I did it. I announced an indefinite hiatus from my patreon. I’m even planning on stepping back from all social media posting, at least for a little while as I rebuild my relationship with my art. It feels a little reckless to have had the idea for and implementing this hiatus all inside of one week but it feels right. I feel like I’ve been needing to do this for at least three or four months now. Every month of continuing my patreon has felt like a drag. Everything I draw feels hollow. I don’t feel inspired or like I’m making anything new. I have to be down for now. I need to get back to basics and explore out from there again. Maybe I can go to the cafe some more and do more life drawing. Or maybe do a little notebook of patterns like I’ve seen on bsky. Or even get back into painting. Either way, I have one more month of patreon and then we’re pausing the payments.
Maybe one day I’ll come back but it will probably be wildly different. I don’t think I should include a sketch request tier unless it’s going to be something like $10-15 instead of the $5 that it’s currently at. Sure, an increase in price after a long hiatus where I’ll probably change my whole style and focus will likely mean no patrons, but at least I’ll be free and the patreon could act as more of a tip jar than anything where I promise art fulfillment. Something that you sub to for a like $1-2 a month just to say I like you work, kinda like a glorified ko-fi.
On the work front, I’ve accidentally made myself more aware of the problem of being unsatisfied with my job by making my weekends more fun lol like I go out on the weekends and go for walks and go to the shops in town and see the people of my city just existing and I get a well made coffee and snack and then watch movies I learned how to torrent and I think “this is living, this is real life, going to work is bullshit and not the real deal” and what sucks is that I’m right and what sucks even harder is that the things that I enjoy on my downtime can only be facilitated by other people working. It’s unfortunately never ending. There is no perfect world where no one does any work and everyone has chill fun weekends seven days a week. Unless that’s what happened in Star Trek with the replicator or whatever. But we’re too busy killing each other right now to work on something that might actually benefit society in that way.
With that thought in mind, I do still think I’ve been unnecessarily grumpy lately. I feel like when I get to work and do my boring tasks that aren’t those nice things I want to do on weekends I’m being dramatic in how upset it makes me. Like sure I think I’m right to be upset about how many hours I have to give to a job just to live decently, but do I need to be that upset the whole time? Am I just needlessly upsetting myself by fixating?
I think part of my problem with being so negative at work is that I continue to have negative experiences with my boss, who doesn’t really seem capable of improving tbh. He assigns half of a project and seems to think that the other half will just materialize without him even when he asks me to wait. Like bud I can get a lot done for you if you just give me all the tools or make A decision on a few things up front. And even if him getting upset with me is his fault in the end for continuously not coming to talk to me it does still stress me out. But I do have to remember that even that isn’t that serious. I mean hell I already try to put the boss related stress in a box labeled “in case he actually shows up” considering how often he misses meetings.
For privacy I won’t be disclosing the work I do cuz it’s too specific but to roughly quote the man himself “we’re not curing cancer, we’re just making [unspecified good].” And I do think I would do well to remember that more. Will customers be upset that things take a little longer? Maybe. Is it my fault that he never shows up like he says he will? Not really. He’s told me to harass him to get him places but like bud, you regularly ignore my texts and will definitely dismiss me if I come over to your office where you’re having your fifth google meeting today. And frankly I don’t think I’m feeling motivated enough to waste more time in my day attempting to get you to fulfill your obligations even if some of them are to me.
this is another journal entry that took like a full week to write. I gotta work on not thinking the whole day is over and that nothing can be done after I get home from work at like 4pm. I should be able to write a journal entry, or upload it to the website, or gasp, even read up on more web building or do research on shit or draw shit or read something that’s not a fucking post. Oh well. That internet addiction be addicting and all that.
this is a continuation of a thought in my lucifer page about feeling like he’s telling me to quit doing patreon/art for sale or views.
last night i didn’t know what to think of it [my tarot session] since i had assumed we had come to an agreement that i wasn’t quitting my job. but this morning i went to schedule some art to my patreon and was going to make a little haha joke about procrastinating when i had the realization that i had been avoiding doing my art with a dozen other things. it’s honestly kind of funny how obvious it is now that i’ve seen it. i’ve picked up html, restarted knitting with plans for more, gotten into kit building and music curating and physical media procurement and digital media gathering and and and… anything to avoid posting art.
it’s less the act of drawing that i’m hating but the act of posting it online for engagement. i think it’s kinda ruined my brain. i’ve never been super popular and my numbers have always looked less impressive than others of my skill level and i’m not usually interested in the thing that’s hot right now so i usually miss whatever wave there is for more engagement. it was more manageable when i was doing it completely for free without the expectation of anyone ever reaching out for commissions (very rare still) or engagement with patrons. the numbers though, they’ve always haunted me. being able to see them next to every other creators numbers always opens a pit in my stomach.
it feels very whiny to complain about how my art doesn’t get the same engagement as other artists as if i’m entitled to it. i know i’m not, but i also know how much work i put into things and i can’t know how much work other artists put into theirs. but i’ve kinda always known that most artists with big numbers are also doing more networking and shit that i’m very bad at.
and i know that the other answer to “not getting as much engagement” is to do more networking and join more events and do timely art challenges and hop on trends and as you can see the more things you list the more they seem fucking unbearable as ways to authentically engage with your craft and more like business moves that lead to you seeing your art as only a money maker and less of a way to enjoy yourself or the topic you’re making art about.
i used to think i wanted to be a studio artist, and i’m not going to count that out in the future. but when studios consistently only want people with experience and my schooling didn’t actually train me for career seeking or portfolio building or networking it becomes something of a pipe dream. then i thought, what about freelance, which has it’s advantages of being more in control of your work and building a more engaged audience, but there’s also no safety net, which i am not in a position to be without. i love the idea of making prints and merch, but i hate the idea that most merch is made with plastic and produced over seas by exploited workers and prints have such low margin if produced third party or have a big investment in material to do yourself, essentially killing that margin again.
i feel like making art for the consumption of others is such a mental drain for me at this point that it's holding me back from doing even basic tasks in my house like cleaning and organizing. no, i don't have to make that drawing now, but i'm thinking about it and thinking and thinking about how i should be doing it and nothing else feels doable until this obligation is taken care of. and it’s probably not a great place to be in feeling like making art is an obligation.
there's also something demoralizing about worrying over my patreon and the amount of effort i put into my art and receiving at most like... $75 a month. again not to sound entitled but on a pure financial level it's not worth it. it's also kind of a matter of feeling like i need to work more and more. like when i come home from work i have more work to do. sure, i like the kind of work i do because drawing is inherently fun to me, but it's still conceptualized as work to be done. and yeah it's "easy" work, but my brain keeps putting it in the same spot as my day job so it's stopped feeling fun. especially when i’m drawing things for others that i’m not especially interested in which is again kinda against the ethos of being and artist for hire in whatever regard but like, maybe i don’t want to be for hire anymore.
i’m going to have to sit down with myself and really think about what i should do about this. do i just discontinue the patreon and continue posting as untimely as i want? do i leave the social internet all together as a creator and just post art to my site and to my friends? i don’t know. but i clearly have to think about it.
long time no see. at least on this page. time to ramble.
i’m finally catching up a bit at work. not perfectly, but i’m way better off than i had been of working on shit a week after it was “due.” also managed to have some meetings with my boss when they were scheduled which is rare, so i’ll take that as a win.
i got some buttons i wanna add to my link page but i gotta decide how i wanna do it and how i want to include people who don’t have buttons but i think are cool. i could just make them a button myself like i made my own, oooor do the slightly lazier option of making one in one of those basic button maker tools where it’s just their site name and maybe it’s in some matching colors for their page. i hadn’t thought of that somehow. for some reason i was like i need to make css button i can just insert inline as if that’s not weird and there aren’t easier options lol
oh my god i just opened up my local editor and i literally already did something that worked but is ugly as hell whatever i'll see if i come up with a better solution soon
the fun thing about teaching yourself something but only on an as needed basis is that i’m definitely skipping some shit that probably gets taught in a 101 class or trying to fuck with shit out of order and confusing myself. it’s either this or sit down and take a course or something and i don’t really wanna do that right now. maybe in the future but not this second. although i have been tossing around the idea of possibly getting myself a kinda cheap laptop that i can just fuck around with and be able to more easily do web shit on than my ipad, which is great for what it is but man, i miss ublock and having a mouse or trackpad when i’m on my ipad. even though i got a keyboard for it i miss having a mouse and for the internet to not be horrendous to use cuz it’s always trying to load fucking ads.
if i get a laptop maybe i could figure out how to put linux on that bitch so i don’t obliterate my actual desktop when i for sure fuck something up. maybe get really into web design or whatever kind of madness i’d need to get good at to self host a small forum for my friends. i did say that if shit goes totally sideways with discord that, if given the time, energy, and focus, i’d totally learn how to build a forum or some kind of private space to chat and dump our fandom talk without having to rely on so many overly moderated platforms.
it’s kinda crazy how you end up sounding like some kind of freak into depraved shit or a murderer or a groomer or whatever when you start talking about moving away from “overly moderated platforms” when all i mean is fucking companies scraping our data and reading our messages and scanning our pictures when i just wanna send old man porn to my all adult friends without having to hand over my fucking id. like literally for a number of years i wasn’t drawing men under 45 and they were fucking nasty and that’s all i wanna send my friends who are also like 25 or older lol.
in the meantime, kinda wish more of my friends would get a signal account. that would be enough to justify me paying for it honestly, if i was using it for more than just one friend who texts me there exclusively unless they’re messaging our group chat with other people who didn’t get a signal. not to overly hype or praise signal of course, i’m just more moved to support their work since they’re a non profit. gives me more confidence that they actually mean what they say about privacy.
i’m realizing that tonight is another one of those “bird tricks themselves into journaling or whatever” nights cuz as i’ll mention in my lucifer section i cleaned the altar tonight and my partner is downstairs playing a game with his friends online so i’m up here hanging out just thinking about shit, complaining for the sake of it.
this is another instance of writing out some shit over the course of several days, as i started this entry on my friday night alone time at my altar and here we are sunday morning cleaning it up and continuing. yesterday (saturday) we went out for a walk to the library and left with some cds to rip and some movies to maybe try again to rip or even play on my shit ass portable player. i’ve also got a book on html/css so we will see if i actually look through it to get better. watch i open it up and immediately discover that my website is bad and should be totally rebuilt lol
also kinda tech related; i’m not good at pirating lol. it’s just not a skill i grew up with and mostly just makes me think of early 00’s horror stories of kids spending 4 hours downloading a song off of limewire over dialup only for it to kill their computers. not to sound like a chad or whatever but when other millennials were online learning to rip music and movies to their clunky computers i was outside on my bike or sitting in the grass somewhere or trapped in my room drawing fairies lol so needless to say i didn’t learn any online skills until college when i needed to learn how to google shit and use catalogue websites. but i’m taking my first dips in lately because i want to be free of subscription services and the main way i was listening it music was via sub. so i go to the library and get cds and rip those and when the cds too scuffed to rip i go and look for other methods. it’s slow going, and i really ought to venture into shit like torrenting but that’s the part that freaks me out the most honestly. but whatever, my phone will soon be full of all of mcr’s music now… might have to actually consider that separate mp3 player.
anyway, after that detour, back to saturday.
after the library we circled back down the street and stopped at a game store for a new little wooden thing to build, it’s a little flower shop and it’s so cute. it has a mirror in the back to make it look like it keeps going. i’ll take a picture when it’s done, maybe an in between spot. there was a cute little craft fair in the street too and i took a handful of business cards and also bought some little crochet crafts and also a beautiful turquoise ring. there was a lady selling hand dyed small batch wool yarn and my god did i want to buy some but i don’t have any garment plans yet so i’d rather wait to buy from her later when i know what i’ll use it for. the we stopped for coffee, then the liquor store cuz i’m gonna make some rose perfume over the course of the week. did you know that you can make rose perfume out of rose petals, perfume, and distilled water? neat!
so today will be normal grocery shopping, the beginnings of perfume making (assuming i find a big enough sealed jar lol) and then getting started on that build. hopefully two great days in a row :)