✿ Personal Profile ✿

I'm Malachyte! You can also call me Mal. I'm a red panda, and a full-time freelance artist. Right now my focus is art for the furry fandom, but I hope to expand that by 2024.

Some tidbits about myself, to give you a general sense of what I'm all about--
I was born on a leap day. My pronouns are She/They. I have a bachelor degree in Japanese Language & Culture. I am a self-taught artist, and I do both traditional and digital media, as well as various textile crafts (like knitting!). My favorite tools are pencils and Copic markers. I love books. Some of my favorite podcasts are No Sleep, My Brother My Brother & Me, and Reading Glasses. I love to rewatch Monster Factory episodes when I can't sleep. I'm passionate about herbology, wildcrafting, food science, and sustainability. I'm a sucker for anime maids and magical girls. My drawing streams get very silly.

☕ Business Profile ☕

Art Trades: Closed
Commissions: Closed except for stream commissions. Check my weekly schedule for sign ups.

Interested in a commission?
Normal commissions are taken through Commiss.io.
Subscribe there to receive email updates about slot openings.
Not sure how that works? Check out this journal for more information about how to support or commission me.

Like what I do and just want to leave a tip?
Buy me a Ko-Fi | Commiss.io Tips

🔗Useful Links🔗

•Malachyte Website
•Terms of Service/Sorta FAQ
•Picarto Streams
•Artwork Queue

Thank you for all the comments and favorites! I am humbled to say that I can no longer respond to every comment I get. As for notes/direct messages, I appreciate them! But my time is limited so I can't guarantee I will have time to chit-chat with you.

It seems plans have changed again, as they seem determined to do. I had to quit that new job, as of one month ago, and have been getting myself back in order4 and trying to figure out my next steps since then. I was able to refund a bit of my queue, but obviously I still have a ways to go. I'm going to be applying to some other places around town and try to do the part-time day job, part-time artist thing again I guess.

The job was very much a mixed bag. I was grateful for the good pay and benefits, and it felt good to be working alongside other people again... until it didn't. The more I got through my training and got to know the other people in lead positions with me, the more I saw what kind of work environment this was. The tasks I needed to do during my shift were very vague, and after my second shift without direct supervision, I faced a slew of issues. I was really struggling with the vagueness of my tasks and lack of direction, so I did everything I could to get coworkers to clarify things, to take notes of every thing I needed to do during a shift, to study how other leads handled surprise situations, and even went to the office for a one on one meeting to talk about my issues and try to get a leg up on things. Nothing I did seemed to help, and it ended up with me panicking and trying to get things done right while several people told me different things I should be doing and then telling me those same things were not the right things to be doing. It's difficult to describe just how jumbled and confusing and impossible to fulfill all these tasks were.

On top of all that, the more I got to know the other leads, the more I learned that racism and nepotism were a huge issue in this company. Not just with one or two people, but with like, nearly everybody. And the more time I spent around the leads (which I was forced to do, since we have to be in communication with each other), the more the line workers shut me out and started to outright ignore me in a weird Us vs. Them tonal shift. It got to the point where I couldn't even get my team to stay in the area and do simple tasks; they'd just say "No" to my face and walk away to go be on their phone or go on a random break. I greatly disliked the other leads due to the horrible shit they kept saying about people, and I was no longer on good terms with any of the line workers because of this strange social divide.

The last big factor was how much of my day I was losing, and all the various health problems I was starting to amass. I basically spent most of my day commuting or at work, with about 5 hours of sleep broken into two parts if I lucky. Fatigue was building up, and even though I had a 3 day weekend, it just wasn't enough to catch up and feel normal again. I felt mildly sick at all times, I couldn't stop ruminating over my job since it was confusing as hell and I felt like I was drowning in responsibilities to memorize, and weirdly my feet were going numb now and again. They seem fine now, but that was a bit scary and weird. I was only able to see my partner for about an hour a day, and I know that may not seem like a big deal for those of you in long distance relationships, but for me it was quite a painful change.

Overall, this was maybe the most isolating thing I've ever experienced. I missed my partner, I hated the people I was working directly with, I was confused at the connections I built with the line workers and then immediately lost, and I even got lightly bullied for being weird and having a "useless degree" while I was there (what is this, high school??). There was a lot more stuff I could say, but I think the point has been made about why leaving was the best option. It was seriously just... so weird there.

Anyways, I'm going to keep working on art in the meantime, and try to figure out what's next for me to stay afloat. I sure wish the concept of money could just go away right now, tell you what.