I wasn’t posting a lot here anyway, but I did plan to. Here is my repost from my Patreon site:
Greetings, friends.
In May of this year 2024, I lost someone who had been as close to me as a father. He was my friend, he was my mentor, and he was my employer. I worked for him since 2001 online, doing customer service and website coding for his various adult paysites.
I’m still reeling from this loss. I lost my father figure and my income in one blow. I could have been more prepared. I even asked him if he thought he was dying at the beginning of this March, and I told him I wasn’t ready. I really wasn’t. Am not.
It’s been hard.
Thankfully Patreon allows me to upload in advance, so I’ve got lots of content ready for new members, and lots of uploads scheduled. But you can guess surely that I’m not keen on art right now.
This man guided me into the world of Poser art. He paid for the program probably twice in the 23yrs I knew him. He bought me Photoshop at one point, before it was a subscription based service. He bought me a new computer maybe twice? I really relied on him. I owed him a lot. He helped me stretch my artist wings. I never thought I’d get beyond drawing crap 2D art, and I thought the furthest I’d ever get was using whatever that old photo editing program that used to be included in MS suite to do photo manipulations. He made me think I could do more and make more.
So yeah. It’s hard. To sit here and create. I know I’ll get through it. But the financial blow has been challenging.
I lost my main source of income. I just bought a new computer, went into debt to make that a reality because I wanted to make this switch to Daz Studio, right? I went for it because I believed I could do something with it. The debt isn’t huge but it’s real.
I have choices. I have some small support. I’m not going to be homeless. But things are tight. And I don’t have the faith in options that I had before. I always had his help, even when we didn’t talk for months because of his hospital stays. He always took care of me, even when he was sick. We didn’t have ‘that’ kind of relationship either. He never asked or expected that of me. He treated me like a person.
It’s taken me time to be able to post this. I’ll probably copy and paste this to my personal DireLilith.com in all truth, because I didn’t think of it before. I’m in survival mode. I’m looking for real world work while trying to help other artists we worked with who are affected by this income loss. We’ll get through. It’s just not going to be the same.
I didn’t talk to him as often as I wanted to. He didn’t prepare the business we shared for his passing, for what I would need in order to keep things going. I think he thought he covered the bases and basics with me. He didn’t. So I’m catching up and making new plans.
I’m pretty devastated. I still keep saying ‘he is’ instead of ‘he was’, things like that. I have real world struggles and I think, “maybe I should email him…” and then remember I can’t, and never will again.
Ah well.
Anyway, just in case there’s a modicum of compassion within anyone there to join my site out of pity, I’m totally okay with that. A dollar helps.
And if you like my art, but don’t have dollars, please share your good thoughts. Because I want to be motivated again. I just need a new foundation. I don’t have that figurehead anymore to show my macaroni necklaces to, if you understand the analogy or metaphor or whatever. I could use that to get back into things. Maybe soon.
Thank you for listening to my little story. This too shall pass. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does make excellent scars.