[1.11] Contractually Obligated Motivation (Part 2)

Angelica had already checked on her webcomic that morning, pleased with the amount of engagement she’d gotten from her double-release. And with her three banked chapters, she had the next week of releases covered. That meant she could focus on making some money, to further vindicate her choice of becoming a full-time creator and avoiding real work like a plague.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t willing to put effort in. It was more the nature of working for a company that Angelica definitely didn’t want to return to; the fake friendly smiles, the pretending to be busy to shirk all duties, the way her colleagues would absolutely backstab each other, herself included, just for even a shot at a promotion. It was disgusting, more demonic than anything she’d experienced thus far, and that was just a life she didn’t want to live ever again.

So being a freelancer certainly fit her more. A few commission requests had piled up. And thanks to her new ability to force motivation upon herself, her output could be sped up greatly. She also imagined it would make it possible to remove her own artistic preferences from the equation, able to give the requestors something closer to what they wanted, rather than constantly being tempted to switch things a bit to suit her tastes.

That was a bit of feedback she’d gotten regularly, and had lost her some repeat customers—adding or changing things to make them look objectively better, but they weren’t how her commissioners imagined them, so they usually weren’t thrilled. At the very least, she could keep her signature style, her soul of the art, so that would be enough. Unfortunately, her intake of requests wasn’t enough to sustain her entirely.

Living was expensive, as was proven by the good deal of money she’d just spent on food and to even do laundry. Her savings was down to just over $100. A subject she’d been adamantly avoiding was performing the cost analysis on just how much money it would actually take for her lifestyle to be feasible. She had been caught up in both the denial and depression of her situation, but she wouldn’t ignore it any longer.

Angelica didn’t know why she’d been fatefully hit with a book a few nights ago, but she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity given to her. She would use these new powers to secure the life she wanted and to prove her dreams weren’t unreasonable. And to spite Ms. Gate, but mostly her mother. Over the last few days, she’d accepted a bit more that her landlord’s demands weren’t unreasonable, and she’d supplanted some lingering feelings towards her main authority figure. But still, she wanted to spite her nonetheless! Maybe there was a bit of a demonic side to her, after all.

Fortunately, thanks to her actuarial background, such budgeting was trivial work for her, barely taking a few minutes once she put in the effort. Accounting for her rent—on a normal month when she wasn’t being double-billed—all necessary expenses for both herself and Cherub, phone bill, and just a teensy bit extra in case of emergency, she could survive soundly on $1,500 a month. But if she wanted to have any sort of real joys in life, $2,000 would be more reasonable.

However, to reach the point she’d consider thriving and comfortable, not needing to worry about money, able to take breaks when and if she needed, Angelica would want to hit $3,000 a month. To break it down, that would be $100 a day, which frankly sounded manageable.

One of the commissions waiting in her queue was for a bigger piece of art, a book cover, that the requestor offered $300 for. It would probably take her at least a day minimum, maybe two, possibly three if they requested a lot of changes, so that sounded about right. She was genuinely looking forward to it because it had a dragon where she could really let her mind run wild with the design, and also a car for some reason.

The rest were all the usual smaller stuff, ranging from $20 to $75, but she could do multiple of them in a day. If she could just do consistent commissions everyday, that would be ideal, and still give her reprieves to work on her comic—truly the life of an artist she currently wanted. But she’d need to get more famous first, both for more commissions and to charge more overall.

So she would need to find ways to supplement her income until that could become stable. For sticking to the artsy side of things, there was another avenue. There were art request sites where people would pay middling amounts of money for basic pictures, essentially commissions with less soul. Usually it was for things like icons, rough character designs, maybe even some typography.

These were all skills well within Angelica’s wheelhouse, but she’d avoided this route so far. The artist could do them even faster than commissions, and there was the expectation that the requestors got what they paid for, so it would be quick work that wasn’t anything too special. She liked to put more effort into her art, but money was money, and it was a direct way her skills could pay the bills. The money also had to be paid to her upfront, so she didn’t have to worry about being shafted. As long as she maintained a good relationship with the site, it would be steady, and she could be a bit picky about what she took.

And assuming that she ran out of those that she was interested in taking, there were other ways she could work from home without speaking to anyone. Transcribing services were something she’d looked into before, even passing their licensing test. But when she’d actually tried out the work, she found it quickly tedious. But with her new abilities, that didn’t matter. Contractually obligated motivation was a powerful thing.

Stolen story; please report.

So the well-motivated unemployed woman prepared to get to work, coming up with a plan to best optimize her time. Before diving into it, she went ahead and got some food, knowing she likely wouldn’t stop again for some time. Angelica pre-rewarded herself with a piece of the only-very-slightly stale pie she’d bought for all the hard work she was about to do, and for the cleaning she’d already done. While enjoying it, an intrusive thought entered her mind.

She pointed her spoon toward the pie and muttered, “Stab.”

[Stab activated. 5 MP consumed]

The utensil flung forward, dragging her hand with it, perfectly piercing into the dessert and banging into the plate on the other side. Fortunately, she hadn’t cracked it, one of her few good and clean pieces of dishware she had left. But it did confirm that her MP recovered over time. How much and how fast? She had no idea. But at the very least, it wasn’t gone for good.

Satiated in both hunger and curiosity, she accepted the more pricey commission but didn’t begin on it right away, focusing on the others first. Part of why she had repeat customers for the cheaper ones, besides the great price, was her fast turnaround. So they could throw cash at their whims. Plus, if she returned the big piece too quickly, it could be suspicious how she made it so fast.