Newsflash: Dec 17

I did my Noblesse Oblige edits! I'm now ready to rock on Chapter 5 (!!) once I'm done on my big Royal Affairs chapters.

And speaking of, here we are going through Chapter 7 of Royal Affairs. There are some sweet and spiky moments with your leadership class, as well as receiving some juicy gossip from the royal palace!

I'm not going to do the wordcount update this fortnight because it's a bit measly and I want to emphasise that creativity isn't always linear, rest is needed, etc, etc. All the things that get said a lot - and, at least for me, I nod sagely and go on to try to power through anyway.

Because it's time to admit that I've hit burnout, which is horribly common for the game industry and for everyone in general really in These Times. This year has been wild! There's been the pandemic and its attendant anxiety, burnout early in the year, major injuries in my family, work stress at my previous job followed by the shock layoff, months of applications and interviews, my previous job announcing their launch of the project that the laid-off-workers created (wow) and more family-related things that aren't really mine to share.

ANYWAY. I've been working on CoG projects pretty intensively around my fulltime contracted day job, which isn't really sustainable. So this fortnight I got sick, and I've been needing to take a break rather than choosing to, which isn't ideal.

However, I'm inching towards a real break for the holidays. I'm looking forward to:

• walking gently around the countryside
• occasionally petting a sheep
• taking baths
• reading some actual books
• doing some embroidery
• delightedly forgetting what date it is

Which is to say that I'm going to be cosplaying as an effeminate, indolent Regency gentleman.

I hope that you are having as comfortable and gentle times as you can. The winter season can be really rough for a lot of reasons. I'm thinking of you.