Another Update blog post!

Or rather, end of year post?

Honestly, this is going to be a pretty underwhelming end of year post since I’ve been so tired over the holidays it’s hard for me to think past my exhaustion.

Brief 2023 Reflection + 2024 Goals

This year has been a bit of a mixed bag if I’m going to be completely honest. I don’t really feel like I really accomplished much this year in terms of the goals I had set up for myself. It’s been a rough year for me mentally but It looks I should be able to get some help with things soon (here’s hoping at least!)
Out of all my goals I had set out for 2023 I think the only once I somewhat accomplished is my relationship with social media. I don’t log onto twitter very often and even slowed down social activity on other websites a bit too (I’m technically still active on my private twitter but even then the amount of time I spend just looking at things is significantly less.) I guess that’s one goal that I managed to get a handle of this year, I’ll take those little victories when I can!

Though this wasn’t on my goals for the year, I did also manage to start going out more. I’ve been pretty shut in since 2019 and didn’t make much of an effort to try and go out. I think this slowly started to make me more and more anxious about talking to people, so going out to visit new places or hanging out in spaces I normally don’t has been helping make me feel a little more human.

In terms of my art-related goals, it felt that every step forward was met with three steps backwards. I think I’m going to have to change how I approach art again. I mentioned before that I’ll be on an indefinite hiatus from doing commission work and I’m hoping this helps me overcome these mental hurdles (though finally getting medication for some issues I’ve been having might help me overcome these significantly faster.)
I’m going to keep my 2024 goals a little brief so I don’t get upset with myself if I fall short again. I want to give myself some wiggle room and make sure not to turn the upcoming year into a series of checklist items that I’m going to fret over.

So for this year I have:

• Do some art practice (either more studies on my own or through a class or short course)
• Improve Spanish (this one is ongoing)
• Start Japanese studying
• Find new coping mechanisms for my anxiety.
  • This includes more physical activities because, unsurprisingly, moving your body around makes the Feel Good chemicals in my brain active. It's just... so hard to get started lol
• Sew one thing (ties into the next section a bit)
• Be a little more open with the things I love.

Keeping the mind active

About a month ago, a good friend of mine made a tweet that went along the lines of being worried about her parent’s lack of mental stimulation. They’re both at a point in their lives where all they really do is watch television and don’t engage in other hobbies. She mentioned how it has made them noticeably more forgetful with their age compared to how they were when they actually took the time to find things to do other than just watch television.

That single tweet suddenly made me worry, because I’m a naturally anxious person and literally any fear will make me panic, Am I engaging my mind enough?

After that tweet I began to think, maybe I should pick up a new skill.

Sure, drawing is engaging enough, but I’ve hit some sort of mental block with it as mentioned from my previous post. I could try doing different things with drawing (and I have been, I’ve actually started doing a little bit of pixel art! Though that might be documented in a future blog post down the line once I do a little more playing around with it. Might end up downloading Aseprite after all for it.) but at the same time I’m worried about actually burning myself out or overwhelming myself with expectations for drawing.

So I thought, why not try a different hobby apart from drawing? I already bake on the side, it’s engaging, though I’m not sure how well that matches up next to learning something completely new. So I decided to also pick up a bit of sewing (and doing some website stuff hence why this neocities page exists. Though I will say, I’m also just generally worried about the state of social media, so this is a nice place to work on while everything falls apart.) I have a plushie pattern I got and I’m learning how to embroider eyes by hand too…. This is a bit scary but also exciting

I’ll post pics once I work on these more later!

Website updates

I’ve slowed down on working on the site to keep myself from burning out.

Okay in all seriousness, working on this site has been a lot of fun. I know I’m just working with a template (both for the site and for how the blog is being run) but it’s been super fun and it feels like I’m actually learning something new. Part of me wants to jump into making a layout form scratch but at my level I think that would be putting the cart before the horse.

So far my biggest enemy has been potentially learning javascript, but again, this is probably another horse before the cart situation. I might look at learning other languages too but it largely depends how much time I want to dedicate to building this site.

My roommate and lots of my friends do coding, either as a career or as a hobby. I have no lack of resources on my end for reaching out to people. It’s just a matter of being patient with myself at this point.

I’ve been having trouble with how I want to set up a gallery but maybe I’m being too indecisive. I’ll probably pick my roommate’s mind on this a little more before I settle on something. I wanted to get it done this year but I guess it will be something to move to the next year!

I’ll have to update past blog posts with updated navbar links but ehhh I’ll eventually figure out how to make this a little easier LOL

Alright, that’s the update for now o/

See you all next year!