longer.blue

Hey! Sorry for disappearing again, Mama Urbs needed her alone and quiet time for a while. XD Some much needed digital unplugging really does wonders and helps. I figure now’s about time to share updates on how things are going and what I’ve been up to, mainly w/status of where I am in my grief journey atm. It has now been about 9 months since Cres passed. I can say with confidence that….things are genuinely looking up again. Not great, but good. I am starting to see more positive days, compared to months ago. :) There are still waves of bad days ahead, many of them. But, it’s gotten to the point where I can more easily look at his photos w/o tearing up, but instead smile. Same with watching his archived streams and hearing his voice again. I wouldn’t say being at the acceptance stage, but that the initial shock has mostly worn off. A silver-lining, at the very least, is becoming closer to his family, especially his brother. His family are just plain wonderful and generous folks and they’ve always treated me like their own, even the 1st time I was introduced to them by Cres. They paid 100% out of their own pocket for me to fly down on such short notice TWICE to see Cres while he was in the hospital during his final weeks. I seriously am forever in their debt for all they’ve done and still do to this day! His brother, Tim, has flown down to the midwest from Oklahoma way back in late June to hang out with our close friend @StrawberryTiki and I for a few days! He’s really taken an interest in the furry fandom and we’re both in the process of co-designing an owl fursona for him! Outside of that, I've been seeing a grief therapist bi-weekly since September. She has been wonderful and I look forward to seeing her again for the next session! It has been nice being able to just simply be able to say Chris’ name w/o it being some taboo thing that makes people run for the hills lol. Another thing I’ve been focusing a LOT on since then is my art. I’ve been spending a whole lot of time going back and taking a more serious interest in re-learning the fundamentals and doing more life-drawing. And boy does it make such a big difference. Things that were difficult for me to draw before no longer are. I really wish I spent more time properly studying this stuff back then, but better late than never! I really enjoy doing backgrounds and props a whole lot more and they really make pictures that much better! I’ve been doing a lot of boring life-drawing stuff haha, but I’ll def share some of the more toony and fun backgrounds I’ve been practicing on at some point! Animation is another thing I’ve been also trying to get more knowledge on and currently working on 2 of them! One of them being an animated fanart of an obscure character I always adored, so keep a look out for that soon! Right now I am currently working on the artwork and design for my holiday cards for this year,to continue the tradition. I am doing it again this year and will make a separate post for that later this month, for anyone who is interested in doing a card exchange. I love receiving Christmas cards, as much as I enjoy sending them to others :) Stayed tooned for that~! Well I already spent 40 minutes typing this all up lol, so I think I’ll end the updates here. Last thing to add is I appreciate everyone who left support for Chris and his family when we did the GoFundMe. I wanna give a shout to out to our friends @Abyay, @Zilch, and @Sophia for their incredibly generous donations left for the GoFundMe back in January.We wouldn’t of made going past $10k if it were for these wonderful folks, who gave us a MASSIVE boost. I kept regular track of all the donors and just know you guys are not unnoticed. <3 Shoutout to both Chris’ and I long-time close friend @StrawberryTiki for hosting charity streams