I suppose this is, in a way, a follow-up of the previous journal entry I submitted where I expressed some doubts about how I was spending the monthly allowance I've set aside for myself for commissions and was contemplating cutting said funds in half so that I could save more money, just in case a need for having some extra currency stashed away arose in the future. Ultimately, while internally I decided to modify the way I was using my money very slightly, not much changed, and the reasons I'm about to elaborate on below as to why I'm deciding to commit to not buying any commissions for the time being are ultimately largely unrelated to the uncertainty I was experiencing a couple of months ago. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering to make a journal to announce this in the first place because the people who watch me probably don't really care if I'm actively buying artwork, and it's not like I've ever been efficient at reuploading them (although I've been trying my best to change that lately), but I figured there might be some users out there who might want to know about my thoughts on the matter.

Basically, here's the long of short of the events leading up to my eventual decision to commit to not buying any more commissions for the foreseeable future: a little over a week ago, one of my cats had a vet visit so that she could undergo some dental cleaning for her teeth that had been scheduled a couple of months prior. We were concerned that, since it had been the vet first time she had her teeth cleaned in her entire life (and she was 15 years old at the time, and just turned 16 at the beginning of April), that she might have to have some teeth extracted, but thankfully the condition of her chompers was basically flawless aside from being covered in plaque and tartar, so she didn't have to have any of them removed, much to our surprise. Unfortunately, it was discovered from some bloodwork that was taken before her cleaning was underway that she is currently in the early stages of kidney disease... which came as sort of a traumatic shock to me since we already had a cat who passed away from renal failure.

It's not really anything particularly urgent or serious. Our other cat suffered from acute kidney failure and died within a week of showing symptoms, whereas her kidney disease is the chronic kind. But just knowing that the disease itself is irreversible and it will probably eventually be what takes her, effectively making it so that my remaining time with her is limited... it's pretty mortifying. She's been with me for 16 years of my life, since I was 7 years old, so I can't imagine what I would do without her. She should still have a couple more years of quality life ahead of her with dietary changes, and we've been discussing nutrition plans extensively with our vet, so hopefully everything will end up as okay as they can be.

Now that I have an actual reason to save money, which is to say, a pet with a professionally diagnosed chronic illness, I've made the decision to cut my spending towards commissions entirely. It sucks because I have so many ideas I want drawn, but my cat will likely be visiting the vet much more frequently in the future, and I want to be able to afford any expenses that might be thrown at us. It's not like I desperately need to save money at the moment because we have a substantial vet fund set aside, but you never know how pricey pet healthcare is going to be, and who knows how long other people in the household will be fine with me leeching expenses from our joint account.

So, yeah. I guess that means there will probably be less August & Friends in the future, aside from the backlog of commissions I have stashed, of course. I suppose with this new development I should probably say that, while I probably can't pay anyone or anything, if anyone feels like drawing any of my characters for whatever reason as a gift or something, don't be as shy to ask about using my characters, because I likely can't get as much art of them by myself ^^'


TL;DR: Due to a recent discovery pertaining to the health of one of my cats at one of her latest vet appointments, I've made the unfortunate decision that it would probably best to stop purchasing artwork from artists for the foreseeable future so that I can save more money to help afford the costs of more frequent vet visits going forward.