angel-in-pieces

...I hope it finds you well! _{[/MLP reference]}

Why hai thar! Yes, I am back online again. Sorry about the long, long wait. It's been a hectic time, as you can probably imagine. Term has finished and Christmas has been and gone, and I'm finally back home in the warm again. Such a relief, I can tell you. I needed a break.

The holidays so far have been good - I've actually been busy, for once. My cousins have recently moved down here from up north, and are now living only a couple of minutes away which is great - means we've been able to see them more times in a couple of weeks than we have in the last couple of years. I spent Christmas with them and tomorrow we'll celebrate the New Year together. Good times.
I've also been lucky enough to see my wonderful friends many times. I missed them like ker-azy over the last semester. It's been so nice to indulge in some proper DMC and tea-side chats again. There really is no one who can replace them. And we've also had a special reason to celebrate of late: my darling friend smicket has just got engaged!!! Do go congratulate her, she (and we all) couldn't be happier.

The rest of the time, I guess I've been writing essays. Managed to get the 4th one written today. It's been a bit of a slog - ok, a lot of a slog. I don't think my brain's ever felt more exhausted and resilient to writing than it does right now. Today's efforts were painful, to say the least. And I've still got one more to go. And then all the re-drafts to go through.
I'm starting to get super worried that the quality's not great - these are the first essays I've written that are actually going to count towards my degree. So it's super-scary-important stuff! It makes me want to cry just thinking about it... So wish me luck for getting through that!

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I've made a start on replying to comments already, so rest assured I will get to yours at some point if I haven't already. Sorry about the super-late replies! I've been useless, it's true. And when I'm through replying, I'll get started on the deviations - you guys have certainly been keeping my inbox nice and full. I look forward to it. (:

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Much love to you all, readers - I hope you've had a great Christmas-tide and that you all have a super-awesome New Year!

Sorry I've been silent for so long! I feel like I owe you all a bit of an update.

Life has been massively hectic lately. Finally, second year of uni, and my life seems to have kicked into action. Ridiculous amounts of work are being done - I swear I trek to and from the library every other day. I've written 5 essays in the past couple of weeks, and our assessment titles have just been released, so there's another mad rush to get things sorted. But I'm getting involved in other things too, including working for the student tv station which is quite exciting. I get to use the snazzy equipment in their office, which is nice... And parties too - quite a few birthdays coming up. I've been perfecting my Charlie Chaplin costume of late for a up-coming do. It was dare, but I think I pull it off pretty well actually. Might be cracking out the bowler hat a bit more often.

Uni life in general is quite a whirl. People change so much, I've discovered - sometimes it can creep up on you by surprise just how much people can change. Phoning home is literally the only thing that keeps me going some days - just to hear someone talking on the other end of the line who knows me, properly, really means something. There are some wonderful people in my life - both here and back home, but - I don't know, I just get a bit sick of some people not 'growing up' and getting the jist of how to act socially. I seem to spend half my time playing the mediator here, cleaning up other people's mistakes when they don't even seem to realise how rude / selfish / unfeeling they're being. You always expect some people like that in life, but I seem to be dealing with it pretty much all the time at the moment. I'm sure people were more mature about some of these things at school...

Speaking of maturity, I've been spending quite a lot of time indulging myself in my My Little Pony obsession lately. Any bronies among you, readers? I seem to spend most of my time drawing ponies these days (Twilight Sparkle is best pony, obvs). And the fan culture is epic - I especially love the amount of brony music out there. I've already downloaded over 100 songs... Yes, this is definitely a productive way to spend my time...

So yes, life is a little crazy at the moment. I'm still writing - I've got to, for my course! - so you can expect updates as far as that's concerned. But I'm afraid replies and stuff are going to be really slow. I know there are loads of comments I haven't replied to that have been there for weeks - for which I'm really sorry! I promise I'm not ignoring you, I just seem to have very little e-time at the moment. I'll get round to replying asap!

Much love readers!

[edit] Omigosh, thank you so much for the DD-love, guys! Totally out of the blue, and I'm so honoured. ikazon is excessively wonderful for featuring me. [/edit]

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Today is one of those days that I realise that I'm actually quite enjoying my life right now. And that's such a rare occurence I felt the need to share that with you all.

Uni life has been a bit of a whirlwind of late. I managed to come down with a cool flu-chest-infection-stomach-bug-thing during my first few days of getting here which was nice - kept me entertained [read: bed-bound] for a couple of weeks or so. I'm still catching up a bit now, on both work and the social side of things. Done a lot of reading over the last few days, after an epic trek to the library in a torrential downpour from which I returned with a mountain of books. I love my course this year - all the modules are optional, so I've had to opportunity to pick and choose some of my favourite topics - and I'm really getting to indulge some of my favourite literary-geek loves. For example, this term I'm doing a module on Jane Austen. Jane-freaking-Austen. (It must be said, Northanger Abbey is one of my favourite books of all time, and who doesn't love a lecture where you watch BBC Austen adaptations the whole time?). So yeah, a day spent in bed reading nerdbooks is a day well-spent, in my book.

When I look back on it, I'm not quite sure how I got here. Determination is part of it, I guess. I've made it back to lectures and seminars, and it's got to the stage when I can actually enjoy being in them at times. I've met a load of lovely new people on my course (who I'd basically never seen before I missed so much last year) and made some new friends. And my housemates are generally wonderful people (even if we do live in a bug-infested swampland nicknamed 'Chez Slug'). I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such lovely people, both here and online with you, dear readers. (: [/over-sentimentality]

It's been great to get back into the swing of writing, too. My Creative Writing module has really helped with that. My tutor's a bit of a legend, and the people in my group are all lovely and passionate about it. It's really wonderful being in that environment, where everyone's so inspired and creatively charged. It's also helped me get into the habit of writing for prompts, which I'm really enjoying actually. Today, for example, we were each given a button and basically asked to construct a short story around it. Sounds a bit crazy, but it was actually a great exercise - and it was interesting to see all the different things people came up with! I'd definitely recommend looking for some prompt-age, for anyone struggling for inspiration or battling writer's block. Take a look at transliterations' latest prompt for example, it's a good 'un!

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I'm really in the mood to read/comment on things right now, so if there's anything you want looking at or you think deserves attention, link me! I should have some free time this weekend (in between textbooks).

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[Gosh, I've just realised how schizophrenic I must seem over the internet, my tone changes all the freaking time. It's strange that I'm not actually moaning my face off in this journal, for one... (I'm normal, I swear! )]

But seriously, thank you for sticking by me through all the messiness of my life of late. It means a lot to me that there are people here that actually like reading my work.

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(And now for some casual shameless self-promotion...)
Follow me in the twittersphere @ girlglitch~
Check out my visual arts account (it's a little crap, but I'm working on it...) @ girl-glitch
Anddd if you're into riot grrrl, female musicians/bands and/or music in general, drop by my tumblr, terradoll.tumblr.com. I'm currently looking for suggestions to help widen the scope of it a bit, so let me know your favourite female music artists / send me lovely things to reblog.

First off: I cannot apologise enough for my protracted absence. I never really intended to just 'disappear' like that. I needed a break from dA, that I knew, but I was always planning on having a formal hiatus, rather than randomly becoming MIA.
It's pretty hard to explain why I did this. The reasons don't make sense even to myself. Basically, I have been through a very rough time recently: there's been fear, meds, and a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears. I needed a lot of energy and time to concentrate on getting through everything. There were times when I was detached from reality, day-dreaming through life which were, quite honestly, pretty terrifying. And whilst I cannot say I'm cured, or anything like, I feel like I am now at a stage when I can start to get back on track. I've started a new course of meds which, although they are giving me hellish side effects, seem to be working. They've cut down on my desensitivity and word salad, at any rate.
So I'm sorry. I seem to have missed a hell of a lot (I got another DD? How awesome is that?! Thanks so so much to zebrazebrazebra and Halatia for that!), rest assured I am gradually going to be getting things back on track. So expect some super-late replies and comments on work long buried as I work my way through the backlog.


As for my own writing, that's a difficult situation. Due to my mental state, writing's not particularly easy right now. That's not to say I haven't written recently. But it has mostly been longer prose pieces that never got beyond draft stage and I'm pretty ashamed to show anyone. To be honest, for a while I thought I should give up writing entirely, and move on, but thinking rationally, I don't think that would be a good idea. Writing is something I have always enjoyed and often relied on for support. And reading other people's work on here has been more inspiring and uplifting for me than I ever gave credit for before. So while updates may be incredibly slow and may not happen for a while yet, I will try my darndest to get something up here for you all. To say thanks for sticking around for all this time, and all that. Because I really, seriously appreciate it.

For now, I've set up a visual art account where I post some glitch art bits and pieces. It's nothing particularly amazing, but it's been useful to me to have a creative outlet other than writing which I can rely on of recent. So you can follow my work here: . I'll be updating art there pretty often, hopefully. At least until I can start writing properly again.

(Alternatively, you can also stalk me on twitter, where I update far more regularly. I'm girl-glitch.)


So again, I'm sorry for abandoning you all! I really hope I never have to take such a break again.
And thank you, sincerely, for continuing to watch me, to read my work and for your lovely comments. My inbox was pretty much exploding when I logged in again! You are all truly wonderful.