It’s been a while; more than half a year since I last wrote. To be honest, I don’t feel like I’ve had a lot to say.

Every now and then I’ll go through a period where the internet just feels like too much. I’ve really tried to draw back my focus. I’m tired of Instagram, Facebook, and I even let my Micro.blog account lapse when my credit card number changed. I’ll sign back up there, eventually. But the endless commentary on everything was just…too much.

It’s not like I fell off the face of the planet or anything. I just took a step back from my digital life. And it’s been great, to be honest. I still read a lot of the news (how can you avoid reading about Covid-19, for example), but comments (especially on New Zealand news websites) just give me an awful feeling in my stomach. People are just filled with so much vitriol, it feels like. I don’t want to be a part of that.

And we had a good summer, here in New Zealand. We went tramping, stayed in a hut. Spent time with family. Leila’s learning guitar, and I’m knitting her a cardigan now that the weather is getting colder. I’ve had more actual paid work on; some unusual things that popped up because I registered for TestBirds and uTest online, in addition to the other work I do for a local company. I’ve been really enjoying all things to do with tabletop RPG playing. I ran a game for some friends in my writing group (Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG), and it was so much fun I really want to do it again soon. I’ve joined a few Play-by-Post games as well, and though they are (by nature) super-slow they are a lot of fun too. I’ve done more solo RPG-ing and am developing some approaches and a “mechanism” that seems to work, too. I’ve had lots of ideas about adventures, character builds, and it’s been great scouring through OSR blogs on the web.

I keep trying to go back to Felathia. I have ideas. I think I am starting on another draft. It’s sort of crept-up on me. But to be honest I was so disheartened by the last draft that I put it aside for quite a long time. Wrote a novella, that still needs another draft, or two. I’m trying to get my focus back, I am. I just want to keep positive.

I’ve just felt so scattered lately. Maybe writing this is the beginning of something, the beginning of finding my focus again.