spark
02-02-2012, 05:47 AM
Or however you spell that.
Anyway, really long background: I am not having a happy time so far this year. Health issues, mental issues, all kinds of issues all over the place, but the biggest issue is probably my severe case of burnout.
I posted here already about how I was quitting taking new fursuit commissions, and what a relief that was, but of course just stopping the influx of new projects hasn't solved the burnout problem, because I keep a six month or so backlog of them. That way there's a steady income flow and I don't waste time with no projects to sew. Very important when it's your primary income source. (And cutting it off has me a little nervous sometimes, let me tell you.)
Unfortunately that means that even though I'm not taking in any new ones, I have six months worth of things I've already committed to, which are all at least partly paid for, and which have to be finished. And some days just thinking about working on any of them makes me want to scream, or hide under the bed, or something. Which makes this even more fun. It's taking so long to make these that it's not going to be a six month stretch, it's looking more like nine months to a year to get it all cleared off. Ugh. Very ugh.
And that, of course, brings me to the suck. Because I'd given all these people estimates. Only one of them had a guaranteed finish date, I try to avoid those and generally only do it when a customer needs the costume for a specific event, so everybody else just had estimates. I said they were estimates. I used words like "probably" and "if everything goes well" and so on. My policies pages on my site makes clear they're just estimates like... three times, I think. The project list that shows how many things I've got to work on right now says they haven't got deadlines, they're just estimates! I didn't think I could possibly BE any more clear that the dates I mention are not promises, they're just frigging ESTIMATES.
You can no doubt already see where this is going.
I'm a responsible artist, so when I realized how bad the situation was, I e-mailed every one of my fursuit customers and told them about the burnout, and that things were going to be late. And *nearly* all the replies I got were totally understanding, including the one person I'd given a hard deadline to! But there's always one. Yeah. Instead of any sort of understanding or sympathy, or even reluctant acceptance, I just got WHINING about how I'd already pushed his stuff back once (which is a frigging lie, I gave him an estimate when he first contacted me, but he didn't pay me until quite some time later, and of course that means that meanwhile other people did pay me and got ahead of him on the list. That's not me pushing things back, that's entirely on HIS head) and he's really not happy, and he wants it when I "promised" it.
I never frigging promised anything. In fact I ASKED him if there was a particular date he needed it by,and he said no, I could take as long as I needed to!!!
Which pisses me off. Don't say something like that unless you actually mean it! What's starting to piss me off even more is that he seems to be ignoring me now. I replied and offered him a refund if he wasn't happy with the delay, and got no answer for several days. So I sent another message saying that I needed to know if he wanted a refund or if he wanted me to go ahead, and could he please respond. That was about three days ago. Still no reply! I have a hard time believing that he hasn't checked his e-mail in almost a week. So he's probably avoiding responding for some idiotic reason or other.
But that's only one of the sucks I need to blow off some steam about today, I have more!
Suck the second comes with making plushes. And can be blamed on my fellow plush makers, frankly. They give away free plush patterns, you see. Not that I'm going to insist they stop, they're doing a good thing, but some people, either thoughtless or entitled, get ideas. They start thinking that this is what plush makers do, and that any time they see a plush they like they don't need to pay a plush maker for it, oh no, they can just ask for the pattern and it will be given to them, for free.
Gah. I HATE this. It hasn't even taken me a month to start hating it with a burning PASSION. The people who want to buy my patterns are okay (I still tell them no, for various reasons, but they're not being EWs.) But it's one thing to pay for a pattern, or to see a "this is for free" pattern and use it, it's another to ask somebody to give you their hard work for nothing! Patterns don't appear out of thin air, I spend time, in some cases a LOT of time, making them. Making them is, in fact, part of my JOB that I get PAID FOR, that PAYS THE BILLS.
If I wanted to give away patterns, I would post them. The fact that I don't means that I don't want to, so don't frigging ask. (I always sort of vindictively imagine that the people asking this would make hideous, ugly monstrosities, even working with my good patterns.)
But are we done yet? Oh no, we're not. This last one isn't EWish or anything, but I just am boggled every time I run into it. I'll get an e-mail from somebody, or even crazier a comment on DA or FA, asking how much a thing in my gallery is, and can I ship it to them right away? Or something along those lines. An attempt of some sort to order the item in question. As though every single item in my gallery of SEVERAL THOUSAND pictures, is sitting in my apartment, ready to be shipped out! (I couldn't fit anything at all in here if that were the case, every single room, including the huge garage, would be piled all the way to the ceiling with this stuff if it were all here.) The DA/FA ones have datestamps on them saying that the pic was uploaded YEARS ago, and yet people still ask this! They'll ask it as the fifth comment down, below two that I answered already, saying that the thing wasn't for sale because it's already been shipped out to the person who ordered it in the first place.
What the everyloving frick is up with that? I mean seriously what? Can people really not recognize the difference between an art gallery and a retail store?
Under other circumstances I probably wouldn't be bugged by this, but it's just one crappy cherry on top of this crap sundae that I've got to deal with right now, and it's irritating me.
Anyway, really long background: I am not having a happy time so far this year. Health issues, mental issues, all kinds of issues all over the place, but the biggest issue is probably my severe case of burnout.
I posted here already about how I was quitting taking new fursuit commissions, and what a relief that was, but of course just stopping the influx of new projects hasn't solved the burnout problem, because I keep a six month or so backlog of them. That way there's a steady income flow and I don't waste time with no projects to sew. Very important when it's your primary income source. (And cutting it off has me a little nervous sometimes, let me tell you.)
Unfortunately that means that even though I'm not taking in any new ones, I have six months worth of things I've already committed to, which are all at least partly paid for, and which have to be finished. And some days just thinking about working on any of them makes me want to scream, or hide under the bed, or something. Which makes this even more fun. It's taking so long to make these that it's not going to be a six month stretch, it's looking more like nine months to a year to get it all cleared off. Ugh. Very ugh.
And that, of course, brings me to the suck. Because I'd given all these people estimates. Only one of them had a guaranteed finish date, I try to avoid those and generally only do it when a customer needs the costume for a specific event, so everybody else just had estimates. I said they were estimates. I used words like "probably" and "if everything goes well" and so on. My policies pages on my site makes clear they're just estimates like... three times, I think. The project list that shows how many things I've got to work on right now says they haven't got deadlines, they're just estimates! I didn't think I could possibly BE any more clear that the dates I mention are not promises, they're just frigging ESTIMATES.
You can no doubt already see where this is going.
I'm a responsible artist, so when I realized how bad the situation was, I e-mailed every one of my fursuit customers and told them about the burnout, and that things were going to be late. And *nearly* all the replies I got were totally understanding, including the one person I'd given a hard deadline to! But there's always one. Yeah. Instead of any sort of understanding or sympathy, or even reluctant acceptance, I just got WHINING about how I'd already pushed his stuff back once (which is a frigging lie, I gave him an estimate when he first contacted me, but he didn't pay me until quite some time later, and of course that means that meanwhile other people did pay me and got ahead of him on the list. That's not me pushing things back, that's entirely on HIS head) and he's really not happy, and he wants it when I "promised" it.
I never frigging promised anything. In fact I ASKED him if there was a particular date he needed it by,and he said no, I could take as long as I needed to!!!
Which pisses me off. Don't say something like that unless you actually mean it! What's starting to piss me off even more is that he seems to be ignoring me now. I replied and offered him a refund if he wasn't happy with the delay, and got no answer for several days. So I sent another message saying that I needed to know if he wanted a refund or if he wanted me to go ahead, and could he please respond. That was about three days ago. Still no reply! I have a hard time believing that he hasn't checked his e-mail in almost a week. So he's probably avoiding responding for some idiotic reason or other.
But that's only one of the sucks I need to blow off some steam about today, I have more!
Suck the second comes with making plushes. And can be blamed on my fellow plush makers, frankly. They give away free plush patterns, you see. Not that I'm going to insist they stop, they're doing a good thing, but some people, either thoughtless or entitled, get ideas. They start thinking that this is what plush makers do, and that any time they see a plush they like they don't need to pay a plush maker for it, oh no, they can just ask for the pattern and it will be given to them, for free.
Gah. I HATE this. It hasn't even taken me a month to start hating it with a burning PASSION. The people who want to buy my patterns are okay (I still tell them no, for various reasons, but they're not being EWs.) But it's one thing to pay for a pattern, or to see a "this is for free" pattern and use it, it's another to ask somebody to give you their hard work for nothing! Patterns don't appear out of thin air, I spend time, in some cases a LOT of time, making them. Making them is, in fact, part of my JOB that I get PAID FOR, that PAYS THE BILLS.
If I wanted to give away patterns, I would post them. The fact that I don't means that I don't want to, so don't frigging ask. (I always sort of vindictively imagine that the people asking this would make hideous, ugly monstrosities, even working with my good patterns.)
But are we done yet? Oh no, we're not. This last one isn't EWish or anything, but I just am boggled every time I run into it. I'll get an e-mail from somebody, or even crazier a comment on DA or FA, asking how much a thing in my gallery is, and can I ship it to them right away? Or something along those lines. An attempt of some sort to order the item in question. As though every single item in my gallery of SEVERAL THOUSAND pictures, is sitting in my apartment, ready to be shipped out! (I couldn't fit anything at all in here if that were the case, every single room, including the huge garage, would be piled all the way to the ceiling with this stuff if it were all here.) The DA/FA ones have datestamps on them saying that the pic was uploaded YEARS ago, and yet people still ask this! They'll ask it as the fifth comment down, below two that I answered already, saying that the thing wasn't for sale because it's already been shipped out to the person who ordered it in the first place.
What the everyloving frick is up with that? I mean seriously what? Can people really not recognize the difference between an art gallery and a retail store?
Under other circumstances I probably wouldn't be bugged by this, but it's just one crappy cherry on top of this crap sundae that I've got to deal with right now, and it's irritating me.