Happy New Year!

I’m taking today off writing, so there’s no big blog post today (it is a holiday in the US, after all, and I’m trying to get better at resting when I need it). Instead, I’m just going to remind you that my Infrared Isolation series will start updating again on Saturday the 6th, that you should check out DeepBlueInk on YouTube for some fun videos of hilarious moments from a variety of media (including media that is VERY AWARE of him, often to a hilarious extent). That’s all I’ve got. Happy New Year and I hope you’re taking some time to start the year off in a way you find fulfilling!

Happy Holidays!

Today is the official winter holiday that my workplace observes (Christmas), so I’m choosing today to not do any writing, so instead of a blog post, I’m going to direct you back to my post from US Thanksgiving for some ways to escape if you feel the need to do so this holiday season. If you’re disappointed that I don’t have anything to entertain you, I suggest checking out Infrared Isolation, which will return to updating every Saturday (assuming I can keep up with the weekly demand for chapters, which is NOT a given even though I’ve got four weeks of updates already written, reviewed, and scheduled) on January 6th. Now is a great time to get caught up, review the story thus far, or dive in for the first time if you’ve not read my near-future, apocalyptic sci-fi story about a band of guides and survivors who made a living navigating the tundra that used to be the Midwestern United States as they find themselves facing off against everything the apocalypse has to throw at them after years of uneasy but safe living.

If you’re just here because you saw I updated then, well, thanks for stopping by! Happy Holidays and I hope you’re having or have already had a great winter holiday season.

National Novel Writing Month 2023

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (Or NaNoWriMo as I’ll be calling it in the rest of the post) and I only just decided I was going to definitely participate yesterday (which, coincidentally, is the day I wrote this post). I’ve been thinking about it for a bit, but not as long as I usually do. Normally, there’s little else on my mind as summer finally begins to fade into fall, but this past year (since it has actually been a year of this life stress and chaos now, despite my desperate attempts to avoid it) has driven most things beyond the immediate day and sometimes week I’m experiencing so far from my mind that I’m beginning to forget what it is like to live any other way. So when my friend asked if I was planning to do NaNoWriMo, it caught me off guard since I did not have an answer prepared and I almost dismissed the question as being hardly relevant right then, despite it being the twenty-first of October, because I’d forgotten how soon the beginning of November was. Still, it’s not like I had to do much to prepare. I’m fairly adept at coming up with writing projects and while I expect to struggle with finding the time I need to do my daily writing since my schedule is already so full, I expect I’ll be able to find enough to write about to fill any words left over should I finish the last twenty-ish chapters of Infrared Isolation before I hit the required fifty thousand words for the month. I mean, the first twenty chapters are over seventy-five thousand words, so I’m really not worried, even if I wind up being a few chapters short of forty-six.

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No New Infrared Isolation Chapter This Week

I’ve been struggling to write, lately. For some reason, I’ve been feeling emotionally drained and all the work I’m doing takes more effort than usual. Almost like I’m consumed with other matters and unable to properly focus on resting, let alone my work. There’s no new Infrared Isolation chapter this week, but there will be one next week. Who knows what will happen the week after that. I’ve got a lot on my mind these days and it’s difficult to push through it all long enough to make any progress on creative writing, so each new sentence feels like pulling teeth. Just maintaining this blog is enough to finish exhausting me after a day of work, lately… I hope this stress will end someday. I hope things will get better. I’m prepared for them to get worse, though, since I’d rather be surprised by improvement than degredation.

Anyway, happy Saturday and I hope you’re doing alright. I’ll be fine. I just need to spend more time resting and processing stuff for now. See you next week for Chapter 23.

No New Infrared Isolation Chapter This Week, Sorry

I spent a couple hours trying to find something to post today, or come up with a project I could complete in a reasonable amount of time. I found nothing and eventually had to admit that doing an entire extra writing project for this update would be too taxing. I’m still recovering from the last seven months of stress, exhaustion, and worsening burnout, so I’m trying to opt for rest more often than I opt for stress, which is why there’s no chapter of Infrared Isolation today. Sure, I finished the chapter on Wednesday, but that’s barely any time for me to review and edit it and too little time for me to ask this to be finished by my usual editor, especially when she’s still recovering from being sick. Plus, I’m trying to avoid being in this position again next week and that’s not going to happen if I grind out another short story or don’t let Chapter 22 spend time in my buffer before it goes live.

I wish I’d been able to write more during the last three months. I feel like I really fell off the writing wagon starting in March and it’s been a struggle to get back on it since then I returned from Spain in April. I’ve had so much going on. Still, I finished a chapter and I’ve got the energy to at least do a bit of work on the next one, so hopefully this will wind up being a good step toward getting the old Weekly Update train rolling. Time will tell and I have learned not to make promises in these updates, but I sincerely hope there will not only be a chapter next week, but a chapter the week after as well. I hope you’re having a restful weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Infrared Isolation Will Return On April 8th

As a result of how busy I’ve been and how busy I expect to stay, I’m not even going to try to get a chapter of Infrared Isolation ready for any Saturday this month. I’ve got a two-week skip planned for the end of the month anyway, since I’ll be traveling and am planning to not update my blog at all while I’m on the road (though I expect I’ll have plenty to write about after my trip). So I’m just starting this now. Gonna save myself a whole lot of mental effort and strife, and do my best to get rested before I have to go on my first trip to Europe.

To be clear, there will be no new chapter posted on the 11th (today), the 18th, the 25th, or the 1st of April. Aside from today, there won’t even be a disclaimer post. I will post a reminder on the 27th not to expect anything new until the 3rd of April. I’ll actually focus on my vacation and what my friends and I are doing for once, instead of trying to keep this place going constantly.

On the 8th, though, I’ll have the next chapter queued up and ready to go. Until then, enjoy your weekends.

You’re Probably Going To See A Lot of “No New Infrared Isolation Chapter This Week” Posts This Month

Life is, once again, kicking my ass. I’d like to say that I listened to my friends for once and decided to take it easy rather than continue to work through the stress, exhaustion, and series of incredibly demoralizing events involved in the past five days, but I genuinely just have not had time or energy to do anything, no matter how much I’d like to. Work has been busy, life has had a series of unfortunate events for me (nothing emotionally destructive like most 2023 prior to last week, thankfully, but it has still been a lot to process and work through every. single. day.), and I’ve been struggling with depression again because of all that on top of returning sleep struggles. It has been a pretty miserable and unredeemable week only made manageable because I’ve been getting a sense of accomplishment (and utter mental/physical/emotional exhaustion) from my day job, so it’s been a bit easier to go without all the writing I normally do to get that.

Anyway, if I keep going too long here, it’ll turn into a full post and the whole “do less so I don’t hate myself, my life, and the entirety of creation” thing I’m trying to do will have failed, so I’m gonna go. Have a great weekend and get some rest. I’ll be doing my best to do that while also attending to the million other things I’ve got to do this month… No real rest for me until April, unfortunately. Who knew international travel took so much preparation?