Autumn Update

I just wanted to say 'autumn'.

It's been a bit, folks! 

We've had a couple of these 'updates' and this will be the final one because, quite simply, our troubles are over. This will be a bit of story time but I've been so (noticeably) absent here that I owe it a bit. 

The long and short if you haven't read the past posts or forgot is that at the start of the year, we were more or less forced to move because our building management decided COVID was over (it was not) and that they could unfreeze the rent hikes they had planned. Instead of being reasonable about this, they also hiked the rent by about $1400 on us when we were already paying about $2400 for a single-bedroom unit. That's about 5K CAD or 3200 GBP. We obviously started looking for a new place and since we liked our neighborhood and the price hike was because we were month-to-month, we looked in the same building and found a 2BR at a more reasonable price. Well, reasonable within US markets. We moved in, it was a nightmare. A lot of issues were kept from us, most noticeably that it was absurdly noisy and our walls would shake from tenants going up and down the stairs outside the unit. We moved to another unit and it was similarly noisy, only this time because we were near the garbage compactor that buzzed loudly at all times of the day. We searched for units in different buildings in the city but found very little within our budget that wasn't just outright worse than what we already had. This on top of a domestic abuse situation arising next door and making us feel VERY unsafe and the building switching the locks on us so that we no longer had house keys. (We had to use a code of some sort, like a hotel. In our home.) I had enough, and I told Lena I want to move back to Canada.

We spent months trying to find a place in Vancouver. The market here is absurd in a completely different way. We have government oversight that means our landlords can't be absolute monsters the way they can be in the US but it also meant that we were competing for every unit we visited with like 40 other people. All of our searching had to be done remotely because at the time I was (forcefully) going through US immigration. I couldn't leave the country without asking permission until I was eventually cleared to do so with a document. We scheduled a trip to Vancouver to look at places. 

We had to extend our trip because it was so impossible to find a place. Not worth going into the details of this either but we spent 3 weeks going around the city almost every day and nothing ever worked out for us. Until the very, very, very last day. We lucked out and a place in the neighborhood we were looking for opened up. We visited the place, talked with the landlord a bit, and we got the place on the spot. No application, nothing. He just really appreciated us, our story, and that we were looking for a place to settle long term. "I don't care about hiking you guys' rent or anything, I just want people living here that I know will be happy for a while". We signed a lease and started packing the moment we got back home.

We've been here for a little over a month now and we're finally settled in properly.

I have an office again! So does Lena! 7 months spent living out of boxes, unsure where we're going and what our situation is for the long-term because it could flip at any moment. We have a home now, we're planting some roots, and have the good fortune of being in a city that has a lot of our close friends and peers. Best of all is that I'm back in a country of socialized medicine where I can finally afford to take the time to address some long-standing health issues I've had and can offer the same to my wife who has had to navigate the absolutely awful US system for her entire life.

END OF STORY TIME / PATREON UPDATE TIME

Everything above hopefully gives you a clean read of what the hell has been going on for us over the course of this year. It's been a mess! And it's made it really hard to be creative. That shit people tell you (or you hear in general) of being miserable makes good art or whatever is fucking nonsense. Being miserable makes you miserable and nobody wants to be creative when you're miserable. The one day you spend taking your anger and sadness and resentment out on a canvas does not outweigh the 20 you spend unable to function or concentrate. The past month has been a really productive one but, yknow, irons in the fire or whatever. 

With that, I'm addressing some stuff on the Patreon to better reflect that. I've cleaned things up a bit in the tiers and rewards. You'll also start seeing art posts on here again. I stopped doing that years ago because scrapers would get the data but frankly that's... less of a concern now for a number of reasons, the least of which is that I don't think people actually care enough to do that anymore LOL. It'll let me keep this place a bit more active, too, which is nice. PSD rewards will still come at the end of the month.

The Discord has also been put on indefinite hiatus because frankly it just wasn't being used all that much. I had a goal in mind with it and it kinda worked for that for a while but the reality is that... I just need offline time. I am a single person and try as I might to keep up, I am not an Tiktok-influencer type. I am not always online because it is unhealthy for me to be. Additionally like, I've felt much more connected through Twitch chat when I am live than I ever have there because I get to, like, have an active conversation, you know? We get to have a place to hangout a couple hours a week and I love that. I would rather focus my energy on having more streams during the week and for longer than, honestly, forcing myself to check into a Discord on a platform that in my head is attached to where I talk to friends and stuff when I'm not at work.

For those of you who also subscribe to my NSFW Fanbox, a tier has opened there for you to get *both* SFW and NSFW posts in one place, if you desire to do so.

That's pretty much it!

Thanks as always everyone for supporting. It's been... years. Some of you have been here longer than I remember in a way that is dizzying. The support you still show through here or the recent Ascari plush campaign has been bewildering. Thank you so much.

If you're reading this on Monday the 12th, stream has been UHHHHHHHHH

delayed until thursday because apparently Videogames are happenning on the 12th so I'm gonna just headdive into art for the week and be back on the 12th with a probably longer stream, over on twitch.tv/aurahack_ 

Have a good day/week/month, everyone! 💖 And thanks again for reading.