LFGryph

Before I launch into a farewell to this year’s Blaugust, I have a more personal farewell to make. Around 5:30 this morning, one of my gerbils (Meg, the brown one) passed away. 

Her sister Progo is doing alright so far, but I’m unsure how she’ll do going forward. She was never as social as Meg, but she was very close to her sister. Introducing a new gerbil is dicey in the best of situations, and I don’t think she’d appreciate it if I tried. I’ll just have to try to spend as much extra time with her as she allows

Meg had been off for a few days and I thought it was coming soon, so I wasn’t entirely surprised at least. She and her sister were/are between 3-4 years old, pretty senior for gerbils. It’s still always sad they can’t stay with us as long as we would like, and I was up late with her once I realized she was likely on her way out.

So, forgive me if this post isn’t my best work. I’m very tired, and while I’m not an entire mess about it, my mind isn’t really on blogging at the moment.

Blaugust 2023

On the topic of Blaugust itself, this year reminded me that while I can do just about anything I set my mind to, I cannot do EVERYTHING I set my mind to. At least not all at the same time.

I touched on this a little bit in my State of the Blaugust post earlier this month. I decided to do a full 31 days of Blaugust, and I succeeded in that. I wrote less fluff posts than I expected and even planned for, and I never did put up a post without at least some images. I covered most of the topics I wanted to, and came up with quite a few new ones I was excited to write about. I was more active on the Discord than I expected to be. I also dug into some games I’d been planning on checking out for a while now.

But, I did end up letting a few other things slip due to lack of time. I haven’t been exercising, and I do look forward to having time to get back into a regular habit there. I missed out on some sleep a few nights. I haven’t spent as much time outside with the TVAR cats as I usually do. And while I maintained my streaming schedule for a few weeks, as soon as more Life Stuff happened, I had to cancel streams as well.

Well, not “had to.” No one was making me, after all. 🙂 And it’s also not a direct connection – there are definitely days I can write up a post but wouldn’t be up for doing a live show.

Still, it’s also true that there is only so much time in the day, and I had a LOT going on this month between an accidental new cat, being over capacity at work, the air conditioning going out, trying to plan for my mom flying in, plus Nash and I both had some car trouble in there…. And then the daily reality of just basic Adulting Things That Need To Be Done, and being a household with multiple pets and the TVAR cats we look after.

I do want to utilize my blog more often than “never” going forward, and I am so glad Blaugust helped nudge me into updating it. I just don’t know exactly how often that will be. I know I need a break to sort out some of this Life Stuff going on, but I also have some posts I didn’t quite get to this month. Some of them – like part 3 of my animal shelter series – are already written, they just need final edits and formatting.

It’s also coming near the time I need to decide what I’m doing about school. The plan had been to start online vet tech classes in Septemberish. I’m definitely waiting until after Mom visits, and I need to reassess my finances since we’ve had some pretty major unexpected expenses.

I also don’t want to wait too long, though. I have announced SO MANY TIMES in my life that I was going back to school only to end up letting other things get in the way, and I don’t want to let that happen this time. I have some amazing support from work, and this is really one of the best chances I’m likely to have to do something I’ve always wanted to.

I do want to take a moment to shout out Belghast and the Blaugust community. Belghast is amazing for running this every year, and he’s going to be incredibly busy tabulating results and handing out badges tomorrow. The Blaugust community is absolutely worth getting over my thing about Discord, and it’s been lovely to meet so many great people. I hope I have more time to check out their content, as that is a regret I have about this last month. I haven’t even found most folks on social media yet, really any “extra” time I’ve had has been going to getting my posts up.

For now, I need to try to finish getting ready for my work week, and either catch a nap or make sure I can go to bed early. I’m really entirely too old to be staying up until 5:30am, as much as I had a good reason this time. Thank you to everyone who’s been so supportive of me joining the madness again this year. Blogging and streaming are going to be sporadic for a bit, but I hope to eventually get back on a schedule. ❤

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Curious about #Blaugust2023? Visit the Blaugust 2023 is Coming page, where you can also join the Discord. Or check out #Blaugust2023 on social media.