Firstly, I would like to thank all my friends and followers for offering me support through these past few difficult years. I don’t think I need to sum up (again) what’s been going on, but suffice to say that it’s been a lot of pretty serious stuff. Fortunately, things finally seem to be on the upswing. For starters, I moved back to my hometown in Montana. Washington just wasn’t working out for me very well, and while it had some gorgeous scenery and I loved my drive to work, I just wasn’t happy. Moving back home has done wonders for my overall mood and really cemented the fact that, given the choice, I never want to leave again.

I’ve snagged myself a new job which, while it isn’t exactly what I wanted, is (barely) paying the bills for the first time in a couple of years, and I’m willing to stick this one out until I find a better one (or until we go out of business, whichever comes first, I guess.)

Also, I’ve finally gone to see help for my anxiety, and between some medication and some therapy, I think I’m doing a lot better. It’s still a daily struggle, though, but hopefully it’s an upward one. (If any of you guys out there are interested in that whole thing, lemme know, I’m willing to blog more about it in specific.)

Pony image to break up the text.

Lastly, there is the boyfriend situation! My dear Mister Adequate: my coblogger over at The Android’s Closet, my comrade in arms, my partner in crime, my best friend for the last seven years. We finally realized we had a thing for each other earlier this year, and to everyone’s cries of “WELL IT’S ABOUT TIME”, we got together in April. Happily Ever After, right? Well, not quite yet. See, there’s a little wrench here. I’m in Montana in the United States. And he’s in England. Yeah.

Other people have made cross-country relationships work, though, and we are determined to follow in their footsteps. We’re both saving up money for visits and hope to sort that out very soon, and the long-term plan is for him to move over here, something which he has wanted to do for quite some time (since long before he met me.) There will be a lot of red tape involved and this might take a good few years, but we both feel optimistic about it. We’re happy together, and that’s worth all the work. /schmaltz

So that’s sort of where I’m at. I’m still writing, and I love and appreciate all the feedback on my first book. If you liked it, please leave reviews and ratings on Amazon and GoodReads! That would mean the world to me. <3

Okay, that’s about it. And now back to my other blog for video game posts for the next six months!

There is another, slightly less positive reason for it, though. And I’ve decided to come clean:

Some of you are probably aware that I’ve been having a tough time lately. A good chunk of this is financially based: it’s hard to live paycheck to paycheck, selectively choosing which bills you’ll pay and which you’ll “conveniently forget” this month (and then prepping yourself for the incoming glut of phone calls from the bills you “forgot”), and patching up your ratty work pants with duct tape because you can’t afford new clothes.

Now before I go any further, I want to stress that this is in NO WAY some sort of begging post. A good deal of you are in a similar position– that’s the nature of the world we live in today, unfortunately– and even if the financial strain went away, there’s still a lot more going on: my family has fallen apart and factionalized due to my parents’ divorce, there’s mud getting slung around everywhere, and I feel caught in the middle in a very uncomfortable position. Plus, my last romantic relationship ended right as this was all going down, and that’s left me pretty rattled as well.

So here’s the part I haven’t told a whole lot of people: the result of all of this is that I have been an absolute mental wreck for the past six months or so, and it just seems to be worsening. I’ve been anxiety prone my whole life, but never to this extent. The littlest things will set me off and turn me into a sweating, trembling, panicked mess. I have to check my bank account? I panic. I have to go to work? I panic. My boyfriend has to leave for a bit? I panic. And so on.

It’s bad, and I’ve been trying to cope with it as best as I can, but it doesn’t seem to be going away. And so while I’m obviously not like this all the time– any enthusiasm you see from me on Twitter or on the other blog is genuine enthusiasm– I seem to be in a bad state more often than not anymore, and because of that, it’s hard to get as excited about things as I used to and so it’s hard to blog about those sorts of things here.

Finally, after trying to struggle on with this almost alone (aside from my dear boyfriend <3) for months on end, I talked to my mom about it the other day. She suggested I book myself at a clinic where they can offer therapy and possibly more, if needed. It's subsidized, so theoretically I should be able to afford it-- the downside is that the waiting list is something like two months long, because of it.

So now it's just a matter of surviving for the next two months. I've been getting by, I suppose, by surrounding myself with distractions-- I'm reading, I'm playing video games, I'm forcing myself to laugh by watching Whose Line is it Anyway reruns, heck, I'm even writing (I wrote 24k words in a brand new book over the course of the last few weeks, before deciding to temporarily drop it and focus on that one book that I’ve been dangling in front of you guys for months now. Hopefully I can have that one done soon.)

I’ve even gotten myself a new job, which I’ll start two weeks from today. It probably won’t do much about my financial situation– the gas savings are big, but I fear that will probably be counterbalanced by the pay cut I’ll be getting– but hopefully it’s less stressful than my current one, which is, well, pretty stressful.

Anyways, that’s what’s going on. It’s a bit heavy, and I apologize. But I no longer felt like hiding all the bad news from you guys, my readers, so there you have it.

I’d like to think things will look up soon and then I’ll be blogging a little more over here, about things like Linux and fish and watches and comic books. And of course, I look forward to my big post that links to all the places you’ll be able to download my book. Until then, just bear with me <3

Out of curiosity I went to look at my most used tags. Here are the top six:

• Video Games: 43 Posts
• Classic Video Game Monday: 41 posts
• Life of Pike: 20
• Writing: 14
• Rambles: 14
• Linux: 12

…I uh, sort of have a wee bit of a thing for video games, I guess.

Here’s what I’m currently playing:

Civilization IV

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

…and Robot Unicorn Attack.

Because there can NEVER be enough HARMONY, HARMONY, OH LOVE~

I also, uh, resubbed to WoW specifically so I could derp around with a friend as a tauren paladin. I have no idea what I’m doing as a paladin. Button-mashing, I suppose! We’re leveling surprisingly fast, though; it’s going to be hilarious if I wind up with a level 85 paladin out of nowhere.

That Civ IV though, man, lemme tell ya. There is nothing funnier than researching satellites and the Apollo Program in the mid-1800s while building massive airship armadas and submarine fleets on the side and “collecting” various historical figures. It’s like I’m actually living out all my greatest fantasies!

It promptly escalated into my head feeling like it was going to explode, followed by a very, very persistent cough.

I’ve managed to escape a couple of days from work in order to stay home and recuperate, and I’ve spent that time stuffing kleenex up my nose, playing video games and browsing stupid websites and doing… nothing else.

So you can probably imagine my surprise when I attempted to talk today for the first time in a while, and what came out was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. So funny, in fact, that I decided to record it so we can all laugh at the chipmunk that somehow managed to crawl into my throat:

PikeHasNoVoice

(Sorry, I can’t figure out how to make a fancy-pantsy embed so you’ll just have to click and open in a new tab.)

Then, in the name of further hilarity, I give you…

WalrusAndTheCarpenter

I keep going around and talking to myself in this squeaky highpitched voice because I think it’s the funniest thing. I know it’s bad and I should probably just shut up and let my poor vocal cords heal but man, I seriously just keep cracking myself up. I feel like I should be taking requests to make Dramatic Readings of various Dramatic Pieces of Literature in the name of Comedy.

How pathetic is that?

Either way, I kind of hope I still sound this way tomorrow morning. So I can call work with this voice and see what the reaction is. Or if they still want me to come in, so I can be all “HelLO caN I HElp yOU fiNd SOmeThiNG.”

Exciting news, though, if you are one of the two people who haven’t heard yet because I’ve posted/shouted this everywhere. A publisher… a real, live publisher… has the manuscript to that novel I wrote a year or so back. Yes, they liked the query letter and synopsis I sent them and now they’re reading my book. It’s got me terrified and it’s giving me the weirdest nightmares about sudden random major errors in my book that I forgot to fix.

ANYWAYS, if everything goes well, they’ll like what they read, and hopefully this will eventually lead to physical copies of this mythical Pike Project that I’ve been dropping hints about for so long.

Oh, and my apologies if this turns into a Writing Blog for a while. I was attempting to dump all of my Writing Rambles in one spot, namely another blog that no one reads– which is fine, since a lot of my rambling is for my own benefit more than anything– but sometimes I get that itching for feedback, so you might see some stuff here, as well.

TODAY’S WRITING RAMBLE: Writing down a story is like pulling a tooth. It just sits there and bothers you until you go through the painful process of pulling it out, which sucks, but then it feels a lot better when it’s out.

(“Weird Metaphors” is my middle name.)

See the windy road through the trees and the bridge? That’s the road I take whenever I go to work. And whenever I come back.

When going over the bridge, my mind inevitably does something like this:

“Must keep my eyes on the road.
Must keep my eyes on the road.
Must keep my eyes on the road.
Must keep…”

*glances out window*

“DANG IT”

(Note: This place is called Deception Pass. I figured with a name like that, there’s got to be some crazy stories behind it, and it turns out there are. Also apparently parts of “The Ring” were filmed here, which means NIGHTMARES INC because I’m a wuss and that movie scared the pants off of me.)

2.) There was somebody somewhere who could read my mind and control me with a remote control. This belief came about because four-year-old-me could not figure out how, say, my arm moved when I wanted it to, or how I could walk. It all seemed really magical, but because I figured magic wasn’t real I decided that the next best answer was that there was somebody somewhere who figured out what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it and controlled me like a remote control car.

3.) The clock would only move its hour hand when I wasn’t looking, just to spite me. I 100% BELIEVED THIS. I used to go sit in front of the clock for five minutes and not take my eyes off of that hour hand. I KNEW I COULD CATCH IT MOVING. But then I would get bored and leave and when I came back an hour later IT HAD MOVED AND I KNEW IT DID THIS ON PURPOSE.

4.) There was a toilet monster who was going to shut the toilet seat on me while I was sitting on it and make me fall in and get flushed.

5.) The vacuum wanted to eat me and all of my toys.

6.) Wishing upon a star worked and that was how I was going to turn into a gerbil. I thought about this really hard one night when I was about… six, weighed the pros and cons (Cons: loss of intelligence, really short life span. Pro: Get to run around in wheels and balls and tubes all day) and then warned my mom that night not to be surprised if I was a gerbil in the morning.

Yeah, things were special in Baby Pike World.

1. NO SET SCHEDULE:
“Whoops, I stayed up too late tonight watching House reruns. Oh well, good thing I don’t have to be anywhere in the morning~!”

2. NO FEELING BAD ABOUT SPENDING THE DAY ON THE INTERNET:
With a job: “Awww, I wanted to be productive today but I spent the entire day sucked into a link spiral on Wikipedia. I guess there’s always next week.”
Without a job: “I spent the entire day sucked into a link spiral on Wikipedia. AWESOME! Let’s do it again tomorrow!”

3. MORE TIME TO DO ALL THAT CRAP YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO DO BUT NEVER HAD TIME FOR, LIKE REMIX MIDIS OF LADY GAGA SONGS.
…what?

4. SAVING MONEY YOU WOULD HAVE OTHERWISE SPENT ON GAS OR LUNCH AT WORK
Seriously I probably dumped close to $100 a month on lunches/the snack machine alone. And let’s not get into gas money.

5. PLAYING WOW ALL DAY
“Holy crap suddenly I have time to do randoms. On all my characters. OMG. OMG.”

—

WORST THINGS

1. PLAYING WOW ALL DAY
“If I do the Argent Tournament dailies on one more character I’m going to punch a toy kitten.”

2. BEING BROKE
“GUYS GUYS I FOUND A $5 BILL I DIDN’T KNOW I HAD. THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE. I’M GOING TO CELEBRATE BY BUYING ONE MOUNTAIN DEW AND DRINKING IT SLOWLY THROUGHOUT THE DURATION OF THE WEEK.”

3. AWKWARD MOMENTS
Phone Rings
Bill Collector: “Hi uh, your bill for such-and-such is past due.”
Me: “Yeah, I don’t have a job.”
Bill Collector: “Oh.”
*crickets*
Bill Collector: “…well, it’s still due. Just an FYI.”
Me: “Yeah I know.”
Bill Collector: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Bill Collector: “Okay because I just wanted to make sure you know that your bill is due and–”
*click*

4. CABIN FEVER
“I’m going to go drive around for a few hours.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. But it’s at least slightly more interesting than walking in circles around the house.”

5. GETTING OUT OF SHAPE
“OMG MY FEET ARE SOOOO SORE”
“…um, you were only at Wal-Mart for like ten minutes.”
“SHUT UP I’MA GO LAY DOWN. AND PLAY GAME BOY.”

—

Still job-hunting. Your good vibes: send ‘em my way!

So then of course I spend all morning trying to figure out what to blog about.

Face, meet palm.

Anyways, then I thought, I should tell you about some of the crazy crap I used to write about when I was a kid. Cause I wrote a lot back then, too.

1.) Cute Cartoon Bunnies Get Stabbed. I have no idea where this one came from. I made little picture books in spiral bound notebooks, and I had these two recurring rabbit characters named Billy and Mookie. They actually lived in a pretty clever little house filled with cute monsters that provided most of their “technology”. For example, they had a little monster that sat on their windowsill and held up a screen to block out the sun, and when they wanted to open the window they’d pull on his tail and he’d set the screen down.

So obviously one of the picture books involved one bunny coming home to find the other bunny laying on the floor with a dagger in his heart.

Yeah I dunno where I was going with that one.

2.) Cute Cartoon Bunnies Go to Jail: Another time they went to jail. They were innocent, but I guess the justice system in their world isn’t exactly all its cracked up to be.

3.) “The Friendly Candidates”: Back in the days of Clinton/Bush/Perot the TV was nothing but an endless stream of smear tactics. Leave it to me to write a book where U.S. presidential candidates actually liked each other and gave each other encouragement. Ahh, cute lil’ optimistic me.

4.) “Gerbil Adventures”: Gerbils go on crazy adventures throughout the house. These stories actually weren’t too bad.

5.) “My Life”: When I was about eight or ten years old I wrote a fictional autobiography for school. Apparently when I was 8 I thought I was going to grow up to be a vet and also have like, 10 kids. (Mostly because I had fun giving them all interesting names.)

6.) Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Fiction: Yup.

7.) Anthropomorphic Toys: Guys, you have no idea how much I wrote about my toys. See, I managed to convince myself that my toys would come to life when I left the room, Toy Story style (although this was years before Toy Story… I blame the Muppets’ “The Christmas Toy”.) So I gave them all sorts of adventures. First in short stories, and later in two full length novels. Did I mention that I was like… 18 by that point? Who me, Peter Pan?

(If you are, for some bizarre reason, interested in hearing more about said novels, I once rambled about them rather in depth over at my LJ.)

8.) The Tortoise Wins the Race, the Hare Sues Because of Emotional Damage: When I was a freshman in high school one of our assignments was to re-write a fable or fairy tail in a satirical way. I redid the Tortoise and the Hare in a way that I still think was pretty clever, but NO ONE in my class “got it”. Stupid muggles.

9.) Ender’s Game Excerpts Rewritten With the Characters As Furries: I want to say Ender was a squirrel but I can’t remember. P.S. I’m in ur library, ruining ur sci-fi

10.) Yoshi’s Island Novelization: The best part was the super long prologue that went into hilarious unnecessary detail regarding Yoshi culture. (Was possibly influenced by the official “Gremlins” novelization, which went into hilarious unnecessary detail regarding Mogwai culture.)

…ya know, on second thought, maybe we should keep me far away from writing.

Scenario 1:

*Sees Wikipedia article and black and white photo about some inventor/scientist from the 19th century. Said inventor/scientist is usually wearing a three piece suit and top hat.*

Pike: Guhhh *adds to “must date when my time machine is invented” list*

Scenario 2:

Any hot guy in a waistcoat.

Pike: @_@

Scenario 3:

At work.

Pike: “OMG, I’m so tired of people coming and asking me stupid questions about the crickets. NO IT’S NOT ICE, IT’S A GEL WATER. GET IT RIGHT.”

Random Cute Guy With Australian Accent: “Hi, I’m a random cute guy with an Australian accent. I’m going to ask stupid questions about the crickets now.”

Pike: “Okay ^___^”

Scenario 4:

Pike: “Hmm, that guy is okay I guess. I mean, he’s kinda… OMG IS HE WEARING AN OMEGA SEAMASTER? I’M PRETTY SURE HE’S WEARING AN OMEGA SEAMASTER. HOLYSHIZ. COME OVER HERE SO I CAN DROOL ON YOUR WRIST AND WE CAN DISCUSS HOROLOGY LONG INTO THE NIGHT. … … … I mean uh, cute butt.”

Scenario 5:

Gambit and/or Iron Man.

’nuff said.

…

Hey, at least it’s better than Dude Watching With the Brontes, right? …maybe?