![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
2019 Year in Review!
Dec. 29th, 2019 11:59 pmYup, it's that time of year again.
2019, all told, was a pretty solid year for me. School continues to be fun and exciting, if also exhausting. We stopped teaching taiko, and are therefore able to actually play taiko, which is a big improvement on our Saturdays. Saturdays have changed a lot this year -- In April we went from teaching taiko to playing taiko (yay), and in August we went from having afternoon babysitting to doing Chinese School (boo), so I guess it mostly comes out as a wash. Dad disappeared to China for 6 months and mom had a rough time, and then mom went to China for 6 weeks, and now they're both back and seem to be doing okay??? Things were a bit rough between me and Hoosband a couple of times, but every time we worked through it, so the marriage is still strong! woo!
I think the big frustration this year has been the lack of time/energy to work on creative projects. There was a little bit of time over the summer, during which I made a print and also put together a nicer version of the Happy Birthday Steve Rogers book, and also drafted out the rest of the Rutabaga comics. But then August hit and I felt consistently 3 weekends behind on work.
A lot of my energy goes into dealing with Hoosband's climate anxiety, both in keeping him in the Hope Boat and making sure that I don't fall into the deep waters with him. (If I'm gonna be honest here -- it's emotionally exhausting.) Part of that has resulted in me trying to get more involved in local community stuff -- joining the Oddfellows and our HOA, and just being more vocal about my crazy ideas at school. (Stuff like 4 day workweeks, climate action as social action, combating the nihilism of 15 year-olds, "maybe dealing with climate change actually requires changing our lifestyles," etc.) This has also been reflected in my art output -- choosing to focus this year's July 4th comic on climate, for example, or the more recent one that's about future vision.
In terms of fandom, I stepped away from all of the various events that I was modding, and I think it's been better for me overall -- I was able to focus on school and family at a time when there were a lot of stressors on family, I was able to actually read the fic coming out of the RBB instead of modding, and this winter I was actually able to write 2 short fics! I got my tumblr back in October (as mysteriously as I lost it 11 months prior), but since then I've stabilized on having AO3 be my primary space and using Tumblr/DW as an amplifying branch, which is actually really good for me. (also: learningtocomic is back! that's also v. exciting). However, Endgame pretty much killed any sort of remaining excitement I had for the MCU. I'm still making stuff in the fandom, but mostly because I haven't found any new fandom that really hits all the right buttons of history, heroism, loyalty and self sacrifice in the face of dehumanizing forces. (Or maybe I just haven't had the time to get into a new fandom.)
Now that the "where do I put my fandom output" issue is resolved, I'm still in search for the right fandom social media space for me. I wish I had time for tumblr, but I don't. I wish I had affinity for text chatrooms, but textchat is always High Social Energy for me, so I kind of dip in for 5 minutes every 2 weeks. DW is nice but a smidge slow, and I'm still not certain about commenting norms. (Plus, clicking through to comments is still ... not very intuitive to me.) I think maybe the bigger problem is that I just don't really have time to properly invest in fandom social interactions, even though I really want to interact. Maybe I should start up some longform email threads with various people?
As far as my non-fandom creative stuff is concerned -- I really want to finish Rutabaga comics, but now that I have them drafted, I've lost a lot of desire to finish inking. But maybe it can be a night-time activity in the spring, if I can have less grading time. I also had various other ambitions (finishing Tisquantum, doing more Chinese-America comics, figuring out how publishing actually works, maybe doing more climate comics, etc), but all of them are hard and I can't decide on a specific one to focus on, not when there's so much other stuff going on, too.
Rutabaga is growing into an interesting 3yo! I can't believe she'll be 4 in 3 months! One day the house will be clean and organized!
I keep thinking I'm 39 but that's actually Hoosband's age. Then I remember that I'm turning 36, and somehow that feels like I got 3 years back, ahahaha.
2019, all told, was a pretty solid year for me. School continues to be fun and exciting, if also exhausting. We stopped teaching taiko, and are therefore able to actually play taiko, which is a big improvement on our Saturdays. Saturdays have changed a lot this year -- In April we went from teaching taiko to playing taiko (yay), and in August we went from having afternoon babysitting to doing Chinese School (boo), so I guess it mostly comes out as a wash. Dad disappeared to China for 6 months and mom had a rough time, and then mom went to China for 6 weeks, and now they're both back and seem to be doing okay??? Things were a bit rough between me and Hoosband a couple of times, but every time we worked through it, so the marriage is still strong! woo!
I think the big frustration this year has been the lack of time/energy to work on creative projects. There was a little bit of time over the summer, during which I made a print and also put together a nicer version of the Happy Birthday Steve Rogers book, and also drafted out the rest of the Rutabaga comics. But then August hit and I felt consistently 3 weekends behind on work.
A lot of my energy goes into dealing with Hoosband's climate anxiety, both in keeping him in the Hope Boat and making sure that I don't fall into the deep waters with him. (If I'm gonna be honest here -- it's emotionally exhausting.) Part of that has resulted in me trying to get more involved in local community stuff -- joining the Oddfellows and our HOA, and just being more vocal about my crazy ideas at school. (Stuff like 4 day workweeks, climate action as social action, combating the nihilism of 15 year-olds, "maybe dealing with climate change actually requires changing our lifestyles," etc.) This has also been reflected in my art output -- choosing to focus this year's July 4th comic on climate, for example, or the more recent one that's about future vision.
In terms of fandom, I stepped away from all of the various events that I was modding, and I think it's been better for me overall -- I was able to focus on school and family at a time when there were a lot of stressors on family, I was able to actually read the fic coming out of the RBB instead of modding, and this winter I was actually able to write 2 short fics! I got my tumblr back in October (as mysteriously as I lost it 11 months prior), but since then I've stabilized on having AO3 be my primary space and using Tumblr/DW as an amplifying branch, which is actually really good for me. (also: learningtocomic is back! that's also v. exciting). However, Endgame pretty much killed any sort of remaining excitement I had for the MCU. I'm still making stuff in the fandom, but mostly because I haven't found any new fandom that really hits all the right buttons of history, heroism, loyalty and self sacrifice in the face of dehumanizing forces. (Or maybe I just haven't had the time to get into a new fandom.)
Now that the "where do I put my fandom output" issue is resolved, I'm still in search for the right fandom social media space for me. I wish I had time for tumblr, but I don't. I wish I had affinity for text chatrooms, but textchat is always High Social Energy for me, so I kind of dip in for 5 minutes every 2 weeks. DW is nice but a smidge slow, and I'm still not certain about commenting norms. (Plus, clicking through to comments is still ... not very intuitive to me.) I think maybe the bigger problem is that I just don't really have time to properly invest in fandom social interactions, even though I really want to interact. Maybe I should start up some longform email threads with various people?
As far as my non-fandom creative stuff is concerned -- I really want to finish Rutabaga comics, but now that I have them drafted, I've lost a lot of desire to finish inking. But maybe it can be a night-time activity in the spring, if I can have less grading time. I also had various other ambitions (finishing Tisquantum, doing more Chinese-America comics, figuring out how publishing actually works, maybe doing more climate comics, etc), but all of them are hard and I can't decide on a specific one to focus on, not when there's so much other stuff going on, too.
Rutabaga is growing into an interesting 3yo! I can't believe she'll be 4 in 3 months! One day the house will be clean and organized!
I keep thinking I'm 39 but that's actually Hoosband's age. Then I remember that I'm turning 36, and somehow that feels like I got 3 years back, ahahaha.
