My name is Blaq. You may know me from such aliases as Blaqink, Blaqnote, or the more commonly known, Panini. I am a digital artist/EDM producer that has posted many of my work across a number of social media networks, and art/music sites.

I'm typing this journal because, as most of you all know, my business practice has about the same amount of potential as flicking a quarter across a bar and landing perfectly into the jukebox.

So, I am no Micheal Jackson.

All joking aside, it has been this way for many years of my life, especially back when I first started on deviantART while still being in middle school at the time (2009).

I suppose you could say they were very memorable, for better or for worse.

But that's not why I'm typing this journal.

As of today, Tuesday, February 17, 2015, it has come to my attention that commissions were probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. Not because it isn't something I can handle, but in all honesty, keeping my clients in limbo when I am obviously still active and doing other things to avoid responsibility is not something I can have lingering around in my conscience.

I am a weak-hearted person that doesn't like the thought of people not trusting me. So, ironically, I make it even worse by cutting contact until I know everything is right. Clearly, everything is not right.

As of now, I owe nearly $1300+ worth of commissions that were either incomplete, not started, or written off as a loss. Every day I tell myself I can get them done, but the more I listen to that thought in my head, the more it sounds like an excuse to not do homework for school until it's too late.

This is not school. This is the real world (kind of weird saying that on the internet...lol) . And we live in a time where trust is so much more valuable then we allow ourselves to believe. Sometimes when I sit around on Skype, or IRC, or hell, even F-Chat, I get this vibe that a lot of people are not responding to me; and my reputation as a failure of a businessman may have something to do with it. This is why many of you Skype users may see me with a lot of depressing statuses.

I can't treat myself like I have a "right" to bullshit my way through my career as an artist. While it is true and very unfair that most popular artists can get away with having their clients wait years and years on "incredible, fantastic artwork", that doesn't make it the right thing to do. Regardless of popularity status or not. I am not going to risk having my name spoken everywhere, when one of those places can end up being Encyclopedia Dramatica, or Artist Beware.

Or both.

And this isn't to say that my family doesn't have anything to do with my lack of progress on my owed work, because a lot of my close friends do know this. But I would rather not speak about that publicly in this journal. Besides, to the majority of my clients--I wouldn't be surprised if this sounded like a BS excuse to you all.

I am not going to quit. I refuse. Because that won't make things better; it will only make things worse. If that's the case, then it shows that I am nothing but a lazy, selfish, inconsiderate scam artist who doesn't want to take anything in life seriously.

I am going to make an effort every day to finish what I owe.

My name is Blaq. And this is the truth.