First of all, lack of posts on here is easily explained by lack of, well, doing art in general. Although I had the intention to do much more art this year than in the last, as of New year I've been in various places of mental business and just haven't really felt the incentive to draw much, to the degree that I really have/had to push myself to touch paper over the past 2-3 months. I have been thinking and rethinking about it, and will touch on it a bit later.

So, what actually happened. First of all - and I apologize about this paragraph being really personal, feel free to skip it - I got pretty nastily heartbroken due to various things happening at the same time, in a way that actually had the opposite effect of that which could be expected - instead of getting depressed, the last straw of all of that actually made me detach a lot of self-worth that I had attached to how other people view me, if that makes sense. It was a "THAT'S?!! the kind of shitty mental thing/viewpoint/person I've worked up myself for?" breakthrough moment and since then I've been in a better mental place than, well, in a very long time, haha. This was by no means the first major breakdown thing I have had over the years, but I guess, as slow as it goes, with the will for that you eventually can be capable of stopping those mental self-abuse cycles which involve unhealthy attachments along with attaching your self-image to it, even in ways where it makes no logical sense. Those who might have followed me for a longer while (since my old account) or know me personally, might know/guess that I've been having social and performance anxiety issues for most of my life due to certain aspects of how I was brought up, in combination with some neurological predisposition to nervousness and some autoimmune health issues I've had since midteens... well, it doesn't matter that much now. The point is that I've been feeling lately better than for most of my life (regardless of what has been going on in the objective sense), and I hope that I'll be able to keep this up.  

Work has been... work? Spring semester so far has been much easier than Winter, or I've been getting into the pace of the work, or both. This semester, I got to teach a group of medical student freshmen practical classes in Molecular biology (just one group, but the preparation time for the lessons is the same as if you'd have 5+ groups), and turns out I somewhat like teaching. Later this month, I'll be teaching stomatology students DNA extraction/amplification classes for a choice subject class on mutagenesis, it's both flattering and humbling how the teacher in charge asked specifically me to teach these.

I think my abandonment of dA started around the time when I was growing increasingly anxious about my general quality of drawing/productivity and everything else.  

I also can't say I've been drawing anything much personal lately, which hasn't inspired me either. So; draw personal stuff, don't like quality, feel artblocked --> resort to drawing well-trodden style critters for others, which doesn't push for improvement --> feel tired of drawing for others, try drawing personal stuff --> can't remember how to draw stuff --> resort to even more generic same-old-crap drawing --> don't feel like you can post anything ever anymore --> don't hang out on dA --> fall out of touch with the people you used to talk and the community in general --> don't feel inspired --> do even less art --> ???

Incoherent much, but, in other words, I miss the time a few years ago when I was still active on here (on my old account) and the temporary friendships that spawned from that. I also used to post a lot of journals about everything, I don't miss that. Anyway, while some of the dA buddyships have grown into real friendships beyond dA, and some also beyond the internet, I feel like I can't really get involved in the community unless I find a way back to my mental roots for drawing.  can't really draw anything interesting or moving if your own feelings aren't in it, right? Guess it's be sort-of going back to the time when I wasn't afraid to (crappily) draw whatever stories were on my mind then, but without the part of being a superawkward kid of superdimensional proportions of awkwardness and, hopefully, with an improved vision of what I wanted to tell.