Has it really been 10 months since I last was here already? *Whistles* Guess it's taken me longer to pull back together than I thought it would. Not really surprised, things were a mess for a while and while things are far from optimal at the moment, they are at least in a precarious balance that may hold for some time. Which really is what I need right now, a bit of balance.

Recently a friend from the past managed to figure out a way of contacting me. I was touched by this, I've only had three others manage that in the last couple of years. The fact that someone I'd met (at that specific point in my life where I knew them) even remembered me after three years was a bit of a shock to me. And the fact that nobody closer bothered to even see how simple it was to find me if they had been interested in talking, well, that shows me that I didn't have as many actual friends as I thought I did.

It's always difficult being a part of the furry community when you don't have a fully realized 'sona. The lack of art/presence tends to mean one is looked down upon as possibly untrustworthy. As a throwaway account designed to troll or harass. And so I know I'll have to work three times as hard to earn the trust of others. I'm certainly going to try. I just find it so amusing because I'd have several nice integrity references if I didn't mind exposing them to stalker I picked up a while back. Which doing so would completely undermine myself. A catch-22, and pretty much the simplest reason as to why my best option was to start completely over.

While I've spent quite a bit of time working on myself offline and online, I've about reached the limits of what I can do. I've pulled together all the pieces I still have into something functional (at least those that I am aware of), and I think the next step is to get some of this mental fog cleared. I believe a good portion of it centers around the lack of a clear image of my mental self, my 'sona. For the majority of my life I always had a clear image of who I was. Losing that has thrown me even further off balance.

So it's time to change that. I've come up with the basics of who I feel I am these days. Nothing final just yet, but enough to start from. I've spent a bit of time scanning through some more relatively recent uploads looking for artists that had styles that stood out, that called to me. I know many of them have wait lists months long, if not hitting the year mark than close to it, so I'm not getting my hopes up there. Plus many of those don't do character design, only working with finished characters. I did notice a few that listed statuses as semi-open, so we'll see if I work up the courage to speak with a couple of them.

I am hoping this will end up being an interesting project. While the character has several complex elements I'm hoping that it is also unique enough to pique some interest in the species I've put together. While I may not have any artistic talent myself, I really like the thought of others enjoying something I created enough to want something similar, even if just as a silly adopt or side character. To have even partially brought something new into the world, that's a gift I never even expected I'd have a chance at.