oh hi!! I'm guessing you probably follow my priv which I suppose narrows down who you are but I'll respect the mysterious cloak and not look too closely 🫡 I do really appreciate you sending this though, thank you, that was really kind of you considering you're not even in the xh loop atm 😭💕 I wouldn't worry about it too much, I know there's a rift between what I feel and what the reality is... I feel terribly guilty whenever I get down about these things because I really am grateful for the response I receive and I'm probably just being greedy, but honestly with every multichapter fic I've published, there's come a point towards the middle where I get into a slump and get discouraged by a drop in interactions/engagements, mostly comments 🥲 I don't want this to get too long so I'll just say that there's this evil slug that lives in my head that will notice a totally normal and expected decrease in engagement and use it against me to whisper directly into my brain folds that I'm not good enough to keep my readers interested and eventually everyone's gonna stop reading and no one even likes or cares about me all that much, and I know the slug is full of shit, fuck that slug, but for a slug he's really weirdly loud and sticky and he makes it so hard to focus on what's real and good and positive 😞

"I don't want this to get too long," she says, and then proceeds to come up with an entire slug analogy rather than just saying "I'm mentally ill", but like... it is what it is 😭 ultimately I don't write to get validation, I write because I like writing, but I guess maybe sometimes I do need validation 1) to shut that fucking slug up and 2) to feel like my effort is worth something, I guess? so, again, thank you 🥺 for partly selfish reasons I do hope you get your jooseok brainworms back soon, but honestly the tag is lowkey thriving these days (I too have not been keeping up 🙃) so there'll be a veritable feast waiting for you upon your triumphant return! 💕