Early Bird: Spiraling Into Control Ch. 03 (and personal update)

In which Vivi sinks deeper and deeper into the clutches of Celeste's soft, bouncy boobies and struggles to resist being turned into Celeste's eager little bimbo toy. Will she succeed, or will Celeste bounce-bounce-bounce all of Vivi's silly little thoughts into bubbly nonsense? Just how much dumber can she even get?

Hello, my lovelies! I didn't have a lot of time to write a nice, proper cliffhanger for this chapter, but the conclusion to Spiraling Into Control will be out next week! I hope you enjoy!

A Personal Update

So, I do want to give some information on how I'm doing, for those of you who've asked. It's a little heavy, so by no means should you feel obligated to engage with it. CW for mental health talk, anxiety, economic issues, etc.

So, I've honestly been too stressed to even engage with most of my work this last week. It mostly hasn't bled into the Patreon yet because I managed to establish a good buffer, but it is why the Bonus Pairing and Flashfic polls aren't out yet. Sorry, lovelies. Sometimes even thinking about my deadlines is enough to trigger a panic attack, and I pretty much just have to ride it out. It's not rational; take panic and anxiety out of the equation and I have the work done in a half-hour. It's just a consequence of too much stress over too long a period. We didn't evolve Fight or Flight with the expectation that we'd have to keep it going for several years straight.

2020 saw me plummet out of college, having disappointed most of the people who'd done their best to help me through it, and proceed to fall so far behind in the work I loved that I spent the next year basically unable to enjoy smut in any capacity. Two months ago, I had one commissioner call me a con artist and cancel his payment because I'd missed yet another self-imposed deadline. The chapter had just entered the final editing stages.

I'm irrationally terrified of disappointing people or losing their trust, and all-too-often, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Me knowing that doesn't break the spell, which bites.

I've done a lot of work to claw myself back out of the pit. There's still some ways to go, and the truth is, when I'm at my very worst, I'm afraid I'll never get out. It's not so much about avoiding burnout anymore; it's about surviving the burnout without too much damage being done while I keep trying to get the engine working again. Maybe eventually the fire will die down if I keep beating it back for long enough.

I'm deeply stubborn. That helps. I also really enjoy this work, and I have amazing and supportive readers, and patient, empathetic commissioners, and those things help a lot. This week in particular has been rocky for me--medical crises and health insurance troubles, extreme family instability, a roommate's unemployment payments getting cut off (making me the sole income once again) and, well, Upsetting News Cycles--but I'm still here, and as Richard Nixon said, I'll outlive all the bastards. I like quoting that guy. Things always went well for him, right?

Anyways, August sucked, but I think I handled the suckiness better than I did in June or July. Sometimes that's what really matters--it's not about moving past the depression or the anxiety, it's about developing better coping strategies so I can get out of the bad places faster and easier. Maybe I'll actually start using water on the fire instead of these dry rags.

Thank you all once again for your support. I'm working hard, even when it doesn't look like it. Here's to hoping I get to handle September even better still. <3

Oh, and please do keep wearing your masks and distancing. Being vaccinated keeps you pretty safe, but not everyone's able to get vaccinated, kids especially, and "let's not get children hospitalized with Delta" shouldn't be as controversial as Fox News would have it be.