[Penguin]

Hello! I've been away for a few weeks and will be away for a while longer. I really miss you guys and hope you're all doing well :>

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I got into a downwards spiral and - after about a week or so of daily hangovers, no exercise, and limited food - I had a call to say that my work couldn't afford to keep me on, so I was made redundant right away.

If you picture a tan(x) graph where one side goes to positive infinity while the other goes to negative infinity, that's a pretty good representation of what my stress levels and mood were doing at the time.

At the time I would have loved to play some games on my PC and maybe come back onto hometown for a while but my computer stopped working at some point during the heatwave and I still haven't managed to get it to boot.

The good news is that I'm alright now (took some time away, and have gone home for a bit) but the bad news is that I will likely have to send my PC off to be repaired and will be gone for another week or more.

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There was another thing I wanted to discuss too.

A few months ago I switched to using she/her pronouns and you guys have been really supportive about it, but during this time I've spent a lot of time introspecting and have come to the conclusion that it's just... not me.

It's not that I don't like she/her pronouns. It's more that other people get confused (especially by my masculine voice in discord) and it's the confusion which makes me feel awful. Of course, a lot of you will say "but that's not your problem, be who you wanna be" and for the majority of cases I would agree with this. (You should always respect someone else's identity!). In my case, however, I had to learn that being female does not make you feminine, and being feminine doesn't mean you have to be female. With that in mind you guys can refer to me with whatever pronouns make you comfortable because my gender identity is how I view myself, and maybe you guys view me differently, and I'm alright with that because - tbh - I'm not even sure how I view myself.

At the end of the day, does it really matter anyway?

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Hope you guys are having a cool time. I'll be around on my laptop every now and then but I won't be working on any new projects (trust me, I have quite a few planned) until my PC is up and running. This post alone took me like 4 days to write/rewrite soooo yeah... not quite back up to the usual levels of productivity.

[Ender_Muncher]

aww ilysm!!

[Beo]

hi you're a fabulous human and I love u sm <3

[Bush]

aw sorry to hear that pengu!

i hope you'll feel better, we all miss you so come back on soon

[TheOnlyKat]

i love u and miss u but soon you wont even need a computer to even see me :>

[Cil]

I'm sorry to hear that things haven't been going good lately, it truly hurts to hear that pengu I do hope that you get better, and if you ever just need someone to talk Im always willing to . Good warm wishes - Cil

[EspInquisition]

Aw really hope you get shits together soon
Also I miss mum Pengu

[belgnbor]

Hope your life cheers up again soon mate. Your always fun to have around on hometown. It was very nice to hear you back on the guitar in call the other night. It sux about your job though, not the best time to be looking for a new one. Let's hope your computer gets all fixed up soon. Keep safe and well.

[Jeff8675]

Take the time you need to relax and recover. This year was already super stressful with everything going on around us, and a job loss was definitely not needed. You are in our thoughts and we look forward to your return.

Take care of yourself

[Penguin]

Thanks to a tip from Duty I've managed to pin down the source of the problem: One of my sticks of RAM isn't working any more. I've swapped the order of my remaining sticks and I still have 16GB left, so thankfully no issues and no data lost.

Looks like I'm back in the game!