Jon’s Creator Showcase – Forth Anniversary & Site Update

Four Years Strong?!?

When it comes to #TheJCS, I can hardly believe that it has been going strong for four years now. It’s really amazing and I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to the community for keeping it going steady for so long. That is why, with a heavy heart, I have to announce that I’m breaking the chain today. While I will be celebrating the anniversary in this post, I will not be accepting submissions as per the norm during the month of January. Rest assured though, the Showcase isn’t over, it’s just taking a mini vacation for one month. Additionally, I’ll be posting an update with this so you can know what’s going on and why I’m not tackling this project this year. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Celebrating The Fourth Anniversary!

Before we get to talking about the showcases of yesteryear, if you don’t know already, here’s everything you need to know about #TheJCS. I wanted a way to celebrate the community and help people discover amazing creators like YOU in a positive fashion. In the early WordPress days, award posts (think chain letters) were pretty popular and sort of achieved this, but they always felt tedious and underwhelming. So instead, this was born! If you want to get involved and help, please visit the link above.

We have had hundreds, if not over a thousand submissions at this point. So for the fourth anniversary, I’m challenging you to check out the showcases from previous years. You can find the complete collections below according to year:

• Jon’s Creator Showcase 2018 Complete Collection
• Jon’s Creator Showcase 2019 Complete Collection
• Jon’s Creator Showcase 2020 Complete Collection
• Jon’s Creator Showcase 2021 Complete Collection

Along the way we’ve had a range of hosts, some only doing the gig once, while others keep coming back (even multiple times a year in certain cases). It’s been incredible to see! With that, we’ve also revamped some of the marketing materials and evolved the posting format over time. I simply can’t understate how much I appreciate every single person who has hosted or contributed to this project in any fashion. Seriously, thank you.

For the future of this project, I really hope it can get to a self-sustaining point where I don’t necessarily have to be so hands-on all year. Even if it doesn’t look like it, I do a lot of behind the scenes work to ensure the project keeps running smoothly. If we can all work together to get it to this point, that would be a big dream come true for me for the 2022 year.

Other than that, I am excited to see how this year’s showcase hosting goes. I know we will see more creative issues, tons of excellent creations, and much more! Thank you once again for making the project everything it is today.

Why I’m Not Doing Anything More

Normally, this would be the part where I tell you how to submit to the showcase and kick off another anniversary for #TheJCS. As I mentioned already though, I am unable to devote my time and attention to my hosting duties like I would otherwise. Please understand that I spent a lot of time on this decision and did not make this choice lightly, I honestly feel pretty bad for not doing it, but if you hear me out I think you’ll understand why.

Last week I said I had news about me as a person, not a content creator. So here we are, today's just the bad news, I do have some good, but I can't communicate it well over the phone like this.

Thread incoming, idk how long it'll be. https://t.co/I6932YINxf

— Jon Spencer Reviews (@JS_Reviews) December 20, 2021

If you have been following me on Twitter or Discord, then you will know that I was recently fired from my job. This was a position I held for quite some time, and while it did not at all pay enough to live off of, I was making things work. Maybe $70 (sometimes as high as $90) USD doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but for me, that was what I had. I also enjoyed the job for most of it too. Then Christmas came, I was fired, and that was that. This has been a large source of stress for me on top of regular content, events, and just general life stuff.

The result is that I’m burnt out. Something like #TheJCS is a big undertaking, I won’t lie to you, but right now I think I need to spend that energy in other ways. I need a break. I need to find steady income. My Patrons have been excellent through this, and several other community members have as well. It’s not my expectation that people rush out and throw money at me, nor am I expecting everyone to be thrilled about this decision. However, that’s where I’m at. It’s how things are.

So what does that mean for you? If you want to help me out, the best thing you can do right now is to remain supportive. Reach out to me privately if you want to do something more, but again, this isn’t the expectation. I’d prefer some work, if you need a writer, graphic designer, marketing consultant, or anything like that, please let me know.

As many of you know by now, I recently got fired from my job which was my only source of income. I wanted to take the opportunity to try and make something positive out of it though.

I have been doing freelance graphic design work lately. So here's a thread about that.

1/???

— Jon Spencer Reviews (@JS_Reviews) December 22, 2021

As for the site and all our other events? I’ll cover that in the next section.

The State of Jon Spencer Reviews

At least through January, I need to take a step back. You’ll see a review from me next week as I gave out a $10 Patron reward to the winner of the New Year’s AMQ event, but other than that, I wouldn’t expect anything else. I might do a Sakugan discussion in addition to this (I feel kind of obligated to given my history with father-daughter content), but I haven’t gotten that far yet. So here at least, I won’t be very active.

On Twitter, you can expect to see the usual stuff. AniTwitWatches isn’t going anywhere for the moment, we will be continuing Fate as scheduled. That project, in fact, is one thing I promise I’ll see through to completion no matter what. I’ve been planning that for a long time and I really want to do it. Might I scale back? Probably, but you will see steady Fate related content throughout 2022.

Regarding community events, those are still on. These are important to me as a social activity and I would be foolish to abandon them. Things like AMQ, Discord D&D, and Friday Hangouts are all going to continue as normal. I know these also mean a lot to other people and I want to keep doing them. Even with everything right now, at the very least I can do this much.

As for everything else? I just don’t know. It sucks to say, but I really don’t. I need things to settle down and stabilize a bit. Once that can happen, I can reevaluate and let you all know. I appreciate your understanding and patience with me at this time, thank you. Until then, stay awesome!

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