This has truly been a crazy year, it almost seems unreal when I look back (and I never thought I’d say that after living through 2020). A web group I’m a part of called 32bit Cafe is running an event where members share what 2024 was like for them! So here’s my journey through the past year, including reflections on lessons, highlights, goals, and intentions in where I may go from here.
I’ve discovered what kinds of things are deeply motivating to me this year by learning from inspirational partner, Nicole, who deftly manages her creative hobbies. Her ever-developing, innovative techniques in cross-stitch seemed artistic to me, when I had once seen that kind of activity as more of a craft. The way she joyfully anticipated and played with thread colors, then chose the most efficient route, and slowly accomplished her mission would bring her so much satisfaction. And seeing that fervor come into play in her every day planning (as she set long periods aside just for the activity) made me realize how joyful tediousness can, itself, become the fun — and we all know how fun is integral is to any creative process!
I was able to put these ideas into practice once I found a medium that brought out my joy in the tedium again! And that happened this year, when my parents purchased an iPad Pro with the pen tool for me this past summer. It revolutionized my workflow and removed so much of the logistical headache I had been experiencing from both my outdated 2003 version photoshop and canvas / pigment painting. Setting up the paint and physical supplies involved me using a lot of “ignition” energy (which is something that my neurodivergent brain struggles to come up with most of the time). And art made using the old program and Wacom tablet involved hooking myself painfully over my desk, eyes disjointedly fixed on a screen while my hand attempted to lay down lines over and over as hours crawled by. But with the iPad, all of a sudden I could now just lay comfortably on my couch and doodle with pin point accuracy on the first try!
And so, for the first time in a decade, art felt alive to me again. I found myself even day dreaming about what I was going to create next, something I had originally only managed to do with dread as I anticipated how many painful steps it would take to get there. The iPad simplified so much of the process, and tasks (such as lineart and masking) became fun tediousness to do, instead of dispiriting tediousness.
As part of this process I discovered that upgrading my art tools to keep with the times is an active process for me to continually invest in. As I get older, if I’m seeing cool new art out there that I didn’t used to see – I can investigate how the tools are being used to make it! For instance, it turns out that many of the chromatic aberrations and glitch art I’ve been seeing are… very easily added as a simple setting in Procreate. (Originally I had thought people were painting in these things by hand in art programs… nope, just a button press). This gave me a false impression of how much time the art was taking them to do, and it wasn’t a fair comparison! Learning these newer tools impacted my art flow and speed/efficiency significantly, and I was even able to open up digital art commissions again!
With that said.. It’s much easier to talk about my skills and hobbies on here than it is my Personality but .. it was there that I experienced huge growth, so might as well share!
So first off, it turns out that my gender is .. more complicated than I thought. And it involves the fact that as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person in the 90s, I was incessantly bullied and socially taken advantage of (as I was trusting and gullible). I never fit in fully, it felt like, in the world around me, so I learned to dissociate. That is, until I found “my people” within online environments in 2001. And to this day, I have never left online communities completely.
But it wasn’t even that I fit in better there – instead, it felt like home. And the online “personas” I knew as my friends felt as natural of a way to get to know someone as it could be. And bodies themselves were just the pot each were planted in, so to speak.
And so, after many discussions this past year with likeminded online friends, I became fascinated by how online personas can often feel more like hanging with someone’s true inner essence. This was especially something me and my friends explored a lot during our webfishing stint. I even made a pronouns page to explore it further, and read the memoir comic Genderqueer which was helpful (especially when e described eir discovery of neopronouns, I felt very seen). There was also a post on mastodon about how someone liked it/its pronouns precisely because it culturally indicates “not like other humans.” Wow, for some reason unbeknownst to me, the it pronouns resonated for me. I have always had trouble feeling much like a human (my favorite character since I was a kid was Tobias, a person who intentionally trapped himself in a hawk body).
So, I came out on instagram and stopped hiding as much. I’m pretty uncomfortable with talking about myself online but I felt compelled to share in case it might help someone else. Anyhow. These realizations helped me learn what’s important to me in online spaces and how to nurture those aspects moving forward.
Besides gender, I learned better coping skills and how to deal with overstimulation better. I’m learning to trust myself in knowing what I need from a space in order to feel comfortable and happy. And that depression is a real illness which almost killed me several times at this point – my partners and friends and family have been huge supports while I heal. I learned to take it seriously. I still feel lost on where I’m headed but I’m surprisingly grateful to still be here even if I’m not thriving yet. More importantly I’m learning to trust myself as an adult, that I have developed a robust plan to escape the hostile political landscape of Texas, and that I’m doing my best to make it happen as fast as possible.
My goals are loosey goosey and I’m okay with that, ha. I would like to comment on friends’ creations more, and create opportunities to celebrate our weirdness (uniqueness) like investing more time into zines or creating a stable space for our online personalities to inhabit and share in each others’ company together. I want to improve my anxious attachment issues with my partners by trusting in myself more. It would also probably help to build out secondary support structures by specifically making time and holding space for multiple friendships within my social circles. I want to continue mending the rift I feel from my family by not closing myself off from them as much and explaining better what I need them to do to help me.
Timeline
- jan – I was in the trenches pulling all nighters, developing and reskinning multiple slot machine games simultaneously, as well as creating art assets for a brand new one
- feb – lost job on Furcadia and slot machine games, discovered Planet Zoo to cope with the loss, began working on game art for Novus
- march – lost my weekly dnd group to drama, was devastated because they had started to feel like family
- april – my trans friend Violet died, and her family had the funeral service refer to her with her dead name, while only her wife and friends used the name “Violet”. Last time visiting Arizona and dealt with more emotional wreckage from misunderstanding social situations. Was suddenly handed reins to a local autism support group.
- may – I started researching cities me and my partner could move to in order to escape TX. Joined some game devs in working on a PC game on steam called Gnomes ‘n Giants
- June – Parents gifted me an iPad (!!!). Visited Sydney, Australia and my wonderful online artist friend Tenjin for the first time. We photographed wild Flying Foxes during the golden hour, as well as met several charming wild cockatoos and king parrots. I hand fed a male cassowary named Princess!
Photos from Sydney
- July – I helped organize and scan Nicole’s abuela’s library. My dad survived several surgeries after multiple ER visits. Had a blast participating in art fight. I managed to keep most garden plants alive through tremendous heat waves and drought. I gained one psych and lost one, and finally settled on a place to move.
- aug – discovered Magic The Gathering through playing Bloomburrow (featuring cute anthro animals!) with friends, officially forever quit Furcadia, met a new UK friend, investigated hormone issues with obgyn, made many commission portraits, finished a mural
- sep – started art zine with online friends and made two issues so far, started meds with new psych, did rush art assets for a Halloween mansion game
- oct – had an unresolved issue with a coworker and felt alienated from our team events, played the Duskmourn prerelease, discovered a magical vegan bakery called Unicorniverse (which looks exactly like what it sounds)
- nov – joined two weekly tabletop games with new groups, played foundations in mtg, made friends with a former drag queen, discovered Web fishing and had fun with friends on it, made half of a new giant isometric dragon base
- dec – mental health decline went to spiral, spent remaining savings on a new iPhone and recovering missing data, photos, and lost art files from two broken hard drives. Still working on upgrading my desktop to survive the next four years. I’m worried about having to avoid potential upcoming electronic tariffs
This year’s random stats:
- art classes taught: 76
- paint your pet classes taught: 32
- most hours spent on single painting: 16
- hours spent teaching: 496
- songs published to soundcloud: 19
- times Chidi asked for food (approximate estimate) : 36,500 meows
- fav vegan restaurants / sustainable businesses closed in Austin so far: 33
- characters drawn in artfight month: 40
- finished iPad artworks: 97
Light in Darkness
I have a few lighthouses that guide me to shore despite the chaotic waves of life. Here’s what lately has been getting me through hard times:
- Choosing to be playful / make jokes with / be around my supportive partners, inner circle of friends / chosen family, animals. Trying not to take things too seriously unless there is an actual threat
- Listening closely to people who don’t often have many opportunities to share what’s going on and/or have their ideas be taken seriously
- gardening – making time to learn about soil restoration has been immensely gratifying and putting even a little energy into the garden creates abundant energy to everyone around (people, other plants, animals, insects, microbes, soil). I had soil restoration and gardening lessons emailed from Phil Nauta that I found super insightful, covering these broad topics in more depth.
- getting to know my apartment neighbors, children, and customers, and helping them where I can
- thinking about my lineage – everything about me and my body was built to survive and I inherited these bodily protections as gifts from so many generations of billions of ancestors
- free cbt open source app – helps me work through any overly emotional reasoning cropping up due to chronic anxiety and depression
- thinking about how me living my life conscientiously is more or less my job as a lifeform, because my actions (or inactions) always affect the planet. For instance, me making coffee every day means I’ll put coffee grounds into my compost. Or when I noticed the erosion at my apartment complex, I dammed the ground with layers of rocks near the gutters to help any water sink into the clay instead of running off. And… If I don’t make time to water fatigued plants, they wither 🙁
- Fat Cats, a family run vegan coffee shop and bakery whose owner has let me display and sell art there for years without charging commission, I would go there when I felt bad and always came out feeling hopeful again
- People who believe in me enough to commission me :’)
Thanks for reading – especially if you got this far! Would love to hear what stood out to you or any other comments. Here’s to 2025!