Artist Notes 1/8/2018: Happy Monday guys! 

How was everyone’s week?  This week… mine was actually really rough.

So last week I was getting really excited that I was finally getting ahead again, and I was really happy with how this page was turning out… And then I closed it without hitting save. :S Somehow after days of working on it I hadn’t saved at all. I know that’s a common thing people who work in programs like photoshop are warned of, but photoshop is pretty good about recovering after crashes so I guess got lazy? And since I apparently closed it myself (I don’t remember doing it, but it’s the only explanation) I consented to deleting all the recovery data. I’ve honestly never lost so much work at once, and with no trace at all… usually I have something, screen shots that I take while I’m working so I can ask for feedback, something, but nothing was left, no failsafes, just a blank document. I probably lost at least 15 hours of work, which may not sound like a ton, but that has a lot of implications… I draw in my evenings and days off around a full time job, which doesn’t leave me a ton of time. Losing time like that means losing the time that I’m able to spend with friends and family, losing time to run errands, losing sleep, time is really precious to me, so the lose of time alone hit me harder than I expected. The more interesting thing to me was that I never realized how emotionally attached I was to my art. The original version of the page had been a struggle to make work, but it was fun and it all had come together in a way that I was really proud of, I felt like the fun I had working on it really showed… But the experience of redoing it was a sort of pain I’ve felt before. It like burnout on steroids and nothing ever felt like it looked as good as it used to. (I’m sure in my mind I’ve put my vision of the original page on a unreachable pedestal, but I can’t seem to quash that vision of it.) I’m satisfied with the page we’ve got, but it still hurts me to look at and know it’s not the same. It seems silly to have been so invested in those original drawings, but I really care about the work I do, to me, this is very defining of who I am, so losing some of my art felt like losing a piece of myself–which is SO dramatic, I know. XD But I can’t help it… it was eye opening.

I guess the lesson from this isn’t the obvious “save your work,” unfortunately I feel like that’s something everyone who does any work on a computer has a story about, everyone gets absent minded sometimes. I think the lesson is actually that it shows me just how important making Mag Na Mell is to me, but also how important my time is. Difficult as this week was, it was also incredibly productive, the idea of squandering more time doing something useless was hurt more than ever.

Anyway, sorry for rambling, it’s just an experience I’ve never had before and my emotions attached to it really caught me off guard. Onward and upward, though. If any of you have had similar experiences please comment or something, I’d love to hear how you felt/what you learned.

For those of you that made it to the end of this post thank you for reading and listening! You guys are the best. ^ ^’