Update: 02/06/2023 : Admitting I’m burnt out…

Hello everyone.

The TLDR is in the title mostly. For those of you who have been with me for a while, the drop in content both quality and quantity has been noticeable and after a talk with my husband, I can finally admit to both to you guys and myself that I am burnt out.

I had started this update so many times and each time I felt like I was just complaining and making excuses. This pregnancy has taken a toll on me both mentally and physically and after five months I'm only now just finding the right balance of medications that dont have me physically ill or have me sleeping twelve hours a day. Little Squigs has blossomed this year, shes talking more then ever and is actually interacting with other children and even adults, but her sleeping schedule has been absolutely atrocious. I cannot write when she is awake, and she can, at times, take hours to put down for bed which in turn exhausts me.

My husband also landed a new job three months ago, which is a good thing! He's gone from 60 hrs sleep shifts with 1 hour each way commute to a 38hr 9-5 fifteen minutes from home. Its been fantastic for his mental health and we've been able to spend more time together as a family… but it also means I've lost the time to be able to pull late-night writing sessions completely alone.

There's been a few other things, friend group dynamic shifts, losing a very dear friend and beta reader, illnesses, inflation creep and financial stress…

In short, its been a lot of big, personal changes in my life and I’ve never been one to open up about these things when it gets stressful. It's a chronic problem I've had all my life that I've never been able to ask for help when I need it.

So, I spoke with my husband about it. What I need to keep writing and how we can accommodate it, because unfortunately were not in the position (yet!) for me to be able to stop my Patreon completely. It will be a slow process because we're basically rearranging our lives to better focus our priorities.

I’m returning to my regular posting schedule. Turns out reader interaction and self-imposed accountability was really keeping the engine running. Breakdowns, Finals, Notes and new editing content, will be returning. Hopefully soon, most of my writing will be done on the weekend and organised through the week so we will see how that pans out.

I’m going to start work on the next Transcripts saga and new projects. It's coming up to 7 years on transcripts as my sole creative project… Which is insane, since I've never been able to finish a single story before this. What was supposed to be a contained story ended up exploding into a full on space opera and I bit off waaaay more than I could chew. It turned into an epic with so many characters that I need to refocus and change the format to something more digestible for everyone involved.

Thats… all I’m willing to state now. I don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver like I have been these last few months. I don't want to do that any more, I want to change.

Thank you all if you got this far, I guess we’ll find out together if I live up to the promises.

~Squiggles