I’m a few days late, but here I am with a summary of how September went. The gist: it didn’t go well.
The full story: I spent all of September in a combination of burnout and a major depressive episode. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this in SotS before, but I am Bipolar. I’m medicated, but I still have manic and depressive episodes, they just don’t affect me as badly as they did before I was on medication. I didn’t realize I was burned out at the start of September and kept trying to work through it with dismal results, and the continued failures pulled me down into a depressive episode, which combined with the burnout to bring my productivity to a complete stop. So for September I got… very little done in general, and nothing finished. I actually considered just skipping SotS this month because I had nothing to report but, as you can see, I wrote it up anyway.
So what did I do in September? Well… I got really into TCGs again, haha.
My spouse pointed out to me that whenever I’m starting to come out of a burnout episode I get hyperfixated on one of my hobbies. This time around, it was TCGs. I’ve always been a huge TCG fan and I’ve played a few over the years, mostly Magic: The Gathering due to its extreme popularity in my area. However, I’ve been growing tired of Magic and wanted to take a break from it, so I started looking into returning to Pokemon TCG. I used to collect and play Pokemon back in the 2010s, but finances pulled me away from it. However, turns out it’s actually a lot cheaper to play Pokemon than it is to play Magic. Sooo, I dipped my toes back into the game, and started building decks, visiting card shops, and playing PTCG Live.
It’s honestly been very refreshing to get to get back into a hobby I’ve had to back burner for a long time. I think it’s helped me come out of the burnout and depression, as I do feel like writing and working again.
So what am I hoping to do for October? Well, thanks to the unintentional September break, it’s going to be a packed month. These are my plans:
- Complete “The Wolf Who Caught the Phoenix” for Transhet Jam #2. (Started working on it again today!)
- Edit and post the opening chapters of Pierce the Sky for Science Fantasy Jam. (Ch. 01 is basically finished, I just want to do one more pass through it.)
- Launch the Between You, Me, and the Moonlit Sea Backerkit campaign! It goes live on the 29th! You can follow the Backerkit to be notified when it goes live by clicking here.
- Celebrate my birthday! It’s on the 22nd and I’ve been saving up for it so I can do something big and cool. I often get very sad about my birthday, so I’m trying to fend that off as much as possible.
- And, with whatever time I have left after “Wolf & Phoenix” and PTS are finished, it’s back to BYMMS to continue the tail end rewrites and edits.
So that’s the State of the Soul!
