Expecto Patreon
When I re-embarked on life as a freelance artist, my friends gave me a lot of advice. All of it good. Some of it more applicable than others. Joseph Scrimshaw suggested I put together a Patreon site.
I know about Patreon. I have a couple of friends with Patreon sites. Joseph is one of them.
I haven’t taken the leap yet because the whole thing is…complicated.
If you are unfamiliar with Patreon, it is a crowdfunding platform where artists can invite the public to help support them in producing art.
Say, for instance, I tell people I’m going to produce one self portrait a month. I’m not going to do that because all I would produce is stick figures but let’s imagine that I could, in fact, do that well.
People then pledge a certain amount of money to be paid every time I produce a self portrait. Maybe it would be a dollar. Maybe it would be one hundred dollars. Most likely, it would be closer to a dollar.
Free Falling
About this time last year, I’d made up my mind to leave my job. I wasn’t happy in my work and I felt it was time to figure out how to make money for myself rather than for someone else. Then a crazy thing happened. I was asked what they needed so I wouldn’t resign. I gave them my terms, they agreed to my terms and I decided to stay.
I had a lot of grand plans for the year. I went from a 40 hour work week to a 30 hour work week and I thought with those ten hours, I could build a freelance business and transition to that job on my own timetable.
I imagined nothing would fill up that extra time aside from being a writer. I imagined that I could keep myself motivated to follow an ambitious blog schedule. I imagined that I could somehow be an (almost) full-time worker and a carve a path to consistent freelance work at the same time.
And over the course of the year, I lost my way. There were changes at work, challenges at home and it seemed a lot easier to just remain as I was. I hadn’t given up on my lofty goal. I’d just postponed it.
Since I’d eliminated the parts of my job I hated, I was much more content at work. That meant I didn’t feel the same drive to get away from my job. The job was good. The people were good. It was all good enough.
