A unique situation

Hey all, new guy here looking for some advice on my somewhat strange situation.

I've been battling with PMO for quite a while now, though my current lifestyle has, in a sense, trapped me in an endless cycle that seems to be inescapable at the moment. To give some background on my situation, I have to start with explaining what I do for a living. I know some members will probably read this with well-deserved scorn, though my income mainly comes from illustrating pornographic material, namely hentai images.

I'm not proud of this. I don't like having to make these types of illustrations in order to pay my bills and buy groceries, but it seems as though it's my only option at the moment, and I'll explain why.

A while back I ended up being diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and guyon's canal syndrome in both of my hands mainly due to high-intensity drumming. I ended up getting surgery for this as it reached a point where I couldn't even make art, let alone work any other type of job. Post-surgery I'm able to use my hands again and make art, though I have to take frequent breaks and rest my hands in warm water several times a day to decrease inflammation. Because of this, working any other type of job is nigh-impossible due to the fact that I wouldn't be able to rest my hands for a meaningful amount of time or avoid risking more irritation to my condition.

The natural response to this would be, "Why not illustrate SFW material instead?" and the answer is because of demand. NSFW material is the only way for me to currently earn a livable salary due to the fact that it sells incredibly well, while only rarely do I get SFW commissions. Luckily, the art industry is not so unforgiving so as to leave someone in the dredges of drawing lewd material their entire life, and will give skilled artists more redeeming work, though I've yet to reach a point where my art is marketable to the bigger industry at large. The problem being that I'd rather not leave it to fate to determine my current predicament and instead wish to resolve it sooner by my own efforts.

In summary, the pain in my hands prevents me from getting any other job besides illustrating images, and the market prevents me from making anything other than NSFW, leaving me stuck looking at pornographic material for hours a day, which inevitably turns to arousal, and MO. Trying to focus on finishing an image while incredibly aroused is very challenging, so I tend to curb my libido by MO and then return to work. If, however, abstaining from MO while simply looking at P is enough to improve my situation, then I'm willing to give it a shot.

I've yet to come across anyone who is facing the same predicament, so any advice on how I can resolve this or even work towards a realistic goal of improving this situation would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

Thanks for the advice guys, I will occasionally try something else besides MO when I need to calm down a bit, for example playing a game or going for a walk like you mentioned. I haven't put too much thought into trying to disassociate the work from its intentions much however, so I might try giving that a shot.

 

You'd think it would have lost its "thrill", but the problem therein lies that since it's commission work, I get asked for all kinds of fetishes and fantasies to illustrate, so there's never any shortage of depraved original content that I see on a day-to-day basis. You have a good point, however, in that I should view my work as something other than just porn. In my case, hating sexual content tends to mean I'm still passionate about it in some way and run the risk of actually becoming aroused by the things I hate. The solution I've found to this is not to hate or love them, but to simply not care about them. When I tell myself "Don't care." or, "Whatever." when viewing sexual content I'd previously hated, my mind doesn't become preoccupied with passionate thoughts of spite against it, but instead drops it completely, removing all neural activity relating to that particular fetish/fantasy/etc.

This method has worked wonders for reversing the effects of deep-seeded fetishes and desires that I'd sought to rid myself of, so hopefully others can attempt this method with some success as well.

Also, my hands aren't always in pain when I'm not illustrating, luckily, so I can still do other things (such as MO) when the "need" arises.