Wild Geese in Flight is up on Patreon

After far more hours than I intended working on this drawing, it is up on Patreon now, along with a post about why I so often end up pushing my drawing time into the wee hours.

The ongoing livelihood concerns referenced in that post are often part of the territory when one is an entrepreneur and/or freelancer, and given my skill set, I’ve been either or both for the majority of my adult life. Despite my familiarity with that territory, this year has been more financially insecure than most, given the failing business model of the friendly local game store in general in the face of the prevalence of Kickstarter projects and online stores with lower overhead, the struggles of The Temple Games in particular in an over-saturated market in Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts. My business partner and I have known for a while that we need to either adapt or die, but restructuring the store to a different business model requires either renovations or relocation, both of which require money that we don’t have.

From my perspective, this is necessary impetus to get me to create a livelihood for myself that is completely independent of the store, and so I’ve been hard at work trying to come up with a means of combining my eclectic skill set into something that actually pays the bills. Unfortunately, while I am not afraid of that work, I am deeply afraid of the giant financial hole that has opened up underneath my feet in the meantime, especially with the current job market offering no real fallback position if my efforts to build a new business for myself fail.

We’ll see how it goes. The irony of finally getting a sense of what I want to do and what needs to be done just when I apparently have no other means of survival is not lost on me, especially when I know just enough of that path to see possibility but not enough to see security. That means I’ve got to brave a deep dive down into the fear, while under immense pressure from those I am responsible to, to do anything to bring in more money except for building another business for myself. When one practices the intuitive arts, there is always the question of “is this real or delusion?” One walks a fine line between healthy skepticism and unhealthy second-guessing of one’s choices, especially when one feels directed to take a leap of faith. In my case, my whirling dervish sensibilities make that leap of faith several leaps at once, because the message I’ve been receiving from stars and cards and inner knowing has been emphatic about the need for me to combine arts and astrology, to merge multiple paths at once in making true divinatory art as constantly as I can. Making that earn me a living is still the foggy part. 😛