2024 Recap

I've been thinking a lot, as I've been re-posting a ton of my art on Bluesky. I see the number of files in each year's folder, and for this year, it's a pretty small number. Whenever I look at it I feel bummed out, disappointed. But beating myself up over that is a really unfair way for me to think... there's so many factors to that being the case.

This year I worked on a couple larger projects like the zine I released and the game that's in development, that work not showing up as a quantifiable number of social media posts. If I was to go by those numbers- each sketch and finished piece for the game and each page of my zine (or even panel where they're more complicated, I think that's fair) as another dot on my productivity chart- things already "feel" better.

I used this year to learn, from scratch, how to make this website. I've built this website from the ground up now three times, each time making it closer to how I see it in my head. That's a huge amount of hours dedicated to learning, and I ought to give myself some props for that.

I restored my old Canon Pixma Pro-100, which had sat unused in my closet since I graduated from college. I had to watch tutorials about how to remove and manually flush out the printhead- without destroying the whole thing (very nerve wracking)! I learned about different paper types, ink refilling methods, and learned how to use a software called QImage to lay out prints and use the correct settings for accurate colour output.

Finally, as my dog brain does, I completely forgot that I lost months of work dealing with my wrist problems. Even now I still have to be really mindful of how I'm feeling (which does NOT come naturally to me), so I don't end up pushing myself back into a flareup- somewhere I have repeatedly found myself since middle school. I had to remind myself how bad it was this time around from reading an old blog entry. It's so easy to lose hindsight when it comes to things like this!

Progress can show in different ways and I need to remember, each year, to take inventory of what I've actually accomplished. I taught myself how to make a website. Got a home printing setup going. I set up my ko-fi store. I printed, sold, and shipped 18 copies of my first *official* zine (having never shipped physical goods before). I worked through an extremely frustrating health issue. I also had to work through something personally very emotionally difficult, and made more progress in therapy from that.

Being mean to myself has never gotten me anywhere good, and every year I get closer to having a kinder inner monologue. My goal is always to be more motivated by positive things, instead of negative self talk. I want that for everyone! Let's be better to ourselves this coming year!!