First off, thanks to everyone that supported me there over the years!

When I started my YouTube channel, it was just a side project to do random creative stuff. I already had a full time job, albeit one that wasn’t satisfying. After serendipitously finding out about ASMR videos on YouTube, and having experienced ASMR all my life, I got into that, while continuing to make other non-ASMR content (my channel is Ephemeral Rift, after all, not Ephemeral Rift ASMR or Paul Whispers).

When the views on my channel started to pickup, primarily due to my 60 Minutes of Nature Ambience video in May 2012, I was conflicted with turning Ads on, because I’m part anti-capitalist. I still hate advertising to this very day, but that’s the only way I can earn an income for what I enjoyed doing (enjoyed, because I’ve moved on to being the writer I should have always been since my youth). I eventually crossed that moral or ethical hurdle, and turned on the ability to earn ads with my channel. I think my first monthly check at that point was like $100, LOL.

At some point years later, I don’t know when now, Patreon came into existence, and I decided to open up my own account to supplement the YouTube ad revenue I was receiving, with the hopes I could quit my deadend, soul destroying, intellectually stunting desk jockey career. Eventually I started making enough money between YouTube, Patreon, and Spotify, that in late 2016 I quit my job, leaving behind my ~20 year office career for good.

Here we are at the end of 2025, 9 years later. Over the past few years, I just unintentionally began to neglect the Patreon account, meaning: not keeping up with the rewards. Patreon really is meant for people who don’t have a primary source of income like YouTube ad revenue. Maybe they don’t even have a real-world job, I don’t know. All kinds of people use Patreon. But you’re really supposed to entice people to become a patron by offering all kinds of rewards. And it really wasn’t meant for someone like me who’s content was already on YouTube, or Spotify, so there really wasn’t anything more I could offer besides copies of my audio in MP3 format, which I did.

But yeah, I basically began to neglect Patreon, but not intentionally, often forgetting about it due to being busy with YouTube with creating/acting/editing/producing my own content, not to mention having a family and trying to live a life beyond YouTube. I had to stop over-extending myself as well.

So it was about time I closed it. I don’t need the extra money, as I make more than enough on YouTube. And now that I’m a soon-to-be-published writer, all my creativity is focused on getting my first (of hopefully many) book(s) done and self-published, while still trying to keep my YouTube channel alive somehow, LOL. And who knows, maybe the book thing will turn out to be successful to where I can quit YouTube for good and focus on just being a writer. If not, I’ll just continue to do both or something. I don’t know, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Right now I’m still somewhat shackled to making YouTube videos since that’s my primary income.

And there you have it.