Hooookay, First of all I am so, so sorry about the lack of updates. There's been a lot happening behind the scenes that I haven't shared in a year, so I'll again summarize:

* I had been dealing with substance abuse issues (weed) from mid 2023, up until recently actually. I couldn't really function while inside my own home, causing massive dissociation waves/dopamine chases. As it is a byproduct of my environment, I am naturally severely cutting back as I no longer need it to escape.

*I had been dealing with picking up the pieces and finding myself and who i wanted to be. This included shifting my presentation and experimenting with my gender. A good irl friend and ex-partner had helped me figure out that i was overcorrecting, as well as not portraying myself accurately. I'm genderfluid, publically masc but mostly femme otherwise. I'm likely going to be getting off T once my round of surgeries finishes, though that is still up in the air.

* I've had to come to terms with my brain's decline over the course of the last decade. I've actually lost a few newer art skills i'm working on getting back and I'm incredibly rusty. learning to compromise as a system and re-learning to function as one person. How pervasive my memory loss has become, and coming to terms with needing to use tools to assist myself in memory retention.

* I've been coming to terms with my sensory issues as more hard limits rather than negotiations. My prior living environment simply was not accepting on the mere idea that I could be autistic, as i've said before. However, that resulted in myself ignoring a lot of my sensory needs, being ableist towards myself and thus whittling away at my own psycological bandwidth. I didnt know this until very recently, since I am now around a support system that lets me advocate for those needs without judgement.

* My day job was one of those active sources of stress. You see, around early 2024 they announced that their 7th floor was getting remodeled, and my position was moved to the 5th floor. I was often alone in their sport section with multiple conflicting audio tracks, flashing lights, loud alarms, sounds, etc from multiple areas alongside the very sensory-intensive aspects of my actual job of sculpting wax hand casts with people who would squirm (or the fact that i don't like touching/being around people in general). This was on top of being swarmed with people and my break getting cut in half. I was unable to recover in a timely manner in between shifts and thus every shift I had less of an ability to handle sensory. I'm no longer employed there.

* I had been socially isolating and unable to talk with most people. I apologise to every person I've left on read/struggled to talk with. I was simply unable to maintain a conversation, as much as I wanted to. It's resulted in me losing a fair bit of social skills and thus I've been a bit rough to deal with. I apologise if you've felt like i've been stuck up or disinterested in talking. I've needed to accept that despite being a social butterfly I am also a social recluse. I never liked people feeling left out so I overburdened myself by trying to be too approachable. I still genuinely care about every single person who's reached out to me. I like talking with people, but I also have a hard time gauging my own limits until I've hit a wall. It's not that I didn't want to talk, it was more that I couldn't.

* As of August 2024, Banryu and I have officially gotten together, and as of last week I've moved in with him. He's been a tremendous help in getting myself back on my feet both finanically and otherwise; I don't think I would be here at all saying all of this stuff without him. I had been circling the drain since the pandemic and I really didnt see it until I was out of it. I'm still somewhat settling in but I've started resuming work today!

* For my entire existence in this fandom I had been struggling with my complicated relationship with macrofurry. I go in depth about it in this journal, but something needs to change. to summarize, please do not regard me as a Macro artist anymore. If you're interested in that kind of art from me, please read that journal to familiarize yourself with the changes.

* Despair. I don't gotta explain what has happened to certain social media and political shit in the past year. DESPAIR.

* My abuser trying to come back to the fandom. to avoid being penalized I will refrain from dropping names, but please contact me for the document if you'd like to know who.

The past year i've been overwhelmed and stressed, sick with mold/ dental issues, depression, poor self image, and generally unable to do a lot else. I sincerely apologise for dropping off the face of the earth and I promise you will start to hear more from me. I have a fair bit of medical stuff I need to take care of, so I may not be working full time or taking some weeks off until I can get that all done. I may open up for ychs soon as I am attempting to do this full time, but I'm going to keep a careful eye on my workload to make sure I don't overburden myself with orders. If i open, I'l advertise it on here.