A smaller Requited Change Update (Patreon)

Hello all patrons old and new.

Well, 2022 strikes again, no humour, nothing, let me get the timeline.

10th July - Journey of an Alraune part 7 released.
11th July - Day off. (Mondays and Tuesdays have been my 'weekend days off' for a while now, with my working week being Wednesday to Sunday.)
12th July - Day off.

13th July - At roughly 5:30 a.m. there was hysterical pounding on our front door. One of our elderly next door neighbours, Paul, had suffered a fatal heart attack. He had only been retired for about 10 months.

At the time his wife didn't know, and understandably, sought our help knowing that I had first aid training.

I found Paul on their stair landing, spasming, with his eyes rolling into the back of his head. I gave chest compressions until the paramedics arrived on scene and announced him dead.

I knew he was gone only minutes before they arrived as I felt his final breath leave his now relaxed, still body. His wife was beside herself, blaming me for being unable to resuscitate, blaming Paul for not taking his heart medication etc. Obviously I didn't hold it against her, we were all upset, Paul was a great guy, a bit in his own world, but truly a kind soul.

The aftermath of this was me and Dad consoling his wife over the next few days, helping remove Paul's clothing, items etc. from her house to stop them being a constant reminder to her loss. She did apologize to me, though I didn't hold it against her to begin with. The paramedics told us in no uncertain terms that the chance of resuscitation was negligible even with proper equipment, it was just his time, Paul had suffered from a weak heart all his life. I was relieved hearing this only in that I hadn't somehow messed up and cost Paul his life.

In between this mess I was working, as much as I could anyway. The whole ordeal reminded me of the recent loss of Cherelle, I didn't realize just how profoundly her death affected me until this event. I feel this has reflected in my upload schedule, as hasn't exactly been punctual or consistent lately.

So I took to work again slowly, methodically, until I climbed half back in the creative saddle again, but there was certainly a day where I only got a single page done through emotional burnout and helping Paul's wife.

On the brighter side this event led to an epiphany; that I needed to take some form of therapy, so I signed up to our National Health Service's mental aid group 'Open Minds' which shall be starting in August. Hopefully I can tackle some unresolved issues and get back to being myself again instead of a sad, frustrated husk of a person.

So to add to the 2022 list: electric outages due to storms, covid, Dad's Meniere's disease, the death of Cherelle and now the death of Paul. R.I.P.

Back to the comic; this part of the story was going to be fun, Ken having another ?wild fantasy? then back to Lola for... shenanigans. This week was going to be 25-30 pages and it was going to push some more of my Koikatsu skills. But, well, 2022 is a real shitbird.

I'm going to continue with Requited Change this next week, with another update out next Sunday. This should get me to where I want to be in the progression of the comic.

I'll put up the Mega files and PDF next Sunday, I don't think it's worth updating the Mega folder and pdfs just at the moment.

With posting this I'm not looking for sympathy, I dislike it, as I feel like I'm trying to justify a low weekly output. But what I dislike more is not fulfilling my promises to pledgers. I care about you all and appreciate that you have let me fulfil my dreams of creating questionably decent content for a living.

Speak to you all soon.