Hello again, everyone, it's been quite a while. I believe the last time I updated a story on either here or was back in October, so it's been... eight months now?

Yeah, so it's been quite a while. And for the longest while, I really couldn't muster up the energy to do any writing, or much of anything I used to do, thanks to the very demanding schedule at work. I played games a lot, I read a lot, I wrote a lot. Then in December, I ended up being in my first relationship, which was a total clusterfuck of a rollercoaster. Once I started being in that relationship, I started feeling constricted doing the things I love, because it felt like I just had to devote all of my attention that wasn't my job to her, and that started limiting me from doing the things I love to do because they took too much focus to do.

Playing the more intense games that I play now, such as Rocket League and Star Wars Battlefront II, for longer periods of time take substantial focus and concentration due to their extremely complex mechanics for higher-level players such as myself, and in my case, writing a chapter, proofreading and checking for spelling and grammar issues, publishing, checking format issues if there are any, responding to reviews and comments, can take many hours, sometimes several days to do, even for just a single cycle, especially when I write larger chapters like I do for my Pokemon story on , and it felt like I no longer had the time to do those things because of that pressure to be with my girlfriend.

It took until just a few days ago for me to realize that was a very unstable and toxic relationship to be in, that I had to support and be considerate of the other person but did not receive the same support and consideration in return, and when I did, I ended the relationship then and there, because I'd much rather be single and still be able to do the things I enjoy than be in a relationship where it feels like I'm being judged for every step I make or every decision I make, where it feels like I have a visegrip around my neck that gets tighter and tighter with each passing day. What also didn't help matters is the fact that my mental state, since possibly as far back as 2013 or 2014, has never been all the way up there, at least not where I wanted it to be, and I've struggled with random bouts of depression for those years now that, when they strike, sap away all my energy to do anything except keep myself fed because those poor states would make me believe that doing anything else is pointless when I already knnow for a fact that that's not true.

I figured, now that I'm fresh out of that relationship and taking two weeks of well-deserved paid time off from work, that now's a better time than ever to come back to writing and making a good story for people to read like I've always loved doing. Now, for longtime fans of my work, you're probably familiar with my knack for just randomly writing chapters when I feel like it. And you'd be correct in thinking that's not going to change now; just because I'm off work at the moment doesn't mean it's going to stay that way, and once it's time to head back to work, updates will obviously be quite infrequent, possibly once a month or less.

Though this post isn't all doom and gloom; there is, in fact, a metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel. While my schedule, if any of you remember, is still pretty bad for consistent updates right now, if everything at the company goes according to plan, I'll be moving to a much more manageable schedule sometime in July that guarantees I have weekends off, which will make it a lot easier to set aside time to write my stories and to reply to all of your feedback, as well as do many of the other things I love on my downtime from work.

Now, that's not to say I'm heading back to writing immediately, but I will be trying to start writing chapter 21 of The Trials of Destiny tomorrow; it's not happening today because, in a surprising plot twist, my mom wants to learn how to play the Xbox so she can join me and my brother when we play, and as soon as I'm done putting this up on Fimf and , I'll be showing her the ropes on one of the games I play most frequently.

Also, one more thing: I realize, after several months of not writing The Trials of Destiny, that I should not have described my characters' skillsets in the A?N of each chapter; that's basically me handing you a spreadsheet of everything the characters can do and then letting you make your own decision on how things should play out, and that doesn't work well at all in this kind of environment because you'd then be letting some people down even though their opinions were formed solely from their own thoughts, and I don't want to lose readers because of such a glaring oversight. So, before I start writing Chapter 21 tomorrow, I'll be going back through all the other chapters and removing any kind of statistic-related info for the characters, wherever I put them.

Y'all take it easy now, enjoy whatever you decide to read, and I'll see you in the next one!

-MajinSM