So things have been pretty chaotic in my life for the last year or so. I’ve had some hard personal stuff over that time for sure, everyone has hardships, but mostly I’ve had a lot of work. For those of you who don’t know, I was doing my research masters degree this time last year which required quite a lot of attention and then I got into PhD applications and interviews, finally landing a fully funded PhD that started last summer. The condition of me getting that position was that I went straight from the lab that I was working in for my masters to the new lab that I would be doing my PhD without any break between the two. Now in the UK, you have 2 years to submit your research masters thesis even though you only spend 9 months in the lab and so, while most people spend a few months at the end of their research masters writing up their final thesis, I had to go straight into my PhD and use my free time to write up my masters thesis. The bulk of my time has been dedicated to research and doing my PhD work which, as you might have guessed, is a lot to do. So this masters thesis has kind of eaten up about a solid 95% of my free time  which is why I’ve been producing nothing really for the last year or so. However, I am now getting towards the end of my thesis and so, once it is submitted and defended (hopefully successfully), I will get a large chunk of that free time back to do things like writing!

And that kind of brings me onto the main point of this journal; I’ve had a few notes and PMs recently asking about commissions and whether people can be put on a queue or whether I will open up at any point soon so I thought I’d make my current thoughts public so that you all know. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and quite honestly, I’m not sure I really want to do commissions for the foreseeable future. I started doing them because there were some interesting ideas and the money was nice to use for buying commissions of my own but I’m now at a point where I don’t really need the money to survive and I can even treat myself to some art now and then without worrying. The ideas that come from people are still fantastic. You guys are definitely very creative people and I love hearing what you come up with and bouncing ideas around if something particularly strikes my fancy. It can and does inspire me to write so I’ll always be happy to receive notes with ideas. Hell, hit me up for my IMs if you really want to hash some ideas out or anything. But with how busy I have been recently, I haven’t had much time to write and when I have a commission going that is all I will work on. I’ll get bouts of inspiration for an idea but feel guilty actually writing it if it’s not working on the commission that I’ve taken on so then I don’t write anything and lose that inspiration and that’s been bumming me out a bit when it comes to writing because I spend months working on a commission in the little free time I have (when I’m not just too tired to write) and miss a lot of small ideas that I’ve had over that time that just don’t get written. I think it’s made writing more of a chore than it should be.

I’ve got a few full story ideas that I want to write, I want to really get into the LBFG series which has taken such a long hiatus, and I know I’ll have more spur of the moment ideas that I’ll doodle up in the form of short scenes. I feel I’ll produce more content and want to produce more content too and with things like the LBFG series, there’ll still be votes for you guys to influence what goes into particular chapters.

I have a trade story and one or two commissions to do first but then I will start this break. And it is just a break! I’m not saying I won’t come back to commissions in a while but I’m just not promising when.

When it comes down to it, I got into this whole fandom in the first place because I’m a horny fucker with some weird fanfiction ideas and a real love for writing. I want to go back to that. I want to fall in love with writing again and hopefully that’ll give you guys more to read and enjoy as well.