I'm very tired, but I've also been on a follow-blitz all night, so I want to try to say *something* before calling it a night, so: Hi?

For those who don't know me (or don't remember me), I've been around a *long* time, and created/posted a LOT of stuff over the decades, but a lot of other people have since used the "softpaw" name in their own character names and projects, so if you want to know who *I* am and what *my* projects are/were, start from my actual website: https://www.meadow.pet/ "Lupinia Studios" has been pretty consistent branding for me since the mid-2000s, across a lot of changes to my characters and presentation ^.^

With that out of the way, hi everyone <3 I've been extremely withdrawn for a very long time, and I'm currently working on gathering my words/thoughts on what happened, as well as trying to reconnect. Both of those will take a lot longer than one post, especially an FA journal, but the short version is that I was already burning myself out a bit in the mid-2010s, then a triple-whammy of simultaneous life-altering catastrophes in late 2016 kinda broke me (lost my dream car, my job, and a lot of my mobility, all in the same month), starting a downward spiral with a few more catastrophes (years of unemployment, homelessness, and getting trapped in an abusive living situation) that didn't even start turning around until 2020. It's currently 2025, and I'm only just now starting to really make progress trying to rebuild, but I have a long way to go and a lot of work to do. But I'm working on it; I've had a steady job for years now, and as of this writing, I recently moved back to the DC area, where I can *exist* in relative safety (for the moment, anyway; the dumpster-fire of the current regime in the US is trying very hard to create new obstacles to replace the ones I've been working to resolve, but I've lost too damn much and worked too damn hard to get it back to LET them, and I will stubbornly continue to try to be my adorable ponygirl self again out of pure spite if I have to >.>).

I don't know what the future holds for me, but in losing almost everything, I got a stark perspective on a lot of things. And I'm still struggling with the fact that an entire decade slipped by so fast. The sheer scale of people I once knew and who are no longer with us, in particular, has been *staggering* - I've crossed paths with SO MANY PEOPLE in this fandom over the years, and while I've always been *awful* at expressing it or staying in touch with anyone, I always *remember* people. I've been to dozens and dozens of cons and meets, worked for/with/at most of them at some point, moderated more community spaces than I can even keep track of, and spent my entire adult life creating things for the internet and doing outreach and education, yet I can *still* recognize and recall every random encounter (given enough of a breadcrumb trail; I have a photographic memory for fellow furries but all the photos are jumbled into one giant pile). But I never really did the work to maintain friendships properly, and even when I did, I was never great at it. I want to try to do better.

So, yeah, I'm still alive, and honestly a little surprised by that, but I couldn't have survived without every single one of you. This chaotic, messy web of relationships we call the furry fandom is what got me through the worst years of my life, and while I'm not quite sure what being "back" looks like yet, I guess you can say I'm back. Thank you all for just being here, and I hope we can all continue to create beauty and joy together <3