Good evening everyone, time to check in once more. I gotta say, my new job is a biiiit more physically tiring than my last one. In my last job I could sit down literally all day and I could wheel units in and out from my station. My new job is split between sitting to build stuff and getting up to pick parts out of the storage warehouse area, and this proved to be a bit rough. After almost 5 years of totally sedentary work, my body got completely out of shape for standing/walking/bending work and it made the first part of the month more than a little rough. It was pretty hard to conjure the energy to write after dealing with that every work day, but thankfully I endured and so far have managed to attend every shift for the first month of my contract.

So far so good! My fingers are still crossed, but I'm not gonna relax until I get that permanent full-time conversion.

That being said, the exhaustion did mean I fell a bit behind my goals for the month, but thankfully not that far. Let's get right to it shall we?

MARCH 2026 WRITING SUMMARY

-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
❌ -Untitled Gift Story for AuroraLatios: Wrote 0 words
❌ -Editing of Untitled Gift Story for AuroraLatios: Edited 0 words
❌ -Editing of Shanelios in Silver: Edited 0 words
✔️ -Mutagen Origins - Chunk 6: FINISHED! Wrote 2,032 new words.
✔️ -Editing of Mutagen Origins - Chunk 6: FINISHED! Edited 19,441 total words, adding 17 new words in the process.

-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
✔️ -Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 8: FINISHED! Wrote 9,133 new words.
❌ -Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 8: Edited 0 words
✔️ -Arina is All - Chunk 13: Wrote 5,638 new words
✔️ -Blightwrath - Chunk 2: Wrote 7,713 new words

❌ -TOTAL WORDS WRITTEN IN MARCH 2026: 24,533 words
❌ -TOTAL WORDS EDITED IN MARCH 2026: 19,441 words

Phew. You know, all things considered, this isn't that bad. I only missed my quota by 4,634 total words. Given the magnitude of some of my past fuckups that's utterly mild. Taking that deficit out of last month's 19,653 word surplus means we still have a year-on surplus of 15,019 words. I think, given the stress of learning a new job and adapting to physical work again, this is pretty damn good. We take these.

Granted I do feel bad about keeping AuroraLatios waiting so long now too, but at this point all my commissioners know well how slow I can be. Sometimes when I'm stressed I just need to focus purely on my own work rather than commissions in order to keep my muse alive at all, and I think learning a new job certainly counts as plenty stressful. That being said, next month is the middle month of my contract, so I can hope it'll be the most boring and uneventful of the three months. Let's see if I can knock out that comm for AL this month, shall we?

APRIL 2026 WRITING GOALS

Well with the previous Mutagen Origins chunk all cleared off, I've at least kept my editing queue from exploding too much. But adding the new COTP chunk to it means it hasn't exactly shrunk this month either. I think I'm gonna try to keep them balanced this month while still working on the comm.

-PRIMARY OBJECTIVES-
-Untitled Gift Story for AuroraLatios: Expected 4,500 total words
-Editing of Untitled Gift Story for AuroraLatios: Expected 4,500 words to edit
-Editing of Shanelios in Silver: 22,805 total words to edit
-Editing of Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 8: 27,912 total words to edit
-Blightwrath - Chunk 2: Expected about 10,000 words left to finish the chunk

-SECONDARY OBJECTIVES-
-Crossing of the Paths - Book 2: Darkness & Light - Chunk 9: ANY amount of words
-Arina is All - Chunk 13: ANY amount of words
-The River in the Valley - Chunk 5: ANY amount of words

Total Expected Writing Wordcount for April 2026: 30,417 words
Total Expected Editing Wordcount for April 2026: 55,217 words

Well, this does feel relatively doable, methinks! I really should prioritize editing Dreadfulartist's comm ASAP since it's been fully rough drafted and sitting on the editing queue for so long. He's still been as insanely busy as ever though so I'm hoping he's not been sitting there waiting impatiently for it. I also have plenty of room here for personal work too. Best part is that because this update journal is so late into April already, I've already had one weekend to work on writing and it's gone really well for Blightwrath. But of course that's not counting here for this journal so you'll just have to wait and see it! Needless to say, Blightwrath Chunk 2 is going to be absolutely badass and I hope y'all enjoy it as much as I have!

And hell, I MIGHT even start the next Mutagen chunk too if the muse really slaps me. That story is getting closer and closer to completion now and I'm excited to finally get it done soon.

Let's just hope that April turns out as uneventful as I'm hoping, yeah? Given current events that have been unfolding in meatspace I am... understandably nervous about that shit. But I'd rather not focus on it. As always, wish me luck and I'll see you next month!