Hey,

I just want to share my plans moving forward with commission work and how my arm has been doing after working with a physiotherapist since early July.

It's been almost four months since seeing the physiotherapist, first every week, and now every other week. Because of this consistency, about a month and a half ago, my physiotherapist mentioned that he could make a case that I can be medically cleared. The amount of movement I have in my neck, and the overall lack of pain throughout my day and while/after drawing are large factors why. This isn't to say there isn't more work to be done, as I did have a setback early this month.

Since the first week of August, I have drawn every week up to an ever increasing goal each couple of weeks. It started at an hour and a half, and is now over four hours total. If I can hit my drawing time goal over two weeks and still feel good, it increases by a certain amount. This helps build work capacity for drawing without overloading or doing too much too quickly. Now what happens if I have a setback and things begin hurting again? If you said still draw, you would be correct! However, instead of doing the same amount, the goal time is lowered. The important thing is to keep things going and not stop, within reason. So that means there shouldn't *crosses fingers* be anymore pauses on work based solely on arm/neck/shoulder/back pain.

So! Let's get back to commissions. I plan on starting in the next week or two, and seeing how I'm only currently drawing 4+ hours a week, but slowly increasing said number, things are going to start rather slow. Streams during the first several weeks to months may be short, it all depends on how much work I get done during the week. Even if I am feeling good enough to continue drawing, I will adhere to the timetable that's been laid out, which times may go up or down depending on how I feel week to week.

I'll post another journal when streams start again to give some heads up. Right now I don't have a definitive date. However, similar to how they were before this current, and soon ending break, streams will occur every other week.

Thank you again for your patience during this whole process. Everything feels like it's moving in the right direction, with finishing long standing gift sketches, and getting personal work done, some nearly ready to post. So I'm very hopeful that this trend continues and I can draw and enjoy my time working on commissions without worry and even have some fun personal work/projects to start/continue.

Thanks,
Oter