Update 16/1/22

Okay! We’re back! How we all doing? Good, I hope.

Sorry for the long radio silence. Working hospitality at this time of year is rough at the best of times, but with the rona finally spreading around my city (and my workplace, holy shit I’m amazed I haven’t caught it myself yet) it’s been made so much worse than usual. But! The Christmas/New Year rush is over, things are calming down, and I can finally breathe again.

Now, the reason for this pseudo-hiatus was obviously my back. Good news in that front, at least; no nerve damage, no muscular damage, no new bone damage. I do still have the spine of a fifty year old man, but we can work around that. So, basically, they think they can fix me without surgery. Yay! I don’t remember if I talked about this yet or not… oh well!

Problem is, the physio is fairly involved, and there’s a heavy emphasis on the psychological aspect of pain management. To really simplify it, chronic pain creates a kind of feedback loop in the brain with the fight-or-flight reflex that heightens reactions to stimuli, which increases the sensation of pain. The idea is that we train my brain out of that mode and force it to switch to the relax-and-digest mode, to decrease that sensitivity to stimuli. Which includes a lot of deep breathing and meditation, and a loooooot of mini painting. Apparently, the state of ‘flow’ I enter as I paint is exactly what I want. That’s right, the doctors told me to paint more minis! I don’t know if my hand is gonna survive lol.

So, let’s look at what’s going to happen now.

My immediate goal is to get SI ch11 finalised and posted here, as well as publicly with a big long note about my back situation. There’s not a whole helluva lot of changes I need to make, so I’m hoping to have that done in the next few days.

Then, my goal is to fix the absolute fucking disaster that is my Patreon page right now. Take away the higher pledge tiers, compile posts, make some ‘Start Here’ posts, that kinda thing. I should have done this at the end of last month, and I apologise, but I was just so exhausted I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Then, I’m hoping to have Dark chapter whatever I’m up to done by the end of the month, and SI ch12 by the end of February.

After that, god only knows.

I do feel really shitty about all this, I’m not gonna lie. I started last year with such big plans, but life just kinda went “no”.

Thank you all for bearing with me this far, and for your seemingly infinite patience. It really means a lot. I know I say that a lot, but I can’t think of any other way to express my gratitude for your continued support.

Thank you all, and Nagaspeed.