Hiatus

Hey guys, I'm letting you know that I'm going to be taking a break from DOTU, starting after today's page.  It'll be at least two weeks, possibly longer.

Short version: I'm burned out and making way less than minimum wage for 50+ hours a week on DOTU and extras, so even after I get over the burnout, I can't afford to keep working on DOTU at this level because my living situation is changing and I need to spend more time on higher paying work.

Long version:

In August, I installed a tracking app the day before chapter 4 started, and I've been using it since.  This was my DOTU schedule for the past two months:

This is typical for my schedule now that I'm working on both DOTU and Merritt's story.  I had no choice but to launch Merritt's story, because I HAD to fund the new website in order to keep the comic alive.

The charts above show only productive time - no meal or bathroom breaks, no social media, no web browsing, etc., and it doesn't include the first week of August before I installed the app.  A full time job in my state is 160 hours a month, $15840 a year.  I'm making ~$13000 working 210+ hours a month, and I have to pay extra taxes and business expenses because I'm self-employed.

As I mentioned last week, I'm going to be moving in the next year.  My living expenses will increase a LOT.  I depend on corporate freelance to get me to a living wage, but since I've had to offer more rewards to fund DOTU, I have less and less time for better paying work.

On top of that, I'm burned out.  It's hard for me to see anything good coming from what I'm doing these days.  Ever since starting chapter 4, I feel like I've been putting in all my effort and throwing things at the wall and nothing is sticking.  Maybe it's burnout, or maybe the days of people being excited about DOTU are just over.  I can't tell.

All that extra work kept DOTU running longer than it otherwise would have.  But unless it starts taking less time or making more money, I just can't afford to work on it.  So I'm going to take a break to figure out what needs to change.

Rewards and extras will still be delivered as-is until further notice, including Merritt's story.  Reward levels may change more in future months if I continue to work on both DOTU and Merritt's story (most likely the $2 tier, which is why I'm not accepting new patrons into the tier right now), but I'll give you advance notice if anything changes.

I also increased the values of some of the milestone goals to better reflect where things need to be for me to continue.  This may change again once my moving plans are solidified.  Merritt's story part 2 is a little cheaper than where the ebook release used to be, and the story is also broken up into smaller chapter blocks.  We used to be super close to this goal, but there's been canceled pledges and decreased pledges and declines since then.

Plans to release Merritt's story to the public as an ebook are canceled for now.  We never actually met this goal, so nothing's really changing.

Bonus page milestone goals are higher too.  I don't think anyone was really into them.

I'm going to be doing Inktober this month to try to recharge and get a different view of my work.  The illustrations are all for Merritt's story.  Some will be public, but the ones that are too spoilery or suggestive will go to $10 and higher patrons.

I apologize to those of you who newly pledged just in time for the hiatus.  I know the timing sucks, but I hope you'll understand that I've only had two or three days off since June and need a couple weeks to recharge.  In the meantime, there's a TON of old content you're welcome to go through - like literal hundreds of images in the voting incentive gallery and elsewhere.

I'll let you know when my post-hiatus plans are clearer.