#After Patreon stuff I think it came out to something like 50 or 55 total drawings? There were some days where I was doing 3 drawings lol!!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

adistantstarblog · 4 years

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HAPPY NEW YEAR, DEB, AND HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO OUR FRIENDSHIP ❤️

(Right back at you @cynic-and-a-saint can you believe its really been a year??)

ONE YEAR WITH BETHIE:

My life around here runs a regular loop, it's always pretty busy, and it's often full of unexpected events and surprises. It’s in a constant state of up and down. There is also usually always something to worry about.

Nine times out of ten, I am a nervous ball of anxiety that is always thinking the worst giving the excuse that ‘...well, if I expect the worst at least I am ready for anything.’ I’ve been alone for the past 15 years of my life after my fiance walked out on me. During all that time though I discovered I am Bi, as it turns out. And also, I like being invisible. I like to hide. Most if not all of my friends live in other states, if not other countries. And truth be told when all totaled up, there are only a few. I can count them on my fingers with room left over. And, I am the first to admit and will tell you straight up...I am difficult to be a friend of.

January 1, 2019 was a day like all the rest, busy, and since it was winter, miserably cold. It was New Years, and like all New Years I didn’t set a resolution as I’ve always believed that you should be willing to make big goals for your life every day of the year. But I was still down that day. In hopes of getting funds to help get out of a difficult situation I found myself in financially (as an epileptic, conventional work isn’t always ideal) I’d started my Patreon. But it had stayed at or around 20 or so dollars no matter what I tried.

Anyway, as I sat down in my chair that evening and opened my Patreon to manage it my eyes popped open wide. I can’t remember the exact figure now, but i had suddenly jumped from about 20 dollars to something like 55 bucks a month. I was speechless. I didn’t know what happened or where it had come from. My highest tier at the time was like, 20 dollars and even with the 20 I was already earning...it didn’t add up to 55 dollars.

So I thought it was a trick, and I yelled down the hall for my sister to come see what I was looking at. She wasn’t sure what was going on either but she told me to just roll with it.

And that was when I saw the message:

..after reading it I was like...is this for real?? But it had to be. Quickly to reassure this person on the other end of the message I typed out as fast as I could something along the lines of ‘it’s okay’ and ‘everyone gets a chance’ and ‘I never would have thought you would just sign up to read everything and take off before paying’ (I had yet to experience Dine and Dash at that point, so this didn’t make sense to me that someone would even do this) and I think I wrote something about ‘how I was so excited’ and hit send.

And I was so excited. Someone out there thought my writing was worth 30 bucks! Someone had noticed me. All these things were going through my head as i sat there, staring at the screen, wanting to hear from this person again and hoping they wouldn’t just decide they didn’t like my stuff, or that they would leave. I was deciding I had to do my best to impress them when I knew for a fact that on Patreon, much like the rest of my life, I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I mean, in 2017 I was basically dropped on Patreon’s doorstep by a friend of mine that knocked on the door for me and left.

But then, over the top of all these thoughts another flew into my head suddenly - crap! I just went over 50$ a month! I have to worry about taxes now….

...before putting much thought into it, I sent a message to the person that I appreciated their pledge and it means so much! And it did! But I have to worry about taxes now because of it. Did they have any idea what I needed to do?

Guys...this was how I met Bethie, and to be fair, if someone I just met jumped on me about taxes like that...I probably would have took off running because yeah..that’s just weird. But she rolled with it. Which is what I’ve learned that she does. And also to be fair, the question about taxes just seemed so natural...like I could ask anything like that..right at the very start.

Which is probably the epitome of our relationship. Right off the bat, anything and everything became a conversation and there is no filter. From daily lives to dating and love lives, to diarrhea to body waxes and all the funny details that involves, the filter is a big fat zero. And I love it. Every story. Every laugh.

And it all happened so fast as though we were trying to collectively cram the first decades of our lives into one year. I’ve learned things about me in the course of it, I’ve had my beliefs challenged. Some came out unscathed and in place, and some others didn’t. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Because one thing about Bethie is I am frequently find myself saying ‘you know, I hadn’t thought of that.’ I know what she likes, what she doesn’t and all the little habits that comes with with it. I know about Christmas being six months earlier. I know about comment culture. She isn’t a sit-and-wallow type. Don’t go there and expect that. She’s a doer, a thinker, and a fixer. If you ask her one question she’s likely to come back at you with about 30 of them; the why, the who, the how, the how long, the where, what color, how many, how big …and I love each and every one. Paragraphs of context put in words thought about and written and re-written a few times before the email is sent off to me and I look forward to it because of this. But she is not alone in this, this same context and having to ask 30 more questions is something I am guilty of too! Which is probably one of the reasons our conversations go for so long! But I love it.

There is no judgement. If I say I need to eat and its 11 at night and I have a bowl of chili she’s like ...okay. I can tell when she wants to say something but is holding back, or when she says she’s fine but something is wrong. And if you ask her, ‘what do you think’ you are not going to get a two word answer. Try 200 words or more, and truthfully I love that too.

But that's not to say it's all been beautiful. Like with any friendship, we’ve been tested and tried. We are in truth very different people. Beliefs clash and so on. And sometimes we have hurt each other, and survived, and are still here.

Going forward into 2020, there are so many exciting things coming up. I will be publishing a full size novel this year, a work with an f/f pairing that I’ve placed so many dreams on. It's a dystopia in which two queens go to war and will change everything. They are also not exactly what meets the eye, either, and might have a few secrets. I hope you guys reading this will jump on board, and I hope you love it. As I wrote it for us. If you want to know more, you can find me here, or on my Patreon.

On the note of my writing, I also hope to get at least two more books into copyright this year, and, while I will always love and will always write Clexa...it is time to move forward with more original work. Also this year..I will be going to either Clexacon or QFX and expect to meet Bethie. (And I hope some of you too!) Guys, we’ve exchanged pictures. But nothing recent. And when I do meet her there may be a little burst of nerves that might last 30 or so seconds. But expect after that it will all be over, history so to speak...and that feeling of knowing each other forever will be back.

It is hard to believe this friend of mine is just on the phone (for now). I guess in the end I’m not really invisible anymore, and I’m loving it. Happy Anniversary and Happy New Year Bethie.

https://cynic-and-a-saint.tumblr.com/post/189992714251/thank-you-for-being-a-friend

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