I'm tired and unhappy (la suite...) (Patreon)

I hate to use the word "victim". But when the government took half of my income away as taxes, I felt like one.

It has been years that I struggled, for people to notice my art. I published books and few people bought it. It's unfair that the day I made money, government just took it away from me. I deserve that money! After discussions, we decide to fight back.

We went to see the advisors in local public finances. We went to consult with the accountant. We tried to find a solution. The advice I got is that, as an individual, there's no way I can reduce my taxes. In order to have the possibility to reduce taxes, I have to start an individual company.

Great... more paperwork. Now I also need to pay for the accountant, and the lawyers, and more paperworks to start a company. Suddenly, it just became... complicated... and not fun.

Everyone involved just looked at my comics like it's a merchandise.

The numbers, the justifications... suddenly it's not about my drawings anymore, it's about banks and numbers and laws and... stuff...

Like I said before, I'm not gonna cry and complain and say this is unfortunate. No! I was fortunate enough to get here, however, I just don't enjoy this situation at all.

It's no fun. After all, it's the life of being an adult. I can handle it. Meanwhile, Instagram started to change too.

With the instagram algorithm changes early this year. Suddenly, I'm not in the favour of Instagram any more. My comics stopped appearing on the Explore page, then it stopped appearing on the feed page of 60% of my subscribers. Suddenly, Instagram had a problem with my drawings, no matter how I censored it, it kept getting reported and deleted. And the comments are getting more and more negative.

I used to love reading comments. I enjoy the feedback and I enjoyed replying back on social media. It felt like... It was not that long ago. But the followers kept increasing and I found myself spending more and more time replying and I had less and less time to draw.

The day when one of my instagram post got 1000 comments, I was stunned.

Remember that Harvey Weinstein post? The comments on that instagram post went crazy. I was called a dickhead, rapist, sexist, all the bad names one could imagine. And I thought I was the gay sweetheart with an edgy sense of humour. Of course, I argued, I replied, I apologised, I said all I could but I'm still being called an asshole.

It really doesn't matter that I have replied nicely to thousands of people in the past. The moment I reply "fuck you, bitch" to a hateful comment full of false accusations, you bet someone's gonna screenshot it and show it to hundreds of people. The hater proudly showed it to everyone saying "See? This is real SongInkollo. A piece of shit with no respect. I have always known who he is and now I have proof!"

After that, I totally lost my interests for replying. But the negativity didn't stop there. Since then, no matter what I post, there's always negative feedbacks. I'm never correct: When I post about having fun on the beach wearing speedos, I'm a gay stereotype. When I post about how uncomfortable I'm on a nude beach, I was being rude to old people. When I talked about sugar in my diet, I'm fat shaming again and spread wrong informations.

And it started to affect my creative works. How would people perceive my comics suddenly weigh on my creation. Suddenly I'm not free to speak my opinion anymore, cause the numbers are going down, and negative comments are going up.

And I find myself spending more time looking at the numbers. I check my instagram statistics every 2 minutes. I become obsessed with my followers count. I'm obsessed with numbers of my Patreon. 

Less followers... Less Patrons... Less income...

Did I mention I dream of owning a house with my boyfriend? Nothing fancy, just maybe a two floors house with a small garden where Joe could plant flowers and I could plant vegetables (different priorities I guess). A small terrace where I could put a table and two chairs so we could have coffee or tea on a sunny day. Maybe we could get a cat... 

We even tried to borrow money from the bank. But no matter how much I earn with Patreon, it is considered "Not a real job" by the banker, thus no way to borrow anything. What if the site Patreon crashed tomorrow, let along the house, I wouldn't even be able to make a living. My anxiety grows as the numbers on my social media statistics are going down.

Ok, I lost 5 patrons yesterday... Oh I lost 10 patrons today...Oh my God... I lost 20 patrons, why...???

The doubt and anxiety starts to cloud my judgement. Should I draw this? Why is this post doing so poorly? Why this reader called me boring? Will this post offend anyone with a different political opinion?

Suddenly, I don't know what to create anymore, cause every idea I have seems to be wrong or not good enough. But one thing is for sure, I know certainly someone's gonna hate what I created with all my heart.

I'm tired. I really am. I have never worked this hard and felt this frustrated in my creative work.

If you paid attention to the details in my drawing, you certainly noticed that I bought a playstation a few months back. I can afford it now, remember?

I have only one game on it. And I still haven't finished the game, cause I have no time to play it.

I'm stressed and I don't know how to deal with it.