Things were really tough when I walked back into the furry fandom, it had been about 10 years since I stopped interacting with the community in any way, and my experiences from before werent that great. I needed to reown myself though, my ex, who I had just broken up with when I joined back into the community, was really abusive, they didn’t agree with furry, or my transexual identity, things were quite physical, mentally, and financially abusive.
I just stripped myself from that situation, and I figured if I wanted to heal (quickly even) I would need to make steps to overcome the self-hate I developed.
Stepping into the local communities was a nice experience, people were largely nice to me, and I didn’t have particular issues with anyone locally. My father gave me about 300$ to get myself back onto my feet, and that was enough to get a cheap thinkpad laptop, and a 100$ drawing surface, much to his disappointment. I sunk all my time into it, while living and recovering with him.
At this point I had started to improve, more of my unique style started to come through, and I was selling commissions. Selling the commissions impressed my Dad, even though it wasn’t a lot of money at this time, it still was enough that I started looking around for farms to work on to get out of the city again, save some money, and live rural.
At this point I largely struggled with my linework, my sense of color seemed a bit natural though lacking refinement, and my ambitions grew to more complex scenes.
This is when my career started to get more interesting, I started to explore taboo themes without a regard to the communities I was participating in, I felt particularly good at this point because I was expressing anything from trauma to the strange quarks that come about from having that sort of trauma. It made me a bit of an outcast locally, but I also started to make many more good longstanding friends. My commissions became consistent, and I more or less became a full-time artist, I started to use that money to move around the country, and enjoy what I could from living there. Gradually, I found I had no friends in the country where I lived, I guess big fish little pond moment, people were weird about me.
My art overall had gotten really good, compared to the last year, my sense of expression, pose, and confidence to expirement had all gone quite up. I was still only sketching my pieces, as I had chosen to focus on sketching to improve my linework.
I had grown a cult following by this point, weirdly it felt like everyone I met already knew of my art, and enjoyed it. It was exciting, but also driven up my anxiety a lot, my art was often illegal where I lived, and often my fans were more the type to disrespect or objectify me. It was a difficult balance, but I was making so much more money that I was happy for where I was.
I started another account for purely sfw cartoon art, but this was kinda the start of me having social issues in the community, some folks knew me for just my sfw art. They would be upset to find out I drew such nsfw themes, so eventually I closed it down and focused that energy back into my nsfw art brand, just adding the occassional sfw art in the mix.
This was also when I started to ponder going public with some personal things that could cause my career to be uprooted, and would eventually make me take down a large portion of my gallery on some websites because I became insecure about how it would make me look.
This was the year when I opened up, it was both the worst, and best year of my life. At the start of the year it was mostly grief, many people started to try to control the direction I would go going forward. I pushed them all away and started to fully stick to myself. When I found a community again, I later learned I was being manipulated, so I left that community too, with a small group of really awesome critters following me along.
This was all a big challenge for me, to figure out what kind of people I actually wanted around me, and I admittedly made some mistakes…
Then something wonderful happened, I met a critter that shown so much heart, we met through the first part of me opening up, we talked lightly before, but didnt really talk much till we got into a big fight, I felt horrible for the fight because I will admit that I had a big crush on the critter.
Despite that fight though, we connected, soon we spent most of our time in call together, I brought her into my community, and when I went on my first visit to the country she was in, and things started to go south on my trip, she offered me to come visit her instead of sticking through a shitty situation, and I did.
Within a month, we knew I couldnt go back, we loved each other, and we got married. Despite all the choas that year, it was the best year of my life.
My art had become quite popular, my style was really refined, and I was doing cleaner linework a lot of the time. I could say that in terms of style, I had found it, and the confidence to like my own art. This is when I started doing my first comics, and when I started to explore future plans, now that I had a stable life with my wife.
For awhile, I stopped drawing, I focused on my new life and finding my place in it, though after awhile I learned that my wife loved me for my strengths so I started to focus on those strengths which meant focusing more on my art, instead of trying to fit into the homesteading lifestyle.
I grew more ambitions, and continued drawing my taboo arts, I have started to plan for my biggest comic goals, though I have a lot of studies to do before exploring that, I now can do what I want without worrying about money, or law. Immigrating is a process, a big one, with lots of roadblocks, but I know it will go well, I love my country and wife.
In the end, I think I made the right choice with my life, it has completely changed from where I started, and where it was heading before I gave art my all.
I wouldnt change anything in my life now, because it lead me to this happiness I thought I’d never get. I love myself, and I love so many others.
If I had any advice out of this, it would be to be true to yourself, be brave, and take risks, because you never know if you’d find your happiness if you didn’t try.