Khairete, I hope you all had pleasant holidays and a happy new year's. To those who are still hear, and to friends and family who are sorely no longer with us.

It really has been about half a year since I've last sat down to write any kind of journal, hasn't it? I never meant for it to drop off as much as it did. Perhaps it was the combination of the overwhelming chaos of the year yet at the same time I hadn't felt like there were many things of substance to write about in my personal life either (none which either hasn't been covered better by others or wouldn't come off as whinging at least.)

I suppose the creative slump surely didn't help. So many times, it felt as if I was about to pull myself out of it only to seemingly fall back in. I ultimately had to step away for awhile, not entirely out of choice. As a number of you all know by now, no doubt; I had to do a bit of traveling for medical reasons.

Back in August, I had been diagnosed with stage 1 cancer in my left kidney following a few MRI scans and a biopsy, I had kept it close to my chest for most of the year with only a few close friends knowing about it and on that apologize, I merely didn't want anyone to be worried about me. Especially as Megaplex had been on the horizon and hopefully keep it on the down low until it was taken care of last month.

The (robotically assisted) surgery was a bit of a mixed bag, on one hand I had to lose that kidney entirely, and I learned after the fact the tumor was malignant. But on the other hand, it had been a very smooth operation and nothing was left behind.

Thank you all dearly for the well wishes, on this note.

I was discharged the following day and flew home the following week. Since then I've been healing, getting active again and trying once again to find my creative spark. The Winter Solstice and any plans for it became a bit of an afterthought by that point, unfortunately. I was at least able to do something for the occasion, albeit small.

I had the understood by this point the two-parter story I was working on wouldn't be seeing the light by the end of the year, and it left me depressed me to the point were I couldn't pick it up for awhile. When I did write, it was usually outlines or character details, occasionally I would work on personal pieces but even that wasn't as often as I would like.

I guess my resolution next year is just to get more projects finished so I can finally show you all what I've been at work on these last few years, especially Never Walk Alone.

I'll leave you all with this, 2025 may be over, but we're hardly out of the woods yet. I fear these next three years are going to be brutal, but...one of the ways we endure is through joy and simply refusing to give up living our lives in spite of it all.