TL;DR: Been dealing with random insomnia bouts for weeks—hit 40+ hours awake this time. Wrote a bonus Kenmachi chapter during a sleepless stretch as a surprise, wasn't up for pushing plot so did a Shirou POV instead. Got called pointless, snapped at someone over it, taking it out on them wasn't fair. Sorry to those I argued with—working on balance (Japanese classes, a local club) but this job's still gonna mean writing through rough nights sometimes. Criticism's always fine, just don't call the effort worthless or pointless, please.
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Okay, normally I can weather things. But maybe this has been a long time coming, and sometimes because it's coming from you guys, it hurts more.
If you don't read my quick updates channel, you probably wouldn't know about the random bouts of insomnia I've been having. The last one before this was Saturday—couldn't sleep till Sunday evening. And now I haven't slept since Monday, and it's like 8pm Tuesday here.
I'd think I should probably say this tomorrow or the day after, but honestly, I'd probably just lie there thinking about it instead of sleeping anyway.
I actually feel fine—that's the problem. Physically I'm good, I just feel stressed because, shouldn't I be sleeping by now?
My doctor's told me it's my body adapting to my new normal as I try to get healthy—probably just adjusting, with a lot of things out of balance right now.
Anyway, this morning I was trying to sleep, but after an hour of tossing and turning I just thought, might as well make my non-sleep productive. I felt like writing a Kenmachi chapter—something I thought they'd appreciate, a little surprise for you guys—and I actually felt excited about it. Unfortunately I didn't feel up to pushing the plot forward, since that's kind of difficult in my state, so I figured I'd give a Shirou POV instead, to shed more light on their date.
If this had been the scheduled chapter, I would've skipped straight to the duel—so yeah, I get the criticism there. And I'll admit I've been holding off on moving away from this arc, since it's just fun to write.
But I got annoyed at comments saying the chapter was basically pointless. Again, the criticism isn't the problem—it just felt like I'd prepared a lavish dinner for the family, and everyone said pass and went to sleep. Though in this case, it wasn't everyone.
Unfortunately, I got angry at the second comment on this, and I took it out on someone on Discord.
I'd like to apologise.
I probably wouldn't stop stressing about uploading chapters, and I'd probably still write despite conditions that aren't ideal. And I do tell you guys when brain's not braining—to be honest, if I don't feel sleepy in a few hours, I'll probably start writing a chapter again.
Because you see, I love this job right now. And even though I love it, I also treat it like one—a job, hence the stress. Before I started writing, I was consuming like 2-4 stories a day, and near the end of things—before I actually started writing—I was just rereading the same old stories. So I just wrote. It wasn't some passion project I kept to myself; I advertised my Patreon day one. But I do love my stories, and I read them all the time.
That's why criticism usually isn't a problem for me. I'll either agree with you and change things going forward, agree with you but stubbornly do what I want anyway, or disagree with you and still do what I want. So again, it wasn't the criticism that suddenly triggered me—it was the idea that my sincere effort felt useless.
To those I argued against: sorry! I'm trying hard to fix my work-life balance—I've recently started Japanese classes and joined a local club that does side quest activities.