A litte house-cleaning
Added 2021-02-22 23:30:34 +0000 UTCPosts like these are always difficult for me to write, because it means opening up to a lot of people I don't really know all that well, or at all. Considering I'm a very private person who find it difficult to open up to even those closest to me, it's extra difficult.
These past months I have been very lacking in communicating with you all, both on Discord and Patreon messages, and my "social media presence" has been zero. This is of course not great when you run a Patreon, and have a lot of people with a lot of questions, and you end up with a bunch of people wondering what's going on, why I'm not talking.
Now, when I become very stressed and things start piling up, I tend to retreat into myself as a self preservation tactic. I check my email less and less frequently, I disable "Start on boot" in Discord, and gradually I slowly start to fade away into my own obscurity.
Which is great. For a little while.
Then it starts to add even more stress, because now I start to stress about not being around to answer questions, or friends getting annoyed because I'm no longer around, and I'm suddenly in this vicious circle of retreating deeper and deeper while at the same time stressing more and more about it.
It takes a lot of conscious effort for me to snap out of this vicious circle, but I am now finally at that point, and... while I'm writing this I look to the left of my screen and see way too many unread Patreon messages that need to be answered and I again start to feel the anxiety building up as pressure across my chest. Enough is enough, though :D
So I want to apologise to you all for not having been a great Patreon host lately, but I hope to get back on track, and while this post isn't written to gather sympathy from you all, it is here to apologise, and to help me get back on track and keep me accountable to my own words.
What happens now? I'll take a look at those messages, reply to the ones that look most urgent right now, and get back to working on finishing up the next release. February is a short month!
Thank you for sticking around, and I hope you all have more productive coping mechanisms for handling stress than I do.
Comments
Hey mate, I printed your Turtle Bust from Thingiverse and it turned out really well. I had to pop on and support you via Pateron. At the end of the day, As a supporter, You are giving me access to your entire works for my printing pleasure. You don't owe me or any other patreons any of your personal time pal, it's not what you're selling. I hope the last few months since this post have been kinder to you, and you're finding your feet again. I'll join the discord, theres a few models I'd love to print in this collection, but I'll definitely be taking on board feedback from the community to do them justice.
2021-05-27 12:32:48 +0000 UTCYou are not alone. Try to take it one task a time, don't look at the entire list of chores all together. Maybe a TODO list where you share your time between your chores and the amount of time you dedicate to answering people, don't overwhelm yourself with daily business tasks. You are doing what you love and it needs to stay this way. I need to go through your policies again but you can write in the policies that you will answer X amount of questions in Y amount of time (even if its very minimal amount of questions, like one/two Qs a week). Reuse the questions that are being asked to you directly if it can assist others and put it up on the boards so others can learn from it. Add to policies that you ask that people should check the board here before they ask in person, just to prevent clutter and repetitiveness and if you get such question anyway, you can refer the person to the board with approxmiation of date, so they know where to look. Thank you for sharing your situation and state of mind, its allows people to give you a breather and to understand if you are fading in and out sometimes to freshen up. Stay healthy mate!
Avishai Victor Ankri
2021-04-08 00:41:08 +0000 UTC
