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First, please help me/my family with the GoFundMe in the post below.  No one has been willing to do so.  We're barely holding on and I d not see a way out.  I don't see us  surviving.

Okay.  Per art: I think in this time of desperation my block is lifting.  My last client says he loves the portrait I did for him.  I'm now twenty hours into a 14x17 family portrait that may take some fifty hours.  Price is up in the air, depending on what the guy who commissioned it can work out with his brothers.  I might make minimum wage for the first time...or I might get seriously underpaid.

The first was scanned, the second was from a photograph (cleaned up by Jesseca) second one is not up to date as I have begin the next brother and added the boat that's behind them.  I will not be drawing the ground beneath them, and will add the background only with the barest, most representative lines.  There are four brothers in the image.

So...my block had lifted and it may be too late.  When I work I feel a despair that it's not worth it, that it can never add up.  People don't want to pay minimum wage, they want a flat rate.  Ten bucks an hour?  They balk. And, ya know what, In the past two weeks I've come to really value what I do on so many levels.  This is not entry-level stuff.  It ain't washing dishes.  It deserves more than ten bucks an hour.

I've trapped myself  by teaching myself to use a mechanical pencil.  I need to try to incorporate regular pencils for areas of shading.  That's a scary thought - mechanical get me a level of subtlety and clarity that I consider to be a part of my signature.  I am loathe to compromise that.  Besides...it not being my voice, I kight just suck at regular pencil work.  The quality  may suffer significantly, my voice may disappear.

I managed a full 8-hour workday drawing a week ago.  No headache either, so I know I can do it.  I've done 15 hours over the course of Monday and Tuesday (the family portrait and the Sharon Mitchell pic), even with everything else happening. - but I did manage to give myself a  headache yesterday. My nerves are shot and I pace the house.  I'm unsteady at shading until I can calm justa  little, and that's nearly impossible.  My mom and sister spend all day every day on the phone and internet trying to find anyone  in authority who will help.   I'm  becoming  dependent on Xanax, though I'm taking only a quarter pill at a time.  Last night it only afforded me 90 minutes sleep.  haven't had any more yet.  I'm fucking  terrified for my future.  Jesseca and my mom are the only reasons I'm even trying to hold out - I don't want to hurt either of them.  But I'm so fucking tired, and tired of being afraid, and tired of the depression.  I do not want to talk  to anyone about it, and I don't want to be medicated.  This is now my permanent state of existence, I've been this way for a month or more now.

Dana is gone.  She has been since 1988.  I can no longer afford to believe in her.  My dreams - well, the hopeful ones anyway - were hollow self-delusion. 

I feel like I'm in a jungle, alone, in quicksand.  My arm is stretched out and every now and then  someone comes along and stretches their own out to me...and instead of grasping my wrist and pulling, they pat me on the head and wish me encouragement, then go along their way.  There have  only been two or three exceptions, and one I know genuinely couldn't help who would have if he wasn't also sinking.

 To those who have shared my posts, who have expressed a genuine concern, and especially those three or four who have helped my family financially inside and outside GoFundMe... to them I cannot express my gratitude strongly enough. I am in your debt bigtime.