arboret

Hey everyone! I'm sure that this is going to come as very sudden news but I've been stewing on this for months and months and I think there will never be a good time to announce this so I might as well do it now.

I've been struggling with developing pouflons and maintaining the group for years. It's reached the point where I'm unable to develop anything new for the species and it's getting harder on me to keep running the group, and the stress and time involved in it are keeping me from working on myself and my art.
I'm going to be looking at selling the species so someone can give it and its community the attention and looking after they deserve.

The last few years have been some of the hardest of my life and I've ended up burnt out and struggling with my mental health. I want to work on myself, my art, and my professional skills, but I have very low energy and time and most of that has gone to pouflons. I love pouflons, and when I originally made them I tried to make them something I thought I'd like to keep working on and developing in the long run, but I realized shortly after the MYO contest 5 years ago that I don't think I'm cut out for being a community leader and head of a project like this. I get very stressed out telling people what to do and enforcing rules that sometimes seemed arbitrary even to me, that I felt like I had to have to keep the species afloat and avoid stepping on people's toes. In the end I've come to realize I'm also not as interested in closed species in general as I was a few years ago.

I've been keeping the group running because I feel an obligation to everyone who has invested in pouflons, especially to the fans who have stuck with them for years. I've had a few people suggest that I should take on a few moderators to help with the group, but at this point even if I did, I'd have nothing to offer the group or species myself anymore. 

I've been worried about announcing this because I feel really bad disappointing pouflon fans. And all this being said, I am beyond grateful to everyone who has shown interest in them over the years. Pouflons have been an enormous help to me financially, and I'm also so honored that people enjoy them and wanted to participate in my ideas and world. It really makes me happy to see people develop their pouflon characters in the world I created and really get into it.

I wish I could keep working on them, but I don't think they fit in my life anymore.

So I think I'm going to try to sell the species and all its assets, including the group, website, and all of the pouflons in my possession except one. I would ideally like to sell them to someone that I've seen around on deviantart and that I could trust making this deal with- I think the species and community both deserve someone who will be able to invest time and energy into maintaining them. If you're interested, please send me a note so we can talk about it.

I'm going to keep the current prompt and raffle in the group running for this month, and then I'll pause all group activities after that. I will still be looking after the group and masterlist in the meantime. If you have a pouflon MYO slot trade in the works and want to cancel, please send me a note, no hard feelings. If you have any other concerns feel free to ask or send me a note.

Thank you to all the pouflon fans over the years