Suddenly jobless and looking for work. Mighty, thank you for the 3 years & all the best <3

Looking for work; learned I was let go a couple of nights ago.

Still on my vacation in Japan but I’ll have this week to return home, recover from traveling & figure things out.

Responses will be delayed.

Help with leads and opportunities are super appreciated via email: business@leonieyue.com or feel free to comment here.

I’m still blocked from social media at the moment and I’m using buffer to get around it a bit.

I’m writing this personal ramble in my hotel room during my last night in Japan.

Please excuse how badly formatted this post is!

Getting super late & I have to pack up too! Eep!

I’ll share more about my vacation in Japan another time when I have recovered from exhaustion, sleep deprivation and soreness from the trip. Unpacking everything and settling back down first too. Gosh it was supposed to be a holiday towards healing from mental and physical burnout, perfectionism, anxiety and my life + creative rut :’)

Digressing. It’s pretty rough to hear while on holidays that I won’t be returning to back to Mighty. Extremely difficult to learn that I am not the only one, on top of everything. I hope everyone involved gets back up on their feet and may Mighty keep doing great things with future games and shenanigans.

I don’t know how to feel yet as reality hasn’t settled in. Mixed feelings.

I’m still in another country, away from everything. It’s too early and difficult to say.

Been trying to enjoy the best I can with my remaining days in Japan since the bad news – with mixed results.

Not looking forward to when reality does hit me when I’m in Australia. There’s a lot to process.

Thanks Mighty for everything.

I am extremely grateful and lucky to have been part of the Mighty team for 3 years.

I was a confused, inexperienced newbie and haven’t worked on a published game then. I did concept art, comics, illustrations, voxel and vector art for a handful of games during my time at Mighty. Somehow was able to talk at two conferences too and do some PAXAus panels as a doodler. Still I have much to learn.

Thank you Mighty peeps for being kind, understanding, patient and chill to work with while I was the quiet, intense, energy-conserving artist/workaholic/perfectionist/grump. I wish you all the best with life, health, family and friends (:

Happy to 1 to 1 catch up with them in the future, given that I won’t be too much of a homebody now that I don’t have to go to an office to work at! Thank you for a Mighty game development ride. (:

 

This is where I get off the Mighty bus.

Honestly I have no idea how to continue on my own as it’s been ages since I was on the rocky freelancing road but I’ll pack up my things early next week. I don’t have anything prepared or lined up beyond Mighty and there’s a lot of things to work out with life, mental and physical health, finances, lack of social life and work.

Since I have expenses from the trip and from health appointments, so I need to be more frugal and accept help [if any] from family and trusted friends :< I might just cut down on those appointments to save money eventually since I’m out of work. And I need to mindfully make myself leave the house too [monthly perhaps?] so I don’t go into a deeper negative, isolated spiral. I’ve been there several times before and it was terrible for my mental health. Catch up with my few trusted friends and still go to some appointments I guess. :S

Scary times ahead. I don’t know where I fit in terms of work.

The exhausting hustle of freelancing again? Art jobs are extremely scarce, competitive and heavily influenced by your personal network, skills and luck.

Focus and build on Patreon and/or streaming since I have 3 kind patrons?

Make more print on demand sticker products on RedBubble? I don’t know.

My audience and network isn’t big for that right now.

Freelancing is tough and comes with a lot of amazing freedom and personal accountability.

Perhaps I’ll unblock myself from social media sooner than I would like. Make sure I use social media sparingly and with purpose. Or I’ll just use Buffer and email to communicate with people if needed. We’ll see. Cold turkey was wonderful but I need to establish healthy ways to use social media again if I need to go back to working independently.

I do feel like retreating from everyone and hiding in a hole but perhaps it’s time to embrace the unknown and go ahead with my original personal art plan anyway. Work on a new portfolio, figure out different revenue streams and post more varied, fun artwork again. Hopefully my savings withstand it. Figure out my own way and build my audience and network somehow.

It feels scary, weird and different going back to not having stability or a job anymore. Ah I’m back on the independent side of the rocky seas. Looking forward to new beginnings and hope I have the courage to get through this.

If you have any advice or help you could offer, I would deeply appreciate it.

But note I’ll be mostly off the grid for this week as I’m supposed to be on holidays with limited internet :’)

I’ll get back to any emails or comments on this blog post.

I have a lot to work out this year!

Regardless, thank you so much for reading <3

 

This is part 2 here