The Joys of Being a Bottomfeeder

2024 has been… informative, to say the least.

When I set out, I had specific goals I wanted to explore and achieve with my art, such as making sure I created art first and products second. Also, that I was only creating art I wanted to create, not art I felt obligated to create. I wanted to step away from cows and explore some other motifs and mediums, as well as stick to a new posting schedule to see if I could play nice with the algorithm and achieve new growth.

And I think these things were all pretty successful! Now it is time to pivot yet again due to an assortment of changes within myself, my environment, and the Internet as a whole.

In 2022, I closed my Patreon after 5 years of not seeing the growth I wanted, both financially and in myself as an artist. In 2023, I reopened it with a new set of goals and parameters. In 2025, I’m going to keep it open with yet another fresh set of guidelines. More thoughts on that specifically here.

As an artist in 2024, I’ve made a handful of videos of differing successes, a lot of reels that panned, and more than one faulty commitment to the people who support me monthly. At first I took these things as abject failures; signs that I should stay in my own lane and stop trying to grow. But… what is my lane? There’s no clear guideline for success when one is either self-employed or nursing a hobby. The limits, deadlines, and metrics are self-defined. So my lane is whatever I say it is, and the only person telling me I’m doing a bad job is myself. If I miss a goal, I have the privilege of moving the goal post. My whole 2024 goal was to create art I wanted, and if people wanted to buy it, great. There’s an honesty there that I think people latched onto, and most importantly, I enjoyed doing it.

That said, I do look at things like engagement, comments, all of that, to determine if the specifics of a post are showing me what I want to see. Was the amount of effort I put into this particular post or reel or video worth the connections I made? What specifically can I do to both reach my intended audience and not exhaust or compromise myself? The balance of success and failure this last year motivated me as a farmer is motivated by a poor or mediocre harvest. Can’t just stop farming; that’s my livelihood. Gotta look at what’s in the soil, the water, the environment. I want the plants to grow, so how do I encourage that? How do I encourage myself?

Anyone who’s been following me for a while knows I also love agriculture. In fact, this year I realized I should have pursued it as a career instead of art… so that is something I am considering. I’ve spent most of my life always feeling like it was too late for… whatever I wanted to do. But that is a perspective I’m working on changing.

In any case, I am still an artist by default, and I do still want to grow as one, and I want to achieve a small degree of success with my artistry. I think I just… have been trying to be the wrong kind of artist.

What defines modern artistic success? Some say dollars made, others follower count. I do not have high quantities of either of these, but I feel success when I’m at a show, physically present to display my wares and connect with people who enjoy them. It is after these shows that my interactions and follower count increases, not in the interim when I am posting regularly, participating in trends, and playing the social media game. Those things have given me a few followers, sure, but the most active ones are the ones I’ve met face to face. Does this mean I’m an artist following artists who is also followed by artists? Yes. But I think artistry is a lot more common than people really think about, so I can’t discount my followers and customers just because we’re in the same industry.

I measure my success by small metrics that don’t really register on greater scales. I can’t measure myself by bigger, more business and corporate-oriented metrics, otherwise I’d be a failure in every single aspect of my life. I’m small and ever-growing, and I have to adjust my expectations accordingly. My financial success comes in waves, like the seasons, like crops in a field, and I think I’m okay with that. I am coming around to the idea that my work does not need to be homogenized, giving me a consistent flow of product and income throughout the year. While that sounds nice, it also sounds exhausting.

In 2022, I was under the impression that the reason I was not successful as an artist is because I wasn’t an artist full time, and surely if I was, I would have an output and workflow that satisfied me. So in 2023, I took on two part-time day jobs to tread my financial waters and structured my week to give me maximum art production time.

And it turns out I am simply not a high production artist. Even with the wealth of ideas swimming around in my head and my journals, creating a great quantity of art on a consistent basis is difficult. If we look at energy like finances, then I realize that creating art is pulling from multiple accounts at once. My creative energy, my whimsy that makes me create in the first place is the first withdrawal. My physical energy. My work brain, like how am I going to structure this piece beyond a vague abstraction. My resting brain, because art is also a joy and a pleasure to me. And when it comes to posting online, I’m pulling from a whole different account of knowledge and skills. I’m not just saying ‘here look at this’, I’m grooming my art for the algorithm, I’m hashtagging, I’m posting at optimal times and days and platforms, and now I have to use the right filters to try and minimize scraping and theft and monitoring my interaction for bots and people who might want to use my art and data for things I don’t want. It’s exhausting just to post online, nevermind all the work I already did beforehand. So I basically feel like I’m making a full, bank-emptying withdrawal every time I finish and post a piece. And this is all in addition to the sheer exhaustion many of us feel as the world is pushed in a direction we don’t want to follow. Yes, this is politics, this is advancing technology, this is environmental concerns that I am so, so helpless against.

It makes it hard to plan for the next year.

But also… I’m the exact kind of person that gets overlooked by all of these things I’m wary of. I am prey that is too small to be bothered with by the predator, living between the cracks in the tree bark where eagles don’t stick their beaks. At the bottom of the ocean, scraping nutrient scuzz from the rocks while sharks fight above me. I am a very small fish in a very large pond, and nothing I do has any meaningful impact on the waters, only the fish closest to me, my immediate environment.

So the impact is not felt if I go from posting three times a week down to two, or if I use the wrong hashtag once, or post in the wrong hour. I see the people and numbers that interact with me, and most of them are repeat offenders- I’ll see them again no matter what, probably. It’s like when you realize you don’t make enough money for the government to automatically withdraw taxes from your paycheck. Too small to matter!

If whatever plan I make for 2025 suddenly falls apart, it’s not really going to affect me, or anything, so I’m basically free to do whatever I want. And I think what I want to do is rest, and cut my productivity down so that I might actually be more productive.

There’s a quilt I’ve been wanting to sew for about six months now, and bags I’ve been wanting to make for nine. I have cross stitches to finish, and more blocks I want to carve. Not to mention the whole reason I started my Patreon in the first place: comics. The Internet and algorithmic powers that be do not care what I am posting to the Internet, only that I am posting, and I think I’m realizing… neither do my followers. To reference Blessid Union of Souls, they like me for me. Me being a purveyor of goods is only one part of me existing in a community, and if I can’t make it as a ‘big fish’, then by golly I’m gonna have fun as a small one.

I tried so hard to turn my art into a career and it didn’t work. I’ve even tried to turn my day jobs into careers and that didn’t work either. I’ve been through four workplaces in the last four years, and I’m still unable to get more than minimum wage, despite my experience, despite my degree, despite my education. Despite me doing all the ‘right things’ and climbing the ‘right’ ladders, I’m basically just… at square one when it comes to employment. All these experience points with nowhere to redeem them. So I’m kind of forced to keep trying to make it for myself, to strike the perfect balance of labor types.

Even if I had gotten an industry job right out of college, look at where the industry is now. There’s a lot of good stuff, yeah, but the working conditions aren’t any less miserable than what I’m currently experiencing, and the jobs aren’t any more reliable. Artists were so easily tossed to the side for the sake of the new technological gadgets, dismissed entirely because we can just steal from them now. The new generators don’t have to pay bills and so they don’t ask for fair wages and sick time and maternity leave and pesky things like bathroom breaks. They produce an inferior product but at least they’re also super expensive and wasteful and people don’t want them in the first place.

Anyway.

There’s a lot of stuff I’m looking down the barrel at for 2025, and how it all turns out is really dependent on how each individual aspect turns out. My health, my housing, my technology. But ultimately, after many weeks of worrying, I’ve decided not work worry about it, because same $#!% different day, right? It’s all the same to a bottom feeder, so I’m just gonna do what I want.

If you want to support a small, as sustainable as can be artist, then I accept between two and five dollars every month here. Select a tier for sustained support, or visit my shop to make a purchase. Is my art not for you but you still want to support me? Share me! Post links to artist stores on your social media and in your stories. Link sharing appeases the algorithm gods, and it gets eyes on our work.

Capitalism is based on consumption. Community is based on sharing. A sustainable society is a balance of both.

Thanks for reading, and see you in 2025.

♥ -R