[Cross-linking! It's a pun. Really.]

You prats don't need to know about my allergies. We'll skip that. I've been out with a little bit of personal stuff these last few weeks. I've neglected things here a bit while recuperating and, more importantly, while working on larger-scale projects than are easily posted.

Another reason for the hiatus: coming out of the atheist closet. The truth of the matter is that I used to be pretty devout, but that was a long time ago. These last few years have had a lot of thinking, and these last few months a lot of hiding. A lot of resentment. It felt good to come out, but it was also a pretty difficult transition - as you might imagine, me being a married fellow and living in Texas.

Second-person is fine in blogs, yeah?

Being out as an atheist is pretty weird. I've developed a habit this last year or so of containing myself. Whenever I had such deviant, sinful thoughts as the long-term implications of poverty on natural selection, I would make a note somewhere instead of talking about it. Or maybe I'd move a line of conversation to private messaging, corresponding surreptitiously about the fossil record with some other inconspicuous skeptic. Even now, I catch myself minimizing potentially controversial tabs or whispering instead of talking. There are a few places still where I imagine being in the closet is still for the best, but for now, Mr. Internet, I confide in you.

So I'm going to retroactive a little bit, cover my ass on the Freeform Fridays that I missed, etc. Get stuff back in order here. I started another editing binge on my private writing wiki. These things are really helpful if you want to do some serious world-building (not planning any fantasy series but that whole genre is essentially begging to be wikified) or if you just have a ridiculously large number of ideas and often forget that you already had one or two of them before.

Screnzy starts soon. I think I'll abstain. While I've developed some pretty amazing stories working on these yearly projects, they tend to interrupt my momentum elsewhere, and never quite pan out. That last bit is my fault, really. Gonna get it next go-round, I guess.