Saturday Update!

Hello folks, it's Saturday!

I'm afraid I have basically nothing to offer this week ^^; I spent most of the week packing up orders and taking them to the post office, and the remaining bit of the week resting.

My back and especially my dominant arm became very sore from the package work.

I haven't worked on the keychain art I showed you last week at all, because I have strict "No drawing when the drawing arm is in pain" rule. If you push an RSI it can lead to permanent damage and I'm not taking that chance.

The collector coins are indeed sold out. In terms of business, they were a success, but in terms of my general life, I think they may have been a mistake. I've been operating under a business mindset, maximize sales, strike while the iron's hot, what's the next hustle. I have to stop and switch gears. I need to rethink my approach to things like merch.

My ultimate goal is to get the next games made. For a long time, doing more business meant more security to create games with, but I've reached a point now where I have enough security and the business work is harming my ability to move on to game work. I must re-balance.

What this will look like is probably more disappointed customers in the short term. I need to learn to be more okay with that. My post on Thursday became an emotional rant at the end and I'm embarrassed about that. I was frustrated that I couldn't make everyone happy and my physical discomfort pushed my frustrations further.

I can't make everyone happy. I need to focus and prioritize, and my priority is very clear: Make YKMET:Lawrence. The first thing I need to do to get on that path is rest.

Next week I will probably work on the keychain art, since the store work has become completely manageable again [ I've run out of most popular items, so the sales have gone from 100-200 a day to 7-10 a day, which I can totally handle with rest ]

I've also decided to begin my restock order once the keychain art is done. My original plan was to also draw the new daki art and buy everything at once, but I think it will be better to stagger the release of new merch.

The order will still take 1-2 months to be produced and shipped to me, so I will have plenty of time for real rest in that period [ and I'll get to that daki art eventually ]

I've also come up with a plan to limit the work of new merch releases. From now on, I'm going to release new merch items in much smaller amounts in the store. So for instance, while I will receive a shipment of 500 plushies eventually, I will not immediately put all 500 up for sale. I'll put something like 50 up, allow them to sell out, process those orders, and then put up the next 50 when I'm ready.

This will likely be annoying to customers, but I must make changes to preserve my own health and ability to work. The merch items can be stocked normally like my older products once demand lowers enough.

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Aside from that stuff, I have nothing much to report! The censorship situation hasn't struck down my games anywhere yet [ I heard that BTD 1&2 were delisted on itch.io but I was never in charge of those. That account was managed by EP and I never had the login- both games are still available for download on DMG ]

Anyway, I hope you guys are staying cool and safe. I'm gonna rest hard this weekend. Thank you all so much for your support!!!