An Explanation, and an Apology

Hey, guys. We're approaching the end of the year, and I haven't posted a single thing to this Patreon in... oh, about six months. Six months! What the hell, Glimglam, what gives?

Well, though I have offered occasional updates on what's been happening on my patron Discord server itself, it occurred to me that I've never posted anything "official" here on my Patreon page itself, and I know not everyone that joins this Patreon has been in that server. So I'm going to set the record straight on everything that's been happening...perhaps far later than it should have been, but better late than never, right?

So, let's get into it.

After my last post in June, I experienced a severe pain that turned out to be caused by a gum infection. I hastily had to arrange myself to go to a dental clinic, and at the same time, arranged further appointments to further take care of my (very poor) dental health. This, unfortunately, utterly annihilated what savings I had at the time -- much of it raised thanks in part to generous donations from followers, friends, and strangers alike not that much earlier -- and still left me hurting for the necessary funds to pay the rest of my procedures off. It ended up totaling me in the several thousands of CAD, overall. Thankfully, my mother stepped in to help foot some of the cost, though I am now indebted to her as a result and have been bleeding money every month to pay it off. More bills, yay!

The stress of all that dental work and the cost of it made it difficult to focus on art, especially because it was a long, drawn-out process. It would not be until late August, after my crown procedure was finally finished, that I was able to bring my attention back to drawing again.

Regrettably, this didn't last. The next order of things was my work to find a new doctor to take over my HRT care, ever since the virtual clinic I used to go through was forced to close. Almost a year later, to the time of this writing, I have been unsuccessful. In September, I came pretty close, conferencing with a few different doctors both in person and through telecommunication via my local walk-in...but none of it went anywhere, sadly. Though I've been able to secure refills on my current prescription (with a lot of work on my part to convince someone in this town to fill it for me, that is...), I have no had a proper checkup and blood test in nearly a year, when I should be having it every 3 months, at least. I'm still on a STARTING dosage of HRT, over a year after starting it, and have had a grand total of ONE check-up. Shit is fucked. I'm STILL trying to figure it out.

So, of course, that is -- aside from my job, which is a can of worms all on its own -- a bulk of what occupied my focus at that time. Art largely took a backseat. October through early November saw me rebound a bit, though, with some new art of Garra and Glamor, as well as a brand-new cast of characters as part of a collaborative effort between me and some artist friends, including Welwraith, ncs_artist, and others; maybe some of you have seen parts of it, maybe not. It sparked a new wave of inspiration and 'love for creation' that I haven't felt in...a while, honestly. Creating a whole new setting, writing lore, developing characters. It's different from my usual content, yeah. Maybe that's why I liked doing it so much.

But... yes. I knew I was neglecting my "work" at this point -- how come I was drawing all this new stuff, but nothing of the poll pieces? Old comms, other drawings I still owe people? -- but I saw this as an acceptable sacrifice because it meant I was able to push myself to do new, better things, something that would surely improve my ability to create awesome things for other people too, and something that would give me the shot in the arm I needed to be able to return to client work proper. Still, it was wrong of me to willfully neglect both my Patreon, and my backlog of commission clients. Even worse for my failure to communicate. For that, I sincerely apologize. My priorities were clearly not in order, here. I value your patience and support, and I'm sorry I was not able to express that clearly enough.

The thing is, I thought -- and I do still think -- I could pull things around before year's end, but December... started off bad. Very bad. My grandmother passed away, a week ago, as of this writing. December 4th, 2023, around 4:30 PM EST. She was 80 years old. Losing her affected me more deeply than I imagined. To this day, I am still shaken up. Left alone to my thoughts, feelings of all my regret begin to creep in. Opportunities had, and lost. Lack of care, lack of attendance. It made me realize just how...consumed, in a world of work, of distractions, of my own trappings, that I've been. How disconnected I was from real life-- and how hard I was rocked when something of this magnitude finally shook me out of it.

... With that all said, now we arrive at today. If you managed to tolerate through reading all of that-- first off, I'm impressed. Secondly, I hope I've managed to explain myself clearly. There are probably things I forgot to mention, or didn't think they were important enough to. But I want to stress that, I am doing okay. I may have been in a dire mental state earlier but I am stable. There have been a few people worried for me very deeply and I want them to know that I am, and will be, alright.

I've faltered in the goals I set for myself, this year. Next year, I hope to do better. I want to catch up on my work and wipe my slate clean, and approach everything again with fresh eyes, lessons learned, and no regrets.

So, what happens now?

Truth be told, I'm not sure. But as of this writing, I am currently on 2-week vacation from my job, so this is as good an opportunity as ever to make something happen without any outside source of stress and obligation. My first order of business is to at least try and catch up on the work I still need to do. There are still personal art pieces I want to finish as well, of course, but I'll make honest attempts to laser-focus my efforts on the poll piece, and comm backlog.

I'll be completely straight with you all: once again, I'm in a dire financial state. But this time I'm going to try and actually WORK for that money, not resort to begging for handouts on Twitter (again). I'm hoping I won't burn myself out doing so, but-- at this point, what else can I do?

There are the matters of housekeeping, too-- I'm considering a soft rework of how Patreon things work, and how things regarding the patron server are going to change... again, yes, I know... but it shouldn't be anything too drastically different to what I'm offering already. You'll hear me talk more about it later once I get myself figured out and organized again, and I will probably make another post here if necessary.

Thank you all, so much, for the support you've been offering me. Some of you only a few months, and others, for well over a year now. You've been a massive, massive help, and your support means the world to me. I thank you for your patience with me, and I apologize for failing to do my part in communicating with you all as clearly as I could.

Please, take care of yourselves. Have a good holiday season.

- Glimglam