It's Been a While · 8:51pm Mar 2nd, 2020
Hi,
It's been a long time. How are you? Still reading happily? Thank you for sticking around.
I've been alright, had a bad time, got worse but slowly getting back up again.
The story why I was gone for so long;
When I was writing stories in my first months on FIM I was using a macbook and the pages application. It was great back then, I could change the colour of the background and text making it easier on the eyes to type for a long time. I still remember fondly constructing my first story; Libera Me. Scribbling away ideas and trying to bring it all together. Making The Marionetter was a fantastic experience, the whole story was made in 4 days with cleanup time excluded as I published each chapter later on. I had another 2 large scale stories in the works each easily reaching in the 100k word count and despite difficulties and my hubris I wanted to carry on. I was not in the best place mentally and writing was a huge help however I think I was not ready for the pitfalls.
So what happened that led to my absence? Simple, apple upgraded the pages software and left all my previous stories unreadable. I could not find a CD or software for the old version, I could not convert, extract, or read the files and after putting out a search for help I found a great dude who got some text from the .pages. However it was incomplete and missed a great deal of what was already written. This crushed me and my motivation, on top of which my computers screen broke and I could not salvage the data on it. On the computer (which I still keep) are some videos of a horse I was tasked with looking after during a voluntary job I took to try improve more on the work front. She was the first horse I was able to work with and we grew very attached. Massive crazy thing but in time she was in great shape and found a good owner. She died about a year after due to a colic from a stress induced by shock. She died in a better place though. Better grounds, better food, and could move about freely. Her name was Equidame H. Lost all my videos of her and the external drive with the backup failed too. Maybe one day I can save enough to hire a company to retrieve all that data. I am not sure anymore they are on that computer but I maintain hope. I gave the drive to be repaired by a friend who has now disappeared with time so its not possible to get that back again. This was before I had to move homes for a job I applied to do.
I was recruited for a live in position job and had to move homes. The job fell through after the owner tried to officially hire me as he was not aware of the high costs of having an employee. The result is I had to leave after one month at the job and on (I wish this was a joke) the week before Christmas. I could not move back but I am lucky I have family to fall back on and I had to move in with them. I still live with them as finding work has been difficult on top of me trying to pull myself out of a very deep pit.
In the meantime I tried my best to get work, to educate myself with useful trade skills and improve my physical and mental health. The physical part is going ok, but not where I wanted to be (but I guess that's true for the majority). The trade skills are helpful but coming by a job or apprenticeship is tough due to my old age and starting a business is impossible in the country I live in where just this year it was published that 90% of self starters fail in 5 years. Up from 70% 5 years ago. I should not say its impossible, it's 10% possible. I am not a top 10% person though.
I have some good news.
The art has kept going, you might remember I used to dabble in art too. I have upgraded software and hardware thanks to the art money. It's a modest upgrade but I am happy with the little tablet.
Now I have some really good news!
I have saved the old writing files in case I ever found a way to convert them. I have! There is a site that now can take pages documents and convert them into text. So they are back up and I will be happy to publish all the fixes I made! Once I look them all over for spelling and format of course.
So why I am writing this post?
You guys were a good bunch to hang about with and always had nice things to say about the stories I made. You deserve to know what's been happening. It still stays with me and I owe an apology for leaving the way I did. I feel better and I am confident to be able to return to writing for fun.
If you are reading this. Thank you for still following!
For now i'll put up all the stories again accept Marionetter as I go back and piece it all together.
And you do not need to worry, I will stay up until the FIM site is no longer on.
Please take care of yourselves in these turbulent times. We all need a place to feel better, and for me that is FIM Fiction.
Shit that was complicated story, still it's nice to see you around here again, and hope to see more of you here; Best wishes to you.
Great to see you back! Been a while since I 'mished you for art, but I hope that what I did helped out a bit, because I sure as heck was happy with the results! Not sure if I ever started reading Libera Me, but if I didn't then I'll try to get to it ASAP.
Welcome back!
Welcome back!
~Skeeter The Lurker
Quite the story—happy to hear everything's started sorting itself out.
Best of luck in the future!
:)
Sorry things have been so shitty my friend. Losing all that must've been incredibly hard, not even being able to see all those videos. Knowing that they're there must be torture. I'm sorry EZ. You don't deserve that, not someone who has been so generous, especially to me, with their time and effort.
You're a good man.
5213087
He'd be the first to tell you he's not. Which is part of what makes him a good man.
5212961 Thanks dude.
5212970 Any help is always appreciated! Your arts were great fun to do and your banner turned out awesome!
5212994
Ay, nice to see you still lurking dude!
5213030
Thank you!
5213060
Thanks dude... :)