December break week (Patreon)

It only occurred to me just now, as I was sitting here at midnight hyped up on caffeine amid the ruins of my destroyed sleep schedule and still recovering from covid, that I never did take my usual week off in November.  Of course as you'll all recall, I ended up taking more than a week off due to being sick as a dog for a while.

As I had cause to mention in the context of depressive episodes during last month's AMA, sick time is not the same as rest time.  I really wanted to push through to December's normal last-week-of-the-month break due to all the missed time in November, but as I take stock now I'm realizing how badly I screwed myself.  My physical stamina is recovering well, I'm almost back to where I was before being sick; the mental fog is still lingering but is starting to clear as well.  And yet, I've been running constantly late on updates since I resumed posting and having a much harder time than usual writing, and now that I really take a look at myself, I realize this is stress and burnout.  No doubt exacerbated by the covid, but also its own thing, with which I'm well familiar.  Despite the way it always takes me by surprise every damn time...

It has been really weighing on me that the Avenist-tier chapters have been late.  I want to give the people supporting me at the highest level my very best, not delays and excuses.

In hindsight I probably should have just written off November as soon as I got sick and devoted the last part of the month to mental as well as physical recovery.  Several people told me to do that, but...here we are.  I didn't get this far in life by taking good advice and let's face it, I probably won't start now.

All this to say, I am taking my monthly writing break now, and as a compromise it'll be across the November/December update week.  I'm backdating it to the Tuesday update that I still haven't managed to finish for Avenists; my next update day will be next Tuesday, which will go up on Patreon for Avenist backers.  The current lower-tier Patron chapter will go up on Royal Road on Friday, so when updates resume for Patrons it'll be at the new Izarite level.  Then the next round of chapters will move through the ranks as usual, next one reaching RR a week from Friday.

This should provide me the opportunity to finish recuperating and get my head back right, so the top backers won't have to keep waiting for their promised chapters.  Sorry about all the trouble, folks.  If you can avoid it, I recommend against experimenting with covid or mental illness.  It's all much less fun than it sounds.

See y'all in a week.  I appreciate you.