Summary: 1. Earnest posting | 2. Hiatus | 3. Ongoing Commission Status | 4. Computer Issues | 5. Commissions & Support

Hi everyone !

I’ve rewrote this blog entry a few times as I wanted to talk for a while, but I had a lot of trouble putting things into words: these past few years have just been a lot. I survived a very abusive situation; my whole life was turned on its head; my health got considerably worse, and I’m only now experiencing the volcanic eruption of it all: everything is just finally coming out.

There were a lot of feelings I never took the time to reckon with from being on adrenaline for so long, and now that it’s tapering off, I realise how much I just need some quiet to get better. Managing social media, being incredibly social, very outwardly in general has just been too overwhelming for me and considering the state I was in: I had to just sit down and acknowledge that I was spread too thin, and that I reached my limit.

It’s difficult to write this without feeling like I’m admitting to weakness, failure and unreliability. However, things are just the way they are, and I have a choice in between being in denial about it or looking at things straight in the eye to get better. I’ve been in intense therapy after the events of last year, handling a PTSD diagnosis that emerged back in April, a depressive episode that lasted (quite frankly) for years at this point, and very intense OCD symptoms that put my life on total standby until I started CBT.

I’m reckoning with how my drive to always get ahead was rooted in a fear of falling behind. Despite not being in shape at all to pursue the mundane, the expected of someone’s life, I forced it and completely quelled all the very intense emotions that were bottling up for so long.

It left me in a state where I couldn’t get anything done anymore. I know I did my best, and I know that I do my best: I know I am someone who is in fundamentally good faith about everything he undertakes, but one of his fatal flaws is that through insecurity, he can’t sit down and acknowledge that he’s in too rough of a shape to simply return to the battlefield later.

Quite frankly, a lot of it stemmed from the silly drive to be impeccable at all times: to impress others, to always be on the right side of things, to always zone in on the centre of the target sheet, and never, ever, admit to any structural weaknesses.

However, I genuinely don’t have it in me to keep that rhythm up anymore: my relationship with creativity, one of the most important drives in my life, is currently broken. Out of panic, I’d keep forcing, forcing and forcing, with hopes that it would just resolve itself. But I never did what I needed to do in order to rekindle that flame: taking some time away from it all, from all the noise, and take off some weight off my shoulders and just spend time with myself.

Earnestly, there was a fear of the standby making me irrelevant, forgotten, or becoming a stranger to all of you. However, I’m now aware that if I take the time to do what I need to do, I’ll be back, while if I continue the way I’m doing now, I’ll be nothing but a husk. I felt like I had to be around at all times despite my state, because the idea of losing friends, the idea of distance with people as someone who is so social, petrified me too. The idea as well of a machine coming to a halt and losing all momentum professionally locked me in a state of stupor, but let’s be real: I wasn’t working even as remotely well as I am able to. If that’s expected and normal, I can’t stand my work being merely mediocre anymore: I know I can do better, but the big acknowledgement is that right now, I can’t.

For years, I shut down my inner world entirely because its warning signs just felt cumbersome and in the way of what I wanted to achieve, but that wasn’t what they were doing: they were merely signalling to me that I was approaching a breaking point little by little. By realising things right now, I think I intervened just in time.

August was rough, in that the prodromes of needing a big meltdown tm were coming in closer and closer, and once I came out with who my abuser was and what happened behind the scenes, I relived a lot of things I didn’t necessarily want to relive. But that step was necessary too, because I was losing track of what I wanted to do with my life and was losing track of my passion for it too. By coming clean about the abuse, I was coming clean with what I needed to do to move on with my life for the better, and coming clean with what I needed for once.

I haven’t been sincerely passionate in years: nothing felt like it stuck, nothing felt like it was good, nothing felt presentable. Nothing felt me anymore, because there was a drive to present myself as someone who had it completely together the entire time when I could just tell I needed to completely breakdown and pull out everything I felt insecure about, feel validated in my feelings instead of feeling like I’m irrational for having them, and just looking at what made me feel pain for once instead of minimising it constantly.

The way things manifest physically too is that it’s a mess to even get out of bed these days: I experience tachycardia, poor sleep, intense nausea, tremors and am often on the verge of fainting. All of that to say that clearly, I’m not in the shape at all to live with as much intensity as I would when I’m in good health.

I need a lot of introspection, quiet and peace right now, and having to manage with social media among other things is getting in the way. To feel better, I need to do the following:

• Have time away from social media noise, have time for myself without having to react to every single thing going on: I need the internet to be a mirage for a bit
• Taking care of myself, selfishly so for a bit: do what I want to do, and not putting myself in a situation where I discard my feelings entirely for others (which is my responsibility and need to learn to get better at)
• Spend time with my loved ones
• Finish my commission queue
• Work on Malysh

I don’t have the space for anything else. Which leads into the next section of this post:

I’ll be going on a total internet hiatus. I don’t know for how long quite frankly, but I know I need to pretend like none of it exists for a second. Naturally, I will be reachable for professional matters, but I need to break the cycle of feeling like I’m going to be left behind if I don’t manifest myself every two seconds.

To find myself again, I need to also get rid of the internet poisoned brain I plagued myself with that ended up presenting an entirely different person online to who I am, and which ended up with me compromising on some of my values. I don’t want to do that anymore ! It just doesn’t make me feel happy, and I don’t want to put up with things that make me sad or annoy me right now, whether it be situations or people. Right now, I have stuff going on, so I’ll deal with that ! I don’t have time or energy for anything else !

There were many times because of how I internalised possible internet antisocial and narcissistic behaviours, I didn’t express how I felt because I had the impression that if I put my foot down regarding parasocial behaviours or things that just made me feel uneasy, I’d never hear the end of it. I know why that’s the case: I had to deal with conflict constantly in my abusive relationship, and it lasted for days on end, so I became conflict avoidant. I don’t want that anymore ! I want to feel able like I can deal with putting limits again ! I don’t like how I felt like I no longer had the room to be sincere, when that’s going to be a huge part of my recovery.

In summary, I’ll be gone for a bit, at least a month: I might pop in to my discord every now and again in the next few weeks, but my social media accounts ? The girlies can take a nap – if in the end they become dormant when I come back, it’s alright: I’ll revive things again. I’m not afraid of that anymore.

If you want to drop a little message of support whenever you want while I’m gone, you can either do it in my discord (#messages-for-toto), my little message form, or send me an email at: thisisradinsky@gmail.com

Oh fuck you’ve read all this and been like: shit dude, what about commissions ? This fucker has been ill for a long time already (I know, I’m so sorry). Not to worry though, I’ll be working on commissions the whole time: my hiatus has no impact on work at all. The only difference will be what I’ll discuss in the next section (4), but otherwise, all will be going on as normal.

If anything, cutting myself off the internet like that will help me finish them faster. So if I’m working on one of your commissions, don’t you worry I’ll be sending you updates until completion ! None of them are paused: I’ve got everyone’s email and you can also message me through ko-fi.

Uh, how can I put this: my computer officially cannot handle streaming anymore. Even if I wasn’t taking an internet hiatus, I’d have to put streams on standby until I sort things out. I am deeply sorry to those of you who enjoyed seeing your commissions worked on on stream, and I’d be more than happy to record a timelapse instead of my computer is okay with that.

So, no streams until further notice !

To ensure some stability while I’m gone, I’m opening up two commission slots that would massively tranquilise me financially. You can check the deadlines in the post themselves. The reason I’m only opening character illustrations, is that I only have mental space for things that feel very creative at the moment.

If you’d like to tip instead, you can do so on my ko-fi.

Anyway, thanks for reading loves !

I know the earnest posting section of this was very long, so thank you for having read it, it means a lot.

I’ll be gone for at least a month ! I expect a party when I come back !

Take care and see you in the next one ! ♥

Sections: 1. Malysh Page | 2. New Stream Schedule | 3. Art Jams | 4. Radahnsky Festival (Portrait Raffle) | 5. HEALTH Stream

Hi everyone ! Welcome to the brand new presentation for my blog. From now on, all of the public posts you usually see on either patreon or ko-fi are found here, on my website ! I find the centralisation to be much more efficient, and less susceptible to social media shenanigans, as we have all encountered as of late.

After coming back from my holiday, I’ve been hard at work optimising the practical side of things regarding my work: my streaming schedule and their topics; Malysh releases; community events and how everything is managed.

In this little blog post, I’ll walk you through the changes !

There is now a dedicated page on my website for Malysh, where I’ll post the chapters and centralise all the work around it. You can find it here, and start familiarising yourself with the universe as I start building the lore pages as time goes on.

I’ll also start streaming the process of working on the graphic novel live ! But I’ll touch upon this in more detail in the dedicated section.

I have revised my stream schedule in a more optimised manner, and wanted to tackle specific things for them. Here is the schedule table:

The philosophy behind my streams will now be sharing the joy of making art, whether one is already an artist or wants to get started: I’ll be walking people through what I’m doing, and sharing pieces of advice as someone who has been in the profession for many years now. I want to turn the streams into an opportunity too to host an artist Q/A, where you can ask as many art questions as you’d like. I am more than happy to share my experience and what I’ve learnt – and to invite people to try art for themselves, discovering how much of an amazing thing it is to pick up. Hopefully the streams will also demystify the practice of art itself !

As such, the political angle I used to take will be more subdued, even if I won’t move away from politics in general: my streams will be dedicated to art with the exception of gaming streams (where politics would be more welcome), in order to not get scattered in the channel’s scope.

If you can’t make it to the streams too, you’ll now be able to check out the VODs on my youtube channel, where I’ll edit segments too down the line in organised playlists. I also plan on having reels of highlights posted there ! So you can follow the youtube channel here.

In line with the philosophy I’ve laid out above, I’m also going to start organising Art Jams ! They would be a fun little challenge, accessible to all skill levels, in order to strengthen (or build !) one’s connection to art.

Art Jams would take place twice a year: February and July. Down the line, I’d like to make a cash prize one of the rewards for the winner, although the point is that everyone wins. I’m hoping this challenge to be fruitful for everyone participating, as they learn something from it !

You can read more about art jams on the dedicated page here.

The Radahnsky Festival has been such a fun experiment so far, that I was pretty much finetuning up to now. Wait ! Wait a second ! Don’t worry, the festival isn’t going anywhere ! You can breathe !

The Radahnsky Festival will now take place yearly, in November. I made this decision so the party has a more exceptional flair, and that we can be even more extra about it.

Here’s the invite link for the event on my discord server.

What is the Radahnsky Festival ?

The Radahnsky festival is a portrait raffle live on stream ! People enter with what kind of portrait they’d like drawn (either one of their original characters, or themselves), and three winners are picked at random ! I then paint the winners live on stream, as we chill and have a good time. So not only do you win a free portrait, you also get to see it completed live !

And last but not least ! On Thursday the 9th of May 2024 at 6 pm, there will be a special HEALTH stream ! I’ll be painting Johnny from the band based on the iconic bi-mart photo – HEALTH will also be playing during the stream, and I was given the permission to even play exclusives of theirs that you can find on their patreon or ko-fi (which you should subscribe to, support them).

I hope to see you there ! It’s going to be a lot of fun, and I have a lot of ideas regarding the composition of the piece.

And that’s all the updates for the time being !

All of you take care ! I’ll see you online and in the next updates !

I hope you enjoy the new blog !