06.01.26
June already?
2:15 PM MDT
I ended up having just a single entry for the entire month of May.
It turns out I didn't want to blog about my sabbatical from work or my journey through necessary therapy here in this space. This journal can be for such things if I wish, but it's really a creative journal and I took my goal of writing for fun last month as seriously as one can take such a frivolous goal. I only wrote fanfiction set in Palia because that's where I spent a lot of my down time when I wasn't writing or watching anime or dealing with all the stuff going on at home.
That's not to say I wasn't creative! Palia is an MMO, so I took all the interactions I had with the characters as I got to know them in the game and plugged them into fictional tales. I enjoyed writing through the eyes of these different characters, tickling myself pink when I wrote them so true to themselves it was like I'd been hired to write them... I flexed my creative muscles in different ways in May, I suppose.
You may have also noticed I changed up Leah's Corner a little bit. Made myself a different header and chose a lovely green background provided by World Anvil. Thus, I can at least say I accomplished most of my goals for May:
Write for FUN!Do the May challenge (Hitchhiker's Guide to Your World)
Revamp Leah's Corner
As long as I wasn't willing to leave Palia or revisit Brihland, I was never going to accomplish the May challenge. It's a shame because I did love the concept of it, but even when I poked around and read some Anvilites' articles, I still couldn't get myself inspired. No one's fault...just how I've been lately.
I never did get around to reviewing April either, so let's have a run-through of that month as well:
An April Adventure: time to fill in the Brihland Bestiary and write some monster articles!Start on Book 3!
Just for fun: Draw some monsters.
I was already leaning toward having less demanding goals with that last one because I knew I was going to approach burnout if I wasn't careful and I didn't want that to happen before I could get to Summer Camp. I do feel like I should give myself the April Adventure one because for more than half the month I was keeping up with the daily monster articles fairly regularly - even when I suddenly had to say goodbye to my cat! I didn't keep up with the project for the whole 30 days of April, though, so it remains an unfinished project and unchecked.
I must also sadly report that I broke one of my most tenacious creative resolutions of 2026: I didn't write one day. It only just happened on Saturday, May 30. I didn't do any writing early, figuring I had all day to get to it. One thing led to another, then my brother and cousin and people came over and we were all drinking and talking politics and having a nice time, then I sat down to play video games with my niece and very soon got sleepy...
I didn't even realize it until I'd already been awake for a couple of hours on Sunday morning. I was peeing and it just suddenly hit me with a jolt that I never did sit back down to pen a few words - not even a single sentence as I said I would do in my resolution. I was less bummed out than I thought I would be...I think more so because the whole point of making that resolution for myself was simply because I want to be in the habit of doing a bit of creative writing every day. Does that mean every single day of the rest of my life in reality? Not likely because there are always things that come up and so on and so forth. On the day my cat died, I managed a couple hundred words of a monster article, but it wasn't quite enough to pull me away from my grief and so that's all it was. Writing is many things to me, but one of the most precious things it is to me is an escape. I am in the scene that I'm writing, and when I'm not, I don't enjoy the process as much. It doesn't offer the right catharsis.
In some ways, too, I feel a release of pressure on myself to force a one-sentence or couple-hundred-word day when I'm really not feeling it. Sometimes a day off results in the best day of writing in the whole month when I "pick up the pen" again, as it were.
Anyway, imagine it still ends up be 364/365 days when I do my 2026 review. That's something to be proud of for sure.
Well, I don't want to blab too much longer because it would be easy to ramble off on tangents since I haven't made an update in a while. I'll wrap up by discussing my plans going forward now that I've dusted some of the cobwebs off my World Anvil account and reappeared.
Summer Camp Prep officially started on Saturday (the day I lost my write-every-day-this-year streak *stares in Alanis Morisette*), but I didn't look at any of the challenge materials until a little while ago. The first of a new month on a Monday is a blessing to a mind like mine. I almost find it easier to start new goals and kick myself off of old habits when it lines up so perfectly like that. Magical thinking? Mental illness? I still don't actually know. The point is, I sat down to work on some Palia fanfiction, but the force of June First drew me to World Anvil first, and now I'm tentatively excited to go back to Brihland.
I still maintain that I needed a break. I had burnout, and I would have thrown in the towel in a more permanent sense by now if I hadn't taken one. Now, though, I see the first prompt posted (Love) and the silly hopscotch theme and everyone sharing their articles with their pledges; and there's a stormy breeze filtering in from the window beside my desk, and the atmosphere is so summery that I just got this sudden sense of nostalgia. Even though last year's Summer Camp was the first one I really participated in fully from homework through reading, getting involved with comments and streams and all the stuff. Isn't the brain odd? Just a dumb little guy up there making us nostalgic for things we only experienced one time a mere year ago. I shouldn't have to remind anyone that the world was only better off a year ago because the war in Iran hadn't started yet. Hahaha remember those halcyon days? +_+
But I digress...
I've been away from Brihland for so long that I can't commit to a pledge or any of the first week's prompts yet until I sit down and read through the first two books and as far as I've written into Book 3. I don't need to pick up and start writing immediately because that's what camp is for - to ease me back into the story I was writing before my life and trauma got too difficult for me to continue the creative journey with a world of my own. I didn't realize what a heavy burden that kind of creation is when you no longer have the energy to see it through. That's why I never pick those worlds up again when I do put them down because how am I supposed to find the thread of that tapestry again?
*stares in World Anvil*
Yes, of course! Most of my articles in Brihland are still stubs, but that doesn't mean they all are. Between the stories and what I've got out there for the public to see at this time, there's plenty to get me back in the game and picking up the thread once more. I'll be taking it easy on myself this week, so here are the goals:
- Pledge. I wanted it to be Gold this year because I won the Bronze my first year, and I won Silver last year. With everything that's been going on, though, is that really something I can commit to? A week or two ago I would have said no freaking way, but today I'm less sure, which makes me want to hold off on my decision... Maybe three or four more sleeps...
- Meta Update. And to make it easier on me, any sort of update will do; it doesn't have to be a re-working of the whole thing.
- Read Books 1 and 2, and what's finished of 3. Not gonna lie - this is the most important to me if I want to participate in Summer Camp with Brihland, and I do. The best way for me to feel the world and remind myself how much I love the characters is by going there and that's done by reading the story.
And that puts us at a good stopping point. I am honestly probably going to leave my desk for a bit to play Palia because there was a Stressful Event that occurred maybe half an hour before I started this entry, so I really just want to chill in bed with a snack and relax with my game. My intent when I get to a stopping point of that, though, is to sit down with Brihland and remember it.
Until my next random musing,
Leah (リア)
PS - This article is homeless for now because WA has a glitch right now wherein my categories aren't saving edits made to them. As soon as I get June up and running, this guy will have his proper home.
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