I’ve been getting into a half-decent groove with making sure chapters come out every month lately. As well, Mutual Benefits, for whatever reason, is a decent hit on other websites despite its scarcity of sex scenes relative to other stories. It would appear that 2021 is off to a solid start for me, from an onlooker’s perspective at least.

To be honest, I’m floored I got Chapter 5 out on time. In Ontario Canada, things are not looking amazing pandemic-wise at time of writing. My day job is related to the healthcare industry, and as a result, I’m basically at the mercy of how well the local government is doing against the pandemic at the moment. At low points, such as the beginning of last summer, I’ll get less shifts than usual and very few surprises. At a spike, such as now, I’ll get called in for surprise shifts on days off and I’ll often have to stay at my work for hours of what basically amounts to unpaid overtime. Hooray for the real heroes of the pandemic. I sure feel like a hero.

It’s a little alarming knowing that if my work completely burns me out, which has happened in the past, I’ll have no energy to write and people online will just accept that I’m lazy or just stopped writing for a bit. I’ve had to accept that I can’t explain my burnout to everyone that reads my work. Even if everyone that visits this site reads my blog (which is definitely not true, far less than half do), I won’t be able to communicate my situation to people that read my work on other websites.

And frankly, that’s alright. There are worse places to be. I’ve even accepted pretending the simpler answer is true – my Twitter bio shows “procrastinator” as the final word to describe me, even though my housemates and family have described me as having an alarming case of workaholism. Between this, my “real-life” work and my other projects not made under this name, I’ll sometimes get to such a point where I realize I haven’t touched a “hobby” in weeks. I guess this writing is a hobby, but some people don’t consider it a hobby if you’re monetizing it, which is fair enough.

Anyway, the point of this blog wasn’t to say, “Hey, I know it looks like I get little done, but I’m actually such a hard worker.” If it comes across that way, I’m just ironically bad at wording things when I’m venting. There are definitely times when procrastination is a big part of the problem, and the lines are really blurred when I’ve been burnt out by work or personal tragedy when it comes to what’s “taking a healthy break to recover” and what’s actual procrastination. Maybe procrastination as we know it doesn’t exist. For now, I’m hoping that I can continue the trend of getting my writing done at a consistent enough pace. Thank you all as always for your continued support with your time and Patreon pledges, I appreciate it. I’ll talk to you all next week.