📕🌺 Yumykon Time ~

Hi everyone, another week of hard work!! I hope you all have a great week and remember to take care of yourselves, okay? I want my dear ones to be strong, happy, and healthy.

Well, I don't have much to talk about this week, but I wanted to tell you a story about myself!!

In 2009, I arrived in Brazil with my parents. It was very hard because the reasons for them coming to Brazil were a little chaotic. Unfortunately, we arrived here with nothing, no money, no relatives or friends, or even a job. They don't speak Portuguese, so it made things even worse for developing a financial structure.

Since then, I've had a very poor life. Often there was no food at home, and the places we lived in were always the worst you can imagine. I never had anything, no video games, no good clothes to wear, no friends, or even the chance to eat ice cream. Sometimes I sit in a park to avoid going home after school, watching many people and kids having ice cream at a really cool ice cream shop. It was my dream to have ice cream from there.

There were times when I developed the habit of selling things at school, like drawings or to do classmates' schoolwork. With that money, I finally managed to do two things I always wanted: have ice cream and pay to use computers to watch anime and play games.

Besides being poor, I didn't had a healthy relationship at home , so I always tried to stay away from home. Until in 2015, what I already told you all about happened: I played Undertale. Seeing that game inspired me to pursue three things: inspire people, make games, and seek my happiness.

A week later, after much planning, I ran away from home and started living on the street. For a while, I survived by selling sweets on the street and living in cheap hostels. Then at some point, I had the opportunity to live with a lady who let me stay at her place for a low cost, and sometimes she let me stay even if I didn't have the money.

This allowed me to go back to school and graduate from high school. I was also able to complete a technical course in Industrial Automation along with school because I believed that working in the industry combined with technology could give me a great financial future. Oh, at that time I did a graduation project that won the school's scientific contest:

But not everything is rosy. After finishing my studies in 2017 and turning 18, I had to find a job and a way to become independent because I couldn't stay there anymore. But it was almost impossible to find a job in my work field in such a short time, so the alternative I found was to work at McDonald's.

In the interview, I was interviewed by the owner of all the franchises in the 12 cities in the region, at least 100 franchises. He didn't ask me many questions; he just said he liked my determination and admired the dedication of Japanese culture. So he gave me the job and said I could start the next day.

I started working as a general employee at McDonald's in a mall. I worked at the cash register, fried burgers, cleaned, and so on. I was very dedicated to my job, but somehow there had to be a problem. Unfortunately, I started feeling very sick while working there. I vomited every day and had to take three medical leaves, once even requiring an ambulance.

I believe the heat from the fryers and the heavy physical routine made me very ill, and I had a health issue that exacerbated it, though I wasn't aware of it at the time.

Seeing this situation, the manager notified the franchise owner about it. Instead of firing me, the owner saw the effort I was putting in despite everything and transferred me to another job location, a McDonald's ice cream kiosk.

There, the work was: working the cash register, making ice creams, handling the bookkeeping, cleaning, and managing the stock. No extreme heat or physical exertion. It was still tiring in a way because it was 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, standing. But I had coworkers, and we sometimes rotated tasks, making it easier to handle the job.

After much hard work, I was promoted to trainer at McDonald's, but I only stayed for another 2 months. Because in 2018, I was hired by a company called DXC to be a technical analyst, providing outsourced services for a bank called Itaú.

I truly dedicated to this company. For a long time, I was a reference among colleagues. I was promoted several times from 2018 to 2019 and was in one of the highest positions possible for someone with my level of education. However, in 2019, as you know, I started working with pixel art on a platform called Fiverr, initially as extra income.

But the orders began to increase exponentially, and I don't want to brag, but... I always dedicated myself to delivering above expectations with an absurdly low deadline without charging additional fees. This made my account very relevant on the platform, thus getting more and more orders easily. This allowed me to stop charging low prices and start charging for extras like quick delivery, etc. Even so, the orders kept coming, and I gave my all to maintain my credibility on the platform.

When I realized it, I was working 8 hours for DXC, earning $400 a month, and on Fiverr, I was working 6 hours and earning at least $800 a month. With that, I felt confident enough to take a leap of faith and quit my job at DXC to dedicate myself solely to art. And it worked out very well!!

Since then, I have been working with pixel art on Fiverr until 2023, when I decided to take another leap of faith and leave Fiverr to work independently, posting my art on Twitter and getting commissions on my own and maybe creating a Patreon... which I have now achieved, and it's much more amazing than I ever dreamed!!

Now the new goals of Yumy here, who was very poor and risked everything to live independently and fight for her dreams, you will follow along with me!!

PS: As always, I omitted a lot of my story because I don't like to talk much about the things I went through as they are very heavy and terrible, and I don't want you to feel bad because this place is just for you to feel good, but I wanted to share at least a certain part. Who knows, maybe I'll tell the rest over time?

Thank you for reading ~
With love, Yumykon.