Hey guys, just thought I'd stop by and let you know that things have been going relatively well on my end; I've finished two of the three biggest projects I had, and I am making good headway on the third.  I expect it will be done some time in the next two weeks, if things continue at the pace they are now.

Thanks again!

-Tom

There is a lot of stuff I'd like to say here.  You have been warned.   I'm going to start off with a little rambling about myself so that you can understand a bit better where I'm coming from with this post.  

I am not a clever pony.  By this I'm not referring to intelligence (I do have my fair share of that ), but I am oblivious as hell.  For those of you familiar with Sherlock, it's the opposite of what he does.  I don't know a whole lot about people because I grew up in a fairly isolated community.  This also goes for me- I am only now beginning to learn a little bit about myself and how I work and think.  One thing that I do know about people is that we like to escape from our lives every now and then, and I am no exception.  I more so than most, tend to deal with problems by avoiding them.  As you can imagine, this doesn't end well very often.  The problem from there is that instead of trying to fix the root cause of whatever it is that is wrong, I just go off and find another distraction.

Let me skip ahead a bit here and talk about something recent.  Cutie Mark Con was this weekend, and I was fortunate enough to be in attendance for it.  It was a fabulous experience and I met some really awesome people (ROBcakeran53, Cyril the Wolf) and went to some awesome panels.  Overall, a great experience.

However, coming back from the con and the good times therein, I guess you might say reality slapped me in the face, quite literally. (It's about as painful as it sounds)  When I got back, there were several problems that I'd let sit for faaaar too long that basically exploded in my face, all at once.  Now, well, I'm at a crossroads.  Like I mentioned in the preamble here, I tend to try and sweep my problems under the rug and hope they go away.  It's a bad habit and if there's one thing I hate most about myself, that's it.  After things hit the fan and I got a spare moment, before I even knew what I was doing I found myself sitting at my computer launching a game client.  I hadn't even tried to do anything.

That's when I realized how much of a hole I'd dug myself into.  I am at the point where I am trying to find a distraction from my distractions.  That's where you guys come in.  I have been neglecting MLP and fimfic for a while now; I didn't even realize just how long it's been since I wrote anything or did something of value.  That was the last nail in the coffin when I got back- I'd gotten a question asking me if I was done writing for FiM.

I don't want to be done with FiM.  I really, really love the people here, and the show, and the setting, and everything about Pony.  However, I realize that it is, at the end of the day, just a distraction.  Not that distractions are inherently bad, but if let out of hand, they take control of your life.  I let myself out of control here, and just about everywhere else too.

This has been a lot of text, I know, but the gist of what I'm trying to say is that I'm at a really bad point right now.  I need to seriously get my shit together or I will have to face some things that I'd really rather not, and there's no shoving this under the rug.  I can't go on like I am now.  So, in light of that, I am going to cut all the excess baggage from my life.  This doesn't mean I'm leaving the fandom or anything remotely so drastic, but until I get things sorted out, I have to avoid spending too much time here or on any games of mine.  I'll still check messages and such, but I can't promise that I'll be able to read, edit, or write Pony for a while.  

I'm sorry that it's come to this.  Hopefully I can fix things sooner rather than later, but I can't make any promises or estimates on when I can resume activity here.  Thank you so much for sticking with me (some of you for almost two years! ), and I hope that upon my return sometime in the future I can make it up to you with a vengeance for all of the lost time.

tl;dr- I need to take a break from Pony.  I'll be here, just not writing or editing or anything.

Yes, yes, I know I'm behind.  I'll watch season 3 once I get finished with my fanfic.  And after I get 100 wins on Dota.  And maybe I'll read through all my favorites.  Yeah, then I'll watch the rest of season 3.

That moment when you realize that your 114 unread chapters total over two hundred thousand words.

It sucks because the majority of my favorites are stories where I would normally drop everything to go and read because they're that good.  A word of advice to the wise- don't let your chapter updates pile up.  

Yes this title is a Dota 2 reference

This is just a bit more musing from me- if that's not what you came here for, don't feel obligated to read on.

Anyway, my wireless router glitched up about five hours ago, and until now I have been without internet access.  In that span of time I have alternately wandered around my house complaining to no one in particular, looking for a long enough ethernet cable to go from my access point to my computer, trying fix the router, and playing that one Fire Emblem game that I never beat.  But I just couldn't stop thinking about everything that I couldn't do while my router was down.

Which brought to an interesting realization; I never realized how dependent I'd become on the internet in my day-to-day activities.  I didn't know how much I'd be missing out on if I couldn't talk to people instantly, on-demand.  It's a humbling thought, and I just figured I'd put it out there for anyone interested to think about.

And I am still plodding along on writing, I assure you.

Fate is such a fickle thing- typoes can become the most amazing of things in the right circumstances.  Also, sequelitis, baby!

===Unrelated===

Anyway, I just wanted to speak my mind, if you don't mind listening.  One of my friends recently gifted me a copy of Dota 2, and I decided to give it a whirl.  Things went well; very well, in fact.  So well that that's where I've been for the past few months.  I'm sorry.  It is quite the addictive game, and I have a good group to play with.  As you might expect, it's a little hard to remember how much I love Pony when I play Dota during the majority of my spare time nowadays.  It pains me to think that I might have to limit the time I spend on one or the other, because I most certainly will not be giving up on Pony Pony Pony for a long while, but I highly enjoy Dota and I find it very stimulating for the mind.  

What does all this mean?  I don't know, but it makes me feel better.  I'll try and write something tonight.  Maybe I'll post a gDoc and people can come in and out and help with stuff.  Am I popular enough for that?  Hmm.  /ramble

Hey all, my apologies for the delay in the next chapter of Turn That Frown Upside Down (henceforth 'TTFUD', because I don't feel like typing the whole title every time ).  I got slapped with a big project that was due yesterday, so now that it's done I can get back to working on fanfic stuffs.  Expect an update in the next three or four days.

On an unrelated note, I tried submitting The Name Game to EqD a while back, and it was sent back to me citing errors with semicolons and hyphens as reasons for not being sent to prereaders.  If any of you are more savvy than I am with those two types of punctuation and would be willing to look over TNG (The Name Game (yes I am that lazy) ), I would appreciate that.

Lastly, I'd like to thank all of you for following me to begin with.  I appreciate every one of you.

TTFN (ta-ta for now),

-Tom

Ever since that last blog post I've been in a pretty bad slump.    It's kind of like writer's block, except with everything.  Many apologies to those who are/were waiting for something from me; as a consolation prize, I am currently going back over MLP:Prime and doing all that serious editing that I wanted to do.  Sudden bursts of inspiration are nice- I just hope I can ride this one all the way to Prime's completion, because there's so much else I'd like to be working on.  Like Ye Olde Equestrian, and possibly some continuations/expansions of other stories of mine.    shameless self-promotion is shameless I regret nothing

Many thanks to all of you for sticking with me, especially Mental Vortex, who is awesome and you should tell him he's awesome.  Feel free to spam my inbox with nagging comments about how I'm doing- it helps.  You can help me keep a consistent schedule for writing by sending me lots of PMs.  nudge nudge wink wink

I can sum up how I'm feeling right now with

And I sincerely hope all of you can say the same!  I just can't stop smiling, though, because I just passed my certification exam!  

WOOO!

And now I will spend the rest of my day writing about ponies and playing video games.