Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a nice 2026 so far, despite everything.
I made the mistake this year of joining 6 Secret Santa art exchanges total, which might kill me dead. I have 4 out of 6 finished. Please remind me next year to never make this many commitments in one month ever again!
With that said, I have enjoyed the pieces I've made this year and I've received some awesome pieces as well. I'll show off my absolute favorite piece I've gotten all year, of my character Orpheus, drawn by my friend lucsw:
Our Yuletide special turned out great- Now we're full steam ahead on a documentary about the history of our local school system, from its founding to today. We've interviewed dozens of people! It's supposed to air in April, as four weekly half-hour episodes. That's a pretty quick turnaround, but I'm optimistic!
We have some other shows in the meantime- some town-hall-esque events, some political debates. I love live shows because they're quick and easy, and it's honestly pretty exhilerating to try and switch perfectly on air. But, my coworkers prefer taping shows and editing them later, which is understandable even if it means a lot more work for me.
Aside from the 6 Secret Santas, I'm also working on that OC pinup zine I mentioned. I'm doing a piece featuring my character D'mari as well as my friend's OC Misae. They're a cute couple, but they're very stoic and the setting is pretty arctic, so it's not turning out quite as sensual as other peoples' pieces... But that's ok! I know how soft and tender it is and that's all that matters, probably. I'm still waiting to hear when the Zine O'Biology Volume 2 is dropping, and keeping an eye out for other zines in the meantime. I saw an ad a few months ago for a House MD zine that I would love to be a part of, but I haven't seen anything else from them yet- I ought to check on that!
Every once in a while I daydream about running a zine myself. I would love to do a Venture Bros zine, I think that would be awesome, but I'm pretty new to that fandom and I think it would be stupid to commit to something like that when work is so busy.
In other news, I'm also currently applying for several new roleplay groups. If I get into all of these, that'll be 4 at once- I've never really been active in more than 2 at a time, but I have a feeling 3 out of these 4 will be pretty low activity for the most part, so I bet it will be okay. And who knows! I might not get into all of them!
I've been thinking a lot about what I'd like to focus on in the coming year. I have a LOT of goals, which might be a little too ambitious, but I reckon the more I set, the easier it'll be to meet at least some of them, right??? No?
A lot of my goals are art related- When I mentioned this to an IRL friend she was, like, appalled. She was very adamant that I'm already a good artist and I should just have fun with it and not feel the need to improve. But I enjoy improving! I have so many artist friends who have put so much time into studies and understanding composition and color theory and just grind nonstop, and seeing the things they make really inspires me to try and be better myself. Idk! Like, when I say I want to improve my art, I'm not saying my art is bad, necessarily. Like, it's not a self-deprecating thing. I just want to get better!
I also want to try and take better care of myself. I need to eat better, exercise more, clean more often. I think trying to change all of these things at once could be overwhelming, but all of them feel like they need to be addressed sooner rather than later. I'm trying to think of a way to do this in baby steps, in a way that's still effective. A lot of my off time is spent watching shows or talking to my friends, and while I definitely don't intend on dropping these hobbies, I feel like I need to just... Rebalance my life and my priorities. I think a huge part of this is the effect that my mental health has had on my adult life. I've been clinically depressed since high school at least, and I think that I developed a lot of bad habits transitioning into adulthood. I want to have grace for myself, but there also just comes a time when I need to hold myself more accountable. I'm tired of living in a cluttered house. I'm tired of eating junk all the time. I want things to be different! Now I just need to follow through.
Well, thanks so much for reading if you did! I know I don't often say many new things in these little blogs, but it's nice for me to be able to look back. This is the closest I've ever gotten to having, like, a semi-consistent diary. It was nice yapping to you and I hope you have an awesome January!