Greetings to you all, my beloved audience!
First, allow me to guess the first thing that's probably on your mind: it's been a while. Yes. It absolutely has.
Let me begin this long overdue update post with an apology. I am deeply sorry that I have largely disappeared from the site over the last few months. As some of you have noticed and pointed out, I have popped in now and again to read the discussion here and check out some other threads I've been following. I haven't, however, done much in the way of interacting. I see that I have private messages from some of you that date back to June and have yet to be answered. I wish I had been more active in writing back in a reasonable amount of time. I hope to get back to all of you sometime within the next day or so. Thank you for your saintly patience with me.
If I may, please indulge me to follow this apology up with an explanation.
As cliché as it is to say, this year has been really tough. I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing this, and I can't claim any one particular hardship that alone explains how I have been feeling lately. But generally, I have been quite depressed. While I am thankful and feel quite blessed that my immediate family, friends, and I have remained safe and healthy throughout the pandemic thus far, the secondary effects of the situation have been difficult for me to grapple with. I am unemployed, and have been for some time. I am unable to see my extended family and friends, whom I miss quite dearly. Events that I typically look forward to in the summer and fall have been obviously cancelled. While these actions and decisions are absolutely right and proper to help end this crisis, they do take an emotional and mental toll on all of us. I find myself lonely frequently. Because my family is decidedly working class, and both my parents are essential workers, I worried about their safety and our financial solvency. Delays to my degree program left me feeling useless, and like a leech on them. I know that is unfair and overly hard on myself, but it was how I felt at the time.
As you can imagine, all of this has affected me and my creative process in rather profound ways.
For the last several months, getting out of bed and taking care of myself from day to day felt like an achievement. My creative output slowed until it became virtually nothing. I do not exaggerate when I write that before this afternoon, I hadn't even looked at my Blue Skies material in over a month. I found myself trapped in a vicious cycle. I would want to write something, produce something, just to feel a sense of accomplishment, only to put too much pressure on myself and come up with nothing. This in turn would fuel my anxiety about myself. I began to feel like I was never any good as a writer to begin with, and that I should just give up on all my projects altogether.
Thankfully, I did not face these things alone.
Over the last several weeks, I have learned to accept the offers of help coming from those closest to me, and I began to address what I was feeling, and put together a plan of action to combat them. My friends and I are back to our weekly games of D&D (well, a Star Wars TTRPG, and Call of Cthulhu actually), playing on Roll20, and I could not be more thrilled about that. My girlfriend and I video chat and watch episodes of Psych together (I've already seen them all, but they make me laugh, which, I've learned, is tremendous medicine). And I've even begun to write again, though my output is small and slow at the moment. I'm just happy with where I am. Something is better than nothing.
I know I have said this before, but I want to sincerely thank all of you for keeping this thread alive. This TL is one of my favorite things that I have ever been a part of. I genuinely consider each of you to be a friend, and I want that to continue for as long as it possibly can. Looking toward the future of Blue Skies is difficult for me at the moment, but I want to share my thoughts, if you'll again allow me. (I'm sorry this post is so long!)
One of the things I have struggled with as I begin to plan and write for BSiC again is in finding the narrative I want to tell. I am happy with much of my work on it thus far, but there is so much I want to retcon and change. Some of these things will be relatively minor, dates, details, etc. But some are rather major. I intend to take the advice that several of you have offered me on this, and finish Act III before making any revisions. This will allow me to continue moving forward, then decide what to change later. If you all are interested in hearing more about intended changes, please feel free to ask.
Secondly, I must admit that my feelings toward the world at present have made writing more of this TL rather challenging for a unique reason: my intention is for TTL to be a more hopeful world than the one we presently inhabit. Going all the way back to 2017 when this TL began, that was always my intention for Blue Skies in Camelot. I wanted to imagine what a rosier, kinder, gentler world might look like, beginning with icons like Marilyn Monroe and JFK surviving their untimely fates. Again, this year has made hope a rather rare commodity, hasn't it?
And yet, I still hold hope for our world. Despite all of the horror we have already faced this year, I believe in us. I still believe that we will learn from our mistakes and do better for the future. I have faith in us to turn this thing around. And grandiose as this may sound: I want Blue Skies to be a part of that dream. I want to find the hope again and continue this story.
Unlike my last "Return" update, I won't promise a certain output or post schedule. I will only say that I intend to come back once more, and keep this story going with your help, all of you. In the event that there are more intolerable delays on my end, I also want to say that I love and value each and every one of you. You are important. You are unique. And you are loved. Stay strong and stay hopeful, fellow AltHistory fans, and remember what Henry David Thoreau once wrote:
"It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see."
Best wishes,
President_Lincoln
And thank you for your kind words. 
