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2022 Recap on Creativity & RestElle leaning forward to show off her cleavage with D-cup breasts in black lingerie.

2022 Recap on Creativity & Rest

Published by mightytinygiant on January 1, 2023

(Content tags: this article contains discussion of sex, masturbation, mental health diagnoses, C-PTSD, size dysmorphia and AiWS, dissociation, burnout, panic attacks, grief, and shame, balanced with a variety of positive emotions like gratitude, hope, and determination.)

 

Instructions for Living A Life:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

—Mary Oliver

 

Achievements in context

This has been a difficult year for so many. As I see the 2022 retrospectives roll past on the timeline, I feel a mix of pride in myself and my own accomplishments, and a wish that I could put some of it in context for anyone else out there who also feels inadequate. If you feel like you haven’t done enough, or if you’re afraid to take a break because you won’t be productive, this is for you.

This year I wrote more fiction than I ever have in my life, more than 120,000 words. That’s clocking in at 2.4 NaNoWriMos! I published 80,000 words to this blog. I recorded and edited six author-read audio tracks. I also wrote a significant amount of nonfiction, including three free community resources, one of which I presented at SizeCon.

Fiction, poetry, and audio:

Nonfiction:

A horizontal graph showing word counts from 2021 compared to 2022. In 2021, Elle published 21,000 words of fiction compared to 60,000 in 2022. In 2021, she wrote 34,000 words in total and in 2022 she wrote 120,000 total. Please contact her if you'd like a full list of figures to compare.
Such a long bar graph you have, there. Is that a personal best wordcount in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

I’m very proud of this achievement. And a lot of it has only been possible because my life happened to fall apart in a very specific way. There’s some socioeconomic privilege at work here, and other factors I won’t share for privacy reasons.

My life was in upheaval this year. I experienced two traumatic losses, one of which was to due to COVID in spite of vaccines and boosters. When the living situation at our last place became untenable, my polycule moved again for the second year in a row. I burned out completely on my entire nonprofit career, had two full breakdowns, and took five hiatuses from Twitter/writing that amounted to at least six months of “unproductive” rest and healing.

Continue reading2022 Recap on Creativity & Rest
Hiatus How To: When, how & why to take a break from NSFW TwitterA close-up photo of a dandelion with most of its seeds missing, and a tiny person sitting on top in a tired posture. These are silhouetted in front of a pink sunset or sunrise.

Hiatus How To: When, how & why to take a break from NSFW Twitter

Published by mightytinygiant on September 18, 2022

(CW for discussion of mental health, depression, addiction, abuse, trauma, and anxiety.)

Topics in this article

 

To go on hiatus is to take a break, or to pause something that has been ongoing.

The first time I went on hiatus in an online kink community, I had a full-on hot mess breakdown. I didn’t know what “hiatus” even meant. I was terrified it would be forever, and I didn’t even know how to reassure myself, let alone the people around me. It was 2016 and I was still new to size kink as a shared experience instead of a shameful secret. I’ve come a long way. I’ve made mistakes and learned a lot. That seems worth sharing.

What this won’t be:

This won’t be an official guide. It won’t be an argument for or against leaving a community temporarily or forever, because only you can know what you need. I won’t talk about what it’s like to go on hiatus when you depend on NSFW Twitter to make money from art, writing, or sex work, because I don’t have personal experience with that yet. (If anyone does, and wants to share some advice, I’ll gladly consider quoting you!)

I also won’t pretend to understand you, your situation, or how you feel about your body or mental health. Some of my advice will be a good fit for you, and some of it you can leave. I’m not a mental health professional, and strongly recommend you consider talking with a counselor or therapist if you even halfway think you might want to try that. (Jump to the end for a list of kink-friendly therapy databases where you can look for sliding-scale and low-cost options.)

What this will be:

Hopefully, this will be a useful collection of my thoughts on my own hiatus process that I’ve developed after years of trial and error and watching friends go through the same. Some come back to the community and some don’t. Some hiatuses are scary. Some are a huge relief.

I’m writing this to you, and to the person I was during my first panicked hiatus. And to the less-than-supportive friend I have been to others going on hiatus. I’ll draw from examples in the size kink / #SizeTwitter community, but I think much of this will be relevant to NSFW Twitter or other online kink spaces in general.

I’m writing to share some questions that you might not have considered, and to point you towards some resources, and to just show that it’s okay to need a break—even from something you love.

Continue readingHiatus How To: When, how & why to take a break from NSFW Twitter