The Sky is Collapsing but We Live Another Day
Sometimes it feels like one day you breathe for a moment and the next second everything is on fire.
The exchange rate is laughable. Our country's currency is so weak and everything is soaring and the sky is collapsing but we all have to live another day. I have some funds in my Paypal account, but withdrawing right now (below minimum threshold) would cause me to lose a lot in fees. Sure, why not, do a fire sale? Sounds apt.
The downside of releasing everything I make for free is there is nothing I could reach for in rainy days. I've heard people telling me to make tools and templates to sell or open some commissions. Lovely, but I barely have enough time off work as is. At the end of the workday, I just want to make nonsense instead of dealing with even more deadlines. So I spent a futile half an hour searching my itch.io dashboard for anything at all, ending up with a sad fundraising sale containing one of my zines (that is available to read for free anyway). Why just that one? Well, uh. Everything else doesn't even have any price tags, so they are not eligible for promotions of any kind.
All this and I still think I have no right to mope. I still have leftover funds in Paypal, push comes to shove I'd just eat the fees and withdraw. Many around me doesn't have access to USD in any way. I'm not in danger of losing food and shelter soon. It's madness out there, we can afford small luxuries but somehow not our rent. The gulf between "doing well" and "actually covering the basics of our parents' generation" ever so wide.
I'll have to take more part-time jobs/freelance projects and I've been putting it off for a while due to burnout and health issues. The good ones have all dried up, it feels like everything you can take these days are suspiciously underpaid (it was already grossly underpaid in the years before, but...) and severely overscoped.
Go out there and earn dollars. I wish it's that easy. I wonder what people would think if they learn that purchasing a zine in the cornerside creative market one cheery Sunday would give this person on the other side of the hemisphere enough to eat two days. Global economy is fun (ha).
Oh well, not our first rodeo here. I'll find a way, and eventually I'll go back to making things. First order of business is staying afloat, somehow.