Recap and why I've been quiet (Pixiv Fanbox)

Hello everyone. I hope you're all doing well. I know things have been kind of slow here as far as uploads, new art etc. and I want to share the reason for it.

Recently I had to take up a regular day job. I work at a local grocery store. I had to do this because I couldn't pay my bills.

When I was drawing and doing content creation as my job I was still underwater every month and suffering from creative burnout.

Then my car broke down. It was the transmission. Literally the 2nd most expensive component of my car aside from the engine. It was still cheaper than getting a new car but not by much. The transmission repair completely wiped out my entire savings. I have $0 at the end of each month.

I don't have a fancy monthly phone plan or buy a bunch of anime figures. I have 3 rescue pets (One of which I'm trying to find a new home for) and my mom who I take care of. Aside from a few digital purchases I don't live in excess. My apartment isn't big. I don't have a big family to rely on. No aunts uncles or grandparents to give me a house. No inheritence whatsoever. My closest family are 2 hours away by car.

The cost of living is way too high in my area and we got rent-trapped. Things have been rougher this year than any before. My mom lost her job so I've had to take over completely on bills. Just my rent alone is almost 100% of my income, even with this new job. Until I can move somewhere cheaper, I can't consider doing art full time.

I try to do as much art and content creation as I can during the two days a week that I don't work.

I know I still owe people commissions (I just got another one done yesterday).

I know there have been people wanting to commission/ trade with me.

I also have other projects I want to keep working on (Like Milf RWBY)

I really don't mean to ghost people in DMs when they ask for commissions. I have a really bad habit of taking on way too much work (because I need the money.) And then I can't take on any more work for a while. It ends up taking a really long time before people get their commissions and I feel bad. (If I don't respond I'm really sorry. I don't mean it.)

I'm not quitting art. I'm just being forced to slow down for a while. Every month it felt like I was having to take all the generosity and patronage from you guys and throw it away. I never got to build anything for myself from it. It just went to rent-seekers. (Yes, I know rent is a reality for a lot of people but it feels like wasted money, just paying someone else's mortgage). It also left me feeling emotionally drained because I was doing art full time every week and seeing no money or extra benefits from it. It was just survival, maybe a game or two once in a while, and nothing else. At that point I wondered "why not just get a regular job for the time being?". So that's what I did.

So far my job is going well and the people at my job seem to like me. Since it's a chain store I may try to transfer somewhere else where I can actually thrive.

Thank you all for everything you do. If you're one of my paying fans on here, your money helps me to buy food and pay a couple smaller bills. It still matters a lot. I can't really do much for exclusives right now but your generosity isn't going unnoticed ❤ 🫶