Sooo… I haven’t updated since May. I do apologize profusely! There are a couple of reasons for the lack of updates over here. The first, and probably the biggest, is that I’ve pretty much essentially moved over to The Android’s Closet now. I know, I know, I was going to maintain two blogs. It’s tough to do, though. I’m having a blast blogging over there alongside my boyfriend, and I sincerely appreciate anyone who has ever stopped by.

There is another, slightly less positive reason for it, though. And I’ve decided to come clean:

Some of you are probably aware that I’ve been having a tough time lately. A good chunk of this is financially based: it’s hard to live paycheck to paycheck, selectively choosing which bills you’ll pay and which you’ll “conveniently forget” this month (and then prepping yourself for the incoming glut of phone calls from the bills you “forgot”), and patching up your ratty work pants with duct tape because you can’t afford new clothes.

Now before I go any further, I want to stress that this is in NO WAY some sort of begging post. A good deal of you are in a similar position– that’s the nature of the world we live in today, unfortunately– and even if the financial strain went away, there’s still a lot more going on: my family has fallen apart and factionalized due to my parents’ divorce, there’s mud getting slung around everywhere, and I feel caught in the middle in a very uncomfortable position. Plus, my last romantic relationship ended right as this was all going down, and that’s left me pretty rattled as well.

So here’s the part I haven’t told a whole lot of people: the result of all of this is that I have been an absolute mental wreck for the past six months or so, and it just seems to be worsening. I’ve been anxiety prone my whole life, but never to this extent. The littlest things will set me off and turn me into a sweating, trembling, panicked mess. I have to check my bank account? I panic. I have to go to work? I panic. My boyfriend has to leave for a bit? I panic. And so on.

It’s bad, and I’ve been trying to cope with it as best as I can, but it doesn’t seem to be going away. And so while I’m obviously not like this all the time– any enthusiasm you see from me on Twitter or on the other blog is genuine enthusiasm– I seem to be in a bad state more often than not anymore, and because of that, it’s hard to get as excited about things as I used to and so it’s hard to blog about those sorts of things here.

Finally, after trying to struggle on with this almost alone (aside from my dear boyfriend <3) for months on end, I talked to my mom about it the other day. She suggested I book myself at a clinic where they can offer therapy and possibly more, if needed. It's subsidized, so theoretically I should be able to afford it-- the downside is that the waiting list is something like two months long, because of it. So now it's just a matter of surviving for the next two months. I've been getting by, I suppose, by surrounding myself with distractions-- I'm reading, I'm playing video games, I'm forcing myself to laugh by watching Whose Line is it Anyway reruns, heck, I'm even writing (I wrote 24k words in a brand new book over the course of the last few weeks, before deciding to temporarily drop it and focus on that one book that I’ve been dangling in front of you guys for months now. Hopefully I can have that one done soon.)

I’ve even gotten myself a new job, which I’ll start two weeks from today. It probably won’t do much about my financial situation– the gas savings are big, but I fear that will probably be counterbalanced by the pay cut I’ll be getting– but hopefully it’s less stressful than my current one, which is, well, pretty stressful.

Anyways, that’s what’s going on. It’s a bit heavy, and I apologize. But I no longer felt like hiding all the bad news from you guys, my readers, so there you have it.

I’d like to think things will look up soon and then I’ll be blogging a little more over here, about things like Linux and fish and watches and comic books. And of course, I look forward to my big post that links to all the places you’ll be able to download my book. Until then, just bear with me <3