Why so long without updates? (Patreon)

Yes, it's been months.

Part of it is that I've been working hard as hell with the convention-vending side of my business. My goals for that for this year are to clear out about $10,000 of credit card debt and then to stash away enough into savings to get me through the winter when shows are few and far between. The good news is, I've pretty much covered the first part of that goal. The bad news is, I've done it by averaging more than one show every other week so far this year, which has really sapped my energy for doing things like writing.

Another part of it is trying to catch up with household cleaning and other little projects when I have the energy (which isn't often). And there are things like doctor's appointments, taking care of the cats (the elderly one and the feral kitten I've mostly tamed at this point) and other stuff of that kind.

But, in late April, I had a space of two weekends with no conventions, and then a summer where shows will happen no more frequently than every other weekend until October. I thought this would give me breathing room to start creating again.

Well... about that...

Late April also brought with it the first wave of a long series of torrential tropical rainstorms... and with the storms came power outages. Several of them, one of which lasted two days and another over a day, but several that basically meant nothing got done while I went into survival mode and waited for the power to come back. Creative time and energy wasted.

Then, after a particularly difficult load-in and load-out at my mid-May convention (Wasabicon NOLA), I caught a very serious case of the crud- not COVID, but con crud- where my fever peaked out at 102.4, just a little short of go-to-urgent-care levels. That lasted for about three days, and the mucus hung around for another month, to the point that I masked up to protect others through Momocon and Anime Blues Con. I was feeling in no condition whatever to create anything.

And then the most recent problem. I think it happened while I was dealing with the crud, because I don't remember my arm hurting for Wasabicon, but I was definitely trying to spare it during the drive to Atlanta for Momocon and setup there. I have either pulled a muscle there or screwed up my left shoulder's rotator cuff, and it's been getting worse over time to the point that today is the first day in three days it was down to a dull ache rather than acute throbbing pain or the occasional want-to-scream spike. Last week I got a referral for an orthopedist, and we'll see how that goes.

The thing is, I've had these dry spells before. This is one of the worse ones, especially since there were some FimFiction contests I wanted to write stuff for, but couldn't because I had no energy left over to make anything up. This sort of thing just happens sometimes.

I hope it's easing up (aside from the arm), but I can't make any promises on that front.

But now you know why I was silent for three months, anyway.