We're SO CLOSE

Hey everyone, sorry the update is a few days late again! I'm sure it gets tiring to hear "we were very busy" every update, but that's still been the case, even moreso in the past few days. This will be a purely personal update, just to be upfront; I have gotten some minor work done on CPE, but it's mostly planning things I can't really talk about because of story spoilers.

We're getting SO close to being finished with the house purchase, but we've run into a few snags near the end of the process. Without getting too deep into the details, my tax situation this year was very odd; I had to put my tax balance this year on a payment plan, because the money I had saved for taxes had to go towards the house purchase instead, since that was dropped on us last minute. I thought that that whole process was completed, but it turns out my 2021 balance wasn't ever actually added to my payment plan (even though I got an IRS letter that made it sound like it was), and since the mortgage lender needs confirmation that I'm up to date on my taxes, it's been a pretty huge source of stress this past week or two. We're still in the process of getting it taken care of; I can't go through the online systems due to some really annoying technical issues, and the IRS is nearly impossible to get a hold of over the phone. I've been on hold with them for multiple hours every business day and still haven't gotten through, it's fun stuff.

That being said, I'm in close contact with my CPA and mortgage lender, so everyone in the process knows I'm working on it and I get the impression that they're willing to give me the loan even if my taxes aren't done in time, since everything else checks out and I have proof that the taxes are being actively worked on, along with many years of consistent payments to the IRS for my previous payment plans to prove that I'm very reliable with paying off my debts.

Aside from the tax situation, though, basically everything else is done and ready to go. We still have a lot of packing and cleaning to do, but we've been completely exhausted with all of the stress and work from dealing with the mortgage stuff, and we still have about 2 more weeks before our originally scheduled closing day. We're trying to get the date moved closer, actually, but that will largely depend on if I can secure the loan in time, so it's still up in the air. I'm hoping to have a definitive date by tomorrow, we got a LOT of stuff done today and the goal is so close I can almost taste it.

For my part, my mental/emotional state has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. Some days I feel fine, and others the pressure is absolutely oppressive and stifling and it's all I can do to just get out of bed. Overall though, I'm hanging in there a LOT better than I would've in the past, thanks to medication and therapy. I'm definitely gonna need some time to decompress once everything is said and done, but I'm really itching to get back to work, and I plan on doing so as soon as we're settled in. In general, I need to get myself on a schedule; during CPE's development, my most productive times have always been when I have a streaming schedule to stick to, and after talking with my therapist about it, I can see why. He told me that dedicated schedules are possibly the most important thing for ADHD people and productivity, but that we're also resistant to the idea of schedules, which.. yeah, I can relate to that, it's a large part of why getting back into streaming has been difficult. I have always enjoyed streaming dev work though, so I fully intend to get them started again once we're settled in.

As always, HUGE shoutouts to all of you who are sticking with us through this lull; I know it's been a long time since we had regular development updates, and I completely understand anyone who decides to stop supporting during it, but those of you who've decided to stick around are just about the coolest people in existence. I haven't felt an itch to work like this in a long time, and I'm about to finally get a private office, so I'm confident the game will finally get moving again in a major way. Fingers crossed that my next update will be made from our new house! If not, though, we'll be agonizingly close, so either way you won't be waiting for real updates for much longer!