Schedule change October onwards - an open letter to backers

Hello everyone.

Starting from October, I am going to change the regular update schedule of my work. The current schedule entails 2 Loops and 1 Scenario with Wallpapers landing every Wednesday, and I have come to the conclusion that this pace of work is no longer feasible in the long run, and that I am headed straight towards burnout. My work as of late has, for a lack of better words, been missing that certain "spark", something which I realize is founded in my work these days being less about creativity and more about, again for a lack of better words, "production", this informed by a steady flow of sequential poll results and subsequent improvising to make something suitable for consumption. I find that I am increasingly going into a mental state where I am making content for the sake of sticking to a schedule and the promised content delivery than I am making things because they are actually interesting or otherwise enticing to me personally, something that has translated into an avoidance behavior where I want nothing else than to be "done" with whatever I undertake at any given moment, which is a clear sign of burnout.

Suffice to say, there's more going on behind the scenes than I tend to openly discuss, with me being somewhat known for my attempts at business mindedness and some manner of "distant professionalism", and while I do not want to imply that people lack empathy in general, I am also well aware that creators who frequently discuss their own health or real life issues tend to alienate their audiences, something I do not blame anyone for. This all said, I have to divulge something I've never discussed here before for the sake of context, and that is my status as a sufferer of PTSD, and how that was one of the driving reasons for me to attempt to get out of my previous job as a prison officer. This means I have certain personality quirks, one being poor resistance to stress (which easily translates into physical illness, such as catching colds, etc), another being hypersexuality (which I have "treated" to some extent, or fueled, through my work, and explains why I have been able to keep up with my production schedule), and another being a low sense of self-esteem and value in myself, and subsequently, my work. I sleep poorly, I eat poorly, and my workout is nowhere close to what it once was, though still acting as a brief respite in my everyday business, like the gym is my moment to come up for air. Other stressors like my wife's sudden heart issues have exacerbated these matters further, and in conjunction with how my schedule is structured, I am feeling like I am headed towards a cliff's end, with no land in sight on the other side.

I had an initial plan, which I announced in this Friday's progress report, to schedule myself a single day off every week (Fridays, incidentally), in a bid to try to see if that could alleviate the issue in question, but quickly came to the conclusion that it's not sufficient to appease the growing void in my chest whenever I think of sitting down and doing this work. Now, signing off my content direction to backers has been a means of drawing interest to higher tiers and has actually allowed me to work on this stuff full time, something I will always be incredibly thankful for, but I have come to the regrettable conclusion that the tradeoff has been turning my work into something industrial in terms of its creative process, something that is done simply because it needs to be done, and for the pace of it to be so all-encompassing that I have little to no time for friends, family, or myself by all means. Worst of all, it's actively hampered both my ability and motivation to learn more about the scene I am involved in, meaning my growth as a creator has stalled, and I find myself more and more simply thinking "this is passable, fuck it" while I scramble to make things do the baseline motions that they are supposed to do so I can have it ready for X day. Each Blender update is accompanied with trepidation owing to the extra work it'll entail just to get my work up to the level of what it was previously again whenever they rework their engine, headaches brew as I try to come up with increasingly contrived writing to motivate scenes that my mind fumbles in the dark to find reason for, often for characters that only superficially interest me, and all this, ceaselessly, week after week, for years.

Simultaneously, I have heard your feedback. Folks want nothing more than, well, more, and what they want more of is more of everything - and I understand perfectly. Animations should be longer, have more angles, and have more effects, they should have more custom animation bits, they should have fluid dynamics, VR integration, 4K resolution, come in versions lacking or including male voices, they should have appropriate themes, longer written flavor texts, and they should have more character variation. I have tried to meet these requests as well as I can, and I would be so bold as to say that I have ended up reaching at least half-way to most of them, but I have realized with time that they are simply never going to materialize under my current schedule given the time constraints that I have - and now, with burnout looming on the horizon, I am staring down multiple crossroads containing several difficult choices.

So am I just pulling the plug on this venture? I'd rather not become homeless, so no, I am not. What I've tried to reconcile with is the pressure of production juxtaposed to my time of recovery, attempting to gauge where there might exist some kind of sweet-spot where I can keep making stuff, keep delivering on an update schedule and on patreon backer perks, while at the same time not ending up in some kind of depressed equilibrium that over time will threaten to start me down the road of burnout again. You know the feeling after you've finished a really good series, or a book, and you sort of just deflate and feel empty? That's what happens to me after any given animation is done and posted - except I am not afforded any recovery afterwards, and will owing to my schedule move on to immediately begin work on something else. It appears commonplace that other creators, after they've come out with some kind of animation or drawn piece by all means, simply state that they are taking a few days off - and well, I do not. They do it for good reason, and I never do.

In that sense, starting in October, I am going to remove the first Loop of the month. This will leave the Less Popular Ladies (LPL) Loop, as well as the Scenario in the schedule, but leave the first week of the month for me to pursue further technical understanding of Blender, as well as, on occasion, animate something that interests me personally, or even just use it for resting. I am also maintaining subsequent Fridays as days off, every week, though that wouldn't have impacted the usual schedule either way, but I want to mention it here for transparency's sake.

I perfectly understand that this reduction in content output will disappoint many backers, and I do not fault anyone for withdrawing their support, should they choose to do so, given the current schedule and expectations thereof. Know that I wouldn't do this unless I found it absolutely necessary to do so, and that I will forever be thankful for the backing you gave me, so no hard feelings on my part. The reason I am writing this now is to warn well ahead of time about the schedule change in October, and given that the September loop poll is already underway I find it would be difficult to adequately communicate why I would interrupt it or otherwise to backers, so I will be maintaining the current schedule for next month.

TL:DR:

DH is facing burnout.
New schedule October and onward is just the LPL loop and Scenario, so 1 loop less per month.

I'm not entirely sure how to end a text like this, given its nature, and how candid it is, but I want everyone here to know that I am incredibly thankful for your backing, and your kind words. I've tried exploring other venues to resolve this matter, but have simply come up short, so this is the closest thing I have found to a "solution" in the moment. I can't guarantee it'll solve anything, nor can I say for certain that the improvements I hope for will materialize, but I feel deep down that I really do not want to quit this venture outright, that there's more stuff in me that needs to be written and animated. I just need time, and a different approach. At least, that is the hope.

Please, do take care of yourselves out there, as well as each other. Everyone you meet has a struggle of their own.
/DH