#burnout isnt fun and honestly i still havent figured out a way to avoid it

[musubiki]

im ngl noww that you say that you do art as a hobby, im just intrigued by how you are so confident and are able to have the free time to do it as a hobby...

i hope i didnt make a mistake taking art college ;; IM ROOTING FOR YOU TOO! its so luckily nowdays to have a job youre at least okay with but also have some really fun hobby on the side too

to one broke college student to another do u have any advice for future years? i ltrly just started college like 3 weeks ago

aaaa as far as time for the hobby goes, i actually only have that kinda time very recently (like over the summer and this semester).....if you noticed, i kinda dropped off for a year where i mustve only drawn like 10 things??? which is because last year was such a busy year for me in terms of work and courses...but this semester is better because im only in 3 classes: one doesnt have any exams and another im retaking (cuz i didnt pass the summer comp exam for it lol) so its all content ive seen before!! so this semester is a little easier and i can draw a bit more when i dont have homework or on the weekends!!!

as far as advice goes, (im not sure how art school works? or if youre in a normal university just majoring in art?) id say: take a lot of different classes to see what you like! explore different areas, and i think it might also be good to have like.....a contingency plan so to speak. like in my undergrad i got a minor in anthropology and almost got a certificate in accounting just so i had a little more options post-undergrad if the math major didnt work out!! so doing something like that is never a bad idea!!! (my undergrad program had a requirement to fulfill a certain amount of credits outside your major courses, so i used those to explore different things)

also dont be afraid to change if you feel you dont like your current path.....like i mentioned i was an astronomy major in undergrad first, and had wanted to go into astronomy since i was a kid, but found eventually it wasnt for me (i couldnt cut it in physics) and switched to something i wasnt SUPER passionate about, but i was good at it!! which was a huge decision for me and lowkey pretty risky (the fuck do you do with a math major?? everyone i asked they just replied "Oh you can do lots of things!" and never gave me an actual job title)

try to do summer internships if you can! as long as its financially feasible for you, itll make your resume a lot beefier when you graduate if employers/grad school see that you already have several experiences under your belt (and experience compounds on itself-- the more you have the more likely you are to get more!! for example here in my program, if you have more stats and coding experience coming in youre more likely to get more stats/coding assistantships, so you gain even more experience over the person who had no stats/coding experience prior and as a result got sent to be a TA or something. so the person who already had experience gets more experience and the person who didnt falls even further behind :') (me) )

networking is also important!!! since youre just in undergrad, i would recommend starting by talking to professors when you can. doesnt need to be like, going out of your way to go to their office hours and talk stories, but maybe chat a bit before/after class!! ask them how their weekend went, ask a dumb clarifying question!! i got to my current grad program because my professor came to me before class one day and said "I have a friend from [my current program] coming to recruit, you should go meet him." so be friendly with your professors so they get to know you and will pass on opportunities when they hear about them!!

a lot of professors get emails from all kinds of jobs/programs to the effect of "[place] is looking to recuit/hire" and they can pass those your way if youre on their radar!! and lastly work hard!!

(anyway this is advice i have based on my own experiences and what worked for me, it will most likely be different for you!! stay on top of your studies, but also force yourself to rest every so often!! I personally do not do any work on saterdays and try not to on sundays!! so i feel okay working hard the other nights of the week so i have two full days of rest....sacrifice your work-week free time for grades :') sometimes the best thing for your mental health is just getting the thing you dont wanna do out of the way!! good luck in uni!!!)

[iggurichan]

now that 2023 is over (and i didnt overslept like yesterday), i figured it was time to properly talk about my thoughts during the year. back in early march i decided that i wanted to make my art accounts more active by doing weekly drawings. honestly i thought i would've stopped after the first month, but surprisingly i kept up the weekly upload schedule up until the end of september. obviously i didnt keep up with my weekly schedule after that, but it is pretty crazy looking back on all of the drawings i did, easily the most i have done in a single year. just looking at my archive on tumblr speaks for itself when you see the content from the years.

as for what's next in this year, it's hard to say if i would keep up the weekly schedule since it probably isnt too realistic without leading to eventual burnout like last time. however, i do enjoy drawing whenever and that is something i dont want to stop doing, i just wont be too hard on myself with deadlines to avoid that same mistake like last year. i also decided that this year i want to start up a small comic that i will be doing throughout the year, obviously im not expecting a lot of people to read it but hey it would fulfill that desire i had last year of keeping my art accounts active while doing something im interested in. i havent decided how the pace of the comic will go yet and i dunno how soon i can get that started, but maybe it will start in february? dont hold me to that, i get distracted easy whenever it comes to any side project as some people might know (doesnt help that i've recently been playing granblue versus last month). also i have a few unfinished sketches i never finished last year, i dont really have any plans on finishing them, but at the very least it cant hurt to share them.

however, i also decided that weekly i'll be answering some year old questions i have in my tumblr ask inbox as a way to buffer some doodles while working on the comic. though i only have 4 or so questions to last me a month, so if you want to ask me anything (within reason), feel free to ask me anonymously if you want to ask me multiple questions, i have no idea it would be you anyways. just know that your question wont be answered until february since i want to answer these really old questions first. this lets me do some fun doodles while keeping my art accounts active during drawing downtime. speaking of accounts, i still gotta post my past drawings onto bluesky, pixiv and etc, i've just been really lazy so honestly it's hard to say when those will be at the same status as my twitter and tumblr. but they'll serve as more options to show my art in the scenario that either site randomly dies one day. whenever i do update them, i'll also make a new pinned with my current accounts to reflect that as my current one was just a placeholder so my pinned wasnt a wall of text like this one is.

thanks everyone who checked out my art last year, it means a lot to me. doing drawings is a fun hobby and i enjoy looking back on the drawings i've done.

tl;dr upload schedule wont be consistent for my sanity, but i plan on making a comic this year, also ask me questions on tumblr to give me an excuse to do doodles weekly