Uhm, hi guys! This is kind of awkward, but I'm giving up. It's simple as that. I can't muster up the energy to write the grand finale that I had in mind for this story. Sorry.

Ok, so, I have a long history of not finishing stories, or projects in general. When I started writing this particular story, I made a few promises to myself. The first one was that I wouldn't stop writing halfway through. I had done that one too ma times, and I needed to prove to myself that I can actually dedicate myself to something until the end. The second promise was that I would stick to the outline that I had made and write everything in chronological order. This was to prevent myself from just writing the fun and exciting chapters first and never ending up writing the "filler" ones.

This tactic kind of worked and kind of didn't work. It did force me to write everything that was needed for the plot, since I worked very structuredly and I didn't overlook anything. I could publish a chapter soon as I had written it, which encouraged me to write more since I really built up a following of readers who expected me to publish regularly. But it also had its downsides. One that I really didn't anticipate was that once I got to the chapters that I really liked and already had nearly completely written out in my mind, I couldn't write them. I had lost the inspiration for it, and forgotten what I wanted to say. I think this is what happens when you wait too long with writing something. This resulted in the high points of the story not really being as high as I wanted them to be.

Overall, I think I did a pretty good job at not giving up and continuing on with the story anyway. I REALLY lost inspiration sometimes, but I kept going. I didn't upload regularly and I took multiple longer breaks, but I kept coming back to my story. That is, until now.

When the end of the story started coming closer, I really didn't want to write anymore. Maybe this was due to me not wanting the story to end, I don't know. Anyway, this had been going on for a bit until the final chapter came along. And there, I completely blacked out. I simply COULDN'T write it. And now you need to know that this chapter was supposed to be the best chapter of them all. It was the grande finale, where all the plot pieces would come together and the arc would be completed. It was really important to me. I have tried to write it so many times, you guys. Really, I did. I started again and again and again but I never got more on paper than a few sentences.

So why couldn't I write it? I think there are multiple reasons:

1. The story wasn't there yet. Stakes were supposed to be really high at this point, but honestly, they were not. The story had been dragging on too much and it just really hadn't reached that peek yet. To write the final chapter and make it feel natural I would have had to rewrite the entire story.

2. I was afraid to not reach up to the high standard I had set for myself. I really wanted this chapter to be perfect, and was afraid of writing it.

3. People like me, who are very afraid of failing, tend to drop out of something JUST before they succeed. That seems to be the case here as well: I wanted to finish the story and I was ALMOST THERE. This is a weird psychological process of your brain blocking off, because you're afraid that if you can do it now, people expect you to always be able to do it again. I think this happened as well. It's very similar to the: "I'm not going to study for the test because if I fail, it's at least not because I'm not good enough" rhetoric. PLEASE DON'T DO THAT, IT'S VERY UNHEALTHY. I'M TRYING TO STOP DOING IT.

4. I didn't want to have finished the story, because that would be the end of a phase in my life. I think.

So that's what I think that was happening in my unconsciousness, when I was trying to write.

I'm really REALLY sorry for letting you guys down. I wanted this story to have a proper ending as well. I'm also really sorry for not letting you guys know when or if another chapter was going to come out for eight months, I should have kept you guys up to date and told you what was going on. Sorry for that.

It's hard to say but: I failed. I set myself the goal to finish this story and I didn't. It's simple as that.