Considerations for the Future (Patreon)

I don't have any content to post today, because I took things more freely and did it all in one go earlier in the week. For anyone that missed it, you can find it here. However, I'm still doing an update because I feel the information I've been including in my posts recently deserves its own post. I've been thinking many people probably don't read the descriptions on images, especially when they're long, so they may have missed what's going on. Due to this I will be copy/pasting the information from when Emotion Sickness ended, with small adjustments to indicate it refers to this month, and not next month.

Before I do the copy/paste, I also want to point out why I'm providing the information. It's not guaranteed that I will be not doing another Patreon comic. There's a chance I will resume as normal after the month is over, but there is a very strong chance I will not, so I want to make sure my patrons here are aware before I make any big decisions. I'd rather take a small hit right now than to leave a bunch of you feeling like you took a hit by getting billed for a new month that you don't want to support all because I didn't give enough heads up on what may happen.

I will be updating throughout the following weeks on my decisions.

Now for the copy/paste:

tl;dr: This month I am doing only standalone Star vs. Evil content because I do not want to start a comic at this time. The reason is that I am contemplating my future on Patreon, and am considering dropping it. There are reasons I cannot do so completely, but I may switch to a lower effort reward that can be easily maintained every month just to keep the page active, and of course I would drop the tiers accordingly.

Long version:

I've been thinking very hard about my future here on Patreon, so I will be taking a break from doing comics this month and instead do smaller things while I work out my thoughts and options. To summarize, I am contemplating dropping Patreon to invest myself into other things. I feel that if I were ever going to do so that now is a perfect time. I have Emotion Sickness at a comfortable stopping point, and I don't have any other comics ongoing that I would be allowed to resume here anyway since the most recent purge of my content on this platform.

As most of you are likely aware, that purge refers to me again having to remove the bulk of my Patreon content. Throughout the years, omic ideas I've had, and comics I planned to still have ongoing at this point, have regularly had to be canceled and removed due to changes in policy or enforcement of policies. This of course means that I now have to proceed with even more limitations than before. Each change in policy/enforcement throughout the years has had me increasingly not enjoying my time here on this platform, and quite frankly it has me at the point that I am not at all excited to continue.

I've always felt it important that I maintain a Patreon page, because they are very compliant with all mainstream payment processors, and for this reason they provide exceptional financial stability. The fact is that platforms with rules differing from mainstream platforms like Patreon are far more volatile; however, the constant changing in policies and enforcement that come with this benefit are feeling increasingly burdensome, and each time these changes occur I suffer a massive decline in patronage anyway.

A major concern is that I have a founder's account on Patreon, which comes with many benefits that I would strongly regret losing if I ever needed more reliance on Patreon. I can't unlaunch my page in the meantime because this would also cause me to lose those benefits. Inactive pages are not allowed on Patreon, so my only option would be to come up with a low effort reward that could be done every month just to keep the page available.

But, my lack of enjoyment could also be burnout. I haven't taken even a single week away from making comics in over 6 years, outside of one week that was even more stressful because it was to arrange and attend a funeral. Patreon comics, due to the restrictions, feel more and more like a job, so perhaps taking a few weeks off from comics could help me refresh and maybe feel differently about moving forward, so I feel acting now would be too rash. As such, as stated above, I'm going to spend next month doing illustrations while I work things out, and if by weeks 2-3 I still feel strongly about migrating then I will most likely do so.