edit: wow. the amount of love and support in the comments... thank you so much. I did not expect that. ❤️‍🩹 --------- my lab results came back and let me know I'm sicker than usual, so I'm kinda down...er than usual. 😅 I started making videos back in November, but it wasn't until I made this page at the end of January that I started dedicating a looooot of my time to it because of how much I was enjoying it. it was great to see so many people genuinely interested in learning about addiction and recovery. it was amazing to see folks saying I was deterring them from trying drugs. it was wonderful seeing others say I'm helping them with their recovery or helping those who love an addict. but tiktok demonitized me in mid-June. they gave me no reason as to why. they didn't even tell me until I msged them asking about no longer getting payouts, even though what I've seen online says that they should have for sure sent me some notice that this had happened. I got no emails or any sort of notification that I was kicked out of the creator rewards program. in fact, according to tiktok studio, I'm not kicked out of it. I'm still in it, I'm just not making money. this means I can't appeal or reapply... since you can't reapply to be in a program you're already in. 😅 I was bummed, but making these videos means a lot to me and many of you, so I kept making videos. I continued to spend at least 50hrs/week making/editing videos and replying to questions and comments, because these are important messages and I like trying to spread knowledge and positivity. to make up for tiktok screwing me over, I made a patreon in hopes I could make a little bit from those who wanted and were able to support the work I put into this page. but now my videos are barely being seen. they're getting less than a quarter of the views it would have gotten two months ago. I went from getting at least 30k views per vid in the first 24hrs, usually way more, to now not even getting 10k. this would be fine if I wasn't spending 3-6hrs making each video. I know I shouldn't care as much about the numbers as I do, but I've been very open about my addiction to good engagement. when my videos perform well, I feel inspired and amazing. when they perform poorly, I feel hopeless and stupid. so this change is reeeeeally destroying my mental health. more importantly, the drastic dip in views means the msgs I'm trying to share aren't being seen. now I'm just rambling about addiction to the same people over and over. please know, I love the support. I love those of you who know my lore, who are able to accurately answer others questions if I don't see them, and seeing the same usernames in my comments always makes me smile. but it means a lot of you have heard most of what I'm saying by now, so as happy as I am that you still enjoy the videos I make, it's starting to feel like I'm being redundant and begging for money, which is just... embarrassing. I shouldn't have gotten five payouts that didn't even reach $1k and decided that this would be my new job. that was very stupid. I just got overly excited. now my dopamine boosts are gone, I'm feeling more burnt out than ever, and I'm not earning anything so I can't even use the motivation of money to force myself to try harder. this is my long way of saying I may be taking a break. it's too discouraging to be trying as hard as I can just to have my page performing worse and worse each day. I'll be posting on patreon at least 5x per week, and the stickers + prints will still be sent every month. the link is in my bio. I'll also still try to post on here, and maybe this imagined hiatus won't last longer than a day, I'm bipolar and have ADHD, I never know wtf I'm going to do next. posting this feels super cringey, but with my history, I don't want to suddenly vanish and have folks thinking the worst. if you read all of this, thank you. thank you for the support. I hope you have a wonderful day. ❤️‍🩹 #addiction #recovery #burnout #depressed #chronicillness - @fragil3gg