Hi everyone. I hope you are mostly okay.
My 2022 went by like it was not much. Been doing daily duties and often got home falling asleep quickly. I am still grateful for the occasional friendly message or when people included Shiny into their schedule for a kind surprise of an artwork. I definitely still enjoy my occasional daydreaming and brainstorming of ideas and potential plans for what to do with my gallery whenever I have more spare time again, but otherwise things have not been very active other than doing things at home.



I am honest here with you. I don't know sometimes what to make of myself around FA. I have met many friendly people, but I also feel like the people from when I got here have lost touch with their art hobby to such a great degree and personally I am not the biggest fan of how things developed.

To count down what exactly I mean, some examples:
1. People preferring social media over this community:
I have been with messengers like Skype, Yahoo, Windows Live and lastly Discord, but I often still wonder why people chose stuff like Twitter over anything else. People have repeatedly displayed that they did not enjoy interacting via notes and to me, that's quite a shame. Even on messengers, I had a hard time communicating with some people, simply because they either wanted me to be there 24/7, or to me at least it felt like people have suddenly started to regressing into the mentality of only exchanging one-liners with each other. I felt a bit lost when people got mad at me for being asleep when they were up and wishing for me to be there to chat (I cannot help it with time zone differences), or when people kinda started to shrug me off randomly with that the statement that they aren't the talkative type. Amusingly though, posting random messages on Twitter for them worked fine.
I don't like Twitter and social media for how often it seems like they make conversations and in general exchanging feel disjointed. I at least never felt like that platform (at least in its vanilla settings) ever made but a confusing mess of messaging. As for Discord, I sometimes wished there was an easy way to save a chat as a text document and I hope I can use the platform more often. People who are willing to have a conversation are always free to message me. I try to reply back more nowadays.

2. I feel like I'm always wrong with the view on art subjects on FA:
Why do we like animated characters? What's it with drawn content in regard to character creation, storytelling and imaginative ideas? Do people all nowadays treat them as only mature themes only? I admittedly seem to get convinced by that whatever I like, people dismiss as a kink and would just tell me "Cartoons were never created with family-friendly image in mind". I do respect if people wish to rate for example cartoon physics as a kink, but I also kinda am baffled by it at the same time. People treat their content that doesn't show anything in my eyes inappropriate and push it as something they don't wish to be remembered by other than a mature subject.
I am not sure but I feel like we looked at such subjects way more laid back when I was new here...
But perhaps I'm just wrong there. I still would enjoy sharing such things with everybody, and that because I think the things I found fun as a kid, are still fun nowadays. I like silly and over the top things for how imaginative they can be and I find it kinda sad if people declare them suddenly as something different.
It's where I feel shame in that more and more people and I cannot share the same opinions any longer and people feel like they need to retreat from it all. To me, it's kinda like with how people treat one another with prejudice and block you just because they like a subject that you might not. Or how people seem not to care for you if you are not treating a subject as a fetish. Some folks even just treat is as an exclusive or closet interest entirely and will get mad at you when you try to exchange over it. Do some of you possibly think I'm not good to share things with?

3. What do people like about me?:
I sometimes wonder nowadays because some folks just disappear, some people suddenly feel like keeping their distance to me and I feel like I let many of you down because I always get so busy with daily life. I am knowledgeable of the fact that I'm just a simple Human with no outstanding talents, but still, I love myself regardless, and I am happy whenever I can find time to show appreciation for friendly people and share the joy of what I usually think are the same hobbies and admiration for interesting concepts surrounding fictional characters and pop culture.
I can only hope that with this, some people might be willing to communicate to me about what they feel is wrong with my way of thinking or my likes. Likewise, I try top be upfront and honest towards others and don't desire to dismiss the way they are but I can only have a certain amount of patience, can only hope for that they show some understanding to where I am coming from and that I prefer to stick to my likely for them a bit outdated ways. <:3



In any way, that kinda sums it up why I feel a bit confused over how things are nowadays with me and people. I would be happy to be more to folks than just their shortcut to some kink of theirs and be considered a person. The same goes for my mascot Shiny. On the same note, I hope we can stay friends and keep exchanging even when I am not treating everything the same way as you might do. To come to an end here, I know that tastes and opinions can change over time, but I'd like for people to communicate things to me more.

Thank you all for the kind share of your time. I hope you all stay safe and in good health. I ponder about writing more slightly random journals in the future with simply takes on what I found interesting and hope they might lead to enjoyable conversations in the comments. ^_^