Goodness, it’s been longer than I thought.

One reason I’ve been silent is that I spent much of the last month grinding away on a paper. It’s basically a useful set of computational tools for a specific job, a minor improvement over existing techniques. Nothing too fancy, but as is typical for me it wound up snowballing into a LOT of work right before deadline. My advisor wanted more results, alas, so we blew past that deadline and are aiming for another venue in February.

Normally I would have popped back up after that, but as you may have noticed the Christmas season was upon us. Historically, it has been the hardest time of year for me. Worse, my life has taken a nose-dive over the last two months, and that plus some changes to my emotional support network could have combined to absolutely crush me.

It didn’t, which is still surprising even in hindsight. After a lifetime of battling depression, I’ve apparently gotten to the point where my  subconscious can organise self-care without my consciousness cluing in. That was a head-trip.

I haven’t fully dodged the emotional bullet, alas, but at least I’m functional enough to either hammer away at the worst I’m dealing with or sit patiently while it passes. It does mean I’ll be keeping to lighter topics and sparse posts on the blog, though, as I’m not centred enough to pull off long–form rants unless I get really ticked off. Sorry to disappoint in that department, but hopefully this isn’t a permanent phase.