I’m really pleased with this and I hope it turns out well. When I upgraded my blog to remove ads, I prepared a PayPal account for monetization in the future. At that time, I discovered that if I set up a “Send Money” button for that, it would reveal my name and location. I’m not comfortable with that for multiple reasons. I decided that I needed a different solution.

I looked at Patreon and saw that it does provide the anonymity I need, but it’s a tiered subscription system. I immediately felt performance pressure while looking at all of that, so I held off on it. It’s still being considered, but my concern there is what sort of value could I provide that I’m not already providing that would be worthy of a subscription and can I consistently meet the timeline involved.

The reality here is that I have Bipolar Disorder, Migraine Disorder, and PTSD. I’m currently doing well, but at any time I could take a turn for the worst. The same applies to my children. Am I able to say that I will provide a short story or audio book podcast every month and be able to keep that promise? It is very easy for me to be prolific while manic, but during depression it’s very challenging, and my baseline is somewhere in between. I haven’t figured out what that’s going to look like yet. Whatever timeline I set up for myself needs to be sustainable across the board.

The other concern I have is whether or not people are even interested in an audio book podcast coming from me. And, what is that going to look like? I like the idea of releasing a fiction novel by chapter in an audio/visual format. Is that something people are interested in?

Examples of my fiction can be found here on this blog, on the Chaos Pen, and you can check out a very raw, initial draft of a novel of mine at Experiment #5. If I were to do Patreon, my work will be polished via multiple cycles of revision and editing before going live. This would happen before I even started work on the audio/visual component. So if you find my raw written work interesting and would like to see more content like this, please let me know.

The other concern that I’m working on with Patreon is deciding what type of content will be exclusive to that platform and what will be of the “seek peek” or early access variety.

With all of that going on I’ve recently discovered Ko-Fi, which offers anonymity on both ends – which is important to me. It’s connected to my PayPal account and it suggested utilizing PayPal’s free business upgrade feature that will allow me to use my pen name, Warren Tode, rather than my real name. It differs from Patreon in that it’s a donation system. So people can pay when they want and as often as they want as a way to say thanks for my content and to offer support. The downside to this platform is I don’t get to set the minimum donation amount. It’s fixed at $3 – the typical price of coffee from many franchises.

However, I will use these donations to keep my blog ad free and to pay for services, supplies, materials, and software that I need to continue producing content – most notably: commercial licenses, editing services for my fiction, and music tracks for videos.

The reason anonymity is so important to me is:

• I’m a parent with mental disorders
• I have children with mental disorders
• I talk about these things freely in my blog
• the stigma against parents with disabilities, not just mental, is real
• I want to ensure my children remain safe from predators
• I don’t have the right to force my children “out of the closet” with their disorders
  • they have the right to privacy
  • I don’t want to embarrass them
  • I don’t want to shame them
  • I don’t want to make their social circle uncomfortable

Yes, I’m painfully aware that most of my concerns are centered around the stigma we have in society.

Using Ko-Fi allows me to address these issues while providing me with a flexible timeline that I need right now.

So if you appreciate the content I create and want to support my creative process, I have added a Ko-Fi donation button to the sidebar of my blog here.

I will be continuing the weekly installments of the Chaos Pen Challenges, the Chaos Rally, and my newly launched Self Care feature which went live yesterday. I will still post the various events going on in my family’s life as they occur and I’ll still be sharing the learning process I’m experiencing with Blender and 3D animation.

If there is something you’d like to see more of from this blog, or if there’s something you’d like me to start doing, then let me know in the comments below!