Hello everyone!
It's been about two weeks since the last update, so I figure that's a good point to give y'all another update on how things are going with the video. I'd love to say that tons of progress has been made in that period, but being honest, it's been pretty slow going due to a mixture of surgery recovery and school starting up.
Like I mentioned in some prior updates, I got an orchiectomy scheduled, and - after some scuffles with insurance (and a brand new scuffle with the hospital sending a completely unexplained bill last night...), - I got it done! And while the recovery has been fortunately very quick and good... well, this is still surgery recovery, so my capacity for work basically plummeted to 10% of its normal amount until the start of this week.
I couldn't do any voice recording for a few days because it was too much strain on my lower body, and when I could do so, I was only able to get about 10~30 minutes before I started having very severe pain and needed to stop. I can't say I ever realized how much strain speaking can put on your abdomen until those recording sessions. >_> I also really couldn't sit on my office chair for more than 2 to 3 hours after that, so getting the voice recordings done and editing started was very slow going.
And then, on this Monday, I talked with my doctor, and he confirmed I'm at the point of recovery where it's just waiting for the body to fully heal up. So I'm in good health to back to normal activities! ...right as school starts up, which has been a bit of a stress-inducing nightmare to figure out work scheduling with.
The work load has been a lot greater than I expected it to be, so my days are now looking like "wake up at 5:30, get breakfast and shower, leave for the bus at 6:45, get to school at 7:15, classes until 1:10, get home at about 1:40 if the bus gods aren't vengeful, work until 6, make dinner, study until 9pm." I have some time on the weekends at least...
As the schedule implies though, I'm able to get about 4 hours of work done on an average day. Once I don't have to deal with the public transit here, I should be able to bump that up to 5 1/2 since I'll have more study time in the morning and way less time spent waiting for the godawful lines that run to my apartment, but that depends on the transit agency getting back to me and actually scheduling my exams. I am in a bit of a limbo right now. ;__;
Anywho. The voice over for the video is all done now, the script is more or less done, and what's left is editing + filming of the live action bits. Now that my schedule is stabilizing after a bunch of medical appointments over the last few days, and the chaos of starting cram school, I think I can have this done by early March at the absolute latest.
I am really sorry this is taking so long, but when it hasn't been holiday/vacation time these last few months, I've been juggling about a thousand different things trying to keep my health and education on-track. Combine that with this being maybe the most complicated video I've done in terms of research and subject matter, and it's taken an extremely long time to get this to the stage where I can finally hack away at it at a normal-ish pace.
I'll be posting updates on the video as segments get finished, alongside previews once major chunks are finished.
See y'all soon, and thank you for your patience!