o hai. I still exist!

Hope you've all been doing well. It's been uhhh...looks like five years since I last posted a journal, which is probably a bit ridiculous lol

Sorry that I've been sort of missing in action. I've taken quite a long hiatus to focus on work and family things, and just so many things have changed over the past few years.

1) I got a few different promotions at work, then left the company I was with to take a better, higher paying position at another company. I'm much happier and way less stressed out, and also no longer have to work overnight hours, which has been much, much better for my health.

2) I got engaged, and then married to my then-boyfriend-now-husband, and we've been doing great together. We even had a (GASP) child! She's two years old now and sooo energetic and literally the cutest little bean ever.

3) We also moved further away from he city, since I work from home now and don't have to be tied to Atlanta, and my surroundings are way less stressful.

4) I took a new, very important step as part of my weight loss journey and got bariatric surgery last year. I injured my knee back in early 2020 and it was a real turning point for me, as my weight had finally reached a point where I was very worried that I wouldn't be able to safely put in as much work in increasing my physical activity without potentially hurting myself more and more. Ultimately, while it was a great decision that has made the process much easier, that doesn't mean that it has been easy overall. There are still so many emotional and mental challenges that I have to face and am still struggling with when it comes to confronting the issues I have with disordered eating. However, I feel I'm in a much better place physically and mentally and have much more support and more resources to confront things head-on. Oh yeah, and I'm finally having knee surgery (tomorrow, actually!) to hopefully finally fix the issues I've been having for the past two years.

Uhhh...I think that's it! I'm sure there are other things here and there, but those are the biggest updates I can think of.

I'm really excited for 2022. The break I've taken from art has been much much much longer than I ever expected. But, I think that I've finally reached a point where thinking about art no longer triggers my anxiety. I admit that I spent so much time over the years (especially during college) desperately taking on commissions in order to support myself financially that at a certain point I stopped really enjoying what I was doing. It took a very long time for me to realize that it was because I just wasn't making art for myself anymore, and creatively I was just completely spent because of it. Art had become something I felt I HAD to do rather than something I WANTED to do or even a mixture of the two. Even as I progressed in my career and no longer had to do art to sustain myself financially, I still had this desperate feeling deep down inside that if I didn't take commissions I'd end up penniless and homeless and hungry again. So, stepping away from it completely seemed like the best way to reset and figure out what art meant for me again.

Now, I think I'm ready to come back. There are so many things I want to do experimenting with traditional media that I think I'll probably start taking commissions again, but only for traditional pieces with ink + marker, paint, etc. I have so ideas of specific types of projects and am super excited to talk about them more. But uh...that'll have to wait until after I go through this surgery tomorrow lol

I'm also considering finally changing my username. I've been 'Mookyvet' for such a long time, and there's a lot of history tied to that name. However, the more I think of it the more I think that it's not something that I really identify with anymore and I've been trying to get better at letting go of things that just don't serve me anymore. And I think that name is probably one of those things. What I want to change it TO, however, is not something I've figured out just yet. :)

At any rate, to those of you still following me I thank you for still being around! And, I thank you for reading this long-ass journal. I'll try to continue to make more regular updates that are hopefully a little less disjointed than this one.

Anyway, love ya much! Feel free to drop a comment and say hi! :)

Oh yeah. I'll probably be dropping some of the art I've done here and there over the past couple years that I just completely forgot to upload. XD

~Mooky