What's been going on?!

Hey everybody.

Sorry it's been so quiet here. I realize I forgot to upload, both on the date I actually said I would and on the replacement date last week, because I honestly just forgot. All things considered, it's just as well though, as it took me a lot longer to organize the uploadable stuff this time around and I wouldn't have been able to process all that with everything that's going on.

So what has been going on?

Well, some of it has been addressed in my public meltdown from last week. Honestly, it's just the general situation of everything currently happening that's dragging me down.

March has come and gone without very much recognition in my head. I've forgotten the majority of things that have happened, as I've neither been paying attention to them, nor would I have been capable of doing so, or at least that's what it feels like.

I chalk a lot of that up to my insomnia. For the majority of the last three to four months I haven't been able to fall asleep until early morning hours. We go to bed around 1 to 2 am, but I wont stop recognizing time passing until probably some time around 4 or even 5 in the morning. With the weather warming, I can often hear birds tweeting outside before finally droping out (though to be fair, we've had some birds make noise around midnight and later too, just owing to the fact that they live next to street lamps or something).

This in turn leads to me waking up only shortly before midday, sometimes even later, and I'm usually pretty fucked up as a result. It's not at all the sleep cycle I'd like to be having, or the one I was used to having, even when I still slept better, though I've always been slow to fall asleep to begin with.

Barring heavy medication, a friend suggested I look into plant based remedies and I've had some success with CBD pills before going to bed, which has been rather pleasant, though I do sometimes still have trouble. We'll see how things continue.

What bugs me is that, at the beginning of the pandemic, when the first lockdown hit, me and the mate had a pretty solid regimen set down that worked in both our favors (or at least I felt it did), which has since degraded into random spouts of activity and lack thereof, where the latter is demonstrably more prevalent and it shows in just about every aspect of our lives.

I suppose this is something a lot of people have been experiencing, so I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. I saw an article the other day (though I didn't finish it) that talked about how the pandemic has messed up our sense of time, both at a large and small scale, and I couldn't agree more. I have a hard time remembering whether actions and events that took place in my life were a week ago, or a month, or sometimes even yesterday, and I know a lot of people in my vicinity who have had similar issues.

I know, it's a chewed out topic at this point, but I figured I might aswell address it.

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Anyway, outside of all that, I've been wracking my brain about how I might be able to improve some things about the patreon, seeing as I'm hoping to get this to be a viable source of income in the future.

I asked around a bit, and I know you guys made some suggestions too, so here's a rundown of things I'm thinking might be a good idea.

• SFW patronage:

Several people have suggested this idea at one point or another. Basically, offer a set of patron levels that are equal to the regular ones I already have, but limit uploads to sfw material only. While definitely interesting as an option to perhaps attract people who, for whatever reason, don't want to view nsfw stuff, I'm a little worried I may not have a whole lot to offer these people. Granted, I haven't uploaded as many nsfw images to my public galleries as I used to do, but that's kinda also the issue - the material I haven't gotten to complete is mostly nsfw in nature.

• Future Content Polls:

I've seen variations of this throughout other artists patreons and I've had it suggested to me in some shape or form several times too. The core idea is an audience poll that allows to vote for either a specific character or image type, or the prioritization of a given piece of work that's already in progress over others. This is definitely something I want to be including after I've cleared the current backlog of upload material. I'm not 100% on how exactly I want to structure this, but I think maybe making several categories of "product"  than can be voted on separately would be an idea (pin-up, story telling, studies and ideation, thatsortathing~) - with that, there might also be a poll that tells me what I should be leaning on most, just to give me an idea what most people will definitely want to see for the money they invest in me.

• Past Content Polls:

Pretty much the same thing I just explained, but pertaining to old projects only. This was also suggested by a couple' people, but I wanted it to be a separate thing so as not to clog up the FCP post. There might be an image or set of images that was never finished or wasn't taken beyond the concepting stage that some of you might have more of an interest in and want to see finished (in fact, I'd like to see some of them developed and finished, but lack the time to do so). I'm thinking it could either be one of the votable options in the priority poll, or I could just make it a poll of its own, where I suggest some of the older materials that I feel could use some polish and you guys can then vote on which one I should work on. I'm figuring this might be especially interesting once I get around to uploading the sketches of the various story telling projects that shipwrecked in the sands of time, but by no means exclusively so.

• Content Sponsorship:

I've seen this with some other artists and at least one of you suggested it as an idea. Basically allowing direct sponsorship of an image, future or past by a single person (or group of people?). I suppose this would pretty much forego the poll system entirely, just either me or you suggesting an image be done to a specific finishing level, with a price tag attached. The only trouble I see with this is that I'm not entirely sure how to handle said price tag, bill it as a pseudo-commission? I dunno. Thoughts on this would definitely be appreciated.

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That pretty much covers the larger ideas that I've been toying with and want to try and implement in the future. Let me know what you guys think on the matter. Remember, any input you give me can only lead to more beneficial outcomes for both you and me :3

Once again, I'm sorry the uploading process got interrupted so badly this month, but hey, since the first upload of the month is on the first wednesday, this means uploads for two weeks in a row :D

I've been looking into the scheduling function patreon has and the first try at that will go live tomorrow at 1pm CEST, so that should hopefully take care of that and likely preempt any future uploading issues, at least until the backlog is cleared.

Thank you all once again for your patience and support. Every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated, especially these days!

LYA~