Phew, it's been a hot minute, hasn't it?

More than a few people have noticed I've had a longer radio silence than ever before. I appreciate the wellness checks on me, and yes, I am still alive and kicking. Well, maybe not kicking, but I'm still here. I'm just eternally swamped and overwhelmed from my job and in an emotional slump from it all. I work as a manager for a retail craft store chain whose biggest competitors suddenly closed down in the last few months, meaning we now have almost a monopoly in our area of expertise. You would think having more business is a good thing for me, but no, it unfortunately just means we are now flooded with the workload from a popular fabric store and a popular party store in addition to our own popular craft store, all while the corporate overlords in charge of decisions think we can handle all of this with FEWER staff than before to save costs. Oh, and obviously no pay increases for the extra duties. Fuck you, greedy assholes.

To top it all off, we've been running with one less manager than we should have for nearly a full year now. The previous one got fired last year for shady stuff, but our starting pay is too low to entice anyone else remotely capable to be interested in taking the position. We split the extra workload among all of the remaining managers and somehow made it work. Earlier this year we finally got someone to fill the position and thought things were going to start to get better, only to recently get blindsided by an even more important manager also getting fired and having to deal with the fallout from that.

In the end, it's a job that allows me to pay my bills (and afford my porn, heh), and it's STILL considerably less hell than some folks have had to deal with here in the good old USA. But these days, if I'm not at work, I'm at home either passed out from sheer exhaustion or spending what little free-time I get with my real life partner trying to recover from dealing with retail insanity. I'm still reachable for the friends who know me, but I'm often not gonna have much to say unless you want to hear me prattle about work BS.

I'll try to get around to uploading the backlog of arts soonish, maybe hold a belated raffle for watcher milestone when time allows. Until then, thanks to those who reached out to check on me!