Alright, over a year later I finally came back to my page. I'm here to wipe away the dust and see what needs to be done to get things moving again.

While I know no one is going to read this, I just need a spot to ramble and this will do.

I shut down in July of 2021 because my job was eating my soul one piece at a time. With an ever increasing workload, unpredictable hours, haphazard management, and the looming possibility that the entire company was about to go bankrupt, I was a little stressed. Add to that a touch-and-go relationship that has since healed but was an open wound at a time and trying to find any sort of balance between work, life, and sanity, and I dare say it's a good thing I survived. So, in the spirit of not losing what little remains of my mind, I tried to close out everything else and just get through work.

That worked for another year.

As of last October (2022) I departed the soul sucking job. When I left, I was the last standing employee. Short of filing taxes and answering the phone I was doing almost everything else. So, I did what any sane person would have done when they first realized their life was being consumed by a job they didn't like in the first place: I left and got another job.

Now I have a job I actually like. There is, however, a new issue afoot. This job is nowhere near as lucrative as the last one. A few surprise bills later and everything is starting to slide down hill. The situation isn't dire, but I'm hoping to cut off any problems before they can start.

Anyway, in the midst of all this almost no writing got done. Part of me feels bad about that. Part of me understands exactly why I stopped. Writing is fun. Writing should be fun. For a while there, it wasn't. The act of writing was slowly turning into a task, a chore, and it was losing its appeal. For over a year now I've been telling myself that as soon as things calm down I'll pick up the pen again. Yes, once my ducks are in a row I'll start writing again.

I don't have ducks. I have squirrels. They've had too much caffeine. And now they're at a rave.

Meaningless metaphors aside, I've realized that things are never going to calm down. There is no "good" time for anything. There's no good time to write. There's not good time to fall in love. There's no good time to take commissions. There's no good time to try and find a job. There's not good time to be anywhere for any reason. Everything, everywhere, all at once, will always be, and has always been, chaos.

So, that means one thing and one thing only: Time to start swimming in order to quit sinking.

Again, I know this is mostly just me screaming into the void, but the catharsis feels nice.

Announcement-wise: Commissions are back on and, just as soon as I kick myself hard enough in the butt to get moving again, the daily prompts will start up again. This time I'll try to remember to show the dice that produce each prompt.

This is gonna work, because I. Am. A. Writer!