Member Posts

Much to my amazement, in two hours I turn forty.

Forty. Four zero. 40. 4. 0. I've been telling almost everyone I meet, repeating the facts to strangers and friends and acquaintances, my psychiatrist and my sister and my surrogate aunts. I didn't expect to get here and I find the fact of forty, frankly, jarring. My teeth grit against the absolute insanity of time marching on to this extent—how did I get here?

Some of the people who are reading this potentially have known me since I was 12 and just like me, probably didn't expect me to get here. Mind-boggling as well.

What has changed recently? Not much! To misquote Tolstoy, perhaps happy days are all alike, but each unhappy day is unhappy in its own way. Or maybe it's the opposite, and it's my newfound ability to revel in choice of enjoyable activities with a reliably upbeat mood climate that's truly unlocked this newfound persistence of pleasant presence.

Current psychiatrist has narrowed down my meds and diagnoses to a fine degree, now that she actually believes I'm ill. (Long story but basically she didn't take me seriously until my last attempt. Wait, not a long story.) Who would have guessed that the magic wand would be ~lithium~ and the magic words, bipolar disorder? Doc's not 100% on it yet but I'm pretty convinced.

My intention is to update again tomorrow, but I'll post this now just in case.

Vacationed with family for my birthday! In San Francisco, where I checked out the Cartoon Art Museum, rode the streetcars, saw some sea lions, bought imported snacks in Chinatown, had dinner in the Castro, and walked up too many hills.

Not sure I got a single Art Thing done all week. Just a lot of Tourist Things, and a lot of extra sleep in between walking around all the Tourist Things.

The Leif & Thorn 10th Anniversary update went live somewhere in the middle of that. Along with an announcement that I’m officially dropping from a 7-days-a-week schedule to a MWF schedule. I hadn’t come to terms with “yeah, this is a commitment I need to change” when I originally queued that update, so I had to edit it in later…which I ended up doing from my phone in the middle of the Bhangra & Beats Night Market.

All of this is the longest I’ve ever been away from the cats. A local friend checked in on them a couple times. (Got investigated by Fiddlesticks. Never saw the Fluff.)

I always wonder how they perceive changes in their routine like this. Fiddles was certainly ready to get back on her “wait next to my bed in the morning until she gets her wet food” schedule. Thought Fluff might be suspicious, but he emerged from hiding within 15 minutes of me getting home, and has been his normal cuddly self ever since.

Fluffy cat in lap with writing program on computer behind him

(“excuse me sir, I was trying to write”)

Got a couple of Art Things done yesterday. Will I do more over the weekend? Or will I distract myself with doomscrolling and cat-spoiling? TBD.

One bright note for the future: I spent the back half of October low-key stressing about a flood of spam traffic on my comic sites. Even after I figured out how to cut it off (longer post about this later, probably), it had already blown through so much of my hosting-plan resource quota, my legitimate traffic for the rest of the month would’ve easily filled the rest.

Since I had a lengthy conversation with SiteGround tech support to get the problem fixed, I was hoping some admin put a note on my account that says “disregard the limit this month, it was messed up by a wave of spambots which the customer has dealt with.” But nobody outright told me if that could/would happen. I was just quietly crossing my fingers.

Well, October is over! The sites never went down. The quotas have reset. And my account stats show actual-human-reader traffic holding steady at a rate that isn’t going to break them in November.

Sigh of relief. Knock wood that this keeps up.

well, how did i get here? (into the blue again, after the money's gone, once in a lifetime)

October ’25 personal update roundup