You’d think I’d have learned not to make promises I’m not certain I can keep when it comes to this story… I mean, I learned not to make the promises explicitly, but I definitely implied in last week’s post that I’d have another chapter ready by today and I absolutely do not. I got close to having one finished, but it turns out that you can’t work your way through depression and burnout. They just get worse if you try, actually, and so I’ve only make small progress since last week. This past week wasn’t nearly as stressful as last week was and I’m hopeful this trend will continue long enough for me to get SOME kind of rest, but I expect this will all shift back by sometime in early March, so who knows if writing this will be sustainable even if I manage to get it going consistently again. I might try to alternate chapters with Flash Fiction pieces, but I absolutely do not have it in me to write any kind of fiction in the next twelve hours before this post is supposed to go up. So this week you get another little note and a suggestion that you should check out my Flash Fiction category for some fun, light reads (in terms of length, not content) or my Short Story category for some fiction that is about fifty percent stories I wrote for tabletop games. Those should tide you over until I figure out how I’m going to balance my creative goals with my current lack of energy and writing time. Or, you know, until whatever I get together for next week’s Saturday post.
Skip
Taking a Birthday Break To Rest Up
This is the weekend after my birthday and, complex feelings about the day itself aside, I am absolutely going to use that as an excuse to rest. We’ve got a holiday in the US (Labor Day, which feels more and more important with every passing year) and I’m just taking some time off. I’m just going to have a quiet, guilt-free day of relaxation and video games on Monday, since I’ve got Baldur’s Gate 3 to finish and then Armored Core 6 or Sea of Stars to play. Plus all the other games I’ve started and left unfinished because something else came along (I’m looking at you, Cassette Beasts). And a new playthrough of Chained Echoes, inspired by the blog post that went up yesterday. I’ve got a lot of fun games to play, books to read, puzzles to do, and I’m just gonna set everything aside for now so I can just enjoy my three-day-weekend. It’ll be a couple months before I get another work holiday and it’s not like I’ve got much vacation time left after how much I was out in the first half of the year, so I’m doing what I can to maximize my relaxation right now.
There will be another Chapter of Infrared Isolation next week (I was almost finished writing the chapter when I wrote this post, so it should be done and edited and I’ll even be partway through the next chapter by the time this post goes up) and my normal blog posts will resume on the 5th of September. Have a great weekend!
No New Chapter This Week
Maybe I should just make the “every other week” schedule thing permanent. I’ve fallen into that pattern these last few weeks, so it would be a bit of a relief if I removed that pressure from my shoulders. That said, I’ve also fallen into the habit of not working out in the morning and not getting out of bed until eight in the morning on work days, so maybe accepting the habits I’ve formed due to stress and on-going exhaustion isn’t a good idea. Maybe I should keep trying to fix my habits and regain full control of my life. I really think getting my sleep and waking cycles into a more healthy pattern will help with all the other stuff since this constant lack of sleep is my primary source of exhaustion these days. Not my only one, unfortunately, but being able to remove this source should make everything else manageable. After all, it’s not like I don’t want to write. It’s not like I’m not interested in finishing this story. I want to do it, I’m just either too busy with work or too absolutely exhausted to push myself to do more than a couple lines of story writing at a time.
So yeah, no new chapter this week but there should be one for next week. I’m going to keep trying for weekly updates, but I guess we’ll just have to see if I can swing it.
Skipping Another Week
There’s no Infrared Isolation post today. While my rest is having a positive effect, it is not an instantaneous one, nor is it swift. It is a slow process that will hopefully bear fruit in coming weeks. The chapter for next week is already written and sent off to my editor, so it will be good to go for next week. Since I finished that early, I’ve even already started work on the next chapter (by which I mean I renamed the document, moved some things around, and reviewed the old chapter that is being rewritten into Chapter 25). If I manage to actually get more work done on it this weekend, between my various other activities, that will be even better. I don’t know if I’m quite that recovered, though. Just because writing during the week has gotten easier doesn’t mean that I’m quite ready to start spending time on the weekends working on writing projects. Especially this weekend, with my last two days of preparation for my new tabletop campaign and my on-going attempts to not mess up my sleep schedule all over again. I’m a bit more hopeful than I used to be, though. Now, recovery and a return to my old, non-exhausted way of living actually seems possible. Only time will tell, though.
No New Chapter of Infrared Isolation This Week
Between my total exhaustion and my editor being sick, there will be no new chapter of Infrared Isolation this week. Despite my exhaustion, I’ve kept writing, so there WILL be a new chapter next week. I just need to give my editor time to rest up before she reviews it and myself more time to rest up before I try to crunch out another one. Rest is important.
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?
Taking A Day To Rest After All That Bullshit
No new Infrared Isolation chapter today. If you want to know why, you can just read yesterday’s post. Dealing with the folks who inspired that post, in the days before writing that post and the days following it, has drained me of pretty much every bit of extra energy and willpower I had. So I’m skipping today and just trying to desperately rest in hopes of breaking out of this continuing spiral of awfulness that has been my experience of 2023 so far. Honestly, there’s not much left that can do sour or bad, so hopefully it’ll stop before much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to play Minecraft, as much Splatoon as I can manage, and then try to enjoy a game of Star Wars 5e with the remaining members of my TTRPG group.
Saturday Skip
I’ve barely had time to even eat dinner this week, I’ve been so busy and absolutely exhausted, so there’s no new post for today. I’m working (slowly) on the next chapter of Infrared Isolation and I’ve got a poem I wrote a couple weeks ago ready to go in case I don’t get that done, so there will definitely be something new next saturday. I just don’t have the energy to push out even a regular blog post for today, so I’m gonna focus on resting up. Hopefully the next week will be a bit more calm and less busy for me.
Two Week Skip
Well, I meant to do only one week of skipped chapters, but then life happened and now we’re at two weeks. I can’t promise it won’t go longer since the holidays are coming up and this period of the year is frequently tumultuous or at least emotionally complicated in a way that leaves me with little energy for anything other than surviving/resting between intense bouts of anxiety or coming up with ways for this time of year to suck less as a person without anyone to mark the holidays with in an immediate, nearby sense. Normally I’d just travel to where my friends are at, but that might be a bit more than I can muster this year on account of… well, everything. Still, I enjoy writing and will be choosing that over a lot of other options when I have the spirit within me to put forth effort, but I’m just saying now that maybe don’t expect consistent new Saturday chapters of Infrared Isolation until the new year is underway. Plus, there’s some major holidays that are Saturday Adjacent this year so maybe I’ll just take them off. Who knows. I’m clearly flying by the seat of my pants right now.
One-Week Pause
I’m skipping another week of Infrared Isolation. I could have tried to get it finished in time for today, but with everything I’d got going on right now (more on that next week), I think it’s better to give myself less stress and take more time for things. So Chapter 12 will go up next week and, hopefully, there’ll be few interruptions over the rest of the month. Things have to calm down in my life eventually.