(*pokes head out from behind a door tentatively to see if anyone's there*)
Hey guys, long time no see? (Metaphorically speaking of course.) It's been a while, huh? I haven't been on here since June I think (the past... half... of the year is kind of a blur at this point). As is typical of me I fully planned on being active and hard at work on all my projects both here and elsewhere this year, and then.... I dropped off the face of the earth. Again. For like a third time. I really need to work on that energy spike thing (where I go into activity overdrive for a few months then when the pendulum ultimately swings the other way and I have an energy drop I suddenly cut off all contact completely). I think I've finally hit the upswing again though (first of the year motivation probably as well as a need to just be better than I have been the last few months) so I might be a bit more active again. I won't make any grand promises about "oh I'm going to revamp this thing!!!" or "hey come join this cool idea I have that in a month I'll inevitably have no motivation for", because that doesn't work for me and I don't want to set expectations too high in case I miss them entirely. I will say that I'm going to take things slow and work my way back into being creative and active, probably with some new drawings and writings (also possibly doll customs! more on that in a bit).
So, now that that intro is out of the way... time to explain why I've been gone for so long. I'm gonna warn you now, I'm going to talk very specifically about some not so great things (including the death of a loved one), so if you're just wanting to stay positive and all that (which I don't blame you for one bit), skip the next paragraph entirely and move straight to the next section (which will have a tl;dr in it to recap a little of what you missed).
So this whole thing actually started with something good, surprisingly; it was only when October came around that things got bad. In June, I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, I was starting to prepare myself to move to living more or less on my own (previously I'd only ever lived with my parents but now I was moving into a house that I was paying rent/utilities for with just a roomate for company). I think we got officially moved in sometime in July/early August (though some things didn't actually get, like, fully set up within our house until September/early October), so that kind of explains why I wasn't active through the end of summer (moving, believe it or not, is very time consuming and does not leave much time for getting online and having fun). Keep in mind I was also juggling working a new job (started at the very beginning of June) for the first time in my life so everything was a bit stressful there for a while. But, once we moved in, I was thinking I'd get back into the creative swing of things. Oh how wrong I was, because next came: school. Specifically, my third full semester (fourth semester in general counting the summer semester I'd done through June/July) and, arguably, the hardest semester of school I have ever dealt with. School started in mid August, and at first I handled it mostly ok, going to class basically every day and turning things in on time. Juggling homework, going to class and a work schedule was a bit difficult but I managed decently ok. Then everything changed when the fire nat-- I mean, everything went sideways in October. In the two weeks before October, I had a project in my engineering physics class (taught by the same teacher who did the Name-your-own-Star activity actually!) where you would design a parade float within certain parameters and have it judged alongside the designs of other classmates, both in the physics class and in an intro to engineering class. The best/winning design would then be made into an actual float (with the designer's guidance and help) for my college town's annual parade. I thought it sounded fun and decided to give it my best shot, not thinking I would win though because I was up against future engineers while being a computer science major (the concept of creating a marketing plan and presentation is the same, but the things designed are much different between engineering and computer science). So imagine my surprise when I, of all people, won the contest and so began my decent into Hell. I would then spend the next month (the entirety of October) working with the contest coordinator, fellow classmates, my own teacher, and other people roped into helping to build this ultimately beautiful but blasted float. I ate, slept and breathed that float for a month, easily putting in 10-15 hours of work on it alone every week, and by the end I am not even remotely joking when I say I built 50% of that float. Between me and the coordinator, who I bonded with over this month and consider a solid work acquaintance now, we probably put in 75% of the work, with another 7% each going to my teacher and my own father (who provided all of the crafting tools because no one else would lend us any) and the rest of the percentile going to various temporary helpers along the way. As you might guess, since I was focusing all my energy into that float and spending so much time working on it, I found little time for anything else--including schoolwork. Homework was turned in late or not at all, I started skipping class because I either overslept or simply had no motivation to do anything other than sleep, and my grades started to plummet. Luckily my ability to go to work didn't suffer, but at the same it probably helped contribute to my lack of motivation for school because part of the reason I was so tired was because I was working 30 hour work weeks on top of school and 10-15 hours weekly with this float, AND all of my shifts were evening/2nd-shift type schedules where I sometimes wouldn't get off of work until midnight, even later on super busy nights (I close the lobby--the place where people sit down and eat if that's not clear for non-Americans cause you call it something different--at a fast food restaurant). Honestly it's a miracle I did any sort of art during that month (I had planned on doing Inktober, but I only got through the first 3 or so prompts and was ultimately unable to continue). Eventually, though, as expected, all things come to an end eventually, and with the end of October came the end of the float (since the parade coincides with Halloween every year). At that point, I had another project for physics but ultimately thought that maybe things would be easier now that the float was done. Again, as usual with this year, I was wrong, because November held something that was going to be worse: the start of Big Final Projects coming in alongside the death of my grandfather. I'm not going to get into that latter part too much because it's still painful and I just... don't want to talk about it, but briefly stated, he'd been very ill for a while and his death was both unexpected and, sadly, somewhat expected. We held his funeral the week of the American date for Thanksgiving and to this very moment there is a poem out there (titled something like "God Made a Farmer") that, upon even hearing it or seeing it will not fail to choke me up, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to listen to the music I listened to during that time (mostly Pentatonix christmas covers/Hallelujah) the same way again. By the end of November, between the toll of grief (messing with my sleep patterns no less) and the looming deadlines of my big final projects in every class, I was missing even more class and failing to do even the basic amount of work in some classes. By December first, I just wanted to be done with everything. At the end of finals by mid-December, my grades were the lowest they'd ever been, at three B's and one C (honestly they were better than I'd expected, but the fact that I went from having all A's and the ocassional B throughout my previous schooling to B's and C's is a pretty solid indicator that something went horribly, horribly wrong here). At least I was done though. The only other item of note here is that the weekend directly after finals had finished up (the saturday that week was the 16th if I remember right), I got terribly, violently sick. Like, I-trembled-like-a-tree-in-a-hurricane-just-by-standing-up-cause-I-was-so-weak level of sick. It completely ruined my plans to spend a day shopping with my roomate by the way, perfectly capping off what had been a truly horrible semester. Which leads us to here, two weeks or so later, the day of New Year's. The two weeks off from school to just rest and recuperate and only focus on work seems to have done wonders, as I'm feeling quite a bit better now. I've found a new passion in doll customizing (I switched around two Barbie's heads and repainted some accessories for EAH/MH dolls!) and am slowly getting back into drawing. Writing may take a bit longer (and if I ever do a true Nanowrimo it'll have to be next November) but hopefully it comes back too. The main thing that I've taken from this experience, however, is that I never want this to happen again. I hated not having the motivation to do anything and feelign anxious about everything and just generally feeling utterly terrible most of the time. The difference between now and the beginning of when this all started, however, is that now I have a plan: I'm going to find myself either a therapist, a psychiatrist or a psychologist this year, probably within the next couple of weeks actually. I took a psychology course this semester because I needed the specific credit it gave me, and it opened up my eyes to exactly how unhealthy my mental health has been, especially in the wake of this past semester. So, I'm going to find someone who can help me improve my mental health and make everything work correctly. I'll try to give updates on that when I get to it (the only updates I really promise right now, actually). It's one of my New Year's resolutions, and by god I am going to stick to it if it kills me.
Tl;dr this last semester was terrible and saw me have a pretty substantial mental drop so now I've resolved to get help to fix that so it never happens again to that degree. And.... now I don't really know what to say. I don't have any concrete plans right now for my continued activity here, but I think that's ok. Mostly I think I'm just gonna put out feelers, see how everything's going now, might check out one of the group chats or something. Probably not going to join or continue any more RP's, unfortunately, so if you were hoping to continue an RP with me I'm going to disappoint you in that regard. I don't think I'm going to make any new OC connections right now either, just somewhat maintain the ones I already have. No new love interests or friends though, which I am terribly sorry about. At some point I might reopen that up so that new love interests for the characters who aren't in relationships can blossom and that new friendships can grow, but it won't be for a while. I'm still not going to be terribly active for a while because starting mid-January my final semester before I get my Associates (two-year degree) begins and I have no idea what kind of a ride that's going to be.
In the mean time stay tuned for one art piece (probably not colored, just sketched unless I use an automatic art coloring program that I found) that features Arion and Anteros and accurately sums up my headspace coming out of this semester. Preliminary warnings for blood, allusions to violence, light gruesomeness, and just general this-set-of-images-is-really-quite-dark-in-nature-and-not-my-usual-fluffy-fair disclaimers.
Also? I'm really into Shadowhunters. Malec owns my soul now.