Tales of Whoa

WARNING: The following post is about real life and has very little to do with Eve. You have been warned.


My professional life has been built on many things over the past decades. One of the most powerful, which I am just beginning to truly understand, is what I call the "deadline factor". I work under constant deadline. And I have been since my career started, or even before that. (one could argue that school is nothing more than endless deadlines) The point being that deadlines are ingrained into my soul. Failure to meet a deadline is abject failure of the worst kind.

Let's skip ahead a bit. I've been dealing with some rather heavy real life over the past few years and my involvement with Eve has been a huge factor in distracting me from those pressures. I certainly appreciate my readers, my fellow pilots and all those that I am involved with in this great community tremendously. My life outside of Eve is slowly being rebuilt and shuffled and transformed. Progress is slow but steady. Or at least, it has been.

And then life throws you some curveballs. Deaths in the family. An employer that can't make payroll on time. An angry ex-wife. A troubled high-functioning autistic son that needs moved to a care facility for a month because he just can't seem to function out here with the rest of us. And then my Mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Her surgery is tomorrow. (On a good note, it appears they found the lump early.)

I'm not sharing this to evoke a response in you dear reader. I'm not engaging in any kind of pity party or asking for help. Life is life. And it happens to us, often without our consent. Much like player versus player combat in Eve.

Remember that bit above about deadlines? Now the story starts to loop around and the point becomes clearer. I've been chronic about missing deadlines here in this great community. And the guilt I feel for doing so is rather powerful, entirely self-inflicted, but it remains a true feeling.

I sincerely appreciate all of you that have asked me for help. And I can assure you that I will get to each of you. Eventually. It may not be as quickly as I had hoped, but I will.

I wanted to say it here and share with you some of the challenges I've been facing lately. Not so you feel sorry for me, because I'm not asking for that. But simply for understanding. I could easily hide behind the Rixx Javix mask and pretend that real life doesn't exist, but what would be the point? I think we know each other better than that by this point.

I haven't been as engaged here in the blog or in the community as much as usual and this is why. Between work, life and an extremely fast growing in-game corp, time is being stretched insanely thin.

But hang in there. I never give up. And I hope you won't either.


UPDATE: My mom's surgery went extremely well yesterday, thank you all for your positive thoughts and prayers.