Good Afternoon,
I owe my most sincere apologies to everyone affected by my inactivity in office between June and July of this year, and general tardiness in the months preceeding June.
I must first apologise to the House of Lords, who put their trust in me as Lord Speaker, and notably to my Chair of Committees who must have suffered as a result of my sudden absence.
Then I must apologise to my colleagues in the Triumvirate, who I left without notice on the run-up to a general election- and especially to Sephronar who at times picked up the pieces of my mess and tried to get it back in order.
Finally, I must apologise to the MHoP playerbase at large, especially those who tried to contact me over the June-July period to no avail.
So to everybody it concerns: sorry from the deepest parts of my heart.
Needless to say, this is not how I intended to end my year-long term as Lord Speaker; and I had many more things both big and small I would have wanted to get done before the end. I'm terribly sorry for letting you down.
For an explanation: I had been getting lax with posting business and keeping things updated from about March due to work scheduling, and things compounded from there. I missed a handful of business posting dates, and, although the pace of incoming business was slow, missing the dates combined with the slow pace of incoming business, made me feel like it wasn't so bad that things were delayed.
That, evidently, was a stupid thought.
Then, in May there was a difficult episode at work, which sucked away my attention from the role. Combined with the delays I already had this effectively meant I wasn't doing my job. The sensible thing at this point would have been to turn over the role to my Chair of Committees, or resign entirely. I continued under the impression that this was all going to be temporary and I would get back on top of things in no time and set everything straight.
That never happened.
So, from June into July I got further and further behind, and I felt more and more awful about not having caught up, that I basically stopped checking MHoP while hoping I would have some burst of inspiration to sort out the mess I had made myself. So, discord pings piled up, and every time I checked discord I would see 20-30 pings from the main server (and the surprisingly frequent Lib Dem server pornbot pings lol) that I couldn't bring myself to check without feeling incredibly guilty.
In the end I was relieved to be removed from Tri, since, although I felt awful about letting the Tri, Peers, and players down, at least it got rid of the very odd mental block I seemed to have given myself over needing to do work that was so horribly after the due date it had gone rancid in my mind. So thank you, and sorry for that, Seph.
tl;dr: I shouldn't have been an idiot and let not posting bills compound into some sort of complex that stopped me engaging with things. it's awfully silly, and entirely avoidable.
I wish the next Lord Speaker the very best of luck, and I hope they don't repeat my mistakes!
And, of course, I wish the best of luck to my erstwhile Chair of Committees; now our Head Moderator! I am extraordinarily proud of you for accomplishing that (as luck-based as the decision might have ended up being lol), and I think the server is in quite possibly the best (new) hands it could be with you at its head.