A necessary post / how we got where we are (Patreon)

Hey guys, this is a bit of a strange post as it doesn't really have much to do with the game. I will mention that Day 8 part 2 will be out on the 31st though.

I've been through a lot this year. I've noticed there's a lot of people that don't know the truth or just purposely skew information to make me look bad or whatever. I'm a person that thinks the best of people so I'll assume they're just misinformed.
It's also kind of on me as I've deleted old posts that talk about these subjects due to me not wanting a constant reminder of things. I'm also aware that there are a lot of new people that just have no clue about what's went down in the past.

Anyway, this is essentially one very long post that details exactly what has happened and why this past half year has gone the way it has. I feel like I've healed enough to talk about these things again. If you don't care about that then this is a post you can skip.
This post is not for sympathy or to try and garner attention. It's merely just stating my side of the story so the information is out there and all in one place.

A timeline of the three big events:

November 2019 - A man I considered a father figure lost his life.

This was my first time dealing with death. This happened a few months after WVM first launched in August and I do view it as the beginning of my downward spiral.
He was a man who I could tell anything to and he would do everything he could to help. I've talked about it before but me and my family were dirt poor, I was homeless a few times when I was a child and one notable moment of our relationship is that one of those times he let me crash at his place for a week while my family figured things out despite the fact that he had a daughter who I hung out with a lot. It was the first "cool dad" moment I ever experienced.

April 2020 - My Aunt passes away.

This really rocked me. My Aunt means just as much to me as my mom does and when I lost her I lost a part of myself. I had so many things that I wanted to do with her that I'll never get to do. She was such a kind and positive person, I honestly don't have a single memory of her being angry or upset. She was the kind of person that would call and check on you all the time and she could talk for hours about absolutely any subject.
What remains the hardest moment of my life is when I had to tell her father (my grandpa that I live with and take care of) that his daughter passed away. I relive that moment multiple times every single day. My grandpa is a lot like my aunt, he's a super positive person who always has a smile and to see him break down the way he did will forever haunt me.

June 2020 - My bestfriend takes his own life

This happened soon after I was finally getting back to my normal self after my Aunt's passing. I can never explain how many emotions I've went through over this. From sadness, to hate, to guilt, to self hatred. It's one thing to lose people to illnesses, it's an entirely different thing when the guy you spend hours talking with every single day takes his own life without ever showing a sign of doing so. This was my homie, we did everything together. He without a doubt would have been the best man at my wedding. His mother was sick and was recently let out of the hospital when he did what he did. I'll never know exactly why he chose the path he did because he didn't let anyone know. I'll never know if I could've saved him if I paid more attention.

What this led to:

Those three things are the main reasons why things went the way they did.
My first missed release date was following what happened in November.  After my Aunt's passing I didn't have a release until the end of the month which was still 600 renders. I didn't pause pledges as I delivered before the end of the month but May 1st is the last time I've charged patrons, that was 180 days ago.
The reason I paused for the month of June was due to the start of what would be a very long process of figuring out how I wanted to handle Day 7 final and how large I wanted it to be.

Other real life issues I've faced in this time:

Had no clue what to title this little segment as it jumps around a bit.
Some prior context is that I live in my Grandpa's home where I take care of him. It's run down and old and he doesn't want any real work done to it and he refuses to move. He spent the vast majority of his years with his wife in this home and he doesn't want to change anything about it.

Water damage:

This place has water leaks weekly. The pipes were horrid and this caused a lot of water damage that I fixed. This was a big issue and even it took a lot of convincing before my grandpa allowed some plumbers to come and redo most of the piping. So it shouldn't be an issue moving forward. At least I really hope so because it was so infuriating.

Power outages:

Once again, this place isn't great. Small storms consistently knock out my power. Both render PCs are plugged into UPS's but that is really only useful to save work before shutting down.

PC issues:

This is just part of the job. PC's are prone to fuck ups especially when you draw as much power and generate as much heat as I do.

None of these are big issues in the grand scheme of things. Just some more info on some of the things that cause hiccups in the development process.

My hiatus:

When my bestfriend first took his life I had no clue what would happen in the following months. My mental was already pretty garbage at this point because of my Aunt and the usual stresses that come with development and criticism.
I took a few weeks for myself which I'm not sure I would have if it wasn't for the guidance of my girlfriend. I got back to work and the work itself went well but I was rarely happy with anything I made.
I'm not sure if it was due to my mental state or whatever but it was a vicious cycle where I'd think I was happy, make 80+ renders then scrap the entire thing and start over.
On the good days where I felt optimistic are where my "update soon" posts came from. I'd feel good about everything and I knew if everything went well then work was almost done. Then a few days later I would be working on that same scene but from the beginning. It led to something I'm very proud of but the process wasn't great.
Missing dates constantly and letting everyone down was such a fucking bummer. And I'd constantly want to make up for it and work harder to make sure I had it out soon but I think the guilt of it all just made it worse which led to more guilt and it just never stopped.
But we made it through it.

Financial situation:

It's never good to talk money but I like to be as transparent as I can be. Also as cliché as it sounds I truly don't do this for the money. I leave the amount I make visible so my patrons can decide if they want to support someone as well supported as I am.
Many people have questioned how I'm fine with pausing payments for half a year and the answer isn't hard and you can see it for yourself. Your guy's support is fucking insane. I'm paid very well for what I do, an amount I never dreamed of.
And I'm not stupid with money, I've saved the vast majority. I don't do drugs and I don't have any money burning hobbies. I eat chicken and maybe salad most days and I drive a shitty car.
If you're curious, WVM has been a thing for 14 months and in those 14 months I've made $90,000 before taxes. (I've paused 5 months in a row at the most I've made and those months added up would be somewhere in the $80,000 range so I've just about paused more money than I've made).
I've spent around $25,000-35,000 (very rough estimate) on things for WVM. From assets to PC hardware. So it's not hard to see that I'm not in danger of going broke so if you were one of the ones worrying about that then please don't. I'm paid way more than I should be. 😅

and if you're curious about future funds, I'm currently planning a build of a third PC. This one will be mainly for working on some of the things I work on concurrently to WVM. Like the monthly renders and the week 1 redo of the earlier days.
I'm also saving as much as I can to buy a house with my girlfriend in the future.

Reasons for the rocky start to my return:

There's the obvious elephant in the room of the fact that me and my girlfriend tested positive for Covid-19. But it hasn't hindered development too much as we have mild symptoms.
There's a few other things like me and my girlfriend were planning an impromptu vacation because for the first time in her career she had a weekend off. (She won't read this post so I'll mention one huge bummer was that I was going to propose to her on the vacation. But Covid cock blocked me.)

But the main reason is that I focused a lot on repairing relationships with some of my friends. After everything that happened I didn't want to be around anyone except my girlfriend and grandpa. But by the time I finished the update I really missed the connections I had. It's been great for me to catch up with these people and I feel the best I have in a very long time mentally. I definitely should have planned out things better this month because I spent too much time away from WVM. I am sorry for that but I think it was good for me in the long term.

(And just to note all of our gatherings were outside and we all wore masks.)

Why are you unpausing then?

Yes, I will be unpausing this month, meaning my patrons will be charged on the 1st.
My reasoning for pausing before was never because I was taking time off because I didn't, it was because my patrons paid for something they didn't receive and I didn't want to take another dime from them until they did.
The day 7 final was 1200 renders long but I made over 2500 renders in that time. And I've made close to 350 this month. And I will be delivering both planned releases this month as well.
I know why things happened the way they did. I know why November will be a more consistent month for me so I feel comfortable unpausing.

Why did you turn off DM's?

This is something I really didn't know if I wanted to address. But I think I should just so you guys don't think I don't love interacting with all of you.

Obviously there were some people upset about the delays and I got a lot of messages about that but it's not what made me turn off DMs.

It started after my Aunt passed but people would send me really fucked up things. It got much worse after my best friend passed. From messages like "No one cares you lost people, we all do. Get to work." to "images of suicide victims with the person sending it saying really fucked up shit".
I've taken the proper responses to these and I'm good. I just wanted to make it clear that I hate that I had to block DMs and I know they were just pathetic people trying to rile me up but it's best to block them for now.

Other things that I didn't mention:

There were multiple other problems, from me dealing with imposter syndrome, to getting sick a few times. Just a lot of personal battles that I don't think need much explaining. I do have a therapist that has helped me really sort my emotions.

Some positivity:

This post has been super negative but I don't want it to come off that way. This year has had my absolute worst moments but it has also had my absolute best moments.

We built this community. Which has helped me as much as anything else has to get through this. From the constant support and kind things you do / say. I can't tell you guys enough about how huge you were in my healing process.

I've made great memories with my girlfriend and grandpa.

I'll soon have a wife.

I've met some really awesome people through making this game.

Oh, and my grandpa's second C-19 test came back negative as well. 😊

So please don't take this as a "woe is me" post. Like all of you I've had my battles this year, some of you have had it worse than me and you don't have the support systems that I do. I know how insanely lucky I am despite recent misfortunes.  
This community is super supportive of me and I know they'll be super supportive of you too. If you need someone to talk to then there are multiple people here that will lend an ear, including me.

I just wanted all of this information out there.
This is in no way me saying I haven't made many mistakes because I absolutely have.
From going quiet to promising things that I didn't deliver on. I've learned a ton from this experience.

What I am saying is that I've went through a lot this year, a comical amount. But I'm still here fighting and healing. I was in a super dark place, I was sad and depressed. But I'm working my way out of it, and I'm not gonna stop anytime soon.
I have tried my best to make the right decisions, I've paused pledges while I figured things out and I just generally tried to do what I believed was right. Though I wasn't perfect.

It's really late for me and I'm super tired so I hope this is mostly coherent.
If you have any further questions please feel free to ask in a comment below.
(Due to touching on a ton of sensitive subjects I'll likely be quick to delete some comments. If things go badly I'll turn it into a patron only post.)

Thank you guys so very much for everything
<3