Leaving Deviantart

I know this is news that a lot of you don't want to hear, but this has been a long time coming.  On Tuesday I will be deleting my deviantart account permanently.  And no, it was never my plan to switch to patreon only, I plan on deleting that account as well at the end of the month.  The truth of the matter is, I simply do not have the time, energy or passion to create the stories and comics that I once had.  I thought that starting a patreon would re-light my fire.  I did get modest support from some patrons, for which I am grateful, but it wasn't enough to motivate me, and I found myself spending more time pursuing other avenues outside this hobby.  I am also getting older and I do not feel it is healthy for me to spending as much time indulging in these fetishes.  Writing these stories and comics was a great outlet for me when I started as a teenager, but I am approaching middle age now and I just don't have passion for it that I once had, nor do I have the desire to regain that passion.  But even as my passion for writing diminished, my presence as Mandrake and the time I spent on DA grew.  I knew it was only a matter of time before it would become too difficult to keep this private outlet of mine private, so the time would have to eventually come when I would have to delete my account.

I had been thinking of deleting my account for years now but there were several things that kept me from doing so.  One was that I didn't want to leave behind the great community and circle of friends I had made in the 14 years I had been a member of this site.  I have built up quite following in that time, and it was difficult to just delete the account and lose all those connections.  Second was that it had just become a habit to log in and check this site each night, and I knew I was going to find it difficult to just end all of that.  Third was the fact that I wanted to finish the longer stories I had started.  Well I did finally finish Polyphylon Girls this past winter, something I am still very proud of.  Sadly I did not get to finish Dervland, a much more ambitious story, and potentially my greatest, but considering how much longer it was taking me to write nowadays I knew it was going to take me at least another decade before that one was finished.  This was another reason I wanted to delete my account.  I simply didn't want that weighing over my head anymore.  It was a story that I came up with in 2005 when I was still a kid.  I have changed a great deal since then, and it's harder for me to get into that mindset nowadays.  It's possible that I may still finish it and post it someplace else sometime in the distant future, but I think that's an unlikely scenario.

Some of you may want to try to change my mind on this decision, but my mind is already made up.  I've already decided to do this.  I do apologize to those who will miss my posts, infrequent as they have been lately.  Consider this a heads up.  I'm keeping this profile up until Tuesday night at which point it will be deleted, so save whatever it is you want while you can.  My Patreon will stay up until the end of the month, and I'll continue to post things that I have backlogged until then at which point that too will be deleted.