June Was A Bust: Here's Why

Hello everyone!

It's been very quiet on here, so quiet that none of the things that I have promised at the beginning of June have come to light. There are reasons for this (whether they're good reasons is down to you, really) and the purpose of this post is to go through them and let everyone know what's been going on and also how I intend to remedy and make up for what has been a completely dry month contentwise.

Before I go into all that, though, I want to make the most important part of this post clear: there will be no A Tiny Furry In A Huge World preview build this month. The promised stories and development log will also not be appearing. 

The long and short of it is that everything will be getting pushed forward to next month: essentially, what I had planned for June will effectively be released in July, meaning that, yeah, everything has been delayed by a month.

I will be changing the passwords for stuff after I post this and sending them all out to everyone via private message on Patreon. I will not be changing them next month and will instead be changing them in August instead. This means that if you were a subscriber this month but you're not subscribed next month then you'll get access to all of the content from next month regardless. Beyond explaining myself (coming shortly) this is about the best thing that I can do to try and make things up to everyone... and, y'know, apologizing profusely.

This month it has been tough to get myself into the headspace to write content. Don't get me wrong, I have been doing my best to write content, but it hasn't been coming out of me as quickly or as efficiently or as, well, confidently as I would like. There are a few reasons for this and I'm going to go into them in order of how significant they were.

First and foremost, I decided that I would finally quit smoking this month. Well, not smoking persay - I hadn't been smoking for most of the year in the first place - but more nicotine itself, because I was still chewing gum and using patches from time to time... as well as having the occasional stress smoke, but let's not talk about that. The reason for wanting to quit nicotine is simple and obvious, so I won't go into it too heavily, but the primary reason for quitting (besides health) was financial: I need to tighten up my budget where I can because I want to start purchasing assets and other things for the new games I am making.

I've learned that, for me at least, the worst side-effect of quitting nicotine isn't the cravings but the 'brainfog' that comes with it instead. It's like there's a big weighted blanket draped over my mind on some days and it makes it genuinely hard to think, which makes it genuinely hard to write, which means that I've spent a lot of my day staring at a half-filled word document this month.

I had considered quitting when I had finished the update. It would have been a lot easier, and if I had waited a month then it's very likely that the update and the other things would have been posted. But at the same time, I was just so incredibly done with it. It's been a habit of mine for over a decade and with my focus now on being healthier I just needed to eliminate it. Chewing the gum was making me feel sick and all it made me want to do was smoke a cigarette. So, one night, around the end of May, I just decided to kick the whole thing: go cold turkey. No patches, no gum, no occasional cigarette: just throw it all away and really focus on being healthier. I knew it would affect my output this month but I didn't know it would affect it this badly. Plus, I knew that if I didn't stop now then I'd just keep coming up with excuses to lean on the vice: like, if I waited until A Tiny Furry In A Huge World v1.3 was finished, I'd just say something to myself like well, now that's done you'll be starting a new project, so you'd better keep smoking until you've figured that out...

It was time to break the cycle, so, I did, and I'm sat here now over a month nicotine free. This is not the longest period I've ever quit, but it is long enough that my concentration is starting to return. Over the last couple of days in fact I've been writing more confidently than I have in years.

The next reason is that one of my close friends ended up going through a terrible trauma that isn't really my business to go into, especially not on Patreon here. What I will say though is that it was physically and emotionally awful for her, and what I will also say is that I spent a good portion of the month out of the apartment with her making sure that she was okay and that she had everything she needed.

The third and final reason is a little tricky to explain, but I think the best way to put it is with the word fatigue. If I'm being honest, the last twelve months or so have been completely exhausting. This time last year I moved house, and then I had to go the dentist six times in three months, and then I caught covid around Christmas, then I had to go back and forth to the doctors because I was having dizzy spells so bad that they were consistently putting me on the floor...

... the point is, it's all been a little tiring, and I haven't really taken the opportunity to sit down and say to myself, hey, now you're resting for a couple of weeks, or, you're on vacation or whatever. I do take a day off here and there, obviously, but even then I'm thinking about work or the next thing that I need to do or... the list goes on.

So that's what I did for the past couple of weeks. I was planning to just do it for a few days and then throw myself back in there for the update, but then a few days turned into a week, and then a couple of weeks, and now it's almost the end of the month and yeah, here we are. During the vast majority of this time I pretty much cut myself off from the internet entirely, taking time away from the computer to reflect on stuff and to think about how to best proceed forward with both my work and my physical and mental wellbeing. Which was nice! If you haven't seen me on Discord or on other platforms for a while, then this is why: I'm not dead, but I did need to take some time away from the computer and the keyboard for myself.

On one hand, I'm really glad that I took this break. On the other, I'm disappointed in myself because I should have communicated this better to everyone, either at the beginning of the month or when I decided to take that break. It is completely fine for me to take a break of course, but what is not completely fine is for me to promise a whole month of content and then not deliver on it at all.

I should have known that I was tired and I should have been honest about that and told everyone that I'd be relaxing for most of the month. I'm sure that most people would understand given that I'm pretty public about the stuff that's been going on this year. Instead I try to pretend that everything is fine and I push through it because that's the only thing I know how to do, and I'm afraid that if I stop for more than a few days then everything I've accomplished over the past few years is just going to disintegrate.

It is really sucky to have a dead month on here: if you're disappointed then trust me, I'm just as disappointed in myself if not moreso. Honestly, so far, it's kind of been a bit of a crappy year overall. I feel like I've not been able to reach to the highs that I want to reach to and that things have been slower than they should be.

During my break I reflected on this fact a lot, and what I've decided is that no matter how much the first half of the year sucked - the feeling of slow progress, the medical stuff, realising that I've been taking horrible care of myself - that there is no point in wallowing in it. That the past is the past, and that I need to stop thinking about it and focus on what I can effect and change, which is, well, the future. You can't change the past, but it's never too late to turn over a new leaf, or... something like that.

So, as much as I am going to apologize for disappearing for the entire month (sorry, sorry, I'm really sorry) I'm not going to sit here and crucify myself over it because what would be the point, you know? What's been done can't be undone, and all I can do is focus on being a better person in the present. This mindset is ultimately what I've decided to try and adapt going forward with just about everything: rather than wallow in guilt, use that negative emotion as motivation to make better decisions in the present.

I will say it one last time: I'm sorry that the first half of this year has been a little spotty, and I am especially sorry that June didn't work out at all like I wanted it to. What I will say though is that July is going to be great, and that I have some truly amazing stuff coming up for the rest of the year too, both in terms of stories and in games. I feel like I've said something similar a few times this year already, but... this is really it. With the throes of nicotine addiction behind me and my head clearer in many ways, I can really get started on everything that I want to accomplish in 2024.

I'm going to take tomorrow off to catch up with a few people on Discord and other places that I haven't spoke to in a bit: to everyone I speak to on there, sorry! After that, going into July, there won't be a beginning of the month post 'cause it'd just be the same as this month's post, so... I'll just be posting content. I'll have two stories out in the first two weeks of the month, and after that I'll be building up to the big release of v1.3 at the end of the month with a poll and a dev log. Seriously it's a big release. There's plenty of content you haven't seen yet, I promise...

Thank you for being patient with me. Going forward, if this ever happens again, I promise at least to be more communicative about things.

See you in a few days with a story!