Odds + Ends (random book)

2021 Year in Review

My Top 5 Songs of the Year:
1) жестокость - Помни Имя Свое (Cruelty - Remember Your Name)
[this song actually made me tear up when I followed along with the lyrics. Right song at the right time.]
2) Swamped (Studio Acoustic Version) - Lacuna Coil
3) Uja - Tanya Tagaq
4) What's My Name - MXMS
5) PANTHER - Pain of Salvation

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"...and I hope 2021 is taken as a rebuilding year for the more disrupted parts of your life and society as a whole, physically, financially, or mentally."

That was a quote I said in last year's post around the same time. If I knew what I know now in hindsight, I would've added a '...psych!' at the end of it. If anything, this year was worse than last. For me, too. My health gave me the biggest cause for concern. While nothing was actually severely wrong with me, I do take medication for digestive problems. Those got worse for two reasons: stress and age. The days of being able to bank on my youth are officially done. I'm no longer 'invincible' as I used to believe (in my defense, I was immune to damn-near everything when I was younger from plant thorns to raw shellfish to the flu). I actually feel my age for the first time in my life. And, for the first time in my life, I'm no longer a slightly-less-than-perky millennial able to survive for weeks on end on questionably cooked chicken and 6 1/2 hours of sleep a night. It's been a while since I was that, actually. On the stress factor, I'd say I was worse than I was last year for factors not related to the pandemic. I've been taking steps to rectify this. I keep a journal (hidden quite well, I'm proud of) and force myself to actively take steps towards self-improvement. No 200-page books necessary. I won't discuss what's wrong or the exact things I write about because I want to keep this place separate from my actual life. This account is supposed to be a limitless, no-obligations creative outlet. I can't do that if I'm expected to talk about what I've been doing to fix myself. I've never let it get so bad because I'm pretty good at knowing when something is bothering me. I just never take steps to actually change it. I never did get to those computer upgrades, nor did I make any more money than I did last year. I actually lost money compared to last year! In exchange, I learned a lot more about crypto and how to make long-term stock investments. The stock investments and crypto are not related to the losing money part. I'm not a risk-taking person.

As far as this account goes, I actually accomplished some of the things I set out to do. I started work on the third and final book in this Warriors trilogy I've been writing. I'm going to try and finish it before the end of the year. I know more about what I want to write and in what direction I want to write it than I did for A Reign of Thunder and Lighting and Bleed. While I plan on it being the longest and most complex of the three, knowing where I want to go should speed up the writing process. I've had a lot of time to think about how this story is going to go and am confident in executing these thoughts better than the last two times. I haven't done a thing related to animation other than take another crack at traditional drawing. I have gotten better than when I was in high school. So that's a plus. I still want to do it in the future, but I've got a few more ideas floating around my head related to Warriors before I do. I want to at least mess around with Blender's grease pencil afterwards, though. Animating is something I haven't done since high school, either, and I've always remembered having fun with it, even when I wasn't that good. With no obligatory reason to do it, unlike work, I hope to have that kind of fun again. Just doing stuff like "music videos" and stuff like that. I have a long way to go in that regard, but I want to try knowing it doesn't matter if I fail here. At the end of the year, that's the part I care about most in relation to this account. It doesn't matter if I fail here. There is no pressure here. Even though 'here' is just a few accounts scattered about the internet and some well-hidden files, it still means something to me. It's somewhere I can always go back to for experimentation and trying new things. I never really had any intention of building a platform or a personality or anything like that. I want to branch off to Star Trek and MLP fanfics when I've gone through some of my more urgent Warriors ideas. I want to animate even though I'm not very good at it. I can make fanart without judgement if it was tied to a real name. I intend on keeping it that way. These accounts are just for me and those who choose to keep an eye on them. Executing all the ideas floating around in my head for years that I'd never do if my name was attached to it is great for my creative sanity (and to some extent, my real sanity for being able to practice executing skills I want to carry over to my own paid work).

2021 may not have been a good year for me, and 2022 isn't shaping up to be much better for the world, I can take away the things I like and try to fix what I don't. I can continue on knowing my limitations and how to subtly manipulate those to avoid completely collapsing.

Now for some side notes:

+ I haven't lost or gained any weight, nor have I exercised as much as I wanted.

+ I reorganized myself digitally for the last time in a while. I have much better organizational systems for how ideas and content are managed.

+ I have been officially designated by friends and family as "a good gift-giver."

+ I now love sardines and anchovies!

+ I began using game engines again. I had an idea to create a narrative Warriors game that was put way, way on the backburner.

+ I created an Archive Of Our Own account this year. All my fanfics are there, too.

+ A spur-of-the-moment idea for a My Pride fanfic popped into my head when the series finished. I want to write it as soon as possible.

+ Minor stress has a way of creeping into everything you do. It grows and latches onto major points of pain and makes that even worse (like how a really bad day is made worse by getting inadequate sleep on a poor bed setup). No self help book or inspirational seminars are better than nipping it best you can at the source.

Overall, I hope 2021 went better for you than it did for me. And I'm glad for those of you who real the sparse amount of content I put out. I'll see you when my next fanfic is done.