Hey all - 

Remember Christmas Horse 3's delay? 2023 was a rough year and it was the last time we had gone to India during my break between Fall - Spring semester in December/January. I ended up releasing CH3 in February.

Well, my husband and I are heading to India again during my break again and travel is always stressful. I have my last work meeting of the semester tomorrow morning, and then I have to focus on cleaning the house and packing and attempting to get some rest before travel in the next four or five days. Additionally, I want to get all my prep done for Spring 2026 while we're traveling - so on the airplane, at nights from Rai's parents' house, etc. - because I remember Spr2023 being a pretty miserable semester and I want to try to avoid that level of workload.

Additionally, for this iteration of Christmas Horse, my cousin is also working on it. She has been painting the backgrounds while I've been implementing a rudimentary Visual Novel system, and we were going to write the story together. However, last week she fell and broke her ankle and now healing (plus continuing to work because yay U.S.A.) is her priority, and I have also been taking things over for her.

So anyway, while I do love releasing Christmas Horse every year in December, just the way things have stacked up with my workload this Fall semester (couldn't really get started that early), my travel coming up, and Bekah's healing, I'm just not going to push myself to get work done on this during this week. I'm going to rest and play some video games and take care of myself, because balance is important! Each semester is a 16 week marathon and beyond teaching responsibilities I also have to be on committees and department responsibilities, and by the end I am always so THOROUGHLY burnt out. I enjoy teaching but a "full time" workload feels like too much for a single human to handle (while also taking care of the rest of their life), and I'm going to try to adjust this balance in 2026, but to do this I need to get my prep out of the way during the break. We return home from India the Friday before meetings begin, then classes begin the week after that.

Blahblahblahblah.

The good news is, early in the semester is pretty breezy. I will probably end up working on Christmas Horse in January and maybe have another February release before the semester work starts getting heavy.

Thank you for your understanding and patience. I'm going to rest now.

--Rachel