Hiatus Over!

Hey guys! I have a confession to make. I had no idea how long this hiatus had been going on for. I had been focusing on my YouTube channel so hard, I forgot to work on the blog. It was mostly because I knew I was safe until the end of November. I didn't realize that I literally had let this blog rot since mid-August.

whoops

That being said, my YouTube hiatus started just one month later.

I upped a video I made about tracing after this, but it doesn't really count

In general, I used this time to take a hiatus from life in general. I felt really frustrated in general that things weren't coming together as I had planned. I had a Patreon, I had a ko-fi. Nothing on the money front other than one friend feeling sorry for me. I had my English list and people promising to record it, but I still only had Cynpoids to play with. (And two banks that I recorded, but I'm not the biggest fan of my voice in UTAU.) As a note, one person promised to record, but got sick. I don't hold that against them, and I'm still vibrating over how happy I am that they are going to record tripitch English for me.

So, with that being all said, I took a hiatus from fandom and promised I wouldn't touch it until November 1st. I did do UtaOber on my deviantArt to interact with the fandom, of course, but that barely counts. I didn't touch any software other than image manipulation software, and I didn't record a single video other than my justification of tracing.

This taught me that I can't do things to try and engage the fandom. No one really is interested in weekly UST releases when no one records my list to use them. I'm scrapping that mess and making USTs because I want to hear an UTAU sing them, not to fit a schedule. My YouTube and this blog are the exceptions to that rule, but for a reason that's for me. I made a commitment, and I'm going to see it through. I won't go extra, and I'll likely do the bare minimum for both, but that's kind of all people need when it comes to that content.

I was feeling good, but then the mental health attacked. I don't know if I fell into depression. That's the one downside being medicated has when compared to be unmedicated with bipolar. Unmedicated, I know that every three or so months I will be one thing, then after three more months I'll be a different thing, unless it lasts for six months, but I will know I am that thing. When I'm medicated, I can't tell if I'm depressed or manic. Would I be manic without the pills? Are the pills doing this to me? Or am I depressed and the anti-psychotics are helping somehow? This is just average bipolar stuff, and I could usually just deal with it... But there's a complication.

I'm very much cis and not non-binary. But not having anything other than menopausal levels of female hormones causes me extreme dysphoria. I gained weight until I was nearly 200 pounds. I forgot what happiness felt like, and I asked myself constantly if I had ever been happy. I don't even know when it really started, because I was just not storing memories well at all. I just got wrapped up in being obese and miserable. I got my birth control (depo) shot, and the gyno offered to make my appointments every eight weeks instead of nine. I was really happy, but I slid back into just not being able to can after a few days. 

(Body positivity note - I absolutely love how I look at 195lbs with the fat distribution that comes with the estrogen coming back. A lot of women are like me and don't look nearly as good at a healthy weight as they do when they're overweight. If this was only about looks, I'd go off the shot and be 200lbs for the rest of my life. It isn't about looks, and I'm staring at the possibility of diabetes if I don't lose the weight.)

Straight up losing memories and the ability to focus meant something else happened that was really damaging and frustrating. I lost the ability to study. My two focuses are Japanese and Java. One day when I finally pushed myself to open up WaniKani and do reviews, I literally got 50% right. I'm an overachiever who gets 80% right on bad days. Staring at all of the things I got wrong was just a punch in the stomach. And studying Java? My eyes glazed over instantly and I forgot the most basic things.

So, starting with October 1st and UtaOber, I just kind of gave up. I pushed myself to do art, but that was all I could handle. I don't think people know this about me, but I love doing art. I more or less stopped because the fandom told me to give up in high school, but I took this as an opportunity to do something that makes me happy that I could do even if my brain went on vacation. Some days I felt like I couldn't even force myself to do art, because I was just that broken down. But I was able to pull through.

I don't know what exactly made me break so completely. It may be the fact that if I don't find a way to make about $13,000 next year, I'll lose health insurance. Maybe it was just the weight and the inability to do anything about it. There's always something you can do about weight, of course, but when you feel like you have no control and the only thing that brings you moments of contentness is food... You don't realize you're on autopilot and shoving a chocolate brownie Clif Bar into your face until it's too late. And exercise? Yeah, the random seizures and unwillingness to leave bed kept that from working out. The inability to access my memories when it came to even attempting to study really didn't help at all. 

But that was last month. This is a time to just put down my foot and say that I'm not who I was. I'll start rendering and uploading videos likely tonight. I think I might have four months of content to upload, which would kick the can down the road for a bit. That takes off pressure so that I can work on the blog extensively. Hopefully writing will put me in the studying mood, and I'll get back to trying to make something of myself as opposed to just being happy that I'm still breathing.

Sorry for the super personal, too much information rant. Maybe someone else is going through something like this and it will help them to read it. Or maybe it is just a useless mess. Either way, I feel better writing it. My goal is to kick the can down the road until May for YouTube and my blog, and then spend December working on a contest for LearnMMD. I think I can do it, and I really hope I can.

We'll see.