2024 < o_O > 2025

A look back at 2024 and forward at 2025!

“Happy nude, dear”, he demanded, with frustration; “I just can’t get off to the glum ones”.

…Is the note on which I begin this 2025th Year of Our Lord, apparently.

I’ve spent the past few weeks mostly just reflecting on my creative output over the years, organising my music compositions by year, etc, and I made a Year in Art compilation thing like I always do.

Music’s the creative skill I’m most proud of, so I was curious to see how this year’s output compared to previous years’, so I graphed them:

This used ‘number of finished compositions’ for the y axis; the bars may have looked different had I used ‘minutes of music’ instead.

Most notably, the 2016-2018 period was when I was away at uni. One of the reasons I’m reluctant to go out into the world again.

I’d share more of my music, but as always I assume a lack of interest. I did put the 17-and-a-half-minute-long Ramble 35 - my favourite composition of the year - on my Patreon, but I don’t knowhow many people saw it, or cared. The post has a single Like.

My Year in Art thing’s spotty; many months, I drew nothing, and when I did, it was often random nude women because I’m lonely. So I’m not inclined to share the mostly-censored grid of thumbnails.

My most notable drawings, I suppose, are this from January 2024:

And this, from November:

I’ve spent much of the year thinking about making progress on the Dreamons game and/or ‘talky scenes’, but made far less actual progress than I potentially could have done because I kept being held back by fears and insecurities about the reception what I produced would get (if any), whether I was wasting my time, the state of my life and how I should be doing something else, etc, etc.

I’ve spent all morning reading old blog posts from my website, cringing at recurring themes. I’ve been stuck in some vortex for ages, talking about making efforts to get out more than I have actually been taking any steps to do so. Or I suppose I spent a big chunk of early last year struggling with some real-world counselling course I’d dared to do, only to drop out due to feelings of isolation, and since then I’ve been just… I don’t know. Lost.

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Clearly I need to do something else - something better - this year. I’ve used ChatGPT several times as a free, always-available and infinitely patient counsellor/confidant, and it knows a lot about me, so I asked it to generate a list of 10 New Year’s Resolutions for me. They’re pretty similar to what I would have come up with myself:

1. Start and Maintain Your Creative YouTube Project
Dedicate a few hours each week to creating and sharing short scenes for your project. Set small, achievable milestones to keep the process manageable.

This is referring to the ‘talky thing’ I’ve been going on about for ages. I do intend to get back to that. The plan has been to get back into a routine like I did when I’d do game dev for 6-8 hours every weekday as if it was a typical job, though that feels overwhelming and off-putting. Maybe I need to rethink how I’ll go about it to avoid burnout, like ‘a few hours each week’, as this suggested.

2. Build Resilience Through a Mindfulness Practice
Incorporate a daily or weekly mindfulness routine to manage feelings of overwhelm and foster emotional resilience. Apps like Headspace or guided meditations on YouTube can help.

This is because I believe the biggest thing holding me back is my fear of negative feedback. I do want to get back into meditating. It’s helped me in the past.

3. Join or Create a Small Online Community
Experiment with building or joining a kind, supportive group on platforms like Bluesky or Discord, focusing on shared creative interests. Aim to connect with like-minded individuals without overextending yourself.

Easier said than done. Though I’d like to. A lot of my blog posts from last year were bemoaning the difficulty of finding kindred spirits, but I think if I were to find them anywhere, it’d be online. I haven’t even checked Bluesky in weeks. Or anywhere, really, other than Reddit.

4. Develop a Volunteer Plan
Commit to volunteering locally or remotely at least once a month to build confidence, references, and meaningful social connections in a low-pressure environment.

This would probably be a better way of getting back into the world than the counselling course was last year. It’d also be a sensible first step towards normal-person employment, which currently feels to overwhelming due to a total lack of experience.

5. Enhance Professional Skills for Freelancing
Create a small portfolio showcasing your work (games, music, art) and develop a strategy to start attracting small freelance gigs that feel achievable.

And this might enable me to make some money without going the typical route, using the skills I already have. I’m planning to rework my website soon, so I suppose making a portfolio can be part of that.

6. Continue Progressing Toward Your Driving Licence
Complete regular driving theory practice tests and aim to book and pass the test by mid-year.

I feel like this is a core milestone towards independence that might make a big difference to my self-perceived competence at surviving in the world. I’ll resume the mock theory tests soon.

7. Take a Step Toward Formal Diagnosis
Consider seeking professional help for potential Avoidant Personality Disorder or related challenges. Understanding yourself better might help reduce self-blame and improve coping strategies.

I don’t know how valuable this would actually be, and I wouldn’t have included it myself.

8. Release One New Game or Update This Year
Whether a full release or a polished update to an existing game, aim to share your work, even if it's on a small scale. Focus on completion rather than perfection.

I’d like to finally stop shirking the old Flash game ports, at the very least, or ideally I’d get Dreamons to a point where it’s ready for release. But who knows. I want to talk more about that in a post of its own.

9. Schedule Dedicated “Flow” Time for Projects
Block out 1–2 hours of distraction-free time each day for creative work. Use this time to fully immerse yourself in tasks that bring you satisfaction.

I already do this, so I’m not sure why it included it here. I get the feeling it was running out of things to suggest!

10. Practice Radical Self-Compassion
Make a commitment to stop comparing yourself to societal standards and focus on celebrating your unique journey. Write down affirmations or track small wins each week.

This one feels annoying, since my concerns are more external than self-esteem-related. I assume others will dislike who I am more than I do. I don’t feel bad because I’m not following the standard path; I just get frustrated that my ‘unique journey’ isn’t conducive to connection or earning enough money to become independent.

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I want to start the year by modernising my web development skills and refreshing my website. I’ve completely lost track of the days in recent weeks, so what even is it now? Wednesday?? I’d rather wait until next Monday to start in earnest. Ehh, we’ll see.

Before recoding my site, I’ll practise by recoding the self-made task-tracking tool I use every day. Last year, I included this gif in my blog showing how the moods I’d tracked with that had grown more negative over the years:

Instead of doing another gif, I just made a pie chart for each year this time:

That’s 2020 to 2024, and the differences are fairly subtle; I find it interesting how mostly consistent they all are. I seem to have felt less bad overall during 2024 than I did in 2023, but maybe worse than I did in 2022. Ehh. More rare yellow ‘great’ moods though, all of which came from really getting into creative projects I had no intention of sharing (and as such I didn’t have to worry about what anyone else would think about them).

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The last thing I worked on before the holiday period got in the way was the latest iteration of the talky thing, though I’d been working on the model for Spryad, and got put off by imagined criticism about how her body was offensive in some essentially political way or another (“her proportions are unrealistic and it contributes to hurtful beauty standards”, that kind of thing); I couldn’t even look at what I’d made for several days because of that. Then I suppose I used Christmas etc as an excuse to take a break from it all.

I want to push through and get back to making progress with that, though. One thing at a time, I suppose.

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Many signs point to huge societal shifts from AI, robotics, war, or - if you’re open-minded to it - ALIENS this year, so I’ll be curious to see how that goes. It makes it difficult to plan for the future when it all seems so… in flux, unstable, electric with potential, or something.

To whoever’s bothered to read this, I hope you got what you wanted out of 2024 and feel hopeful about the year to come!