Downsizing (Patreon)

Hiya folks. If you like things short and don't much care for context: I'm not doing Patreon projects anymore. All tiers except the cheapest are being deleted and the remaining tier will be kept as a tip jar for those who wish to support me without getting anything in return. Patron rewards will stop indefinitely. The Discord server will remain open.

And if you're wondering why this is happening:

A wrist injury kept me from working for the duration of both January and February. Since furry art (prompts, patrons, and commissions) were my only source of income, I accepted projects I was unable to do at the time, with my intention being to complete them after what I had assumed was going to be a short recovery period. That way, I could pay for food, rent, bills. The usual.

Fun fact: it's just about impossible to gauge how long an injury will keep you from working. I thought January 15th would be my return. Then it was January 30th. Then I got a brace at the start of February, but my wrist still kept me from drawing for more than a few minutes at a time. When March began, I started to feel like I was getting my strength back, but frankly, even to this day, I'm just not as fast as I used to be.

So, being stubborn, hoping I could pull through and recover financially? It left me with about 2000 dollars owed to my landlord, about 800 dollars in credit card debt, and enough debilitating stress to ensure I would fail my last remaining semester at school. And that was AFTER the Twitter donation drive ended.

So, it took some working up to it, but: I got a job. Wee! I have a day job now! It sucks, and it's very hard to think about the fact that I've essentially failed as a freelance artist, but I'm actually making money again. I'm picking away at my debts. The stress is lessening slowly, surely. It almost makes it easier not to think about how much better I felt doing art for my job.

But... I've never been able to make art with any consistency whilst also having a day job. I've tried many times in the past, but it never goes well. I'm already experiencing that familiar alienation of W-2 employment; the kind that ensures any day spent at work is capped with immediate exhaustion and sleep, and any day spent away from work is spent recovering from the days I'm there. If I draw, it's low energy, low quality, and pretty much always ends in a depressive episode after realizing how tired I feel and missing what I used to be able to do.

So that's it for me, then. This just isn't something I can do anymore, at least not for a long, long while. Two bad months was all it took for me to swerve and crash and burn (I recall someone on CuriousCat informing me that they were looking forward to that happening, so there ya go, stranger). I can only be a hobbyist at most, now.

I think of my remaining queue as another debt to fill out right now, and I will be chipping away at that until it's done and gone. I don't know how long that will take, and if you're one of the many eagerly awaiting your number in that list, I apologize for the delay. I will do it, I assure you, but it may be a while. After that's done, if I'm not irreparably burnt out, any thing posted will be personal work and I will likely not be accepting paid work. I already make people wait long enough for paid stuff, and that was before I had the day job.

For Twitter, I will be posting my round 3 materials from the donation drive as soon as they're ready. They're still a WIP. The drive was an enormous help to me, despite my debts outweighing it. Thank you again.

The Patron server will stay open for the foreseeable future as a cute little hangout, but I don't expect I'll use it too often. Twitter is where all of my remaining queue work will be posted, and I'll keep up with posting full-res versions in Discord, but chatting will probably be rare.

So yeeeaaaah. I suppose that's all. Thanks for the support these past few years. It's been loads of fun; even most of the stress I've had up until recently was just... art-related. That felt nicer by comparison, honestly. I would love for such a thing to be possible again in the future, but I don't see it on the horizon right now. Maybe one day. Until then, hope y'all have a nice time and that life is cool and fun. Love ya.