I don't expect anyone to read this, really, but for those curious enough to try and hunt up some explanation for why I've been gone, I figured I should jot it down.
So, sometime early 2011, I left Gaia. I went offline entirely for a while there, really, but Gaia was something that I did not phase back into my routine once I started hopping online again. There's a couple reasons for that, which I suppose I'll go into briefly, but the main reason was some really shitty RL problems.
Put shortly, my family lost our house to foreclosure at the end of 2010. That was a trauma of about a half-year leading up to it, while we tried to dig ourselves out of an impossible financial hole and throw around blame and sort out how life would go on afterwards. For those unaware, my family bred, showed, and sold Maine Coons at the time. That meant that not only did we lose the house we'd lived in for more than a decade, but we had to find homes for 20+ cats that were fixtures in our family (and yes, I can still name them all.) I still can't really talk about that without tearing up, so we're not going into detail there.
Things were stressful at that point, but the aftermath was what got me. Three months after we had moved into an apartment with the three cats we decided to keep, I was having full-blown panic attacks during class and wound up dropping out. It was during that period that I realized I needed to seriously address my RL issues and bowed out of Gaia.
Even when I was off Gaia, there were a lot of bad feelings that hung with me. I felt awful for not being able to do more with Fa'e, a shop that I truly loved and where I had wound up in a position where I was the only one with any legitimate control over making it work. I had some heartbreak over some things that happened during that messy transition in ItNotM which inadvertently but directly hurt me, in such a way that I didn't feel I could discuss it even to vent. I was frustrated by the fact that I was unable to bring various storylines to fruition, and I felt guilty that people were depending on me for them. Despite all the wonderful friends and stories I've found here, I found myself being way too focused on drama and failures. With so much else going wrong in my life, I felt like getting so wrapped up in so many things on a site I visited in order to destress and have fun was not just counterproductive, but kind of belittling what was real at that time.
Life's been evening out since all that happened, and it's sort of getting all right again. We survived the foreclosure, and in some ways, we're better off where we're at now. I've found a part-time job I love, I'm gearing up to return to school, I'm volunteering over at my favorite gardens starting this month, and I've got creative projects aplenty to fill up whatever time's left after all that. The s**t factor in my life is, for all intents and purposes, back to normal - there's still uncertainties and stresses and things I outright abhor in my life, but they're all in balance and I've spent the last year or so learning how to cope with those kinds of stressors better.
I miss Gaia terribly, and I think about everyone here on a fairly regular basis. I think about how wonderful it would be to write with everyone again, and how much fun it was to stay up late chatting with my friends on AIM, laughing and plotting and just goofing around.
The one thing really keeping me off Gaia at this point is a need to not just create, but to create in a more productive way, something that can be published and shared. I love writing with you guys so much, but I also know that I can spend 100% of my free time here on Gaia and get that "creative" itch scratched (and get it scratched even better than when I'm pounding a keyboard all on my lonesome), and lose my drive to work on other projects that don't show such immediate rewards. For mainly that reason, I don't think that I'm ready to come back yet, or even to commit to returning. I need a lot more discipline, first! But I hope you all know how absolutely brilliant I think you are, and how wonderful all your stories are, and what a big, big place I have in my heart for you. <3 At the very least, I can guarantee I'll be visiting again.
Arrien Community Member 
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