Weekly Update #56 (Patreon)

Alright. Are you ready for venting/rambling/apologizing? Because that's what you're about to get.

First off, I'm not going to try and make up for EDE and LDQ not releasing last week. I wasn't able to get them out and trying to catch up now is only going to stress me out even more than I already am, and I really need to be careful not to overwhelm myself right now. This also, unfortunately, means I won't be getting to work on any of the other stories I really want to start writing. I have to put all my other ideas on hold so that I can focus on what I need to do. So, no more stressing over those to begin with. Also, no more trying to do two chapters a day. For the past few weeks, I've been wanting to do TQH + CORE on Monday, EDE + LDQ on Tuesday, and then TTE on Wednesday. Obviously, that hasn't worked out at all. So, I'm just going to focus on consistently doing one story a day like I'm supposed to be.

That's two stressors dealt with.

Then there was losing 18 patrons in the week leading up to the end of the month, and then losing about 7 more right after the first. That knocked me from $2,850 a month to $2,500 a month. Fortunately, I'm back up to $2,650, but I was back up to $2,800 by this point the past two months.

And now for the biggest stressor - the one that, unfortunately, I am not able to simply deal with. This is 80% of the reason for why I've been so stressed lately and struggling to write.

Those of you in the Discord probably already know what's up and I've talked about this in Weekly Update posts before. Anyways, my grandma is here.

Indefinitely.

Her mental state was getting worse and worse to the point where she can no longer live alone, so... now she's living with us. For those of you who don't know, my grandma is basically an extreme Christian and is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and progressively getting worse. Now, combine those two things (with a dash of dementia, probably), and you've got my grandma.

On the first day of arriving here, we left her wallet with all of her information in it out in the open for a few minutes and told her to not touch it and leave it there. What did she do? She hid it, forgot where she hid it, and then claimed that her demon (she 100% believes she's being followed/watched/harassed by a demon) hid it. Thirty minutes later of turning the apartment upside down looking for her tiny wallet, my poor mum was having an anxiety attack from the sheer amount of stress of her mother losing her mind (and it doesn't help that she had to fly up to her while sick with the flu to help get her ready for moving down here), I found the wallet inside of a pocket inside of a pocket inside of a random purse in the middle of a bunch of other purses. Then, suddenly, my grandma remembered hiding it there after very adamantly claiming that it was a demon. Then she was basically laughing it off and treating it like no big deal while I had to try and help calm my mum down from her anxiety.

And this sort of thing happens every day now.

Then there are the other problems like her not being able to learn how to do anything new because she has a horrible memory now. She can't work the oven on her own because it's different from how hers was. She can't use the microwave. She can't make her own coffee. So, every thirty minutes during the day, I have to stop what I'm doing to go do something for her. And you know, I love her. I want her to be happy and healthy and all of that, but trying to write like this is difficult for me. Really difficult.

There's also being asked the same question at least ten times a day. For example, she came to interrupt me three times within an hour to ask me if I fed the dogs dinner right after I fed them dinner.

She also can't remember if she takes her pills or not and occasionally doubles up on them since she can't remember already taking them for the day, so we basically have to micromanage every single part of her life now until we can get her into an assisted living home. But first, we have to actually get her diagnosed.

Why isn't she diagnosed with anything yet?

Because the doctor who she went to back before moving here - despite telling him that she sees demons, that they steal her things, that they hide things from her, that kids break into her house to make weed in her kitchen pots while she's gone (not exaggerating), not being able to remember anything, asking the same question five times in a row sometimes, etc, the doctor fucking told her that she's perfectly healthy and that she should speak to her church pastor about it. He wouldn't even schedule any tests for her because of how "healthy" she is.

So, we need to get her diagnosed and then we can look into getting her into assisted living. Even then, she might not be eligible yet because she can live on her own. Barely. Plus even if she can, she really shouldn't be.

And want to know what made this whole past week even more stressful? Aside from having to clean everything to make the apartment as spotless as possible (and then one of the first things she did after getting here was point out how "dirty" it was since she's an extreme clean freak who thinks that one speck of dust means your entire apartment is filthy), my mum had to go up to get her and help her and she got the flu right before flying up because of her coworkers who won't fucking use their sick days when they're sick and contagious. So, because of her coworkers getting sick, she was horribly sick the entire time.

And then my cousin was responsible for hiring the moving company to pick up my grandma's stuff. Now, he didn't do anything wrong so we're not mad at him, but none of us knew that who he contacted was actually a third party service who basically sets up bids for the actual moving companies.

The third party service had 4.5 average stars.

The moving company who accepted the job through the third party service... had 1 average star.

They were a day late getting to my grandma's apartment, resulting in my mum having to buy a new plane ticket since they'd miss the flight down here because of them.

Then they increased the price from $1500 to $5000 after picking everything up and weighing it.

Then my mum finally got to bring my grandma back three days later than planned.

Now, I'll be cheesy and honest and admit that I'm a momma's boy. Always have been, always will be. Having to talk to my crying, sick, emotionally-broken-down and physically-exhausted mum on the phone every day last week really fucked with my ability to write. I'm so damn empathetic when it comes to her. Her mood strongly affects my own. So, when I know that she's basically going through Hell, I want nothing more than to make things easier on her and can't focus on anything else.

That was why I struggled with writing so much last week.

tl;dr (kinda): So, basically, I'm sorry for not posting EDE and LDQ last week. I was just seriously overwhelmed by stress and dealing with my grandma. I won't be experiencing nearly as much stress as I felt last week, I hope, but I'm still going to be with my grandma until I move out (which is something I'm trying to get my Patreon's monthly earning up to $3,000 to do). So, I'm going to take things slowly, try not to stress myself out too much, and get back on a more consistent schedule of one chapter a day instead of trying to do two in a day or whatever. I'm also putting all other ideas I have on hold until things are more manageable.

Blagh. Alright. I got that massive rant over with. That's been building up for a week now. I'm kind of tempted to delete it or seriously cut its size down, but fuck it. I'll leave it there.

I also won't blame you if you skimmed it or skipped it entirely.

Ah, I sound like such a lame crybaby. I have to try and type the rest of this weekly update before the temptation gets too strong to delete it.

Anyways!

So, there is one bit of good news kind of. I got into a new hobby!

Homebrewing.

As you can see in the pictures I posted to Twitter here ( https://twitter.com/ace_arriande/status/1125134624789868545 ) and here ( https://twitter.com/ace_arriande/status/1125191463418122242 ), I've started brewing mead. I love mead from the time I've had it, it's impossible to buy locally, and buying it online is crazy expensive for how much you get, so I jumped headfirst into brewing my own mead. I'm really excited about it! Of course, this also means my grandma has 3x the amount of questions to ask me, including worrying about me turning into an alcoholic like her husband was multiple times a day every single day. That does take a lot of the enjoyment out of it.

But I also got into RimWorld. If I'm going to be stressed out, my colonists are going to experience despair alongside me.

Weekly Memes:

Old but gold, I love this,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GPcAGc1CXU&feature=youtu.be 

This one's not a meme but is awesome and should help with CORE visualization,  https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/bj35wg/this_is_an_actual_lava_river/ 

This one's not a meme either but I absolutely love it and should listen to it again to get my mood up despite how negative it sounds,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmIUvp0e1bw 

Weekly Worksheet: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vO9giXLsrbkPn0iWW8lllJWN1HVstvth

Blagh.

The True Endgame

Volume 6 has begun! This volume is going to have a good deal of progress for the characters, both in terms of game and personal progress, so I'm hyped for it. It's also probably safe to say that the series is over half way over at this point. There will probably be... 10-12 total volumes. We'll see!

Ero Dungeon Evolution

TTE isn't the only one about halfway over. EDE will probably end up being 6-7 total volumes, and those volumes are going to be much more focused on plot progression and dungeoning stuff than it has been thus far. It's probably going to end up feeling like the story, as it's named, actually starts with this third volume. That's not exactly how I intended for it to go, but I'm still excited.

The Queen's Hound

Only a few more chapters left in this second volume and they're going to go fast starting next week! And, since I brought up how many total volumes TTE and EDE will be, this story will probably be... I want to say maybe 15-18 total volumes? So, there's still a lot of this series to go.

Lazy Dragon Queen

Well now I don't really have anything to say for this since I haven't written it in over a week. But, I guess I can say that I have no idea how long this series will last for. Probably at least 5 volumes, maybe as many as 15. It's going to have a massive harem and literally anything is possible in it, so it has potential to last for a really long time. We'll see!

CORE

I planned on the first volume ending like 2-3 chapters ago. Now it's probably going to be another 2-3 chapters before it's over. Oh well. I'll be writing this tomorrow and I'm extremely excited about tomorrow's chapter! I think most of my long-term readers (fans of TTE and LDQ in particular) are especially going to like it.

In Closing

Sorry for failing last week. I'm going to cut out as much stress as I can from my life so that I can focus on doing what I need to be doing, AKA getting a chapter of TTE, EDE, TQH, CORE, and LDQ up each week. No more writing more stories, even in secret, no more stressing myself out trying to do two chapters in a day so that I can give myself some time each day to relax, and trying to not lose my mind.

Also, I might have made my grandma sound pretty bad up above. Just let me say that she actually is an extremely kind and loving woman. She's just, you know, literally going crazy and I have to live with her now since I can't afford to move out yet. But I am saving up money and it's all thanks to you all!

So, thank you. Thank you for supporting me and my writing and I look forward to continuing providing you all with stories to read!