Well, that year could have gone worse. The most immediate significant event of 2024 that occurred to me was my psyche falling down like a house that was held up by one rotting beam, but then I forced myself to keep thinking because I'm so many other things than a mope who wallows in vent art. Good things that happened in 2024:

1. I started working out and got cut enough to use my own body as a study for improving my ability to draw muscles. Chad behavior.
2. I improved my artistic ability a lot, especially in terms of lighting.
3. I started university and met a professor I really vibe with.
4. I found out that knowing how to bill health insurance is an exceptionally valuable skill. I'm serious, it has substantial monetary value. I know that because A) Everyone hates billing insurance and B) Everyone hates it so much that you cannot PAY someone to do it. My workplace tried to hire someone else, they couldn't. So they paid ME to do it, and I fucking learned it, starting off by literally searching "how to bill Medicare" on Google.
5. I wrote a lot and effectively revived a project that had been dead for about a year. The "Shattered Archipelago" story that Iris is from. The first part might get finished next year, I donno! Either way I'm probably gonna draw a lot more about it.

As for the new year, as usual I have no resolutions. My energy is budgeted and I'm already running on all available cylinders. I guess that's my resolution. Fix my cylinders, goddamn it. Maybe then I'll have the opportunity to set some other goals.

I have fled Instagram's impressively awful image cropping and the inherent shittiness of any social media site over a certain size to the promised land of Bluesky. But, who are we kidding? I've already been followed by my first thot bot and I haven't had my account for a full hour yet. The platform is already telling me to like stuff so that I can be subjected to the algorithm. Despite the telltale signs that this boat is going to fucking disintegrate inside of a year, I've climbed aboard seeking the mythical land of discoverability.

So I've been dealing with my brain shitting itself for the last few months (just in time for university to start, how convenient!) and I've finally figured out through keeping a journal that I crash about once every week. As you can imagine, Señor Depression standing by with King Dedede's hammer to slam me into the fucking ground every Tuesday has not been conducive to my productivity. So that's why I fell off my schedule.

Seeing as Twitter is experiencing the same phenomenon as DeviantArt (namely, the acute decline of both mind and soul), I decided to abandon the account completely. I'd already stopped posting a few months ago because of the dozens of bots that were following me, but before that I kind of had hope that it could turn around. It's not going to.

So, I downloaded Instagram and made an account. My friends were overjoyed that they can now directly send me the worst brainrot known to man instead of having to link it in discord. I'm cautiously optimistic, because I haven't noticed as many parallels between Instagram and the Chernobyl incident as I have with Twitter. I guess it's also more meant for videos, but I don't plan on posting any. Anyway, you can find the link on my profile, but I'm not sure why you'd use it because I plan on posting basically the same content there. There'll be more sketches that I won't post here, if you're interested in that.

The

the femboy has just gathered more views than any other illustration I've ever done.

Yeah I posted that like a month ago. Yeah I've been on the site for more than a year, why do you ask?

and I've spent the last two weeks using it on writing instead of art. On one hand, I've added 20,000 words to a story I'm currently working on. On the other hand, I haven't drawn a single line in the pursuit of visual arts for 12 days.

This will probably change at some point. Bottom line, I'm not dead.

SOMEONE SCOUTED ME YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The showing of Treasure Island has officially ended! I have pushed and pulled so many wheeled set elements on and off stage, and I must have sent like 12 skeletons up through a trapdoor. I know that last part doesn't make sense. The skeleton was the most chaotic element of the show. Anyway, It's been great for my core strength and leg strength. I was worried that my weak back would be a problem since I was essentially The Guy Who Moves Heavy Stuff but my lumbar region held up brilliantly. I'm glad I participated, but I'm also glad it's finished XD. God that was a lot of work.

So as of the beginning of last week, I've been working with my local community college in a stage production of Treasure Island. I'm part of the "deck" crew, meaning I move in set elements and make sure props are ready when and where the actors need them. This is distinct from "fly" which is only about set elements that are too big or heavy to move without using some larger mechanism of pulleys and ropes.

Anyway, it's a real commitment and there will be twelve showings clear through to the middle of next month, so I'm a tad busier than normal. I'd blame my utter failure to adhere to my regular schedule on that if I was a liar, but I'm not, so I won't. No, I just fell off. What the production WILL do is slow me down in my continued adventures of not following my schedule. So there's that.

So, to make a long story short, I didn't want to do that last drawing, but I did it anyway. I already knew that forcing myself to work was the fastest way to thoroughly burn out my creative battery. But I had already agreed to it.

Lesson learned: It's called a 'request' because it's a request. My slip wasn't even because I flaked out and let someone force me to feel obligated. It was because I apparently didn't quite understand the concept of a request.

So basically what I'm saying is that I'm not sure when the next drawing will be. I wish I had a monitor to check my battery percentage, but I don't. All I know is that it'll be back relatively soon, and it'll probably be in the form of some shitty meme drawing. You have been warned.