Good news #1 - Things are stabilized on my end. I recently went from a measly 10 hours a week at work to having 28, so I had to adjust to that real life wise. I've been able to do that, albeit with random off days on every given week, but still. Not an issue. Three weeks in, I'm used to tailoring things to the increased hours.
Now for the bad news.
I was doing some thinking about things here and I've realized a couple of things I overlooked when I came here and created the Minka Carter character. These two things are common, I'd say. The first thing is that I created her on a whim, without too much of a way to break her in and as a result, she had the whole "vanilla rookie face thing" going on. The second thing is that I honestly rushed it when I first put her together, without REALLY giving too much thought to how I wanted to build her as a character. So, as a result of that, I was taking a shot in the dark with her and didn't know how to build her story as she went along in XWA and I was hoping the break would help. Unfortunately, I came to realize that I had a character that was vanilla to the point where I just wasn't into her at all. In fact, I was getting pretty close to just dropping her and writing her off as an experiment I just wasn't interested enough in moving forward with, which tragically, happens with some characters.
So, I know what you're thinking. I'm leaving XWA for good right? Wrong. That's not the case. No worries there.
Obviously this means I'm dropping Minka and trying a different character right? Well... that's where you'd be wrong if the thought crossed your mind.
And this is where the bad news ends and I get to the second part of the good news.
I'm going to keep going with her, because in the least expected 11th hour moment, a character development story idea hit me and I will be honest with you guys and admit that this story is going to take her in a direction that is likely to be significantly different from the small sample size you've seen of her in matches, but I just got that proverbial "gut feeling" that tells me that once I play this story out, and I know that there are CD forums and other things here for that, that it's going to give me something with Minka that I am really going to enjoy (and hopefully you guys too). I won't give spoilers, but everything in her current app/bio is on the table to change (and I mean EVERYTHING *cue dramatics*). It may be a bit longer before I'm actively doing match writing on the regular again, BUT, my plan is to flesh Minka out as a character and play out some of the plans I have in mind and THEN jump back into it.
Don't you love 11th hour inspiration?

Anyway, didn't mean for this to get long winded. Just wanted to keep you guys in the loop of what's been happening with me and what plans I have for the near future.