Christmas Post - 2016 and Beyond

Hiiii!

I hope, for the most part, that everyone is doing well, or at least keeping it together until after Christmas. I’m doing this blog post earlier than usual because I’m not sure when I’ll be back home or have a stable internet connection (and I’d rather not type out a blog post over my phone). I’ll be in North Carolina for a week or more to spend time with family and friends. I’m really looking forward to it!

So let’s begin this by dealing with the elephant in the room... Yes, there was [really] only one update this whole year. I know that things seem hopeless for Savior, and I’m not going to make any promises that I’ll ever finish it. I’d like to, but I can’t say I will or that it will happen. A lot has happened this year and I’ve had to do a lot of ‘reprogramming’. What I mean by that is, well, I’m not sure what it means. I’m still in that mental state and I can’t look at what I’m currently going through through any other perspective besides my own. What I can tell you is that I’ve had to deal with a lot of personal struggles and I’ve had to give up on a lot of things that use to make me happy. I’ve had to teach myself how to get back up and how to tread water so I don’t sink any further than I already have.

School has really pushed me hard this year with 5 advance classes in the 3000/4000 level range, as has work and financial struggles. I had to eventually give my two weeks notice in October because school was just too much to deal with along with 30-35+ hour work weeks. I was at a point where I was either in school all day, at work all day, or asleep. The rest of my time in between was spent making public appearances with friends and family where most of the time I felt like absolute shit. I felt horrible all the time, and this year felt as if it has flown by. It feels like it should be July and not December. I did however learn a lot this year, more so than I have in a long time. I feel like I’m finally getting to where I want to be in life and I feel surprisingly hopeful and at peace.

For those who have stuck around, thanks for holding out. I’m sure I’ve lost your focus and you probably don’t even know what’s going on in my story anymore. I’ve had to reread Son and Savior, and I’m trying to push myself to finish Slave at the moment. Everytime I do, I see so many more mistakes of mine from the past. It’s a very cringy process I don’t ever enjoy. To me, this is work. I can’t take my own stories seriously.

So, where do we go from here?

Well I have a few plans on updates, one of which will come this week. Yes, you read that right, there will be an update by the end of this week, whether my editors finish it or not. It is a special, but it isn’t Christmas related. What it basically is is a retelling of a side story I had written long ago on Fimfiction and had cancelled. It was a prequel to the series. There will also be moments in the special that hint towards a secret that I’ve kept in the series. This secret has a lot of back story and I’ve worked hard on building it into the series without giving it away. Now the secret isn’t entirely revealed in this special, but it is present. It will get fully revealed in future Savior updates.

I also plan on writing a semi-detailed spoiler post for the entirety of Savior of Eternity, so those of you who want to know what happens and don’t want to wait till I actually write it, you’ll be able to know how it all ends. So keep a look out for that if you’re interested.

Other than that, Savior is still “incomplete” and it will not be cancelled. All I can say is that the cookies come out of the oven when they’re ready...

Over the course of this year, I’ve tried my hand at writing two other spin off stories. One I had posted was about a human and Vinyl Scratch going on a Hunter S. Thompson-style adventure. The other I never posted, a romance fiction I’ve read numerous times in vain attempts to get back into pony fiction. Someday I’d like to post it when I finish it. It shouldn’t be long at all, just around 30k words or so when completed. I’ll probably never touch the drug related fiction again. There was no real goal to it that sounded good in my head. From it though, I did have a fun time writing it, the interactions were pretty great.

Here comes two really cheesy paragraphs, but I hope you take them seriously...

So I hope this Christmas you all take some well earned rest and relaxation for yourselves. I’m sure many of you are dealing with personal or social issues, or things that seem impossible to deal with at the moment. If you do decide to get away from it all, if just for a moment, I hope in your solace that you find understanding, or peace, or forgiveness, or whatever you know deep down is the right thing to do. If you feel inclined, meditation or prayer is also an insightful exercise to see into your blind spots. Whether you’re religious or not, there’s no better way to spend an evening than to get cozy and warm, have a cup of hot chocolate, and to just sit and let your mind wander without having technology distract you. Just by taking a moment, in that sort of setting I described, you can be at ease with the world knowing that everything broken can be fixed, and every problem has a solution.

For me, it was hard to grasp the concept of this time of year. Christmas has really turned into a greedy cash grab, and for years I just wanted to ride it out so that it would go by quicker. Christmas was a beautiful thing once, it was simple and it only asked for you to be compassionate and together with family or friends. It’s now been gutted and stuffed, adorned to look pretty, but is nowhere near what it use to be. Listening to older songs, you realize what Christmas is about. Take for example “Sleigh Ride”, one of my favorite christmas songs. Sleigh Ride’s lyrics encourages us to appreciate the world around us and to admire the little things, such as holding someone’s hand, and being close to someone you love. It promotes being together, eating simple and wonderful food with others, and it even establishes itself by saying, “These wonderful things are the things we remember all through our lives”.

On that final word, I hope you all have a cherished and memorable Christmas and a fantastic end to this year.

-Secrets