Update on General Affairs · 3:20pm Oct 25th, 2017
Hey guys. I've been a bit silent of late, and that's because a lot has happened. Most of it is good, though, but it does mean I've been kept pretty busy/exhausted.
The biggest change for me was that, after four years, I graduated. I did pretty well, all things considered! Even had the highest marks that year in Medical Device Regulation, which is pretty swish. I got to wear the silly hat and wear the wizard robes, which was also fun (if a bit swelter-y). Then I went back to Europe with my family whilst I looked for jobs. The next big change was that I found one, although it's not really a job. I'm currently doing a doctorate in engineering on medical devices. I get given money by the university to live and pay for food and housing and booze, and in four years I'll have (hopefully) progressed the field of medical device engineering in some respect. I also get to go home to Scotland, where I haven't lived since I was a child.
The downside is that during the first year, I'm essentially trying to catch up what medical or bioengineering masters students will have as common knowledge, which leaves me with an absurdly packed timetable with a lot of info to cram in not a lot of time. This has meant I've not been able to write two words in, and have struggled even to keep on top of things on The Writer's Group. So sorry for not writing more stuff! Eventually the cramming and catching up will end and I'll get the opportunity to manage my own timetable, but until then I'm struggling to find the energy and time to write. This has proven especially frustrating as I've been hoping to work on a personal writing project that has little to do with MLP, but of course I do still want to keep writing about ponies. They're still super fun.
The personal project is still in planning phase, although I'm hoping that at the end of it it'll have its own website and stuff. For now that's just thoughts for the future, though.
In other news, the results for the AppleDash contest came out! I actually placed this time, which is a relief, since I've wanted to win one of them for literally years since the first one came out. Titanium Jack placed second, which means I get to spend $150 on some oversized poster of Rainbow Dash, presumably. So that's neat! If you get the time, check out the other participants on the AppleDash group: I'm told most of the entries (which apparently amount to 200K-something words) were pretty swish.
Since I cut a lot of ideas out from Titanium Jack due to them being, in my opinion, rather distracting from the main story between Rainbow and Applejack, I'm thinking of doing a sort of 'author's notes' blog later covering some of the lost ideas, initial concepts, and hidden details that I ran through. Spoilers will abound, though, and a lot of the things I'll be talking about will refer to things that were left unclear or up to the reader's interpretation, so if you read it and would prefer to view things your own way, don't let me stop you. Reading is an interpretive experience, after all.
That's all from me, I guess. I have more work to do.
-Hap
The studies are more important. You don't have to worry about not writing stories.