Let's start with the obvious: I'm sorry I have been so absent over the last several months. After several years of being relatively consistent with streams, videos, and posts, I am embarrassed I fell off as hard a I did.

I'm going to be real with you. Things got hard. I don't mean "oh I'm busy and just can't figure out how to fit everything in" hard, but emotionally and mentally "I really should be on medication and see a therapist, I am in a bad place" hard. I knew that, but also fell into that hole that other people are likely familiar with where I was too far into that place to muster the energy, physical and mental, to do it. I used busy as an excuse for the lack fo time for setting up any appointments, which to a degree were true, but probably not as true as I talked myself into believing.

I'm in a better spot now. The things that were dragging me down subsided, the things that are uplifting are no longer fighting that gravity and are actually elevating me, I've talked to a doctor and got on some meds to manage my anxiety and depression, and I finally sort of feel like I am really present again instead of just barely existing.

Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to not just get back into the swing of things, but I also want to talk a bit about what the last year or so has looked like. Some of it will just be to catch you up on what's affecting my life and what I'm working on, but some of it will be rooted in "lessons learned" things I want to share.

For now, I'm going to let my allergies finish destroying me and use the forced downtime to do things like sleep and read and actually go outside. See you all soon, glad to be back <3

First of all, massive shout out to the RT Community for your epic streams this last weekend! You guys killed it. And by "it" I mean childhood cancer and illness because you raised over $100k. I am so proud of all of you, and I was so excited to see my old stomping ground RT Michigan as a part of the official Community Stream.

I am unable to dedicate a day to doing a solid 24 hour stream myself (genLOCK isn't going to just make itself, ya know), but will be dedicating every stream this month to the cause. I will be streaming as part of Team Rooster Teeth, but raising money for the facility I was born in back in Michigan, Sparrow Children's Hospital. In addition to a handful of raffle prizes, I also have some stretch goals in place that include me finally biting the rage-inducing bullet that is Dark Souls III. I hope you'll help support Sparrow and my impending aneurysm!

If you're watching the RT Extra Life stream this weekend, you may see me around there too. I'm mostly helping work the event, but I may be a part of some...plans.

November 2nd is such an innocuous day for most people that they're likely barely aware of it.

For me, it's my Cancerversary. That will never not be weird to say.

Everyone defines their Cancerversary as something different. Some people it's the day they're diagnosed, Some call it the day they started treatment. I like to call it my last day of that chapter, the day I had my surgery to remove that pesky, sketchy uterus. For me, it's a day to celebrate.

It's also a day to remind everyone to go to the doctor. Check your boobs. Check your prostate. If you've got a vagina, get your PAP done regularly (they say you can do it every 3 years now if you haven't had an abnormal result, so yay!). I know it's uncomfortable and it sucks but lemme tell you not catching cancer early enough to do something about it sucks way worse. Take care of yourselves, and encourage the people you care about to take care of themselves.

Tell people you love them. Give your pets extra pats for me. Eat that extra piece of cake. Enjoy life while you can.

Related: go vote so people can have healthcare for this kind of shit.

Austin is currently under a water-boil advisory. Turns out getting a ton of rain isn't a good thing, and the amount of runoff it has generated to contaminate our water sources has left our treatment plant in a bit of a bind. At first the advisory was supposed to be for a day or two, and was then extended to two weeks, before being scaled back down to expecting it to be just one week.  Even having it for a week is not something I've ever seen before, but if you've never been under a water-boil warning before this might all mean nothing to you.

The short version: there's no guarantee the water that comes out of any tap is free of bacteria, so you have to boil your water before you use it to kill anything that could be there yourself. You can still shower and wash your clothes, and theoretically you can wash dishes still (though I personally feel ick doing that), but if the water is going to go in your mouth it's gotta be bottled or boiled and cooled. It's an inconvenience, but it's not the end of the world.

But then you realize the coffee machines at work have in-line water systems so you can't use those and there's no coffee. And the water coolers were disposed of a few months ago in favor of an in-line filtration system to save on plastic so now you can't use that. And restaurants can't possibly boil all their water before using it to cook or make drinks or even ice so then those are closed while they wait for the advisory to lift. And you have been diligent and boiled your water and used it for drinking and cooking but forget like an idiot to use it to brush your teeth like somebody you all know (*cough*me*cough*).

The number of times you just...use water without really thinking about it is staggering. It's easy to remember to use your boiled water for those conscious choices, but all the times you're just going to flip on the faucet real quick in passing to rinse your hand or wet your toothbrush or grab a few ice cubes for your drink? That's what gets you.

Have you ever had to follow a water-boil advisory before? How long did you have to do it?

Life has been busy for a long while, but now it's a different kind of busy. It's a steady stream of busy rather than bursts of super busy. I got good at handling bursts. Hit the ground hard, do the thing, take a breather, sprinkle in some outside tasks, repeat. On the one hand it made everything feel rushed, but on the other there were defined down periods for recovery, always another light at the end of the tunnel to reach.

I am super glad to have steady work again, but it is a huge upheaval in that system I had grown accustomed to and thrived in. It's been 2 months, and while I can acknowledge that expecting 2 months to undo 3+ years of routine is kind of silly, I still find myself not only struggling to make that change but struggling with the fact that I'm struggling. With daily life averaged out across the week that consistent beat of down periods has averaged out along with it, and I just cannot adjust to it. It feels like I'm overall more busy, and maybe I am, but figuring out how to continue to exist is feeling like some insurmountable obstacle.

I don't mean that in a suicidal way, not in the slightest. I realize rereading it that it can come across that way. I mean it in a "I am so overwhelmed with the idea of doing this, that, and the other thing within the amount of time allowed by the laws of physics and biology that I literally do not think this is possible" way. I've been trying desperately to tetris together things like my new work schedule, going to the gym, laundry, basic housekeeping, streaming, making stuff, spending time with friends, enjoying time with LoLink and all the pieces are just awkward enough that while it may be possible for them to all fit in the grid I have yet to come up with the solution. In the face of that, all I can do is start removing some pieces. Or at least making them smaller.

The easiest piece to cut down right now is streaming/videos, and frankly makes the most sense at the moment. I have reached a point where streaming is not as enjoyable as it once was, and has instead turned into a pretty hefty burden on my mental health. I was hoping that dropping ti back to 3 days a week was going to help, but it hasn't. After a lot of consideration and talking with a few trusted confidants, I'm mostly no longer going to stream on a schedule. Tiara Thursdays and Stardew Sundays (which were moving to every other week anyways) will still be planned for, but for the foreseeable future other streams will be done on an as-able-both-literally-and-mentally basis. I'm going to go back to streaming when I genuinely feel like streaming and want to spend time with friends in the chat.

I'm also going to work on getting YouTube up to date, and once I get it to where the archive on Twitch is current (or current enough) will be switching to not making any edits on streams and just straight uploading them from Twitch for the archive. Doing that will free up time to make actual videos when inspiration strikes, which I haven't done in ages partially out of guilt for all the other things I felt like I had to do.

Ultimately, I'm trying to go back to doing things I enjoyed as I enjoyed them rather than trying to force them into the self-imposed obligation they've become. I don't really have a plan for how long it'll be this way...as long as it takes, really. I may be able to get a better handle on the rest of life in a few weeks, it may not be until this production wraps, maybe I'll ultimately decide it'll be like this forever. If I had an answer I probably wouldn't be doing this in the first place.

You've all been wonderfully supportive both on and offline, and I cannot thank you enough for that. I'm looking forward to bringing some of the old energy and spark back into things by giving myself the mental freedom to exist without guilt. Eventually.

I still haven't done my laundry from PAX.