The Webb Report, 6/30/23 (Patreon)

Hi everybody, it's now the end of the month and the end of the break period announced in my last post due to mental illness.  I'm here to update everyone on my progress and plans, as promised.

I'll go into more detail below but if you don't care for the fine print, the tl;dr is that I'm doing better but not really back up to condition yet.  I'm going to give it two more weeks and see how I'm doing at that point.  So, middle of July, I will give another update and either (hopefully) resume posting chapters or provide detail on the next postponement.

So, here's the long version.

I am recovering from what turns out to have been a more serious health issue than I realized.  It's funny how stress and exhaustion creep up on you; I honestly had no idea it was as bad as it was until I started pulling out of it.  I've been doing my best to look after my health, and the first few days were really discouraging.  It took most of a week of sleeping a lot before the exhaustion started to properly recede.

I have been making a point to get as much sleep as I can, and to exercise every day.  I'm (with a few lapses) deliberately eating well, focusing on properly cooked meals with lots of veggies, protein, and rice and potatoes.  It's done me a lot of good, overall.  There have been a couple of days in the last week when I felt great, honestly better than I have in the longest time.  That didn't last long, but it was still an encouraging development even as it's for now only intermittent.

I have also, for the first time ever, started therapy.  Just had one session so far.  I am...I'm gonna call it skeptically optimistic.  Some parts of the process kind of made me roll my eyes, but my therapist also suggested a few things that have made me think and already helped me recontextualize things.  So, we'll see.  It's way too early in what is usually a very long process to draw firm conclusions, but I could see this helping a lot and I'm gonna stick with it while I can.

In summation, I feel better, but I do not feel well.  I'm still tired a lot, weaker than I should be, bothered by nightmares and stress - all of it less than before, but still enough to continue disrupting my daily life.  I see the light at the end of the tunnel, though.

The other big development is that I have had time and the opportunity to come to a realization about the future.

I have been deliberately avoiding reading, looking at or thinking about OVDT.  I've done some writing work on other projects, purposely letting Ephemera fade from the top of my consciousness, and how much good that alone has done my mental state is really telling.

My theory was correct, it seems: OVDT is damaging my mental health, and I'm going to have to step away from it for a while.  Now, this isn't necessarily a crisis.  This developed over two years of constantly working on it, and I don't fell as utterly destroyed as I did before when I burned out so hard I had to drop TGAB.  There are other options; I may be able to work on OVDT intermittently, or resume after spending some time on something else.  I will continue to recuperate, experiment, examine my mental state and see what works.

Ideally, I will come back to it and finish Book 4 before any longer-term hiatus.  I really don't feel good about just dropping it right in the middle of everything like I did.  That's going to be my goal, so unless it turns out that I have a serious mental block on it, Book 4 should be wrapped up before I switch to any other project.  We'll have to see what ends up working, but I'm cautiously optimistic.  

OVDT will not be abandoned, or has TGAB been.  I am utterly determined to finish my stories, one way or another, however long it takes.  It's just that right now, the grimness and brutal violence of OVDT, the bleakness of its outlook and especially the seething anger of Seiji's perspective that I have to immerse myself in to write him, are just plain fucking me up and I need to gain some distance before I can dive back in.

Thank you for all your patience and support, everyone.  I am grateful for the kind words many people have sent, and definitely for the donations.  It's humbling and I'm incredibly appreciative that you all are tolerant enough to enable me to keep living until I'm able to resume writing for you.  I promise I'm going to do my very best to get myself back into shape and back to work.