Progress Update: 2020-02-01 (IMPORTANT)

Well, I wish it didn't have to come to this point, but I have to slow down to get my bearings. I'll explain the exact situation and how I came to this decision below, but first I'll get the facts out of the way:

I intend to pause Patreon billing for March. I will be catching up on Yearbook rewards throughout February first and then start on the next monthly drawing, but going by the mess that December-January left me with, I won't be able to squeeze it all into one month, so February and March will sort of count as one month as far as drawing is concerned.

In the future, when I expect a lot of interference from other parts of my life, I will pre-emptively pause billing for that month. I don't like interrupting regular service, but that way neither I nor you will suffer any nasty surprises.

Now, the full story:

December and January have been stupid busy, patially because I was foolish enough to think I could take my normal workload despite knowing the holidays were coming up as well as me starting a new job right after; partially because of unexpected factors depleting the drawing time I had even further.

What makes all of this a lot worse are the mental health issues I've been dealing with for a long time. I've recently been diagnosed with ADHD-PI, a subtype of ADHD that mostly covers attention issues rather than hyperactivity. I've struggled with this my whole life and it led to a host of other issues, but for a number of reasons we didn't figure it out until now.

I've got an appointment with a psychiatrist later this month where I'll hopefully receive medication to try and temper the ADHD, and that ought to make me more productive in the long run. I wanted to keep all of this quiet until after I'd gotten the medication so I could explain how much it helps, but I've reached a point where it doesn't make sense to keep working however hard I can and apologizing for all the delays.

The other issues I mentioned include anxiety disorder and depression. So whenever the depression decides to flare up (which I really don't have a good handle on predicting), I'm obviously going to be even less productive, which in turn will inevitably set off my anxiety because I'm terrified of letting people down. And then the anxiety makes me even less productive. You can see how this becomes a problem.

Right now, I'm sort of working three jobs--I've got my day job, I've got the Patreon stuff and I'm working on writing a novel. It's stressful because while my day job is fun and not too strenuous, it does take up a big chunk of my energy--energy that I really need to work on the other two because of the ADHD trying to lure me away. So then I have to take this limited time and energy and somehow split it between a slowly bloating backlog of Patreon content, and trying to get the last layer of polish on this novel which I should really get out of the way so that can move on to the next stage...

Last night I had one of those spirals where all these issues just wear me down until I get to a very bad place. After talking it over with my mom, I've decided putting a little less strain on myself is a good idea, but I still owe it to all of you to finish my backlog, so I'm not going on a complete hiatus--I'm just going to stop taking on new work until I've finished what I have now.

Additionally, I want to prevent things from getting this bad again in the future, so whenever I see something like December-January coming up, I'm just going to pause billing again preemptively.

I hope that explains everything... it's quite a lot to lay down, and given that I'm easily distracted, it's totally possible I missed something important. :P

At any rate, thank you all for the support this far, and I hope to take your requests and polls again after the backlog!