Akasha´s Blog

Hey Lovelies,

wow, it´s been a while, eh? What happened, what made me stop?
I had a massive burnout. Yes, another. It was looming on me for a couple of weeks but I had to pull through Halloween. After Elektrohexe I´ve let go of all of my sponsors, jobs and responsibilities, thanking them kindly. I´ve retorted to Youtube and Spotify, drowning myself in music, podcasts and channels devoted to dogs, mental illnesses, queer and trans topics, wellness, cooking, horses, celli, StarWars. My beloved cat Arya joined me ever so often, curling up on my lap or between my chest and my keyboard.
Then Dec 24th happened and Arya fell sick. I have mentioned it in previous years – this is THE day of Christmas for my family. THE NIGHT OF THE YEAR. Holy to me. However I did spend it with Arya in the clinic.  But this was only the start to a 3 week nightmare triggering the worst phase of my life.
While I spent day and night on the couch, at Arya´s side, taking her in for infusions twice some douchbag took the glasses of my car´s side mirrors, tried to kick off the left one and took my front wipers. Of course there´s no hints as to who it was and it was JUST below of what I have to pay before the insurance takes over.
My parent´s 14 yr old lab fell sick on the same day as Arya, Sam´s fine now though, he just turned 15 on the 8th. Arya however turned out to have a lymphoma, it was 8 by 4″ – her having a back length of  11″. It must have pretty much exploded and there was open fluid, too. I had to let her go on January 13th. One day after my rezday, 2 days before my birthday and 15 years after my Grandfather died.  It crushed me completely, especially as she was so dehydrated they almost had to do a cardial injection (Pulp Fiction Needle in Heart Style). On the clinic´s cold metal table.

I´ve posted updates on my personal SL FB so you might have seen those. Hence I´ve asked not to be tagged in anything except for stuff I´m actually participating in.

However on the 20th my bridesmaid Laura asked us if we wanted to adopt their black beauty Loki, a huge mini panther with a gentle soul and heart. We discussed things and of course it was interrupted by Arya falling sick. Dani, her sister was quite fine after she passed  and no matter how broken my heart was – I couldn´t stop thinking about Loki. I´ve always had a crush on him and I knew that he would be a great buddy for Dani. We took him in a few days after Arya´s urn was back home. They gave their pack of 4 away cos they never really got along. Well they gave Paulchen and Loki away. Their girl Snow stayed along with Loki´s brother Jasper, who had 2 huge tumors on his neck. Jasper passed away 3 weeks ago, so Snow is now alone. With them expecting their third child in late summer this is absolutely the right decision.
Dani and Loki get along just fine and Loki´s SUCH a daddy´s boy. He loves Jonian to bits and prefers males. So we´re looking for Soul No 3 right now cos I´m really suffering under not having a cat that loves to cuddle near my heart and lets me hug them. Ours look at me if I wanted to punish them and I don´t want to annoy them too much bless their gentle souls.
My mom also lost her “shadow” (yet blonde) pug Paula quite suddenly due to a brain tumor, another angel sorely missed by the whole family. I mean – who´s gonna lick our jeans´ legs when we visit them now?

Quite some furry-induced trouble, eh?

The biggest impact this all´s had on me though: I cannot listen to music anymore. If you´ve seen me in a club or at a set, telling you “love that tune” – it´s because  I´ve read it in local. I´m sorry.  I start to shake if I try to listen to tunes. I cannot watch videos anymore either. I miss it, cos it helped me relax, kept me occupied without being overwhelming.

I´ve started to dabble in some projects in SL again. I´ve updated my services page accordingly and you find more detailed info and all the links there. Mainly Jonian opened his mainstore and will attend his first event next month, my beloved colleague Mildread Gloom and I started an Event Promo Agency, for EU-timezoned goth/rock/alt club MANAGERS to promote their events on adboards and in an inworld group to people within our timezones. Furthermore I started….or am starting… a consulting service for bloggers to help them with organizing their workload, setting up scenes for them or helping them with that – or whatever they need help with in their workflow. Well, except post editing their pictures of course, cos we all know I don´t do that. But I know some awesome digital artists (people who do) that have done some wonderful tutorials to refer them to.
“Unfortunately” neither of these services are free.
I´ve worked hours and hours helping people for free. Good service isn´t free and free service isn´t good. There might be exceptions but people keep mentioning this “self-worth” thing and well, let´s do that for a change.

I don´t know if I´ll ever return to sponsored blogging though, because it gets more and more insane out there and I neither have the will nor the strength to succumb myself to the pressure of achieving numbers and deal with items I wouldn´t usually wear just to fullfill requirements. Never say never, but for now it´ll be random posts of whatever I feel like.  I´ve had about 11 wannado´s prepared, some pre-written, some pre-styled and I might do some text only posts, too.

The pictures I´ll add today is  one I did for a black and white challenge Will tagged me in on FB, I´ve never actually released it but just put it in the comments under his post. It´s my farewell to the souls we´ve lost recently. There will be no Stylecard either. Of course you can always ask, but you know that. I´ll only add the B/W Version but I do have a coloured version of it, too. The second is my current mood with a kitteh that I found in my inventory. It was part of a ….swing set? I think…

That´s it for now.

Take care,

love,

Kasha