Month: December 2023

This is going to be my last blog post for the year; let’s sum it all up as best we can.

2023 has been something of a rollercoaster, physically, mentally, emotionally, and all the other -allys as well. Many highs, more than few lows, bursts of progress and lengthy roadblocks, artistic expression and artistic burnout; it’s been the full package of the good, the bad, and the less-than-attractive. But the thing about a rollercoaster is that, once it’s done speeding you along, turning you upside down and making you want to throw up, it comes to an end; the cart slows down, you lift up the seat brace, and make your way on toward the next one. But you can always stop for ice cream and a visit to the gift shop before you climb into another death-defying contraption of evil; the holiday period is my path towards the next rollercoaster.

In terms of life and living, this year was full of uncertainty. The house hunting began almost as soon as 2023 did, and we had hoped to wrap it up by June; obviously that didn’t happen. I emotionally detached myself from finding a new place to live and resolved to let whatever happened happen, since it was out of my hands and I wasn’t looking to get said hands dirty. I had enough other things on my mind and less time on my hands than others; the detachment kept my anxiety down and my spirits… I won’t say “higher” but at the very least moderately elevated in comparison. Fortunately, even if we didn’t find a new house, we at least found a new living space thanks to the efforts of my wonderful fiance; she lucked out in finding the ideal spot for the next stage of her own journey in the coming year, and I’m so grateful to still be able to share a home with her and our cats.

Artistically speaking, I accomplished more this past year than I have in a long time, even if it wasn’t as much as I had planned. Of a potential three or four issues of the Fifth Ace Showcase, I only finished two, but I’m still proud of what I was able to do with them; I tried a lot of new things, most of which worked out well, and I had fun doing so. Outside of the website, I’ve experimented with various other things, but have not kept as consistent as I would have liked; with an ever-changing sleep schedule and the inconsistency of workflow in the day job, completing things in a timely manner has been difficult. This could change if/when I find a new job, but in the meantime, I want to use my pockets of free time (at home and at work) in a more productive manner; I need to be less lenient with my deadlines and commit myself to getting specific things out at specific times. By breaking down my creative goals into smaller, manageable goals, I can skirt between them to finish the overall task more efficiently. I already have a bingo card with my art goals for next year laid out; next step will be to tackle each one, one bit at a time.

As far as my mental state goes, I’ve been improving over the course of the year; despite starting to feel cramped in our small home and stressing over several things at various times, my brain has more or less balanced out, except in one area in particular. This ties to my physical state, so let’s lump them together, “lump” being the appropriate word. I am not happy with my body; I’ve never really liked my body in general (which is probably why I also dislike having pictures taken of me), but considering that I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been and running out of notches on my belt, it’s time I did something about it. Having a bigger living space means that I can’t use the excuse of having no room to move anymore; I have to get some exercise in. I’ve been looking into workout plans, similar to what I did earlier in the year, but starting off with easier exercises and building my way up. At the same time, like I mentioned last week, I want to look into meal prep strategies so that I can eat healthier without having to cook every night; I fell asleep at 7pm last night, I was so exhausted, so having a ready-made meal for when I get home in the evening will be an absolute blessing. Combining the healthier food and consistent exercise, I may just be able to make my body lighter, and hopefully not my wallet.

So, all that being said, what does the year boil down to, and what does it mean for 2024? Well, it’s all much the same really: thank FRICK this year is over, let’s make the next one better; it’s the usual bevy of New Year’s resolutions: eat healthier, get in some exercise, work harder, find a better job, improve life all around. Hardly original, but still highly relevant, perhaps now more than ever; it’s going to take some commitment, more than I’ve ever managed to muster in the past, but commitment to goals is how you get through life, even if the goal is just to live.

With that, I’m signing off for the rest of the year; the next Bottom of the Deck post will be on January 4th, and hopefully the next issue of the Fifth Ace Showcase will begin on the 5th. Happy Holidays to those who celebrate in your preferred manner, best wishes for the New Year, and I’ll see you all in 2024; I have several ice creams I wish to consume before the next rollercoaster.

Ciao for now.

I’ve officially deleted my TwitterX account! It’s a total shitshow over there, and I don’t intend to go back; Bluesky all the way for now.

While the day job tends to slow down somewhat in December, it doesn’t halt completely, and I can only devote so much time during the work day to stuff that I’d rather be doing instead. To keep it low energy, I’ve primarily been doodling, but also working on getting some writing done; if I want to leap into the thick of it in the new year, it’ll help to have some scripts ready. I’ve laid out a bunch of things that I want to accomplish in 2024 in terms of art, and a lot of them are comics (naturally). The Fifth Ace Showcase will of course be making a return, and I’m also aiming to work on a few one-shot greyscale zines that I can print for cheap; there are conventions on the horizon, and I’d like to have a few small things to sell, even if I don’t have a table of my own.

How much of anything I’ll get done also depends on what kind of schedule I’ll be able to construct; it’s always the same thing with New Year’s resolutions: you hold up the life-changing schedule for two or three weeks and then it all collapses. In my case, I’m going to be taking into account a bunch of things that will arise with the new living space. For a start, with my longer commute, I’ll have to leave the house earlier in the morning, and I’ll be getting home later, so that will chew up a potential extra hour of my time (at least until I find a new job closer to home). On the other hand, I tend to be waking up at around 4am these days, so that leaves a little extra time to do stuff in the morning; the cats have trained me well. It’ll be a chance to potentially try some exercise challenges again, maybe get a little bit of extra artwork or writing done before breakfast; the only reason I’m not doing it now is because of lack of space. Once I have my own desk again and some room to move, the possibilities are endless.

Additionally, I’ve been looking into meal preparation strategies to cut down on time spent making food; we don’t have the biggest fridge/freezer, but with some proper stackable containers we could store quite a few ready-made meals, so I may start taking Sundays to whip up a few large meals that I can divvy up and pick from throughout the week. I don’t have any major meal plans in mind yet, but the main reason for doing this would be to discourage impulse snacking and take-aways; a lot of nights I come home and just don’t feel like cooking, so having something ready and waiting in the fridge would prevent me from spending money that I don’t have. I found a great instructional video for homemade tortilla wraps that would provide me with a week’s worth of lunches; I also learned that I’ve been folding my wraps completely wrong for years, it was a full blown epiphany! Plus, with less time and energy taken up by cooking, I can (hopefully) find it in me to spend my evenings more creatively and get more art done.

All of this is just planning, of course; no plan survives first contact with procrastination, so we’ll see how long I’ll be able to hold to it come January. In the meantime, we still have to move into the new space before all this can happen. Some team of ours won a Sportsball trophy of some kind, so in recognition of that, we have the day off tomorrow; we’ll be using the long weekend to get some cleaning done and start moving the non-essentials out of our current space. We’ve been slowly emptying out our cupboards and freezer of long-forgotten foodstuffs so that we’ll have less perishables to cart away, and once some of the stored furniture is in place, we can clear out the rest of our hoard, starting with the board games and ending with the cats. With any luck, we should be home by Christmas… nothing bad ever came of anyone saying that, right?

Anywho, wish us luck; next Thursday will likely be the last blog post for the year, as I’m planning on using the week between Christmas and New Year’s to spend time with family and not think too hard about anything else while I still can.

Ciao for now.

Holy cow, we’re in the December times already; where has this year gone?

It’s been a hot minute since I checked in here, and stuff has been happening in that time. First and foremost: we got the lease! We’ve signed, we’ve paid, and we’re moving into our new place! It’s a good thing that we’re also paid up in our current residence until the end of the year, which means we can take our time to clean up and transfer all of our stuff across without rushing around. We’re going to have more floor space, which means we can have a real dining table again, as well as our L-couch that has been in storage for five years because we couldn’t fit it anywhere else. There’s space for our desks, our board game shelf, and somehow ourselves as well; I am going to be so glad to have a kitchen that I can stand in and move more than a single step to the side. There will be some adjustments to make; our cats are going to have to acclimate to a new space, which will likely take a few weeks for Sparrow especially, and despite a slightly reduced rental fee, we will have to pay for our own electricity and gas heating now; our costs will more or less balance out, just distributed differently. The biggest shift is going to be the extended commute to work, at least an extra 15-20 minutes both ways, so the sooner I find a different job the better.

My weekends have been filled with social obligations lately, and this weekend will be no different; it’s Japan Day on Saturday, so we’ll be going out to experience some culture. It’s a natural attraction to the cosplay crowd; there are going to be a lot of anime characters wandering around, though the best I’ll be able to manage is my Japanese Spider-Man T-shirt. While going out and seeing friends can be fulfilling, as an introvert it leaves me very drained, as I mentioned last week; my social batteries especially take a lot of hits during the holiday season. It’s not all bad though; at a birthday party this past weekend, I found a new potential D&D group (purely theoretical, no confirmation yet), and just chatting about my preferences as a DM got me thinking about my homebrew world again. I’ve been absorbing quite a few third-party D&D content creations lately (the less said about mainstream D&D the better, really) and it’s helped me brainstorm a bunch of new ideas, or put different spins on old ideas that could do with a good dusting off. Whether or not I get to put these ideas into practice is a whole other fettle of kish, but they’re nice to think about in the meantime, and it keeps the creative juices flowing.

Speaking of creative juices, I’ve been trying to get into the groove of communicating with people on social media, Bluesky in particular; like I’ve said before, to grow a social media account, I actually have to be social, and what better way to do so than communicate through the language of art? I’ve taken the slower year-end work days to get some art practice in, using some of my favourite artists’ original characters to try out new techniques; I’m looking into greyscale colouring and rendering in particular, as that’ll be easier on my wallet if I ever get my comics in print again. Here’s a couple of fanart pieces that I’ve done in the past week, featuring Big Help by psudonym and Charlie by Yung Khan:

The original creators both expressed their thanks for my efforts; it’s a nigh-universal truth that creators love seeing sincere fanart of their characters, and if I can make people happy while experimenting and improving my art, all the better.

Think that about covers it for this week; if I’m not completely wiped out by next week, I might have more stuff to show for it.

Ciao for now.