Recently I've been living the digital hermit life and not really letting people in on what I'm doing.
I haven't posted publically on twitter in about a year, and I also left tumblr and cohost about a month ago. I also decided to stop giving myself writing deadlines for my web novel, Unjust Depths, and just write when I want to and when I am happy with working on it. To me all of this stuff, the deadlines, the social media marketing, "networking," it was becoming really damaging to my mental and physical health. A series of health problems has left me in a somewhat debilitated state and I could not keep up with the speed of the world and trying to fight for people's attention while tending to my own needs. So I just stopped participating and am trying to go at my own pace.
Since then, I've written about 11,000 words of a new project I'm excited about. I've also written about 20,000 words of Unjust Depths. Because there's no deadline, I've been working on multiple chapters at once and just putting down ideas and writing scenes where I think they fit best, instead of "cramming everything I can into next week's chapter to meet the deadline."
For people who are dying to know, I am hoping to have an Unjust Depths update in August. Chapter 13.12 is almost complete.
No, as much as it looks like, I am not "giving up" on Unjust Depths.
However, the "5 year plan" thing I joked about is looking grim. Look forward to "finishing" Unjust Depths in the 2030s.
If you're not along for the journey, we can't ride. Sorry not sorry.
Anyway, can I necessarily say, social media """detoxing""" (ugh, I hate that term lol) has made me happier?
Nah, because depression just doesn't work that way.
However, not having these deadlines and these things over my head has led to me spending more time with my beautiful wife, playing more games, and even cracking open some books again. When Unjust Depths was a weekly, I did not have time for *anything*. When Unjust Depths switched to 2/month, I was still struggling to have a life outside of it. It demanded a lot of me.
As much as I love my art and will continue making it, I've needed burnout recovery for a while.
Letting things breathe has been nice, and I am excited I got to write something way different too.
Anyway, I hope to use this blog to do things like this update. And other things too.
I have a day job as a technical writer so it'll be nice to practice HTML/CSS more.
Anyway. Madiha, signing off!