Hello!
I would like to tell you a little bit about my background, why I'm having another go at Patreon, and why now.
Originally I wanted to wait with the opening until I am more known on social media, but recently I got news about how my living situation is going to change.
UPDATE (April 2024)
Things are turning out quite good. We got an extra month, so the relocation has been postponed to June. I was also offered a temporary accommodation, so it's possible that I'll have more time to look for a new place to live in the long run. This is very appreciated, given that it's possible that I'll need to leave the city, so any extra time I can spend with considering my options is highly valuable. The vast majority of tenancy agreements are for 1 year at least, and I'm cautious about this decision. (I lived abroad before, but never in a different city in my own country.)
YOUR support made it possible for me not only to move whenever I need to, but also to continue doing fanart while having this peace of mind. I don't feel cornered anymore, which improves my general day-to-day life immensely. Thank you, a million times.
DISCLAIMER
Please do NOT share this outside of the Patron circle. I would prefer if people supported me because of my art, hopefully feeling like this is a two-way street - not out of pity. I'm opening up about this now because I don't know any other way to express how much I appreciate your support.
Long story short (November 2023)
I'll need to move by May 2024.
I wanted to move out months ago because the issues discussed below, but in that case I would have needed to reduce the time spent with doing fanart to the minimum. Creating to my heart's content is my life juice, it helps me mitigate depression and every difficulty in life, so I was reluctant to give up on it. Soon I won't have a choice though.
This means that I'll need to focus on my paid work, not only to save up the necessary funds for the moving/deposits/etc itself, but also to maintain that life. Rent, bills, groceries. And to do that, I'll need to reduce the time spent with doing fanart drastically. I also have issues with workaholism which have to be addressed. I need hobbies other than doing art, I need to socialise. One may think that constantly doing art, from morning till bedtime, would ensure the rapid increase of skills and level/quantity of artworks, but frankly, I feel like it's the opposite. I think the lack of recreation decreased the level of my art in many aspects.
The point is that I'll need to decrease the time I spend doing art (both fanart and paid work), in order to become healthier and increase the quality of my art. However, because of the situation I am in right now, I will have to prioritise my paid work and I don't know how much time I'll be able to dedicate to fanart, if at all.
This is where your support comes into the picture. I work as a freelancer, which means I can (sort of) freely change the proportions of the time I spend with different types of work. The more support I get here on Patreon, the more time I can dedicate to doing fanart.
Thank you very much.
More details
[TW: mental health, mentions of abuse]
Currently I'm enjoying an accommodation that costs much less than similar places in the same area, thanks to my mother's workplace. However, this is the last year we can spend here: next May, we have to move out. (To make it clear: my family does not own any sort of property, we are talking rented places.)
Naturally, I want to have my own separate life, but there are situations when you cannot be picky, so as a worst-case scenario, I could share the costs with my mother. I would not become homeless, it's not THAT bad.
HOWEVER. There is another factor at play here. This factor is a family member who has been mentally (and sometimes physically) abusing me for the past 15 years. Luckily, they don't live with us right now, but they can pop up out of nowhere and spend 1-2 weeks here. I don't want to go into details about our story, but how it affects me.
Just the mention of of this person's arrival sends me into panic mode. I went through a lot in my life but nothing and nobody has managed to give me a panic attack before, except this person (and my father, but he is already out of the picture). Besides the "usual symptoms", my stomach gets ruined and I'm unable to sleep for days. This spirals down into a depressive state, hypersensitivity to stress from all sources, and even if I learn that it was just false news and they changed their mind, it takes me weeks to recover and get back my momentum. This, of course, affects my work as well.
I will be exposed to situations like this as long as I live with my mother, as she is very much invested emotionally in this person, and I don't have the right, nor the will, to force her to choose between us. Since I'm the one who doesn't need help from her, my interests are not the priority and I will get the short end of the stick, as I always had, since forever.