Things have been extremely trying this past month.
Foreword: I realize this is a long and depressing post despite my efforts to keep it brief. If you take one thing away from this post, it's that a lot of artists in this community work alone and deal with a lot of shit in the background while trying to stay motivated and productive. Showing support to your favourite artists is invaluable to them and can drag them out of a funk on their worst days. You're valued and important.
I haven't felt too comfortable talking about things openly because of "reasons" but bottling it up has only made it worse. I just want to sum up what I've been through as briefly as possible in case anyone's wondering what's been going on. I haven't been as productive as I'd like to be.
Things just keep getting in the way of my projects and plans and it's frankly led to what feels like the lowest point in my career doing this full-time. Here's the play-by-play:
NB: This isn't a plea for people to donate or pledge to me. Don't do it because of this. The financial situation I'm in is largely my own fault cause I chose to make the most of my vacation and not limit my spending there. I still intend to start taking commissions as soon as I can manage.
- Patreon went on record last month that TF and Hypno art is effectively banned from their platform. I spend weeks making measures to migrate away from the platform. There are no good options immediately available to me, largely caused by the fact that Stripe isn't available in my country.
- I effectively research and exhaust every possible alternative funding/payment handling platform, realizing that my options are basically limited to PayPal and Crypto. Not a reassuring position to be in.
- The time spent on research and damage control is lost from possibly taking on commissions to bolster my finances. I also had to advise patrons to scale back their pledges cause of the changes I need to make to my Patreon page to mitigate damage.
- 2 weeks after the news with Patreon, I go on a trip that was planned for over 6 months prior. The vacation goes great, but I'm left effectively broke after the fact. Patron pledges help me to bounce back a bit at the start of the month.
- Plans I had in motion prior to the trip fall through completely. The accountant I contacted to help me ghosts me, while their associate lawyer gives me shitty advice that stresses me out further.
- Badly written laws in my country's criminal code make me think that the decriminalization of pornography from three years back got rolled back. The lawyer did literally jack shit to clarify this for me, and no other law firms will help me. This is now cleared up, but not before losing another 4 or 5 days to stress and abject panic.
- Receive a bill from the lawyer. It's a lot more than I was expecting, and even more than what they deserve. Finances are thoroughly shot.
To top it all off, I hurt my wrist while trying to just enjoy my Summer in the midst of all of this. It still hasn't fully healed, which makes it difficult for me to just lose myself in work and pick up the slack. I also haven't yet fixed the Patreon problem, though I have made some progress thanks to Tiff bunny's help. Last night also brought news about the porn ban being upheld on tumblr despite it getting sold off, which just got me on my last legs.
I'm exhausted. Exhausted of feeling like I don't deserve to exist. That what I'm striving to achieve needs to be restricted and regulated off the face of the Earth.
I'm still determined to bounce back, but right now, I'm just disappointed about all these ideas and progress I've had to postpone for longer and longer because of setbacks I shouldn't be dealing with.
Nobody can or even should solve my problems for me, but like I said up top; please remember to support your favourite artists. You are why we do this, so your feedback and enthusiasm is what keeps us going. Creativity is more draining than most would let on, so being reminded that those efforts are appreciated can help us through some very dark and trying times.
Thanks for reading this. Sometimes the hardest part of all this is the lingering thought that people might not care much about what I'm going through. I know it's not true for most of you here, but that doesn't allay the anxiety on my worst days.
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4 years, 9 months ago
13 Aug 2019 15:44 CEST
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