Martin: So cool to see you around here again, and yes, I realise I'm a month late, but wow ... how cool to see you on TV as a sports anchor! Totes impressed, man.

Well it's been awhile since I've posted here. I've been checking on fanfic daily as usual, but over the past few months (since mid-April, actually) my posting and actual activity has dried up and withered until now.

I feel like I owe an explanation to fanficcers in general, so basically the reasons are mostly to do with working full-time and getting a new house and starting up a french radio show.

Having said that, while that kept me busy enough physically, my headspace was also very occupied. In mid-April I gave up alcohol, a substance that I've been binge drinking since I was sixteen and it finally started to catch up with me in terms of my self-medicating, drinking alone, self-destructing and basically beginning to lose my shit and go off the rails, so it was time to give it up outright. Of course, sobriety after five years of using alcohol to solve problems is difficult ... not only did I have to change all my habits, particularly going clubbing, I also had to face everything that I had been resisting and running from, which takes a lot out of you.

Long story short, it's been a very long and interesting five months and two days since I stopped drinking, but it's also been extremely insular and I've unconsciously withdrawn from lots of social contact, including, it seems, TPM; I've been something of a hermit and reluctant to interact with anyone, reluctant to speak.

I suppose the reason I'm saying this (at risk of, I guess, embarrassing myself with too much private detail) is because it's the true reason, as opposed to just the full-time job, that I've been absent and allowed the forum to grow progressively less active without injecting any life into it: because I lacked the capacity to do it mentally. The same factors stopped me from progressing with Lisa the Legend. And so, I feel like I owe an honest explanation to the members here for my five months of ineffectiveness, and I hope I can rectify that.

So ... those be the facts of what I've been up to the past few months. Feels good to actually get it off my chest.