February Update! Videos & Health.

Hey there everyone! Hope we're all doing well :D

Before I begin, I want to reassure you that this isn't a scary update! I'm not quitting or planning to quit, but I hope it explains why things have been slowing down lately. 

I wanted to drop an important update to you all before I mention it in a video, as I believe its crucial to bring up to you as you're the generous bunch that are allowing me to make a living doing something I truly adore. 

In my next video which is about One Piece Odyssey, I decided to take a different route than my usual videos. I talk about why and how I dropped the title barely 15 hours into my playthrough. I think the video itself is very fun and still gives a detailed impression of my experience, including a lot of hype for One Piece as a series. 

However, I had to admit along the way that due to a mixture of reasons both IRL and in my career, I feel emotionally burnt out. I've been burnt out before, but never to this extent. There have been a lot of extremely bad family issues on my end which have left me frantic and worried and that doesn't lead to a healthy environment to make videos in. But I still had to force myself to, because making videos is how I get paid. Its how I my rent. It's how I support myself and my family. But most importantly, its how I pay you guys back for your generosity. And I always want to make sure I emphasise how incredibly grateful I am to you each and every time.
Then, I started working on this video. And I realised 15 hours in that I just wasn't enjoying myself. I felt the game was wasting my time and I had my head in my hands knowing I'd be delaying a video once again. But I decided not to give up, due to everything I just mentioned.

I realised one evening, that I hadn't left bed even once. Not for food, not for anything. I could have opened my laptop and started working, but I couldn't even bring myself to do that. It was a week of shame, guilt and a feeling like I'd let everyone down. This continued for a while. This is a lesser issue, but I realised the less I make videos, the less new patrons I see joining, and the more I see leaving. This is not me blaming anyone but myself, because I know people have monetary commitments outside of my content. But I can't help but blame myself for this every single month, and its not a healthy way to look at this at all. Its only contributing to the stress.

I knew I had to tell you guys that I had, due to my own fault and nothing else's, had completely and utterly burnt myself out. Something people warned me about countless times, and that if I didn't change how I worked, would happen. It did.
I asked a few months ago about changing my patron charges to monthly, and people seemed fairly positive about the whole thing. But I still couldn't bring myself to do it, because I knew if I did (when I was in this state), then you'd be paying me for no video. I would become complacent, and eventually all of the trust that I've built up with you all for all these years would be spent. And that terrified me.

So I felt the best thing to do was to TALK TO YOU ALL ABOUT THIS. To tell you where I am mentally, and to reassure you that I'm taking the correct steps to stop myself from being burnt out. I'm going to therapy weekly to talk about IRL stress and work stress, I'm trying to fix my sleep schedule and going forward I'm going to try and make shorter videos inbetween my larger projects and MEAN IT this time.

I will not charge monthly unless I find myself in a healthier state, where videos will be delivered on a timely schedule and at worst, you'll go a month without a new video instead of 2 or 3. And I'll be sure to update you all again with this in the future, guaranteed. 

Thank you for EVERYTHING and thank you for sticking by me during this slight hiccup / hurdle I'm going through. I will still release videos when I can, and I will still try to release them within 1 - 2 months. I do not want to betray your trust as a creator, I want to make you all proud with the content I release. I don't want this to suffer due to my mindset. 

Thank you for listening, and thank you as always for everything you've let me do in my time on Patreon. I hope to make you more happy in the upcoming months, and see myself mirror that happiness. :)

- Clemps