#my goal this year is to FINALLY finish the novel .... I'll be serious about it this time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

clevercatchphrase · 4 months

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2023 Year In Review~

at the time of me writing this, it is 8:11pm on tuesday night, january second. Let's see how long it takes me to type this entire thing. I expect no less than two hours. This is gonna be a long one, so I'm gonna put it under a read-more. Proceed only if you dare!

So! Another year down, another begun, and this is my.... 5th? time looking back on my year and assessing what I accomplished and what I did. Lots of changes and new things happened to me this year! Not nearly as many good things as bad! But first I'm gonna dig up my old resolutions list and see how well I did on them. Let's see... for 2023 I had 9 goals, six of which were serious and 3 of which were more casual. those goals were;

Read 12 new books in a year (one book a month)

Finish the Snowdin Arc before Ghost Switch's 5th birthday

Rewrite the 3rd draft of my Nanowrimo project from 2021/22

Write 4 one-shots for BSaPT

Solidify the details of the waterfall arc

The one secret goal

Finish writing the last 4 chapters of Clemency and finally post the dang thing

build a comic buffer of 8 pages, and finally,

write the crack fic

Of these nine goals, I achived... 4 of them, those being reading 12 books, finishing the snowdin arc before june 18th, rewriting my 2021 nanowrimo project, and finalizing the waterfall arc for Ghost Switch. All of these were serious goals, which I am proud of! but it was still less than half, which was a little disappointing. As in past years, I'll go into more detail below:

Read 12 books I BLEW THIS ONE OUT OF THE WATER! the grand total of books I read this year was THIRTY-SIX! three times as many! In fact, I forced myself to stop in order to have more books to read for 2024! Most of the books I listened to this year were through librivox, and mostly on my commute to work. Great way to pass the time! I wrote short little notes about the books I read on a personal discord with only me in it, so let me see if I can just copy and paste all of that here... (all of my original notes will be italicized, while additional thoughts on it now will not be)

1) Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Short, cute! Inspirational. About self actualization. Read by richard Harris. People call this a demonic book?? Apparently a fourth part added in 2014. Look it up later. (Edit; I never did look it up later. there's an audiobook for this on youtube, and while the voice is nice, there is, like, a solid 10 minute segment with a single violin note playing in the background and it is GRATING) 2) fire bed and bone. Ok. Middle of the road. Too focused on people and not the dog, but I get that's the point. it's ~symbolic~. Like the use of no dialogue and no name for the main dog 3) dogs of the spires book 1: reads like fan fiction (derogatory). Sentences go on for 4 or 5 words too long. Used the word orbs for eyes 3 times. Duke is ALWAYS FUCKING GRINNING. Half-brother reveal makes no sense and comes out of nowhere. How… Big/old is Step? Talks waaay too mature for a kid. What happened to Twig? Very tell and not show. Pink foam pink foam pink foam. Why are dogs separated? Hoe do the packs work? Why training? Not given enough to care for characters. Feels like a warrior cat reskin. Too rushed and yet nothing happens at the same time. (I was very curious about post-apocolyptic xenofiction this year, and this was one of the books I could find on the matter, but it's very childishly written and just... bad. Surprisingly, there seems to be a very tiny but dedicated fandom for it on youtube? the series has a fandom wiki anyway...)

4) old granny fox. Very cute! A little repetitive, but passable for a children's novel. Great introduction to xenofiction for kids. Wonderful audio book. 5)the adventures of Sammy Jay. Short sweet also a lot of fun. Both books are Definitely of their time with their usage of the word "queer" as a synonym for "strange/odd"

Now, this is a little known fact about me, but I'm secretly a massive furry. yeah, who could've guessed, right? Anyway, i'm always on the look out for good xenofiction, and when I searched through the "animals" playlist of the librivox youtube channel and stumbled across the books by Thornton W Burgess, I was INSTANTLY enamored. Old Granny Fox, and The Adventures of Sammy Jay were the first two I read/listened to, and was immediately captivated. I MUST give extra props to the narrators of these audiobooks, with some of the more frequent readers for this series doing unique voices for each character, which really added to the charm (Jude Somers and John Lieder particularly come to mind). I WISH I had these books as a kid. I love the way they describe animal behavior and reasoning. While it is anthropomorphized, it never crosses a line into "too" human, if that makes sense. There's another book on this list that is very similar to Burgess' work, with talking animals, but in that book, the animals make and read signs on the doors of their houses, and go to animal tailors to get their clothes fit. this doesn't happen in Burgess' work. Sure, they talk about their homes and the coats they wear, but it's all very intentionally conveying their natural states and habitats in a slightly more human way for us to picture them. Sure, the art on the covers of the books may say otherwise, but it's never depicted that way in the actual text. All their behavior is very animalistic, too, explaining their thoughts and actions in a way that would make sense for a wild forest creature. These books are a little gentle when it comes to the cycle of life. While the predator characters do need to hunt, they are always juuuust out of luck when they are the main character, and the prey characters juuuust manage to escape each time they're the focus. I will definitely be reading more of Burgess' books this year (the man wrote over 170 of them!), but expect quite a few more titles of his to pop up on this list.

6) adventures of jimmy skunk 7)adventures of paddy beaver (not much to say on these two. both were charming, but I feared I would have sounded repetitive if I just kept writing "cute!" in my notes) 8) my father's dragon Short, cute and silly. Listened to the audiobook. Does the physical have pictures? Not really so much about the dragon. Wish there was more after the ending, like what became of the dragon? (I also watched the netflix movie adaptation of this book. I.... could not stand the dragon in the movie. I'm sorry, he's annoying as hell) 9)adventures of buster bear

10)adventures of old mister toad.Favorite one so far. Puts toads in a positive light and describes them as beautiful instead of ugly or gross. [Burgess] Really appreciates all animals and their unique abilities and traits

11) The tale of freddie firefly. Ehh, okay. Not as great as Thorton Burgess' books, but still enjoyable. Not the same 'voice'. (this book was written by Scott Bailey) 12) The adventures of Chatterer the red squirrel. Fine~ Fun. 13) The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tales. Funny, short. Would make a good 22 minute short film 14)tale of master meadow mouse. Alright~ why do the animals know what groundhogs day and February are? How does mouse know how to write, and fox to read? Do they wear clothes? Mention a tailor frog. Oars for a raft. Don't like the animals being described as "(color) person". Feels like it's missing an adjective, ie "feathered" or "furred". (This is what I was talking about above. Scott Bailey wrote very similar stories to Burgess, but something was just... off about is writing style. ) 15) the adventures of reddy fox. Okay. Feels like an earlier book. Not as kind as the other ones. (I later looked it up and confirmed this was one of the earlier books in his series, and this one was, like, his tenth ever published one)

16) the adventures of jerry muskrat

17) the tale of doctor Doolittle. Fun! Kiiiiiinda racist in the africa parts, but an overall good time! (I'm more familiar with the Doolittle movies, but was surprised to learn that Doolittle's ability to speak to animals was something he learned with effort and practice, and not a magic power or weird innate ability of his. It was an interesting read!) 18) Nomads of the North. Fun animal romp. I Flinched at the use of "fat" "tar baby" "half breed" and "Indians". First half is mostly about the bear, then a sudden sharp turn to mostly about the dog. Kinda meanders, has no over-arching through-line, conflict or plot. (Apparently a movie was based off of this book, but focused more on the humans than the animals. Eh, it was the 1920s. what can you do) 19)falcons of nerabedla; short sci-fi novella about a bodyswap time traveler. Its… Fine. Not the greatest. A little too confusing and kind of wish they explained things more earlier on. Not really about the falcons. Even for a sci-fi, still pretty sexist in the future.(honestly I don't even know if I should count this as it's own book. I'm pretty sure it was a short story inside a bigger magazine?) 20) south American jungle tales. Enjoyable! Very strong jungle book vibes with a South American flare. The story with the racoon was pretty dark, though. 21) a gryphon's journey. Too fast pace. Characters have a habit of spilling their entire backstories onto arias without prompting. Not enough show, not enough explanation of how the gryphons work. Some aspects completely pushed to the sides, like the satyrs and naugi until the end. Very rushed. The skyhaven arc could have been its own book, the stygagryph arc could have been it's own book. The heron gryph arc could have been it's own book. Not enough time to get to know the characters or care about them. Arias speaks far too maturely for his age, I feel. (Still on a gryphon kick from the last... two years now? Mostly I'm waiting for the fourth book in the Griffin Ranger Series to come out before I read the third. The author said it would come out before the end of 2023, but that date came and went and it still isn't on amazon at the time of writing (which is now 9:26pm, jeez...) I want to read isthmus so bad, but I don't want to wait on a cliffhanger) 22) myths and legends from Alaska. Okay. Feels very white washed and overly simplified. missing nuance. Reader is so deadpan and monotone that the audio book was a slog to get through (One thing I was determined to do for my own enrichment this year was to read more legends and mythologies from other cultures. There are SO MANY cool creatures and monsters and ideas out there, and I just feel so LIMITED by the small amount I know. We humans come up with some of the craziest shit imaginable!) 23) the white czar; a story of a polar bear. Bad, boring, incredibly racist. Barely about the bear at all! 24) the twins of buster bear. Another thornton w. Burges book. Its middle of the road. Certainly not bad, but my least favorite so far. Just kinda dull, and the audio book was horrendous. (honestly if the audiobook wasn't so bad, I wouldn't have disliked it so much, but it was a CHORE to listen to this one. I mean, thank you librivox for doing all this work for free, but is it too much to ask for some sort of vetting process for your volunteer readers??) 25) the wishing stone stories; BEST thornton w burges book so far! I would have been obsessed with this book as a child. Transforming into animals to learn about their ways. Not super PG like the others. The animals hunt and kill and get killed. 10/10

26) lightfoot the leaping goat 27) Toto the bustling beaver. Both alright. Nowhere near as charming as thornton Burgess, but endearing none the less. A little more 4th wall breaking. Toto audio book fun with silly voices, but I don't like the description of "tramps". A little too humanized for me. Lightfoot audio book fucking trash. Almost gave up. (Both of these books were written by Richard Barnum, another children's xenofiction writer of the time, but I quickly came to realize that his writing style is just not for me. I listened to a handful of his books too, this year, but they left me feeling uncomfortable more often than not because common attitudes of the time period reeeeeally show through his work.) 28) the adventures of poor misses quack. How do these qualify as adventures. She lands in a pond, dumps her backstory for 60 percent of the book, finds her mate and lives happily ever after. Not very strong, not very adventurous. 29) Mother West Wind "When" Stories; a lot of fun, charming, Aesop fable-esque. Fun mythology for children. A little too much peter rabbit, but I understand why he's there 30) the adventures of tamba the tame tiger. Yeahhhh, this series isnt my thing. A little too humanized, and the audio book is fuck GARBAE. (Pretty sure I meant to say "fucking garbage" there, but "fuck garbae" is funnier)

31) joust 32) alta 33) sanctuary All really good! All revolve around dragons and their usage and care. The books are a liiiiiitle too serendipitous, with the right thing always happening at the right time. Vetch/kuron doesn't "fail" enough. Second book is the best so far because the magi are a legitimate threat and it feels like time is running out so they must always stay one step ahead. (All written by Mercedes Lackey, all about dragon husbandry with a nice Egyptian flare! Check them out! But... maybe skip Aerie, the last in the series. It's not really worth it.) 34)aerie weakest one. Ahketen was absolutely unbearable and I didn't like the literal deus ex machina at the end with the actual gods coming down to help. Final ranking in order from best to worst; 2)alta, 1)joust, 3)sanctuary and 4)aerie. 35) the adventures of johnny chuck. Fun, average. Simple but doesn't need to be complicated. First of the thornton books ive read where the main character forms a family with children as the main focus 36) blacky the crow. Fun and charming as always. Feels a little simpler than the others with only 3 main mini stories, two of which involve stealing eggs. I wonder if I can find a box set of these books. (Aaaand that wraps up all the books I read this year! 15 of them were from thornton w burgess, and I hope to read even more from him this year! If you know of Burgess' books, tell me your favorites! I'd love to discuss them with someone~)

2.WHOO! the time is now 9:50, and I am just starting on talking about my second goal, which was to finish the snowdin arc of Ghost Switch before its 5th birthday. I did this! I did this exactly on june 18th! (for public readers, anyway. Anyone on my patreon got the page early, but a one week difference isn't much in the grand scheme of things.) I also get to say that I passed the Snowdin Test this year! "What is the Snowdin Test," you might ask? well, it's something a mutual acquaintance of mine, from the Fan Fic Paradise discord I lurk in, made aaaaall the way back in 2018, right when I was just startin' out with Ghost Switch. (Hi, Vikingaspoke, I don't know if you follow me on tumblr, or even have a tumblr for that matter, but I want you to know I thought about your thesis every single day since you first posted it, and have been determined (har har) to succeed where so many other undertale stories have failed. I did it once with my Epic-long fan fic, You Monster, but to do the same in comic form was a new and unique challenge. it took me almost 5 years, but I got there in the end! Cutting out the memories, I've officially concluded snowdin and started waterfall just this year!) I've also got to mention that I think my estimation on how long it will take me to finish Ghost Switch is slowly unfolding to be oddly accurate. I've never made a comic this long, but back in 2019, when I made an anniversary comic for Ghost Switch's 1st birthday, I guestimated that it would take me roughly 11 more years to finish the story, meaning it would take me 12 in total from start to finish. Well, we are rapidly approaching the half-way point of the comic, and if I haul ass it get to 312 pages out by the 6th birthday, we very well might actually hit it. I haven't drawn up to page 312 yet, but it's strangely close. Granted, my guess didn't account for the length of the flashback segments, which may push it back, but the sheer Idea that the "vibes" I got on how long each arc would take just by roughly judging the time it took me to finish ruins as a baseline to compare... it's just weird, man. I just "felt" that snowdin would be 1.5 times as long as the ruins, waterfall 2 times as long as the ruins, and hotland+New Home also 1.5 times that of the ruins. I have no metric for this since the final scenes were not written out yet. It just... feels like it should be that, and I'm kinda scared at how on track it's been.

3. Third goal was to Rewrite my Nanowrimo project from 2021/22. I did this as well! It's still no where near a final draft ready for beta readers or anything, and towards the end of the year I got distracted writing the second book in the trilogy because this is an epic fantasy story so it just HAS to have three books. Maybe I'll self-publish these stories one day. it sure is the most passionate I've ever been about something original i've ever written, but I want to make sure the entire rough draft of all three stories is done first so I can easily go back and add hints in previous parts without having to retcon anything later down the line. I've already had to do it once, so no doubt in my mind I'll have to do it again when I start trying to wrap things up in the final book. Speaking of the sequel, that was my nano project for this year! I won, but much like 2021 and 22, I didn't finish the book. my 21/22 project ended up being roughly 80k words, and I still expect to add about 10k more when I add some missing scenes and flesh out some description. I don't think that will happen with the second book. If anything, I expect it to barely stick around 50k in total because I just know I wrote a lot of filler and junk and repetitive stuff in the first draft this year because I was STRUGGLING with nanowrimo this year. Idk yet if I'm going to make a rewrite of book 2 my nano project for 2024. we'll have to wait and see how I'm feeling once september/october rolls around.

4. My fourth goal was to write 4 one-shots for my fic collection of Blankets, Socks, and Pillow Talk, over on AO3. I didn't do this, mostly because I was too distracted with my original fiction this year. i DID write one one-shot, hilariously during nanowrimo when I was suffering from writers block. Hopefully this year will be different. I would like this fic collection to at least hit 50k words so it could be a full novel of short stories all on its own. I think I can do it, I just need the time and inspiration.

5. My fifth goal, and last one I achieved this year was to finalize the details of the waterfall arc. I'm sure I've said it before in the past, but all the major story beats for Ghost Switch were planned out well before I even drew the first page, but the scenes connecting them were filled in more as I went. Rest assured, I make sure the entire arc is scripted before I start it, but my dirty little secret is that the snowdin arc wasn't completely written until I nearly finished drawing the ruins arc, and I was well into the snowdin arc before the final scenes of the waterfall arc were written down. It is now, and has been for at least 10 months. This was a goal I always knew I would achieve. Sometimes the resolutions I make are things I know are gonna happen whether I want them to or not. Sometimes you just gotta give yourself a guaranteed win to boost your self-confidence, you know? (now I just need to do the same for the Hotland arc. I think it's gonna take me 3 years minimum to finish waterfall, just like it did snowdin, so I got time, but the sooner I figure out the dialogue, the better. Will I make that a goal for this year? Ehh, probably not. I just wanna focus on building a buffer first)

6. The one secret goal was not achieved. If it was, this post wouldn't nearly be as long and you all would have heard about it as soon as it happened. Idk if it will happen this year, or anytime soon. A vicious combination of anxiety, the economy, and the uncertain state of the world make me hesitant to even attempt this goal.

aaand those were all my serious goals for this year! the time is now 10:37, I am tired and dizzy. I'm gonna save this as a draft and get back to it tomorrow~ nighty night~

OKAY! IT'S JANUARY 3RD NOW, 8:34AM! LET"S CONTINUE!

my three casual goals, none of which I accomplished, were;

7) Finish writing clemency. While I didn't do this, I did think about the story a lot. If you've been around since late 2022, You'll know that when AI writing generators started gaining popularity, news broke that the internet was scraped for data sets, including fan fiction websites like AO3. This extremely pissed me off because Fan Fiction is... well, I guess there's no better word than "sacred" to me. The unadulterated desire to write, create, share and expand on media that has touched us, inspired us, (hell, even angered us!) and to do this all purely because we can and we want to, just to make connections with other people who were fans of the same media, people we may never meet, thousands of miles apart from us, who we can touch and inspire in turn... Fan fiction is a gift. it means so much to me, from the professional writer who writes ficlets as an exercise, to tweens just starting their creative writing journey by imagining themselves hanging out with their favorite characters, to the hobbyists who wanted to imagine how things would change if just one thing happened differently, to those who feel underrepresented in media, and want to see themselves be the hero. People working through shit, people who are just bored, people who love a story so much they will retell it a hundred times over so it never has to end. Young, old, girl, boy, fluent writers, to writers in fandom where english is not their first language. It's an amazing, nearly incomprehensible melting pot that can connect us all... and some CEO jerkoffs just wanted to steal all this heart-felt work and feed it to a machine to make a quick buck. I was so enraged, so violated that works of passion could be abused this way that I locked down all my fics on AO3, and you now need to be logged in to read any of them, and I didn't write a word of fan fic in over a year. Every time I thought my anger had cooled off, more news would come up about "AI" generated stories appearing in the kindle app, or authors having works published under their name without their consent because thieves are trying to make a quick buck with their identity to trick fans, or hear that tv show and movie writers being told they are worthless and replacable, and I would get mad all over again. I'm still mad just remembering it, and until actual laws are in place regarding the use of "AI" in art and writing, I'll stay mad, and my stories will be under lock and key. If some good has come out of it, I focused a lot more on original fiction this year, which I haven't shared online at all, so no fear of that being stolen, but I do miss writing fan fic more regularly, yet I can't stand the thought of something I make for fun being taken and used by someone else to line their pockets. It's like... the antithesis of the purpose of storytelling to begin with and makes me sick to my stomach.

WOW! That sure was a rant! Let's move on! My 8th goal and second casual one was to make a comic page buffer of 8 pages. I almost did this one! At one point, (like, the second week of december) I had a buffer of 5 pages because I was finishing up Memory 5 of ghost switch, but then I realized I could line up the end of the memory with the end of the year, and I ended up posting all of my reserve pages in, like, a week! During those weeks, though, instead of making more pages to keep the buffer supplied, I played a lot of video games instead, which I hadn't done since... october? because I didn't touch my PS4 at all during november while I was writing for nanowrimo, and I missed playing Horizon Foridden West and wanted to get back to it. Maybe this year, though? I'm dead set on trying to get to 312 pages before Ghost Switch's 6th birthday, which is, like, 30 pages away, so I gotta improve my output process regardless.

And the 9th goal of mine and the last of the casual ones, was to write that crack fic. This goal has been on my resolutions for a couple years now, but I still haven't done it. I'm gonna blame my AI hatred grudge for this, since it made me not to want to write any fan fic at all this year. I'll get to this someday, but maybe now I should put it on the back burner for some newer goals and projects~

Okay! The time is now 8:57! if you're still reading this stream-of-conscious ramble of mine, it's time for me to list off my goals for this year!

IN 2024 I WOULD LIKE TO...

Read 12 new books this year (one book a month)

Reach 312 pages of Ghost Switch by June 18th (the 6th birthday)

Build (and maintain!) a comic buffer of 8 pages

Go walking on 3 new greenways around my neighborhood

Go camping by myself

Make at least one new song comic

Finish 4 video games to as close to 100% as I can (currently looking at Horizon Forbidden West, the original Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue, Carto, Alba, Stray, Journey, Unraveled and The Talos Principle 2, as these games currently entice me the most, but I still want flexibility and options if one game ends up not clicking)

Finish the first rewrite of my 2023 nanoproject (this will probably end up being my nano24 project, if i'm being honest with myself)

Write 4 one-shots for BSapT

-- These 9 goals I want to be serious about, but like last year, I have some casual goals i want to do as well. They include...

10. Get reacquainted with Neocities and make a personal website

11. Learn to code to improve said website/learn to make games

12.Listen to the entire royalty free youtube library for reasons

13. Research every d.o.n.g. ever featured on VSauce, for neocities reasons.

I feel like I had a couple more off-handed things I wanted to do this year, but these 4 casual things are the only ones I can remember at the moment. Maybe I'll come back and add to this list later.

Alright! The time is now 9:37AM, and I have to go run some errands/do some house chores! Saving this again as a draft to come back to this later!

Okay! Done with errands, and it is 11:30am on the nose! Time to resume my inane ramblings and hopefully finish this thing within the next two hours.

One thing I mentioned in my recap/review of 2022 was that I never actually felt like I was looking back on the year in depth. So much was forgotten or blurred together with other years because I didn't keep track of it. Well, this year I kept a monthly diary, again in my personal discord of 1, and wrote in it whenever I felt anything of note or significance happened to me, or whenever I had reoccurring thoughts or feelings. i managed to write in it at least once a month, often times twice, that being every two weeks. I found the whole experience quite therapeutic, frankly, and I'll share snippets of it now, though I will cut out the more personal entries. Be forwarned! A lot of the following text is straight up copied and pasted from my diary entries, so there is a lot of misspellings and short hand. I'll try to fix some of the more obvious ones, but these paragraphs are just as stream-of-concious writing as the rest of this massive post. Anything in parentheses with A/N is me adding context right now on the present day!

january 5th, two very close coworkers of mine quit due to upper management being petty. These two employees had worked here for nearly two decades. They were married to each other and were the mom and dad of the work base, with everyone else relying on them, looking up to them, and going to them for their problems. Them walking out scared everyone lower on the pecking order, because we felt that we were no longer protected from manager bullshit with them gone. I was off the day they walked out and didn't get to say goodbye. the grief I felt upon learning they left caused me to have my first ever anxiety attack that night. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in my life. I try to keep in touch, but we don't talk much due to our age gaps and busy work lives.

in January I also had a body-horror nightmare that still makes me squirm just thinking about it. I dreamt no one in the world wore pants, but we were all cool with it because we had pockets built into our legs. Not like... fabric sewn into skin, mind you, I mean naturally evolved extra flaps of flesh over our thighs like the pouch of a cartoon kangaroo. flesh pockets. even in my dream I could feel them. the insides were surprisingly dry and smooth- no sweat or hair in there, but the sensation was uncomfortably irritating, like when you rub your knuckles too much and it feels sore. worst part of this dream was, I woke up, thought "thank god I'll for get this in a few hours", but then watched cartoons later that day and saw a... tom and jerry(?) short where tom also had built in pockets on his body which made me remember everything, and now I can't forget.

February 8th. Watched The Flight if Dragons. Good, campy 80s feel. Drags in some parts, rushed in others. Some aspects feel like they have 0 explanation. (How did peter separate from gorbash? Did peter know that denouncing magic would vanish him from the safe haven? What happened to the princess's parents? EVERYTHING with the wolf and whatever was going on between the huntress and knight. I also Watched 1996 dragonheart. Slow start, but good fun. Pretty decent cgi. Acting is downright TERRIBLE in places, but it was good campy fantasy fun in the end.

On february 14th, I dreamed of a haunted house, but the house wasnt malicious. It felt like a friend that worried for your safety when you left, because it was rooted to the spot and could not come to you when you were in trouble. I did not stay long, and felt melancholic when I had to leave. Once outside, I turned around and said "goodbye house" and waved it farewell. Then, in all the curtains and windows, dozens and dozens of shadowy human arms waved goodbye to me in return, wishing me well and safe travels. It would miss me, but not keep me prisoner, because a house is only a home if you had the freedom to leave and return when you wished.

March 18. I got recommended a video on YouTube about screen savers, and it reminded me of one that our family computer had in the early 00s. After searching for a while, I rediscovered it; the createacard screensaver pack. So many buried memories unearthed. The sense of wanderlust and inspiration and not over such beautiful art came rushing back to me; https://youtu.be/zFPKmnegK0c

I was generally tired for all of march, not having much energy for any project outside of my comic, and even that was starting to wear me down.

I played a lot of kingdom hearts 1 in late February/early march. Synthesized the Ultima weapon for the first time. Cried farming sniper wilds and stealth soldiers because they unsettle me. I'm trying to grind to level 100 before the game is over. Debated on doing a kh song comic this year (A/N: This did not happen)

I want to redo my personal website. Wix added an image file size limit, and my whole site currently surpasses that twice over. The wix site editor is slow and finicky any way. Looked into blogspot and WordPress. I want to start a xenofiction book review podcast. Are solo podcasts popular? I Looked into neocities. Felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and child-like wonder. Made my own account/basic website, but haven't edited anything yet.

I got hit with the seasonal depression late February/early march, watched some home gardening videos on youtube and got inspired. The videos I watched were about people building actual massive scale pond and lakes, but I just went to home depot and Lowe's and Wal-Mart, bought, like, 12 different kinds of vegetable and flower seeds, 3 long rectangular planters and 2 massive bags of dirt. I also bought some peat seed starters, a plant heating pad (which I might just give to my cat) and a plant light. I spent over 150$ total.

My cat turned 5 years old on the 15th this march as well!

In late april I got really into analog/digital horror args and unfiction realities. Been watching a lot of Night Mind and similar analysis videos (I'm too lazy and dumb to try and solve them myself).

April 28th. Maternal grandfather might be passing soon. He's been in and out of hospitals since late January, needs around the clock assisted living, and my mom and her sister are constantly having to take time out of their lives to help him. I hate it. It's stressful and aggravating to mom, the assisted living people are incompetent, and my mom is stretching herself thin, running ragged trying to do everything at once. It's not fair to her. It's not fair to anyone.

May 11th. Mom's computer has a solitaire program with hundreds of versions of solitaire, most of which have gone unplayed. Ive been trying new games and learning them through trial and error (the "rules" tab doesnt work because it accesses a file that is no longer installed on this computer). Ive found new favorites in "twenty" and in "carpet". It makes life just a little bit more interesting.

June 4th. Been really into watching blind lets plays of undertale from 2022/3 lately, as well as dissection/discussion of undertale's music. Also into shayy's undertale mods. Glad the fandom is still having fun with this game. Got interested in pokemon infinite fusion. Downloaded it, but havent played yet. Getting back into PMD, though I have to grind now for leveling and evolving mons I cant recruit. Took a break from listening to librivox books, but might pick it up again. Same with checking in on flight rising. This year will be it's 10th birthday iirc

Looked at my ao3 recently and noticed I havent written anything in over 6 months. Still mad about the AI data scraping. I didn't stop writing entirely though. I spent all of October, November, January and February writing an original story, and still really proud/excited about it. Finished typing the rough draft on Wednesday, taking a break before I start edits.

All my flowers I planted in February are dying. Has a lot of rain this year. I think they're getting over watered.

June 6th. Been thinking a lot about Hawaii recently. I miss my old school and house. Went to Google earth to look at it again. I think our old neighborhood of [REDACTED] was razed and rebuilt becuase the streets dont look the same. This makes me feel… Not quite sad or bitter, but hurt none the less. I knew ever since we moved here chances of going back would be slim, but knowing my most nostalgic childhood home is gone forever…

Saturday June 17th fucking sucked for everyone. Two coworkers got seriously injured at work. My car battery completely died and couldn't be jump started. Had to call for a tow and wait 2+ hours for it to arrive. Wanted to cancel but they told me I would be charged even if the tow never arrived. Got charged 80 extra dollars for a "wench fee" I didn't need, but they talked to fast for me to think about it. Massive accident on the 4-lane highway home put all traffic down to 1 lane, and we were stuck there an extra hour. Dairy Queen's lobby closed early, going to drive through only, sonic was OUT OF ICE CREAM, and the local grocery store was almost sold out too. Did not get home until almost 10pm. Both my car AC and my mom's car a.c. don't work. I FUCKING LOVE OWNING A CAR. IT'S SO MUCH FUN AND SO FREEING.

June 28. Been playing a new video game recently; horizon forbidden west. Price dropped by 50% on Amazon and I had a 10$ gift card so I got the game for 1/3 the launch price. It's okay so far. Been slowly exploring and uncovering the map, ignoring the main story and discovering secrets. There is definitely A LOT more to do in this game than in the first. Dont really like a lot of Aloy's line deliveries. Some of the controls are different which throws me off. Robo enemies cool as ever, though noticeably fewer dinosaur ones.

Mom continues to take care of her dad. Aunt does too. All of mom's free time and energy this summer has been stolen by him. She keeps insisting she won't have to look after him as much when he gets better. I don't think he's ever getting better.

All my flowers I planted back in March have died. It's just too damn hot for them. It's too hot for everyone. We have just hit ten straight days with weather in the triple digits. I'm miserable.

Might have to replace my laptop soon. It's almost 12 years old, the battery doesn't work anymore, it overheats, and it's super slow. Looking into gaming laptops.

June 29; grandfather passed away last night. All I feel is relief.

July 11th. I got gifted my grandfather's bed, but had to switch it back out with my old bed because it was too soft and fucking up my back. No lumbar support.

July wrap up: month went by sooo fast I can hardly believe it. Its too fucking hot. Texas is stuck in a heat cyclone. Havent played solitare in a while, or listened to audio books. I managed to do 7 jigsaw puzzles this summer, and hope to do one more. each one has been 1000 pieces minimum, with two being 2000 pieces, and 1 being 3000. I should have taken more pictures of them finished, but it's fun to know we finished one puzzle per week this whole summer.

August 5th; Wish I recorded some smaller details throughout the year, not realizing id want to recall the last time I did something. When was the last time I intentionally watched a movie or listened to a specific song? (but then again, how will I know I'm going to think the exact thought; "when was the last time I did X specific thing?") I rewatched wolf children 2 months back for the first time in years, same with relistening to HeyHiHello songs. Been having a lot of lower back pain lately. Stretching helps, but I can no longer sit or sleep in my favorite position without cramping up. I need to be perfectly straight and i hate it. (A/N: The very next night I pulled a muscle in my back so bad I thought I was paralyzed. for the first time in years, I had to call in sick to work because I could not physically move from my bed)

August 19th. Went to a chiropractor. No pinched nerves or slipped disc, just a pulled muscle. Stretching helps and have been wearing a back brace. Finally had grandpa's memorial on the tenth. It was nice to learn he made friends at his community center. I'll try to be out going when I'm old too. Doctors would not sign his death certificate for 7 weeks because they just didn't give a shit, and we finally threatened to call a lawyer. He finally got cremated.

August 30th- recently had to go to pepboys to get my car fixed again. It was "stuck" in neutral. Grandma came and picked me up to let me go home. She said she doesnt plan to be driving much longer and intends to give her car to me. I dont know how to feel about this. Grateful for the future gift? Sad that she is getting older? I had to have my car towed and had to leave work early, which I hate doing because it makes me feel like I'm leaving everyone else to do my work, but I did not want another repeat with the towing situation that happened in june.

September 19th. I finally put on my brave face and ordered a new laptop for myself earlier this month (the 5th to be precise) and today it finally arrived. I bought myself an HP omen gaming laptop. It's so nice, but also different and a little scary trying to adjust to all this new interface. I went from using windows 7 for the last 11 years to jumping into windows 11. It'll be an adjustment. Gotta re-download all my old programs and transfer my files. Hope my drawing tablet will still work on this laptop. Might have to buy a new one of those as well. I already hate the subscription model being used if you want to do ANYTHING with the tech YOU BOUGHT nowadays. Goodbye microsoft office! It was fun while I knew you! I got libreoffice now! Fuck off adobe! OpenShot and Shotcut are my video editing programs now! I still need to learn my way around OBS, opentoonz, and pencil2d, but I gotta say there's something.... rustic? homey? about having a desktop full of opensource programs made by people who want to help other creatives free of charge. I miss the days where you buying something meant you own it forever, but free homegrown programs updated by community feels friendlier than just owning a shiny "offical" big named piece of software, I gotta admit.

The new laptop is wonderfully fast and silent. It cost me 2 grand so I hope it lasts just as long as my old one. There is no removable battery from what I can tell, which is sad. Also no disc drive. The keys light up rainbow which is cool (but I had to turn that feature off to improve battery life). I customized the desktop background to some concept art of the videogame RiME. (I thought I had saved the default bg pic from my old laptop to my external hard drive, but I guess I hadn't?) Funny to me that in the 10+ years of owning my second ever laptop, I never changed the wallpaper because I liked the default art so much. Might add more art to a file and have the wallpaper rotate. I want to replay RiME again too. Love the simple gameplay and strong colors of that game.

October 4th. So much has happened in 2 weeks, it feels much longer than that. I pretty much completely switched to using my new lap top ad my main computer, transferred all the files, downloaded a bunch of open source software for writing documents, video editing, streaming and animation. Fuck you Microsoft. I shouldn't need an account to use basic microsoft word. Hope to bring back page making streams next year for patrons~ ive even been playing some steam games that my old laptop just couldn't run, and quite a few new ones as well. Candleman, carto, so many fun and charming titles~ replaying snakebird because all my progress was lost 🥲I'm not mad. I love snake bird.

I have so much desire to do so many things, but not enough time to do them. I need to queue up my november posts for tumblr before I go on break. I need to get my oil changed soon. I want to go back on steam and play more humongous entertainment games. I want to write, I want to draw, I want to animate, I want to learn how to quilt and crochet and garden. I want to do it all right now all at the same time. I want to go on a nature walk. I want to see my friends.

Its finally starting to cool off. We still get in the 90s easily, but it rained last night for the first time in weeks, and we havent hit 100 degrees in a couple of days. Been reading a lot of webtoons lately. Been having the urge to start my own with my original storylines, or at least use webtoons as a backup/mirror for my fan comic. So many unique stories there all ready. So many fun art style and worlds to get lost in. I love stories and the people that tell them. The joy of creating a tale and sharing it with the world is humanity in its purest form.

November 1st: youtube is cracking down on adblockers. Havent had any problems yet on desktop, but on this day, my default youtube app on my lg smart phone started showing me ads for the first time in the 8+ years I've had it. I was so mad that i forced stopped the app, and logged into youtube through an ad block browser app instead. Some of the app's features will be missed, like being able to watch a video and search at the same time, but these little annoyances are nothing compared to the fury I felt at being shown ads. I didn't write nearly as much as I wanted to for nanowrimo today because of this.

November 6th: I turned 31! Both my friends forgot my birthday, and I wasn't able to reserve a camping site for the April 8th eclipse next year! 🙃 ive been writing like mad for nanowrimo, but I'm still falling behind.

December 17. Has it really been a whole month since i last made a diary update? Thanksgiving came and went. No drama at our house but my mom and I watched an argument unfold in the yard of our neighbors. The one mobile game I play, dragon's world, officially shut down for me 4 days ago. I'm a little sad I could never 100% it, but glad I got as far as I did, and even managed to buy some dergs so it didnt feel all my hard earned gems went to waste. Havent uninstalled the app yet out of nostalgia, even though I only played this game for a year and a half. I made the mistake of reinstalling the google play store to look for a new dragon raising game, but none had the same appeal, and the reinstall caused my discord app to update and hate it ):< I kinda want to learn how to make a mobile game of my own like dragons world, but with gryphons instead and a focus on rescue/rehabilitation and zoology angle. (I mostly just dont like how common fighting is in these kind of games.) Finally been playing horizon forbidden west after a few months away. I'm not progressing the story, just trying to max upgrade all my gear. It's a fun challenge~

December 26, 2023. Got bit by a dog at work on Christmas. Right on the nail of my middle finger. He broke my nail but not my skin. Its odd. Thankfully I can still draw without much issue. I got a tetanus shot and flu shot just to be safe. Mom got me a tent for Christmas because I plan to go camping by myself next year, even though I wont get to see the eclipse on my outing.

The fan game undertale yellow came out on the 9th… Which was before my last journal update? I've been enjoying the game play but the story is just a little... eh. the sprite work is phenominal, though, no complaints there. I hate that it's making me want to write my own AU version of it already to "improve" it, since I think the story loses its way pretty much once you leave the ruins. (maybe I can try to shove it into Clemency in stead since i still haven't finished that either).

I watched a documentary on kangaroos on netflix this month. I had to play it at 1.25 speed because I swear they slowed down every single clip for the film to get it to a certain length. I also watched "dog gone trouble" which had terrible voice work and awful character design, and then "back to the outback" which was surprisingly well made even if the characters stumbled sometimes, but I'd easily recommend it. I want to watch more Christmas movies before the year is through. (A/N: this also did not happen).

Finally uninstalled dragons world today. My phone's been acting up. Hope I don't have to replace it soon. I don't like how, nowadays, the technology I pay for, I don't actually own, and features are being removed left and right. I'm afraid any "new" phone on the market offered now won't nearly last as long as my current one has.

Aaand that was a brief glimpse into my year! The time is now 1:10pm! I already have one other post going up today, so I'll queue this one to go up on thursday instead~ if you managed to read this far, thank you so much, i guess! I hope my ramblings don't make you see me differently as a person. It's odd reflecting on where I was in my life over these past 12 months, remembering my state of mind and the feelings I felt as I wrote these entries. I'll be sure to do it again this year.

Overall, did I learn anything?...no, I don't think so? I did come to the realization that at the end of every year, in multiple youtube videos and tumblr posts, people mentioned how hard the year was for them, but like... after june, for me, everything improved quite a lot. it doesn't feel right to say that 2023 was hard for me. It was unbearably sad for me at the beinging. annoying and (physcially) painful half way through, but once august hit... everything slowly started to get better, despite the small petty things I complained about in my journal entries above. youtube ads, car troubles and discontinued apps of games I enjoyed still feel like small potatoes when compared to what I accomplished. Finished writing a draft of personal fiction, finished a major arc of a fan comic, got a new laptop to stream and share art with others, played a bunch of new video games, and generally enjoyed life for the latter half of this year.

And it almost feels selfish to say that... I'm happy.

I hope I can stay happy in 2024 as well.

Thanks for reading~

Have a safe and joyous 2024~

#long post #year in review #new year's resolutions #2023 review

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