Where Did I Go?

Note: I'm typing this while I still have some capabilities of doing so. So if my spelling or something suddenly goes awry later, don't be too shocked. :P

So I've been kind of absent on the blog front, comic front, and general art front. I apologize greatly for this. It has, however, been because of something that's out of my hands - or I should say something that is IN my hands.

We'll start with a story.

Long long ago, in a college land far away (okay so it was like 7 years ago. THAT'S A LONG TIME STOP MAKING ME FEEL OLD), I used to work in a payroll office on campus. It was an awesome place (except that one creepy guy who ended up getting fired), and I had nice hours and decent pay. However, despite it being like 2005, we still did payroll the old fashioned way by adding up and hand-entering all the hours on all the time cards. For the entire college campus. We would have around 2000 separate time cards for all the student workers (not including the staff ones that weren't "salaried").

So being one of the student workers in this particular office, we got the luck of being the ones to enter all the times into the system - which at that time was one of those reeeeeeally old fashioned black screens with green text that you have to tab to every part of the screen. No mouse use at all. I kinda liked it, in it's hipstery way.

I quickly learned how to type numbers quickly on a keypad (a skill that has benefited me ever since), and I was LIGHTNING FAST at it too. Darn accurate to boot. However, the greatest flaw to this was that the keyboard was not, shall we say, at an ergonomically sound position. I did not realize this. And after working all summer, and into the winter here... my arm began to hurt. So much I couldn't even touch a pencil without pain jutting up my arm.

Found out I gave myself tendinitis (by the local doctor just off of campus. Ech. I did not get long well with this one - indirectly the cause of my anxiety attacks for the rest of my life, along with poor diagnosis), but thankfully they assigned me some physical therapy and I did that for about 6 sessions and with rest and muscle relaxants, it got better.

We now segway into the current job. Where I'm at now, my computer work is almost ENTIRELY reliant on using a mouse, clicking, dragging, all sorts of other things requiring the use of muscles in my hand and arm. (I do a lot of photoshop work, and the back end program that we use to update our store's website is mostly mouse based - there's no keyboard shortcuts to get around the screens, alas)

Lately, I've been getting a lot of last minute/rush type things, and adding that in with the long term use of the mouse, NEW problems have arisen.

So what does all this rambling have to do with me being gone? Well I'm finally going to the doctor about this problem.

I have an appointment tomorrow with a new doctor who I hear is pleasant, who will hopefully be able to help me solve this mystery (maybe finally prove to people I have something wrong with my hands), or possibly refer me to an actual hand specialist, as I'm just plain sick of having this constant issue.

Wish me luck!