There are people that like winter. I don’t understand them, but I will cheerfully give them all of mine if they will trade it me their autumn, that I may have eternal October. This seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me, and I need the Universe to get on board with this plan.

SAD is in full swing and, with the mountain of shit that the last year has thrown at me, is going as well as one might expect. So very glad that I decided to lay out the money for the Nintendo Switch, as a medical expense, because as I anticipated, Animal Crossing is basically holding my sanity together. Tragically, it doesn’t do crap to help override the executive dysfunction problems, but at least I’m not standing in the middle of the swamp screaming for eternity, so I’ll take the wins where I can get them.

Courtesy the latest N/F/T debacles, I had to change my online store host *again*. While Big Cartel isn’t openly pro-N/F/T, they not only “have no stance” (I asked them) which is a problem, given the rampant art theft involved, too many of their management team and whatnot are very definitely pro, and thus I shut down my account. Which is sad, because otherwise they’re a decent organization, but yeah, that one’s still a dealbreaker for me.

On the upside, Ko-fi has a basic Shop feature now, so until I can afford to permanently upgrade and maintain this hellsite to install WooCommerce, that’s where I’ll be putting things up for sale when I have them. I’ve got a couple of other pieces to relist over there, as well, and if I can get out of my own way long enough, will have some other items soonish.

Winter can’t last forever and, though the reason why sucks, I no longer have to be home by 7 o’clock every night and can do longer trips now, which means that once the weather warms up, there’s a lot of things I’ve been putting off for years that I can take off the shelf and put back on the table again. Might even start looking at getting myself a small camper one of these days…

Way back, in what would turn out to be the last days of the Before Times, I had made Some Decisions about how I wanted to make my living in this world. The Universe laughed and pretty much all of those decisions got stuck on a shelf to collect dust, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, I made them and I did not forget about them. They’ve still been there, waiting for the day when the plague subsided and things returned to normal, and I could get back on track.

Annoyingly, the plague hasn’t really subsided, and it looks like my fellow humans have decided that we should all go back and live in the Dark Ages, plagues and all, because gods know we can’t have nice things, but I suppose the good thing about having spent a lifetime studying medieval history is that I guess I have a decent concept of how to navigate the kind of world that my ancestors tried so damned hard to make sure I didn’t have to live in. Things are apparently about as “normal” as they’re going to get, and anyway, I can’t put my life on hold any more, and thus some things have been taken down off the shelf and put back on the table.

Like, no really, on the actual table. I spent the day digging through boxes that never got unpacked after the studio move last June locating tools and wire, silk ribbons and beads, etc. There’s a tray of clay disks curing on a shelf that should be ready for sanding and painting by Monday.

It’s nice to be working on tangible things again.