I'm going to keep this as concise as I can, but considering my hobby of choice, I wouldn't hold too much hope. I'm also going to try to keep this journal from being too apologetic, but I still feel the need to at least offer a smidge of explanation.

I'm alive! I know that only the most grim would assume otherwise, but considering the prolonged silence to most, I couldn't fault the assumption. Without going into an inappropriate amount of detail, life is hard, and I'm far from the best at dealing with it, especially when it comes to the health and happiness of my family. I needed to quickly reprioritize how I spent my time, and I let it get away from me. I haven't stopped writing in the past few... months, thought the volume has certainly dwindled, but I have to admit that I may have been using my troubles as an excuse to hide myself away like a frightened child. I wanted to tell myself that I was simply too busy, but that would be a savage untruth. It's not as if I couldn't have spared fifteen minutes to reply to a message I might have noticed or to simply remind the people that I profess to appreciate so much that I'm still breathing. It reeks of hypocrisy, and it's for that reason which I am most sorry. I let myself do it. I let stress and anxiety, and maybe even depression for a time, drive me into a shell from which it's taken quite a bit of mental and emotional effort to break free.

However, I'm in a better place now, for the time being, and even if that doesn't persist I don't intend on simply disappearing from the internet without explanation any more. For now, I have a story to upload--one that's sat written for nearly four months. After that, I'll be sifting through quite a few thousand neglected notifications and replying to messages that are sorely in need of attention. I need to blow the dust off a great many things. It seems I missed out some milestones, most regretfully almost forty watchers, my two-year anniversary of posting on this site, and... a whole bunch of favorites. Normally I'd offer thanks individually, but seeing as how many of them are months old I don't want to clutter up a few dozen shoutboxes with long, long overdue messages. Instead, I'll just take this opportunity to thank all of you, new and old, with all the sincerity I can muster.

And for those of you who are waiting on a reply, I've got a lot (for me, at least) to work my way through. Give me a few days and I promise I'll get in touch. Until then, I'll just go and leave something for you all to peruse at your leisure, something I wrote in mid-December just before I got hired by a company for which I no longer work. I hope you all enjoy, and can find it in yourselves to forgive. I'll keep striving to improve with renewed gusto.