I'm tired and unhappy (Patreon)

Hi guys. There's no easy way to say it, so I just put it in the title. Now that's out of the way...

Really, I don't know how to say this... but I want to be honest with you: it hasn't been... easy for me.

These past few weeks, I find myself spending hours... really hours... doing nothing but just staring at a blank page.

It's not even about not having ideas or inspiration. I have ideas, living with my babe is a great inspiration. I just... don't have that desire to draw anymore... it's almost like... I hate drawing...

What happened?

I remember when I first started, I had a very small following, but almost all the feedback I got were positive. I had lots of ideas in my head, I can't wait to get them out on paper so people can read it. I used to reply to every single comment. It felt wonderful to get feedback from my readers...

These were also the days I earned the least. I wasn't happy being in poverty, but I love drawing. I made like 40 dollars per month while I was spending 8 hours drawing comics only a few people read. I remember I used to post my drawing on a forum and there was a thread about teaching newbies how to draw (Basically some anonymous beginner artist would post his drawing there for people to criticize). In that thread, I gave out a few drawing tips in a very raw and honest way, and the newbie artist was not having it...

he replied... I will never forget what he wrote... He wrote: you only have 10 patrons on Patreon and you made 40 bucks per month, you think you are better than me? Why are you even here telling me what should I draw when you are just a piece of crap...

Needless to say, I was very hurt...

Somehow, all changed when my instagram followers exploded.

My Instagram went from 100 followers to 100, 000 followers. And along the way, things changed. I started to get more and more negative comments, some of them are just pure insult.

I'm not going to sit here and cry and say that's a bad thing. No it's not. It's a great thing, it changed my life. My boyfriend and I used to fight about paying bills. With the instagram growth, my Patreon also grew a lot, my finances have improved a lot. We were both happy about the change.

And I wanted to make more money. You know, I have a dream, I wanna have a house, I wanna travel. So I worked harder and harder, sometimes more than 10 hours per day. My Patreon earning also grows proportionally, until the day my Patreon earning reached 9000 dollars per month. (That's about 8000 euros)

Remember, Joe is a simple employee and I was struggling to make a living as an artist. 9000 dollars per month was and still is a lot of money, I never thought I would make that much money. It blew my mind when I received that payment from Patreon. That number scared me and also made me jumping in joy.

I was like: FINALLY! Now I can afford our stupid rent. I can afford that drawing tablet I dream of! Joe and I never have to argue about our electricity bills anymore. Finally! After years of struggle, I made it.

Well, that happiness didn't last very long...

The first shocking surprise came from the government. Apparently, despite my years and years of struggling to make a living as an artist, the day I started to make a decent living, the government wanted a share of my cake.

With a yearly income of 80,000 dollars per year, I had to pay taxes which equals 40% of my entire income. Also, since online crowd founding like Patreon is still a new territory for the government, the Taxes also informed us that I should pay 20% of VAT of my whole income.

Like that, the government took half of my last year's income.

Suddenly, I just felt... stupid. 

And that was just the beginning of my bad fortune.

To be continued...