Hollow Pony (and Type Writer) Status Update · 8:50pm May 26th, 2022
(My FA notifications are even worse; 20682 and counting)
So yeah it's been a year and three months, or thereabouts? And it's been a hell of a year, lemme tell you. But first, a TL;DR.
I'm still writing. Erratically, without any consistent schedule or output, but still writing. There's seven chapters of Hollow Pony written already, and Chapter 50 is in the pipe. I'm still alive, and plan to continue being alive and writing, just slowly. I'm gonna post a chapter again, every week on Sunday as before, until I run out of chapters again. I'm gonna try and get more in the pipe during those seven-eight weeks, but when I run out I'll likely shift back into hiatus again. I dislike the stop-and-start pace, but I dislike stopping for over a year even more. So we're gonna do this, we're gonna see how it works, and there will be more horsewords. There will always be more horsewords—that, I can promise.
So where have I been?
Well, I've been right here. I drifted away from FiMFiction briefly, which caused a backlog, and sooner or later that backlog of notifications up there started stressing me out. But I've always been poking my nose back in and reading, even if I'm a little behind on a lot of announcements or events. (Both Elden Ring and MLP G5 released during my hiatus, which I find hilarious, but that might just be me.) I don't plan on going anywhere else, like Fanfiction.net or AO3 or whatever. I like Fimfiction; there's ponies and writers who write cute ponies here.
As for what's been going on during that year, WELL. Some of it I can talk about, some of it I can't. I ended a long-running relationship in January 2021, which some might notice is before I went on hiatus. It wasn't directly related, but when you're in a relationship for long enough, your brain is literally wired to include that person. Breaking that relationship—or having it broken, now that I've been on both sides of that happening—is a real shock to that wiring. Things get ripped out and displaced, and you need to spend a while re-wiring everything to sort yourself out. That's just part of the process. And I can't say whether I'm fully finished rewiring or not. For what it's worth, we're still friends, and I maintain open communication with that former partner, about which I'm happy.
You know what else is traumatic? Getting mugged. I got mugged in July 2021, when I went out late at night to go get a burger. I took a stupid shortcut through an empty parking lot, a guy jumped out of his car and pointed a gun at me, and took my bag, with my phone, wallet, passport, and a whole lot of happy memories with him as he drove off. I'm fine physically, but I still have nightmares about that night every once in a while, and it took a very long time to get replacements for everything official, like my IDs. I'll likely never get the stuff I had in that bag from Ciderfest 2019 back, or replaced. I also still have horrible anxiety going out at night, which sucks, because I'm still functionally nocturnal and I used to do a lot of writing out in a park after midnight.
Before anyone asks, yeah, I've already gone through the whole rigmarole with the Henderson police, who were just north of useless. I had a list of transactions done with my cards within 24 hours, including several attempts to withdraw cash at a local casino, and the next day we followed that path to a parking lot where I'm 60% sure we saw the car the guy was driving that night. We took all that info, and the license plate number of that car, to the cops. And the next time I heard from the detective on the case was two months later, long after all the evidence had gone stone cold, and all the surveillance footage from the casino that he very definitely walked around an hour after mugging me had long been deleted. So at this point I've long written off that bag, and the contents thereof, as being totally lost.
Nothing else quite so bad as that, but definitely some rough occurrences over the rest of the year. My paternal grandfather had a stroke in January 2022, and is now being taken care of by my dad. He's particularly beloved, and seeing him so badly damaged by old age was deeply unsettling. He used to teach history in college—but now we're not even sure if he can read any more, and we're all pretty sure he's not going to make it through the year, himself included. My mom, living on the other side of town, had the catalytic converter stolen out from under her car, which has severely impacted local mobility, since I don't have a car myself and was leaning on her for longer drives.
I still don't have a job; the job market in the Vegas valley is in the absolute toilet. My dad is recommending that I move out east, to live with him and that paternal grandfather, but I don't think I can handle moving out there to be a part of that whole hospice situation full-time, even if it means an otherwise-positive change of scenery. But Vegas is definitely going to hell; the rising crime is clearly a symptom of the local economy crashing and burning due to Covid, and long-term, Lake Mead loses more water every year. I give it fifteen years before it starts looking a lot like Mad Max out here in the Mojave, and I wanna be out of here long before that happens.
And then there's just general entropy, as things break down and degrade. In just the last month alone, I've had my glasses snap in half, and a hard drive beginning to fail. I keep getting outer ear infections, and various problems with my gut and feet. My caffeine addiction is slowly getting under control, but that's a struggle, especially since that's uncomfortably tied to my productivity.
But I'm still here. And unless another mugger guns me down, I'm not going anywhere. I've got friends, and I've got goals, and I want to write. I've got so many stories in my head that yearn for the page, I just need to get my head and my hands to cooperate.
As I said, there are seven chapters written now, and an eighth chapter that I'd say is 75% done. I'm going to post one of those every week, starting with this Sunday, along with the usual music and author's notes. And when I run out of chapters to post, then it'll likely be time for another hiatus so I can catch up once more. We'll just have to see what happens when we get there, together.
stay safe and defiantly get out of Vegas soon as i think a food shortage is going to happen soon and that means noncoastal states are going to be hit the hardest.
Damn, really been through the wringer lately huh? Glad you're still kicking despite all that, and welcome back!
Glad you're still with us my man, stay safe out there
I'm glad the ride will continue