Somehow, this became a lost year... · 10:00am Dec 31st, 2022
It has now been a full year since my last blog post, and how much progress did I make in my LEGO Equestria Girls series since then? Well, after finishing one of the side stories back in April, I have sadly made virtually no further progress at all. Why? To be honest, I'm struggling to figure that out, myself.
Looking back at past years, there's really not much more that happened this year compared to earlier years that had been full of progress. I got the first few stories done at a time when I played Civilization V for what would ultimately be a total of over two thousand hours of total gameplay time. I got the more recent stories done (two per year, at that) when I then became busy playing through literally every available Lego game from prior to 2020. On top of that, the additional time I've spent on other daily interests has (as far as I can recall) remained mostly the same since all of those previous years. And yet, every day for much of this year felt like an endless treadmill, where I seemed to accomplish nothing more than my daily check on certain things, and even forgoing some proper sleep in bed for up to a week at times was ineffective at giving me a chance to do any writing at all. I could go on and on about what exactly I check up on every day, but I'm pretty sure most of you have no interest in such personal details, so I won't even bother trying to further elaborate any of my pointless excuses here.
I remember mentioning either in another blog or in an author's note that I had gotten a new tablet on which I would continue my fanfiction writing, based on the idea that having easier access would allow me to record any interesting ideas that I could then quickly add to the next chapter. However, it seemed that once I started putting off making further progress right at the often difficult part of starting a new chapter, I somehow just couldn't bring myself to even take a quick moment to add in some brief notes, and thus my progress over the past eight months has pitifully been only one single paragraph. That could be because after some technical frustrations, I had tried going back to doing my writing on my computer, but now after eight months of nothing at all, I decided last week to go back to the tablet, so we'll see if I can finally start making some progress (even if it's at a rate of just one paragraph per day, that would still mean that at least some progress is actually being made).
At the absolute minimum, I had wanted to get just one chapter of the tenth story posted within the year of 2022... and I ultimately failed to reach even that embarrassingly low bar. Well, nothing like miserable failure to motivate someone to do better next time, and I definitely do not want to repeat next year the lack of progress I had made this year. Clearly, I will need to cut back on a lot of various things if I'm going to give myself a realistic chance at actually making some serious progress with my fanfiction writing. If I can somehow get the next chapter done before the year is halfway over, I'll consider that a win for me, but only if I can then keep the momentum going and not get stuck at the start of a new chapter once again. (I suppose if there's any silver lining to all of this, it's that I had made sure my unexpected hiatus that started over a year ago occurred at a point in the story where a period of action had just come to an end, with the upcoming chapter to start setting things up for the next act.)
I'm very sorry I was unable to deliver any substantial progress on my stories this year, and I hope those of you who have been very patiently waiting for the next update will still stick around for when I can (hopefully!) finally get the next chapter done and start moving on to some really interesting parts of the story. Well, wish me better luck for the new year...
Well, if you plan to work on your Lego stories, could you focus on the next blooper update?
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Seriously? I thought I had made it clear long ago that my intent for that particular story was to do only the four stories I had done prior to writing that and nothing more. There's a good reason it's been marked with the Complete tag. It's not a mistake or some flimsy suggestion. It's a fact.
I mean, really, my top priority here at this time is to just get the next chapter done on the tenth main story that's still ongoing. If I've been struggling to get even so much as a single paragraph done on this, what makes you honestly believe that I could even consider going back to something that I've long since declared to be done and over with? I've already beaten myself over resetting my goals to a ridiculously low level, and the last thing I need right now is someone demanding that the bar be raised further out of reach.
Put simply, please stop asking about that particular story. My answer has been unchanged for years and it's never going to change.
Believe me you're not the only one for who this year sucked. I collected so much academic debt over the first half of the year and had to spend the second half just to close them all (and got new debts in the process for a new year).
On the bright side I'll probably be back and catch up with your stories in a month or two.