Announcement: Changes to this Patreon in 2021

Hey Cafè Cats,

I have an announcement that I would like to make. I know that I’ve been a little bit off this month and, as always, it's due in part to the fact that I’ve been chewing this over for a while now. I have a difficult time articulating my feelings and so I tend to think too long and too hard on things. I don’t like to rock the boat, which often leads me down the road of being too stressed out or even burnt out. In the long run, I end up keeping my mouth shut and slip quietly away even if speaking up would help me in the long run. That’s why I’m just going to rip the bandaid off.

To warn you all now, there will be no TL;DR version of this. Even getting this far is exhausting and emotionally draining for me.

Come the end of December I will be completely restructuring my Patreon. I have come to realize that I am doing what it is that I always do with my life: I’m attempting very hard to be a people pleaser. Yes, one of the goals with this Patreon was to share my work and bring joy to everyone here, my main goal was to do things that I wanted to do. Like I always do with most things in my life, I tend to put the thoughts and desires of others before myself.

Over the last two years I have desperately desired not to be a waste of your time and money. This has caused me to realize that I have bitten off more than I can chew with juggling commissions (which is still my primary source of income), custom rewards and personal pieces to keep this page up to date. Much of what I had set this page up for originally have been shoved off as goals to be reached when really these things were meant to be the main focus of the page to begin with.

I want to be perfectly clear: This is entirely my fault. I know it and I want to make sure that you all do too. However, it's gotten to the point where if I am doing anything other than art that I feel extremely guilty. I’ll find myself playing video games, watching TV or getting ready to fall asleep and I’ll be saying to myself “This is stupid, you should be working”, and that’s just not healthy. It’s been this way for months now and I’ve been talking with Silver about it for just as long. It took me that long to realize that what I’m doing now is not sustainable and it was time to try something else.

Now, with that said, I don’t know all of what is going to change in December. This is primarily due to the fact that I have been sitting down with Silver to evaluate what I can and cannot handle. I am attempting to be more realistic with my goals and the amount of workload I put onto myself. Here is what I do know:

• If you are pledged at an older tier, your rewards are not changing. You may keep that tier and its custom rewards. I’m not taking it away from anyone. I’m just not allowing new Patrons to join the older tiers. But to reiterate, I am not touching your custom rewards and only certain things about these tiers will change (see wallpaper and sale changes) -- the other new rewards will not be offered on the old tiers.

• The only exception to this is Catfeine Junky’s -- I’m sorry but I will be discontinuing this tier altogether after December. If I go forward with some of my ideas, then I will not be able to keep up with the stream rewards for this tier. To compensate those that have been in the Catfeine Junky tier any time during 2020 will be given the option to pledge down to an older tier with custom rewards should they so choose.

For the above two: If you choose to leave the old tiers, please be aware that I will not be allowing access to them again.

• Starting in January I will be releasing a new Wallpaper once every 2 months instead of every month. Looking back at the wallpapers I have done there were more than a fair number that I wished I could have spent more time on. The adjustment is to make up for that.

• I have really enjoyed doing posters and sending those out -- so I will have more physical prints to send out. I’m still working on the logistics for this, but both Silver and I really enjoy sending things in the mail. In that same vein I have also found a new place to print stickers and will be doing more of those in the future. I have a few left over from my last run of printing and will probably give those away to some peeps in the Discord at some point.

• Certain newer tiers will have a one time/first time reward.

• I will still have discounts applied to certain tiers for Rcoms and YCHs.

• I will be keeping the suggestion box, presales and adopt/YCH previews, but these will be open for all tiers to input and claim.

That’s what I have figured out so far.

With the changes coming in some of you might not want to stick around and I just want you all to know that if you choose to go or stay that I have and will always appreciate you. I have said it before and it bears repeating: I never thought even a fraction of the people that follow me would follow me. And certainly never thought that many would like my artwork. I have never deemed myself as “worthy” of praise or anything special at all, really. I really and truly am extremely overjoyed that so many of you enjoy my work enough to want to collect it like pokemon cards. I’m so very honored.

I also appreciate your patience and understanding.

Warm Regards,
Zero