🥀🌹 🌹🥀

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I'm no longer comfortable using this account. There are a lot of reasons, though chief among them is that it's old and full of hundreds of inactive watchers from the 2000s.

This account will always be dear to me, in a very painful way. It's where I met a lot of people I loved. It's where I met a lot of people who hurt me. It's where I spent my teens talking to my future fiancé, the thing that kept me sane through some of the worst times in my life. It will always mean something to me, and I won't be deactivating, nor will I store everything.

But I need a change.

If you'd like to follow my new account, please head over to @EVERLOSTE, that's where I'll be.

hi deviantart, been a while!

i know my activity on da has been sparse, especially since eclipse came out. it's been difficult and annoying and frankly i've been waiting for a better option to roll around. this site is just not… good. lol

but more importantly, i wanted to talk about something that affects me personally. the real reason for my silence and lack of consistent activity.

it has been a rough few years for me.

ive been dealing with so much--many of the things we all have… but many that are uniquely mine to bear. a terrible president, a bad political climate, a plague, adhd and depression and anxiety, the arduous, drawn out end of an abusive relationship… and the pressure of financial instability.

i wont get into what happened with myself and zuzu. that’ll be for some other time. i'm finally in the last stages of grief over it after four years and i have been writing a letter to her due to some recent behaviour of hers. if you really need to know then send me a note if you must idk.

no, what i want to get into here is the financial instability.

when we first started doing commissions, it was on a whim. my boyfriend and i made a memey base for a grem and sold it as a… 1 dollar ych.

its funny… i remember the culmination of this was actually because i was feeling extremely down about my friendships. about how disposable i felt. so yessie made a silly drawing and we agreed to reach out and share it with others.

i have a great deal of gratitude for the grem community. between them and my remaining friends, i never felt alone. and partially… i was never without access to at least a small amount of income from ychs. which at the time was vital.

but commissions would ultimately do much more harm than good.

monetising my passion was the worst decision i ever made.

it took everything i had and kept taking. i stopped caring about my art, i stopped working on things that didn't matter to others… or that didn't build or serve my brand. whenever i started to work on something that was just for me, i felt terrible… i had trouble finishing the work because i didn't see a substantial reward for it and i was so exhausted most of the time that it really wasn't worth the effort.

over time, it got so bad that i stopped drawing completely for over 3 months.

during that time i realised just how much of “me” was just … creation. i used to love drawing, used to be unable to imagine myself without it… it was an outlet. therapy…

now i sometimes resent my ability to create. it makes me feel beholden to others… it makes me feel like i need to perform. to make others happy instead of myself.

i've been seeing a lot of people talking about issues like these recently. i think the virus and ongoing events have had a similar effect on a lot of people.

i see posts on twitter all the time talking about the burn out. how they don't or didn't want to draw and how they never realised how the symbiotic relationship they had with art, with their fanbase, with the internet, could turn into an insidious trap.

capitalism and social media are the most to blame, i think. there's so many ways to turn your art into numbers these days… so many ways to grade your success that will never matter as much as your own personal satisfaction.

they will never replace the fulfillment you're lacking… at least in my experience.

when i first started doing commissions with my boyfriend, i felt fucking amazing. incredible. slightly slightly self-sufficient for the first time ever… if i kept doing it, maybe i could stop worrying about being homeless!

i just needed to work really hard. be the face of our operation.

but let's be real. the amount of energy it would take to make art into a living is far, far beyond my capabilities. so much of it is chance, constant activity, good networking… things i can't do consistently. and no amount of extra work when i can is going to make up for that.

i was (and maybe am?) pretty well known in the grem community. i used to make ychs like every week, sometimes twice. my prices were too low and i only made a little over a hundred every two weeks if i was lucky.

but raising my prices wasn't helpful. people just stopped buying, for the most part. im not a very aggressive advertiser. i’d feel bad pushing sales… im too poor to ask people to spend money on me in good conscience.

so i've been giving up on that.

im actually only just now realising how traumatising this whole thing was.

how much damage i did with a decision that felt so harmless--even empowering--at the time.

here's the point of this whole thing:

i have decided to cancel all outstanding commissions

for the benefit of my mental health.

if you need a refund, please dm me and i will work that out with you asap.

i'm terribly sorry to anyone who had hopes of receiving a commission from me. they will not be open for quite some time. no matter how tempting it is.

i need to fix my relationship with art first and it might take a very long time.