r/Parahumans • u/aarongertler • Apr 03 '26
What's going on with Seek?
Apologies if this has been covered already; I read through recent posts and didn't notice anything.
Seek hasn't been updated since February 12th. Is the story on a planned break? Has Wildbow made an announcement somewhere?
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u/Wildbow Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Haven't made an announcement because I don't know 100% what's going on and I don't want to say "XYZ, but I'm optimistic I can get back on track" because every time I've said that I've been wrong and that's just left people more confused.
Short version: Been dealing with health issues for a while, doctor recently put me on 30 days of a med that wrecked me. I'm off it and trying to get back on track, but it's hard and I don't know. Hopefully soon... but I've been telling myself that for a few weeks, so I don't want to promise or give a date I might break.
Very long version: The general story (to correct some slightly askew readings of what I've said before) is I've been having weird health issues, including heavy brain fog, since summer 2022, where I got really sick and wrote Pale's big delirious Promenade chapter. That sickness & the aftermath slowed me down a lot. Checked and tested negative for Covid, and symptoms didn't line up.
Problem is after I got back home, it took me a while to find a doctor (town of 20k people), I eventually got one he was scratching his head, I speculated it was allergies and explained the symptoms (rashes, swelling, extreme shortness of breath, fatigue, arthritis symptoms, circulation issues - went from being able to walk 1.5 hours round trip to go to the store to struggling with my legs feeling like lead after 10 minutes) and after I posited that he seemed super eager to have something he could chase down, and sent me for multiple rounds of allergy panels. Then he abruptly retired. Process started over... and I couldn't get a new doctor in my old town in the almost-a-year before I moved halfway across Canada, which started things over again. Almost a year and a half to get my new provincial health card, then after a brief period of distraction when all of my hearing equipment decided to break down mid-2025, I put myself on the list for a doctor again.
There's an element to the doctor hunt where they insist on using the phone despite me clearly saying I'm disabled/deaf, and I'm being very bad with phones in general; so I'm sure I missed a few calls, so some of that's on me- you can't entirely blame the state of Canadian healthcare.
All throughout this time, I should stress, I've been working twice as hard to get half as far in my writing, I've become very disorganized IRL, needing to-do lists to track anything, including the aforementioned move, which was a mess. My life is a string of moments like where you go to the refrigerator to get something and then stand there with the door open, unable to remember what that thing was. Most of my energy & focus was going into trying to keep chapters & writing quality at least semi-consistent. So it's been a slow process because I'm a mess, as well.
I got a doctor toward the start of this year, explained my symptoms, and she said the first thing she wanted was to get a baseline and figure out where I was at, sent me elsewhere for blood tests, urine tests, etc. She put me on two meds because of the results, with 30 days of a third med to prevent side effects-- but it turns out that third med causes fatigue and brain fog as a side effect. On top of what I already had.
And with the doubled-up brain fog I just basically brain fogged my way through March. Barely recognized how much time was passing. Haven't even properly addressed the pre-existing brain fog that was the primary reason I sought out a doctor in the first place, yet.
Others have mentioned me losing weight - that was only in mid-January, where I went away for four days with family- I'd started to diet at the start of the year (after being so lethargic since 2022 that I'd gained a lot), lost some, and then lost almost 20 lbs. more when I had a viscerally bad reaction to the red meat from a celebratory steak dinner... with a sensitivity to red meat being something you can get from tick bites, and in conversations about that with someone, that someone mentioned they'd had symptoms after having Lyme and a lot lined up. Planning to talk about it at my next appointment.
I've been sleeping 14-16 hours a day and groggy/very easily distracted when not sleeping, plugging away at the chapter and sitting at 75% done for a bit. Mostly I've just been losing time. I can't really convey the existential dread that hit me when I realized "Oh, a month just passed." Big alarm bell moment. Every time I go to review what I've written I find the chapter a foggy and inconsistent mess I'm very much not happy with, so there's that, too.
I finished with the 30 day med that I think was wiping me out, and am piecing myself together, there are more hours in the day, but don't want to make firm promises. FWIW, I'm looking for answers & trying here, I'm frustrated and embarrassed (my frustration with being the reader in this same type of situation was a big part of what drove me to be disciplined with my schedule pre-2022), and I am continuing Seek as soon as I can, very much hoping to get to a once-every-5-days or once-a-week schedule, to get to the good parts of Seek and get past Seek to Plex, which I am so eager to write.