(Important!) Tamberlane Update Schedule Shifting

TL;DR: Update schedule for Tamberlane is changing. Hop to the "Scenely Updates" section if you want to skip the "I wanted to write a deeply personal essay for funsies" section.

Priorities

If your life were a movie, what would the audience be screaming at the screen for you to do right now?

I am pretty sure my audience has been screaming at me for years to take care of myself.

I have an illness that doesn't respect routines, yet to this point I have lived my life just trying to get as close to routine as possible. This has allowed for some pretty incredible productivity -- like Tam's continual, fairly steady release while also juggling co-director duties at Foxglove, charity fundraisers, and more -- but it has also meant that, even though I'm constantly chasing down leads with doctors, as much as I tell myself I put my health first, I really don't.

I have been pursuing routine with the mentality that I am simply a healthy person in a disabled person's body. That if I just find the right solution, the right medication, the magic potion, I will magically be better and can go back to living a life set to Turbo Speed. But that is not true. And even if it were, living life on Turbo Speed has never been healthy for me, even when I was, in theory, fit and able.

The reality is that living this way leaves me with absolutely no energy left to do things like eat right, exercise, or meditate. For years, I have been telling myself that I will get to that as soon as I get the big things out of the way. I have told myself that it's okay, because my health is my top priority, so it's inevitable I'll get there eventually. Unfortunately, like basically every other brain in the world, mine's good at telling me sweet-sounding lies.

In reality, my priorities have been:

1. Work other people are relying on

2. Tamberlane

3. Doing things for other people

4. Health

5. Life things like cooking, chores, etc.

6. Hobbies

Confronting this reality has been … let's say, enlightening.

Drinking Deeply

How do you even begin to explain a profound mental shift? Over the course of this break, I have undergone a significant transformation that, maybe, is only really meaningful to me. It feels like at last, some puzzle pieces have snapped into place, the horizon has widened, and the walls have stopped closing in. It feels like I finally opened a window to feel fresh air and sunshine, dusting out a lifetime of mental cobwebs.

One of the things that has seeped over my awareness over this break is that I do not tend to spend energy on myself. For my whole life, I have given myself away gladly and freely. I've given so much of myself away -- to loved ones, to strangers, to friends, to readers, to any person on the street -- that I have nothing left for myself. Not because anyone asked for that, but because it is just in my nature, and even when I'm aware of this tendency, it's hard to feel out the limits.

It's like exploring downward in a cave. At the first level you go, "Wow! I really do put others first! From now on, I'm going to put myself first." And then you keep going down and find there was another layer below that. "Oh, doing commissions is putting others first too, but in a clever disguise. I will stop doing that as well." But there's another layer ("I need to make time for myself! Got it."), and another layer ("I should create things purely for me!"), going deeper and deeper. It's turtles all the way down, except the turtles are life lessons, and every successive turtle is the same turtle but smaller and with a more intricate shell.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I think some of my chronic illness comes from this; certainly, one could point to my profound fatigue as a result of living off of scraps of energy. But that means it's within my power to, if not solve it forever, at least improve my situation. And I'd like that!

So I am changing tactics. I'm reworking my priorities to be more like this:

1. Health

2. Life things like cooking, chores, etc.

3. Hobbies

4. Tamberlane

I am going to stop treating Tamberlane as a 9-5 I have to structure my life around, and flip the script. Instead, I'm structuring my life around the things my body needs to thrive: exercise, eating well, meditating, private hobbies, leaving the house, all that good stuff. Then I'll fit Tamberlane and any other outward-facing project around that.

Notice the lack of "doing things for other people"? This is not to say I will never do something nice for others ever again. It's just that I am so pathologically addicted to doing things for other people that I'm going cold turkey for a while to readjust. Same thing for doing work others are relying on. I will no longer promise reliability for most things. I know myself: as soon as there's a deadline, I will meet it, and I will wreck myself in the process.

Scenely Updates

From your point of view as a patron or reader, I'm sure this sounds a bit scary. Is Tamberlane going to stop? No. Not at all. But it might come out a smidge slower than it has been if I'm doing my job right.

Up til now, my rate of release for Tamberlane is fairly comfortable: unless pages are particularly complex, I comfortably complete 1-1.5 pages a week. I won't promise this rate won't change, but I do think it's a very sustainable amount of work for me. Mostly, I want to loosen up expectations for both readers and myself, and give myself wiggle-room to take my time when I need to.

For patrons, this cadence will largely stay the same. However, the public rate of release is going to change slightly.

The public Tamberlane releases are moving to a per-scene release. That means, generally, a new update will occur every 4-5 pages, or about once a month, all released at once. 

This is for a couple of reasons. In addition to giving myself time to improve my health, as noted above, it also should help with keeping track of the plot and what's being said within a single scene. It's very easy to lose the thread when you're reading week-to-week. Plus, it gives me leeway to spend a little more time to polish pages as needed.

What's a Scene?

A scene, in this case, means the pages that make up a single "idea" or "topic," rather than an entire sequence that takes place in one location between specific characters. For example, in the sequence where Milo, Ainsley, and Belfry are in the library kvetching about Oakewood, there would be four scenes: 

• Milo and Ainsley commiserate (4 pages)

• Milo, Ainsley, and Belfry commiserate (4 pages)

• Belfry's mistake about Tamberlane & Oakewood (2 pages)

• Belfry nudging Milo about Briar (4 pages). (Technically the final Oakewood page would be its own "topic" but since it's a single page, I'll tack it on to this scene.)

So, luckily, you won't be waiting for all 14 pages to see the ENTIRE SEQUENCE. Sometimes it'll wind up being more than 4 pages in a scene, and sometimes it'll wind up being less. It'll depend on the comic itself.

The new update schedule for Patreon and the Public is as follows:

1. Every page is uploaded as soon as it's done to the Apricot Croissant tiers and above, as usual.

2. One week later, that page will be released to the Cuppa Tea tier.

3. Once all pages in a scene have been released to the Cuppa Tea tier, the scene will be scheduled for public upload on the website and for Patreon's free members the following Wednesday, whether that's the next day or the next week.

I am going to force myself not to promise a weekly cadence, and to let myself have the leeway to just... breathe. Let my body dictate when I work and raise my standards of acceptable pain and fatigue for working from "I can probably deal with this" to "I actually feel good today." Especially while I am learning how to respect my limits, I'm not sure what my work schedule will shake out to. Due to this, as much as I'd like to say otherwise, releases will not be completely predictable. 

To help combat the confusion this may cause, I'm going to be stepping up my efforts to communicate status.

• My current status will be communicated on the website

• The current scene progress will be stated on the website, as well as estimated release date for current scene

• The most recent Patreon posts (aka which pages have been completed) will also be on the website

• I will stream much more to the Patreon Live feature when working on pages, rather than sticking to Discord streams, and post the vods after the fact for Apricot Croissant patrons to catch up on what they missed

Going this route means updates may, on the whole, be a bit slower, but the ultimate goal is to no longer have these big huge gaps in updates due to my health crashing. It may take some time for me to figure out how to be kinder to my body, how to find a new normal. And it may mean more adjustments in the future. It's an experiment, and I thank you in advance for your patience while I learn how to truly put myself first.

Gone Fishin'

In addition, I'm going to be a lot less available for responding to casual talk, questions, or comments. I've long felt like a forest hermit who's suddenly found herself in the scorching glare of the spotlight surrounded by a crowded, screaming stadium. I just need some time to grow moss under my rock in silence. 

When I do interact, it will probably be to drop in and say hi here and there on the Foxglove Comics Discord, or sometimes I may do a bit of chatting at the start and end of Patreon Lives. I recognize not everyone here uses those, but that is what is most comfortable for me. Like cutting myself off from doing nice things for others, cutting myself off from constantly engaging with people is a way to force myself to unhook, disconnect, and use my energy for myself for a while. Will this be forever? I don't know. It depends on how much it helps, I suppose.

I will still post other non-Tamberlane art and projects here, and I will still write about process and stuff as I am inspired -- those are things I adore sharing with others. I will also continue to do art studies using the high-tier patrons' characters. I love working on Tamberlane. It's become a wonderful way for me to continue to learn and create, and share my feelings and ideas and thoughts with the world through the lens of fuzzy, funny critters. Both it and the offerings I have on my Patreon right now are truly aligned with what I enjoy doing for myself, and I don't foresee that changing at the moment.

Tamberlane, as a venture, is just going to return to its roots as a passion project instead of A Job. And honestly, I think both the comic and I can only flourish from that shift.

If this doesn't appeal to you, that's fine. I understand. I will not be offended if you want to step down or remove your pledge here. This kind of shift is generally not what someone hopes for from a project they like. But I am stepping away from being a content creator and just... being a creator. Thank you for all the support you guys have shown me. Genuinely, this kind of personal growth could not have happened for me without having so many clients/patrons/readers telling me to put myself first. 

When?

Well… Now.

I'm terribly sorry to public readers that this is happening at the end of a long break. I wanted to get it done sooner and have it ready in time for my return, but it just didn't happen. There are a lot of moving parts that need to be updated to make this per-scene thing work smoothly, and I don't have a lot of daily mental bandwidth to work with to get it done. As soon as I realized I was stressing out about getting it all done before the deadline, I opted to practice putting myself first, and moved the deadline.

I will say that I have already resumed work on Tamberlane, and already put out a new page to Apricot Croissant patrons. And when you get the next public update, dear readers, hopefully in a week or two, you will have 4 new pages to read instead of 1.

With that, thanks for sticking with me through this long update. I am by my nature a wordy person. I would apologize for that, but I actually quite like that about myself, and I am, after all, doing more for myself. :) 

Have a great day, everyone!

TL;DR: 

• Break is lasting a little longer

• Tamberlane is moving to a per-scene public update schedule

• Patrons continue to get per-page updates

• Infrastructure needed on website and with social media poster is what is delaying public updates

• I'm taking care of myself