Quitting All the Things

So, you guys may have noticed another semi-unannounced absence from me. If you haven't, don't tell me. My poor, fragile ego, dude.

Originally, it was going to be a much "worse" hiatus than it was. We were having some serious problems here that seem to be mostly alleviated. My living situation still sucks, but now there's one less variable threatening to make it worse. Still, I had planned on being gone for a month or two while we sorted it out. It started to come together almost a month ago, but I was too upset about it all, and about other things, to be involved in dA.

The truth is that no matter how much I scaled back in my previous involvement in dA, it still wasn't enough. I still keep getting overwhelmed, getting behind, and then hiding from dA for weeks because I am ashamed of my failure to do things I volunteered to do for free.

After a long conversation with several of my friends today, I realized a big part of the problem is that I am doing things I paid big bucks to learn to do for free. 

I love fanfiction. I have always been involved in the community, and I made much of trying to foster and support other writers when I was younger. Then I went to school to learn to do that professionally, for children writing more than just fanfiction, in a context where they can be taken seriously. I wanted to take all the problems I saw in the fanfiction community, the elitism and casual dismissal of kids' interests, and attack them at their source: in the school systems.

Which would be great if, you know, I could get a job.

I'm getting paid near minimum wage to do the part of teaching I like the least: the behavior management, the order-enforcing. While I have a lot of rewarding days in that job, I also have a lot of days when I'm cursed at, threatened, mocked, and lied to, to an extent that "real" teachers don't endure. Then I come home, and I give away professional level critique (or do and sit on said critique, for groups that don't allow decline critique) to people I do not know writing about topics I do not care about for free. 

It isn't that I don't enjoy giving criticism. It's that I feel I have to give it, and what do I get out of it? Maybe if I were chasing the spectre of seniorhood it would be different, but I'm not. The pressure of "oh Tyra you have to read this" has gotten to the point where I can hardly read for my friends, and I'm not writing out of guilt for not reading. I have written a few things, but they're all things I can't share, have no intention to share, and that nobody cares about. (and most of them are Carly O related, which, again, nobody cares).

So I need a fresh start here. 

So I've resigned as an admin at my two main groups: LiteraryFanFiction, whose mission I still believe in, but whose day to day work has become toxic to me... and Art-Academy-Users, whose new games I cannot afford to buy. Once I get comfortable, I might be open to helping out at either in a more limited capacity, but for now, I need to just be an ordinary user.

I'm staying on at Liwick-Fc because nothing happens there anyway.

If I owe you anything, forget it. 

In the meantime, I'm just going to try to enjoy this website again. If you've done anything in the last few months you think I might like to see, please comment with it here. I cleared my inbox without looking at deviations. I'll try to be around... but I make no promises with what I"ll be doing with what I'm here.

I'm so sorry. I hope people can forgive me. I hope they still want me around.