State of Mind

First of all I wanted to assure you all that the update for this month is still planned. I apologize in advance for being late, but I was struggling once again with the work.

Now to the excuses part...

I'm a person who doesn't talk much about my personal life. I was taught to keep my problems to myself, as they do not concern anyone else. In the end I should be strong enough to deal with the obstacles and be able to stand on my own two feet. It's not always easy, I'm not as good at hiding everything as I would want to be, and I heard a couple of times recently that I should talk about what bothers me. If you don't want to read my rambling you can easily skip this post. 

The last few months weren't easy for me. A lot of days were dedicated to my dog who was with me for thirteen years. Taking him to the vet frequently, giving him pills and shots at home, helping him with even the easiest tasks. With every passing week I saw his state worsening until eventually I realized we were going on a borrowed time. It wasn't a surprise for me, I knew his late years were going to be difficult because of the surgeries he had as a pup. It didn't really matter... he was there for me when I was going through my depression when I was younger, the least I could do was to try to ease his pain in his last years. 

Unfortunately the inevitable happened a few weeks ago. Maybe I should have canceled this month's update, but I didn't want to cancel it out of the blue. So I tried to work anyway. The results are... average, but then again I'm never happy with the quality of my work, so that didn't really change. 

Right now I'm trying to keep going, though I miss my friend greatly. Some people could say it was just a dog, but I don't know if I would be here if not for him when I was going through some very difficult part of my life. A lot of small things remind me about it, I have a lot of mood swings, I'm mostly trying to keep myself occupied just to not think about the loss. But well, during most days it's not really helping.

I didn't really feel social at all. I might have missed some messages sent to me. I'm putting a lot of expectations on myself and I hate myself for not meeting them for a while already. Lack of communication on my end, being late often, I guess here I wanted to at least partially explain where it's coming from. I have trouble accepting the fact he is gone. I hoped it would get better soon enough, but for now it's still hard to ignore it.

Normally I would look forward to vacations. To give myself some space and possibility to relax. But with the current state of the world I'm not sure that's going to happen, which means I will most likely miss the chance to meet with good friends who live far away. That thought is not making me feel any better either.

We all are going through different hardships. We all have our problems. Part of me is angry for making those excuses - cause yes, that's how I see it in my head. I was always proud of being very consistent for all those years and I really don't want to ruin it.

But right now I think I need to rest. I'm not fine, not at the moment. So after this month's update I won't do any content for the next one. I'll put some time into cleaning the code, maybe adding few items or doing a bit of balance, but no writing from me. Virile may add some Maul stuff so the next month is not bare bones. 

There is also another piece of news I have to share. There will be a change in artists working for LD. Narram decided to resign from drawing for the project - for his own personal reasons. If you follow him you should probably know he was going through his own difficult time. I still have a few sprites from him that I will add to the game, but after that I'll be relying on other people. 

I don't think I officially announced it so I might as well do it now. StanG was a part of the team for a while and this will continue.

I think that's all I wanted to say at the moment. 

Thank you all for supporting me and staying with me for all this time. I will try my best to get back to being more communicative again and to give you all more of what you like and enjoy in LD.

~Hyao