May/June Illustration #1 (WIP 1) + Life update

So here is the first WIP for the Star Wars Rex x Hunter from last month. I may flip it just so I can draw Hunter's face paint, which looks kind of cool, but will see how it looks in the final. 

For those who like Rex, should I draw him clean shaved, with a stubble or with the long beard he has in Rebels? 

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Now into life... It's not easy for me to write this update, and know that I am deeply ashamed of the inexcusable performance I've had this month. Close to a month ago I made a post saying life was giving me too much troubles for me to deliver art, and i would take a couple days to unleash some steam, and well those couple of days are almost a month after. I did worked on commissions for a bit trough the month but not to the proficiency required for my already too long to manage commission list. 

And while I don't really want to make a vent or anything on this platform, you guys are the ones helping me pay my bills and supporting me so I owe you transparency over what's going on. 

While I won't deny that poor time management skills and laziness are a big factor on why my productivity plumbed. The truth is close to the end of last month my best friend had some major personal problems that for several weeks to come had us very uneasy. Not only that but one of my childhood friends had to escape his abusive household and come to live with me, only for me to kick him some weeks later because he got extremely creepy around my sister. The world is been very stressful lately so another one of my friends had to be hospitalized due depression. 

I felt powerless to do anything so many of my friends struggling with issues that I couldn't really fix the best I could do was open my doors to someone and then close them again because it was creating new problems. 

All of this while the #BLM movement was prominent, and yes while it did made me very uncomfortable to see so much brutality and it would've been better for my mental health to turn off social media for a bit. I didn't felt like it was the right time for me or anyone for the matter to be quiet about something that has an impact on the rest of the world to a different scope. 

June 12th was my birthday and while I did not wanted to celebrate it cuz I feel like I'm too old  for it to have any meaning, the night before I got notified I tested positive for COVID. 

And somehow in spite of all of these bad news I managed to keep myself rationally motivated. Sure I wasn't working as much as I needed, but I wasn't in bed the entire day wishing the world would stop, and for those who have been long enough supporters, you know that's a huge accomplishment for my mental health.

Even more so considering that due to the quarantine I've been unmediated and unable to attend to my psychiatrist (who is in another city). 

As many of you may know, I started this patreon with the sole intention of being able to remain medicated, because I suffer from some serious mental health issues that have put a total stop to my life and had a crippling impact on my performance as an adult, and yes things have definitely gotten better and I'm very proud of how I've managed so far this year that it's full of bad news after bad news. 

But last week, shit hit the fan. I live in the state of Guanajuato, close enough to Celaya, Valle de Santiago, Irapuato, Guanajuato City, etc. Well pretty much all of this cities, where I live and many others were set on fire by a conflict between drug cartels. Stores were burning, cars were burning, highways were taken, and I was just laughing in my house because I was like "wow I'm 2 blocks away from borderline warzone and here I am playing games and watching YouTube lol zen level 1000".

It all changed when while browsing on the trending topic page on twitter about the conflict I scrolled across photos of a friend and her family brutally murdered. Uncensored. Raw snuff. Scrolling more I got to see how even the people who I purchased dog food from were laying on the floor lifeless. 

I'm not gonna lie. Even to this day I don't know how to feel about that. It's been several days I've tried to process it every possible way I can and I just cannot come to feel anything meaningful. I'm just completely numb to the fact that I found out my friend (whom I was neighbours with for like six months) died, and I saw unfiltered photos being constantly posted on twitter begging for justice to a government who couldn't care less. 

In spite of that I've been updating my clients, I've been trying to work as productively as I can, not because I'm trying to negate what happened, I'm perpetually shocked by what happened but my body has gone trough so much trauma over the past 2 to 3 years that I've lost the ability to react to trauma, I don't know if it's good or bad, it's something that I'll get to talk eventually with my psychiatrist when the hospital reopens for patients like me. 

I want to work not only because I'm extremely delayed, but also because I need to do something with my life, I need to finish all of these commissions some of which are getting close to a year of unfinished, I need to somehow escape this vicious cycle of 

Not having money > taking new commissions > having more work than I can reasonably finish > delaying patreon > having more need for money > taking new commissions > etc.

During May I managed to pay off in full one of my credit cards and is now maxed out again on food and bills. And I just don't want to keep living like this anymore and I am trying the best I can about it. 

I know my social media presence is close to none because I seldomly post art but thats a problem that fixes itself when I catch up on commissions and patreon stuff. 

At the moment I'm seriously considering on pausing my Patreon campaign for the upcoming month because, while yes I really need the money. I'm reaching a point where it's becoming impossible to manage my workload. I need to get a huge productivity boost, and I know a lot of these commissions are something I can get done in 2-3 days each if I work 6-8 hours a day. if I could honest to god dedicate just a single month to catching up, and have a persistent productivity cycle, I could make a significant step into breaking this cycle, I could start focusing into paying off my debt again and moving out from this region of Mexico that is constantly having drug cartel issues. 

But for the time being I don't know if I can do that yet. I think I got enough time to finish this draw and the Constantine pinup before the end of the month, but I may be a bit delayed with the later, hopefully 1-2 days as opposed to an entire month like this. 

I'd like to hear you guys opinion on if I should pause my patreon page until I catch up or try to keep working on this in parallel. 

This life update it's already long enough as it is, and it's time for me to sleep, so I'll do that and I'll wake up to work more on this.