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Posted a year agoHey, this is Zastra, you know that whole last journal about financial difficulties? Ignore it! Turns out we've been paying rent almost two months in advance, so we should be a-ok until well after we get a new job! So yeah, don't worry about us anymore!
More info about our financial situation
Posted a year agoHi! this is Zastra, currently speaking as a representative of The Kipper System. In the description of some of our recent posts (namely "Angel's Offer (PWYW Vore)" and "We are now offering Pay What You Want Commissions!") we have alluded to some financial difficulties we've been dealing with as of recently. At first we felt the need to be vague about our predicament, not wanting to bother others too much with the details, but the more we thought about it, the more we realized we wouldn't be bothered if someone else talked about their struggles, we would be compassionate and want to help, so we decided to write this journal.
So, we've been barely scraping by for more than half a year now, with jobs that won't schedule us enough and almost no other sources of income, we've been in a vocational rehab program since early april, which is to help securing a steady job that works well with our needs and preferences, but it will still be at least another month before we're employed through that program, maybe more (we keep finding out there's more to the process than we thought). We've been able to pay the bills at all this year only thanks to the incredibly generous, kind, and patient help from our roommate and our parents, who we have been borrowing money from to make up the deficit I think every month this year so far. It has felt awful taking money from them again and again and we want to pay them back several times what we borrowed, especially for our roommate who has been helping the most of all.
We've been picking up odd jobs and asking for more hours at our primary job to try and make up the deficit without getting a second job, partly because the idea seemed extremely stressful and soul-crushing (we have enough trouble with just one minimum wage job), and partly because we were always thinking that the vocational rehab job was right around the corner and we didn't want to mess up or complicate things with that, only to find out that it was further away.
Around the end of last month it became unambiguous that we would need a second job or equivalent income, we had resigned ourselves to work at mcdonalds or something, but before we got there we decided to hail-mary an idea we've had for a while of setting up somewhere to draw portraits for tips. We felt really nervous about asking places about this and didn't think it would work out at all, but we had nothing to lose, so we asked around and, to our surprise, we got some affirmative answers from a couple local bars. The start of the next week we were in there drawing portraits, and we actually made a good amount of money and had a great time!
So, with plans to go to the bars five nights a week, and the little money from our fast food job who were barely scheduling us, we didn't have to borrow very much money last month, and it was looking like this month we might not have to borrow at all, and maybe even be able to start paying people back!
Then we got Covid.
We started feeling feverish on the night of the 5th, and on the evening of the 6th our roommate drove us (oh yeah, we also have two tires that probably need replacing on our car) to get a take-home test, and it came back positive. So that means both of our current sources of income are inaccessible for roughly two weeks, which means we almost certainly won't be able to make anywhere near bills this month unless we can find a remote source of income. Times have been getting tighter and tighter on the people helping us out with bills, too, and we doubt they'll be able to cover us this month (regardless, we don't want them to have to cover us ever again).
We have a good few channels online for our creative output, but none of them have a very big following or much attention, and we've gotten barely any money from them. In the past we felt unable to take commissions for mental health reasons, but we've been healing in a lot of ways, and the bar job broke the ice in terms of doing what are basically commissions, more high-pressure if anything. So, we figured, our best bet for a quick way to earn some money from our creative work would be to focus our energy on commissions for the time being. Thankfully(?) we have a whole lot of drawings that we've never uploaded, so we've been going through our files to collect drawings for some big pushes.
So that's our situation, it's pretty much go big or go home at this point, we need a LOT of commissions to be able to pay for everything we need this month (or a few really big ones, etc.) Roughly $800-$1000. We really don't know if this is even feasible, we don't know much about how these things work. We are self-taught and unconventional, but we know our art is worthwhile, and we put a lot of care into it when we're whole-hearted about it. We've dreamed for as long as we can remember of making a living off of our art, and we believe that the universe has guided us to this situation for a reason (that's apparently the kind of pressure it took for us to finally post some of the hundreds of drawings we'd never posted), but we're also really worried that it won't work out and we'll have to get another soul-crushing hourly job, or worse, have to borrow money again.
We greatly appreciate any support you might give us, whether it be commissioning, faving, commenting, viewing, even just sending good vibes and well-wishes. We're humbled to be artists in a community so full of brilliant, hard-working, creative and lovely artists, and we hope to carve out a space big enough for us to live here. I know we don't talk much, but feel free to message us to chat! If you have any advice on how to get more commissions (or make money remotely at all) we would be very thankful to hear it. If nothing else, we hope you enjoy us finally posting so many of the things that we never got around to sharing, we really like a lot of them and we hope you will too!
Much love <3
- Zastra, on behalf of The Kipper System
So, we've been barely scraping by for more than half a year now, with jobs that won't schedule us enough and almost no other sources of income, we've been in a vocational rehab program since early april, which is to help securing a steady job that works well with our needs and preferences, but it will still be at least another month before we're employed through that program, maybe more (we keep finding out there's more to the process than we thought). We've been able to pay the bills at all this year only thanks to the incredibly generous, kind, and patient help from our roommate and our parents, who we have been borrowing money from to make up the deficit I think every month this year so far. It has felt awful taking money from them again and again and we want to pay them back several times what we borrowed, especially for our roommate who has been helping the most of all.
We've been picking up odd jobs and asking for more hours at our primary job to try and make up the deficit without getting a second job, partly because the idea seemed extremely stressful and soul-crushing (we have enough trouble with just one minimum wage job), and partly because we were always thinking that the vocational rehab job was right around the corner and we didn't want to mess up or complicate things with that, only to find out that it was further away.
Around the end of last month it became unambiguous that we would need a second job or equivalent income, we had resigned ourselves to work at mcdonalds or something, but before we got there we decided to hail-mary an idea we've had for a while of setting up somewhere to draw portraits for tips. We felt really nervous about asking places about this and didn't think it would work out at all, but we had nothing to lose, so we asked around and, to our surprise, we got some affirmative answers from a couple local bars. The start of the next week we were in there drawing portraits, and we actually made a good amount of money and had a great time!
So, with plans to go to the bars five nights a week, and the little money from our fast food job who were barely scheduling us, we didn't have to borrow very much money last month, and it was looking like this month we might not have to borrow at all, and maybe even be able to start paying people back!
Then we got Covid.
We started feeling feverish on the night of the 5th, and on the evening of the 6th our roommate drove us (oh yeah, we also have two tires that probably need replacing on our car) to get a take-home test, and it came back positive. So that means both of our current sources of income are inaccessible for roughly two weeks, which means we almost certainly won't be able to make anywhere near bills this month unless we can find a remote source of income. Times have been getting tighter and tighter on the people helping us out with bills, too, and we doubt they'll be able to cover us this month (regardless, we don't want them to have to cover us ever again).
We have a good few channels online for our creative output, but none of them have a very big following or much attention, and we've gotten barely any money from them. In the past we felt unable to take commissions for mental health reasons, but we've been healing in a lot of ways, and the bar job broke the ice in terms of doing what are basically commissions, more high-pressure if anything. So, we figured, our best bet for a quick way to earn some money from our creative work would be to focus our energy on commissions for the time being. Thankfully(?) we have a whole lot of drawings that we've never uploaded, so we've been going through our files to collect drawings for some big pushes.
So that's our situation, it's pretty much go big or go home at this point, we need a LOT of commissions to be able to pay for everything we need this month (or a few really big ones, etc.) Roughly $800-$1000. We really don't know if this is even feasible, we don't know much about how these things work. We are self-taught and unconventional, but we know our art is worthwhile, and we put a lot of care into it when we're whole-hearted about it. We've dreamed for as long as we can remember of making a living off of our art, and we believe that the universe has guided us to this situation for a reason (that's apparently the kind of pressure it took for us to finally post some of the hundreds of drawings we'd never posted), but we're also really worried that it won't work out and we'll have to get another soul-crushing hourly job, or worse, have to borrow money again.
We greatly appreciate any support you might give us, whether it be commissioning, faving, commenting, viewing, even just sending good vibes and well-wishes. We're humbled to be artists in a community so full of brilliant, hard-working, creative and lovely artists, and we hope to carve out a space big enough for us to live here. I know we don't talk much, but feel free to message us to chat! If you have any advice on how to get more commissions (or make money remotely at all) we would be very thankful to hear it. If nothing else, we hope you enjoy us finally posting so many of the things that we never got around to sharing, we really like a lot of them and we hope you will too!
Much love <3
- Zastra, on behalf of The Kipper System
Oh btw we're on Itaku
Posted 2 years agohttps://itaku.ee/profile/thekippersystem/gallery very cool website that is cooler than this website and has useful features
