First off, don't worry, this is NOT a cancellation of Batmare Begins and I am NOT leaving MLP Forums or anything like that. I have every intention of getting back to my fic as soon as I possibly can (which will hopefully be sometime this week) and remaining an active member here. But I need to be open and honest with you right now, since I owe you an update given how patient you've all been.

Well, no easy way of saying this, so let me just be frank: I've bucked up. In a lot of areas of my life, this past month. Things are just pretty rough right now, in general, and most of it's self-inflicted. I've been frivolously wasting my time doing things I know I shouldn't be doing, which leave me with not enough time to devote to both my real life work and things I care about very much like Batmare Begins. I haven't been to church in quite a while and am currently not devoting enough time to God or my Christianity. One of my cats at my mom's house had to be put down this past weekend, and since she's almost three hours away I wasn't able to say goodbye to him (not that I'm angry at her about that, it was very sudden and took all of us off guard and it's still sinking in that I'll never get to see the little guy ever again). And I've been worrying way too much about my future to the point that I have paralyzed myself into inactivity in almost any endeavor I truly care about. In short, things are just a mess for me right now, and a lot of it is just because of poor decision-making and use of my time on my part. I need more self-discipline and self-control in my life, and that's not the case right now.

Now, I'm not asking for your help. You don't owe me anything. I just felt I need to be honest with you all since I've kind of been off the grid for some time. I needed to let you know why, mostly to get it off my chest and to give me some good incentive for getting back on the right track. I just need to do better at motivating myself right now to use my time better and make better decisions in my life, and I think being open and honest with friends like you, people who have been there for me in this fandom for a long time now, is a good place to start. So now that you know what's up, I promise you that I am working hard to turn things around, and that includes regularly showing up around here, getting back hard at work on Batmare Begins and getting these latest updates up as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued support, and once again everyone, I'm very sorry.