VDIGU - Pausing Patreon/5 Week Hiatus

Ninja Edit: Sorry, I just got back on the 11th, I'm taking one more week. I definitely did not look carefully enough at the calendar when picking that first date. After that travel experience I wasn't even properly functional until the morning of the 13th. But I am back in my chair, getting my thousand words a day in, so progress is being made. Also I'm engaged now, so that's neat.

TL;DWR : We’re going on hiatus, next chapter will be July 21st.

Oof, 3 weeks without an update. I don’t feel great about that, I just kept thinking it wasn’t worth posting a delay, I’d get back on track the next weekend. I have been writing, chapter 40 and 41 are 80% done, I’m just not quite happy with the way 40 ends, and I’ve been waffling on it for a while.

I left my job last friday. I was initially planning on jumping right into writing, and trying to get some chapters out while I’m on vacation in June, but after a bunch of introspection the last two days, I’m starting to think I’m way more burnt out than I thought I was. Not from writing really, though I think my push to keep a regular schedule even while I was working a bunch of OT over the winter may have contributed. I’m just bone-tired from a solid decade of mentally draining full time work with a single break longer than a month and an unhealthy number of side projects.

So, I’m gonna pause patreon and take the next five weeks fully off. Enjoy my vacation and maybe the Elden Ring DLC without the shadow of needing to be productive hanging over me. I’ll probably write, but I’m not gonna force myself to. Anything I do get done I’m gonna use to actually build up a real unpublished backlog and firm up the outline for the next hundred and fifty thousand words, so I’m not dropping chapters I finished an hour ago. Plus probably flesh out those other in progress stories I mentioned.

Ultimately, as much as this story began as a writing exercise for me to focus on getting words out regularly, (My internal mantra for a while was 'it's allowed to be shit, it just has to be done') I have come to get a little attached to it and I think I'll be in a better headspace in a month to do my best work.