Yeah, I'm around again.

I left originally because my mother was ill. Ill as in "there is a good chance she'll die" ill. And, when she got over the worst of it, it left her so weak that I was spending all my free time going up and helping my father with her. And the recovery was a very long time.

Finally though, she started making some progress. We celebrated her 81st birthday in November. While we were celebrating, our apartment was robbed. I lost my computer and all my Sims games. Along with a bunch of other stuff. It was a really bad time in our lives, not because of losing the stuff, although that was bad, but my cat Goten, who is a big old friendly doofus, was terrified for weeks whenever there was a noise by any of the windows. Terrified as in running and hiding and when I would drag him out, he'd just shake. Whoever robbed us must have hit him. He probably ran up to see what was going on, like some big, friendly, orange lummox, and they must have hit him. I don't think they yelled at him, because when you're robbing a house, you don't yell. If they'd just pushed him, he would have been fine, he's been pushed a lot. The way he was acting, he must have been hit. We never hit him. We rescued him from the streets and I know people on the street used to kick him, but we never did. It was awful seeing him like that. My whole attitude was, "Okay, it's bad enough you took our stuff, but damn it, you don't mess with my cat!"

In December, I was finally able to hobble a computer together. When I wrote to tell Atwa that I needed an extention on my leave, I found out that they had to remove me from my select artist status because I guess they figured I'd been gone too long.

At that point, I decided that any "hobby" where I can lose my standing because my family is sick and I get robbed, isn't something I'm really into anymore. So, I put it behind me and pretty much stopped doing anything Sims, including playing the game.

I've been playing lately, just playing, and doing a bit of downloading. I never really played the game as much as I wanted to before, because I was all caught up in creating. Now I want to actually play a bit.

Yes, there are times when I have the urge to create, and I've even got some sets of bedding I made that I considered uploading, but eh, I'm not too sure anymore. I mean, Sims 2 has been around for a long enough time that there are tons of things out there. And, there are so many people making stuff that are a zillion times better than I ever was, I don't know if I'd even make Select Artist now, as I did then. I see people who are select artists now that are doing just...breathtaking stuff. Stuff that would have garenteed them Feature Artists status back when I was creating.

Sims 3 will be out soon enough it seems and then will there even be any market for Sims 2 content creators? As for Sims 3, I strongly doubt this old computer will be able to play it. Also, if I'm hearing correctly, being able to change colors of items will be as easy as a couple clicks of the mouse, so I doubt there will be much need for a recolorer. And I don't think I'll ever master meshing. The whole process to mesh was just way too much for this old brain. Not the actual creating a mesh, but all the steps involved in how to just get it into the game, the time it took to again and again check the item, etc. For someone with ADD, it just got to be too much.

So, yeah, I'm around, but I don't know if I'll get back into creating. If I see a need I can fill, I might, but with tens of thousands of walls and floors and recolors of almost every shade and hue, I don't see where I'm really needed anymore in the Sims custom community.

Well, that's my story. In case anyone was curious...

Warmest Wishes
Darqstar