Hey everyone, long time no talk.
I apologize for disappearing and not posting or responding to emails and messages for so so long.
Many thanks and much love to the community for it's patience and to everyone who tried to reach out. I appreciate the love and concern.
While I don't want to go into a ton of detail I feel I owe you all some sort of explanation and this one's personal so if that's not something you're interested in then I apologize for going all TMI and suggest you skip the rest of this post.
After the fire our good friend Jesse took us in up here in Oregon and did everything he could to help us get back on our feet. He fed us, housed us, introduced us to the people of this strange new place and just did whatever he could to try and help us heal. We were close before but after being here for a while he'd become best-friend/family/mentor to both Amanda and myself. He died this summer, no real warning he was just dead in his house one morning and gone forever. We had just celebrated his 50th birthday a month or two prior and the loss was surprising and shocking and devastating for both of us.
Separately from Jesse's death was a close call/suicide scare in our immediate Underdog family. While it fortunately ended in a close call instead of another funeral it just completely broke me and pushed me into such a dark and deep depression that I'm still struggling to find my footing.
Throughout this I've also been dealing with some type of mystery neurological issue/illness that has just relentlessly kicked me while I've been down and has made it that much harder to deal with everything going on and limiting how hard I can work.
That's my dumpster fire, pity party story and I hope it helps explain my shitty disappearance and absence. I've felt the need to make this post for a couple months but found it too overwhelming every time I tried. I feel like I'm back on my feet now even if still staggering and stumbling and I hope it's a sign of returning to better times and a less dark place.
and again thank you all so much for the patience, kindness, compassion and love.. after 13 years here I feel like this community and all you amazing people are almost a second family.
