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2025 Wishlist (instead of Resolutions)
10 months ago
It’s not New Year’s Eve yet, but considering how time loves to shift and roll and move and get away from me, I might as well get this done now while I’m thinking about it.
I’ve never been one for resolutions, or at least, I’ve never been one that could stick with them very well. It’s always tricky to find a behavior or a theme that really works for me going through an entire year, and trickier still to actually stay interested in all of them. Who knows, maybe there’s a part of me that just gets bored and doesn’t like ideas that it enjoyed earlier (even as recently as an hour ago).
Whatever the reason, I’m trying something a little different this year. I’m going to phrase it as a ‘gift list’ to myself, 12 different gifts, no more than one a month, for the year ahead. Things I can do that will hopefully make me happy, things that will make me feel accomplished, and things that will keep a little more goodness in my life. Goodness knows that the recent events have taken a bit out of it.
Anyway. Let’s go through the gift-list for myself. Maybe some of you can help me keep accountable to this stuff.
1: Research and connect with my Cherokee heritage. With some Native American connections through my mom’s side, going back at least a couple of generations, I’ve always had a vague, kinda low-key pride in having that bit in my family tree. Yet, I’ve never really dug into it, and I feel like I should. It’s something that, as a part of me that I do take pride in, I should know more about. Pride without knowledge is merely arrogance, after all.
2: Prioritize personal writing. I say it every year, and maybe this will be the year that I actually do it. I want to do stories that aren’t just porn commissions. I want to do erotica that touches my own interests more often, and I want to do something that isn’t furry, as well. Something that maybe I can publish. I touched on an idea last month that I’ve been slowly developing, so maybe this one will stick around. As long as I keep loving it and bringing it back in.
3: Get in touch with asexual/queer community IRL. Having discovered that I’m asexual – or, at least, on the ace spectrum, leaning toward aegosexual – a couple of years back, it feels only right that I push myself to be part of the community, as well. Particularly IRL. There’s lots of good ace community stuff online, just like there is for a lot of us under the rainbow flags, but there’s something about IRL stuff that really does better. There’s more…substance to it, more people, and without the screens in the way, there’s something more understanding, more connecting. And I need that right now.
4: Learn asexual history. Queer history in general is something that is always at risk of dying out of the living memory. We learn a lot of national history (propagandized in a lot of ways, but still getting the basic bits out there), and there’s a general consciousness of a certain amount of historical basics, that certain things actually existed, inasmuch as the heteronormative stuff is written down and learned and taught. Queer stuff? Muuuuuuch harder to just have by osmosis. Since being ace is part of me, just like with the Cherokee stuff, I should bring some of this into my life, too.
5: Read one fiction book per month, minimum. The fuck kind of writer doesn’t read? I have been letting this slip for too long. One book a month, minimum. I need to keep the writing in my life, and that means keeping the reading in it, too. Starting small, with a young adult book called “Elatsoe” by Darcie Little Badger, and seeing what else I can put together over the course of the year. Hopefully a big bunch towards the middle with the WorldCon stuff being local this year, but we’ll see.
6: Figure out my clothing ‘style’ and put together a few looks. After literally decades of stubbornly refusing to care about fashion and looks and style and just pulling the first thing out of the drawer and wearing that (and doing a bit of introspection to realize that was defiance rather than choice), I want to figure out what my look is. Drac used to have his robe before going to his current suit. I want to spend some time figuring out what me, the author, should look like, and what I can do to enjoy that.
7: Decorate my room. Similar to the above, I never really had the option of doing much room decoration in the past. Either we were renting and I couldn’t do much without risking damage to the walls or something, or we were too poor to actually afford getting anything, or something else had come up. Now, I have a place that I’m staying for a significant amount of time, there’s no real worries about damaging stuff so much, and I can kinda do what I want. The question is, what do I want to surround myself with? Again, what is my style? I want to figure that out.
8: Put out an erotica anthology. I put out enough porn that this really shouldn’t be so hard. I could go back to some of the Kink-Tober/Kink-Vember pieces and expand them, or take some of the pieces I’ve done for myself and edit them, or something. I want to actually have something out there that’s more my own, and maybe something a little special as a result. Who knows? Maybe people might buy it.
9: Find a happy place between my asexuality and my libido. Those of you that know, know. Those of you that don’t? Sex-neutral and sex-favorable aces, and some sex-repulsed aces, still get a lot of weird signals from their libido that doesn’t always gel with the general sense of attraction with others. It’s very easy to have a moment of weakness in fantasy and go ‘Maybe I’m not ace, maybe I should get some action.’ Then you open something like grindr, or some other app, and you rapidly realize nope, nope, nope, still ace, still not interested in that. Part of this year could – and probably should – be spent on figuring out that happy space where I’m good with who I am – and more confident with it – and dealing with the signals the libido sends, because clearly something isn’t getting what it needs.
10: Find out if driving is possible. I avoided learning to drive for two reasons: to avoid giving my family more power over me when I was still living with them (because I would have become the new chauffeur with how things were going and lost even more free time) and because I get serious panics getting in the driver’s seat. With the former no longer a concern, I want to see if I can overcome the latter, because in the US, not being able to drive (and not living in a large city) means getting ANYWHERE is a pain. If I can learn to drive, this is the time to do it. If not…well, then I know and I can stop pushing on this.
11: Build up my online community and build an offline one. My discord community is a nice one, but I want to be more reliable with it, and make sure that there’s plenty of stuff going on whether or not I’m there to run it. We’ve had irregular movie nights and semi-regular game streams, but I want to add some more stuff so that there’s stuff there for people to enjoy outside of, you know, work stuff. And outside that, I want a small community of friends locally, as well. I’ve spent my life with online friends, and while I’ve gotten to know a number of them and enjoy them, I want to have people I can hang out with in person without going on a plane somewhere. This year, I feel like it’s a possibility to get that.
12: Build a personal cookbook. I do enough cooking that I really should do something about that. If nothing else, it would give other people in the house a list of stuff to make if they wanted to, instead of me making everything. And who knows, it might give me more ideas rather than churning out the same things all the time.
Well, that’s the list of 12 gifts I hope to give myself this year. I wrote those out over the last few days, but with the bad news I got after that, I’m adding one theme to the list. Something in honor of someone who isn’t here anymore.
13: Prioritize joy, be shameless in enjoying what you enjoy, and be the hero that you always dreamed of being.
This is what I’m taking into 2025. Fingers crossed I can give myself all these gifts at some point.
I’ve never been one for resolutions, or at least, I’ve never been one that could stick with them very well. It’s always tricky to find a behavior or a theme that really works for me going through an entire year, and trickier still to actually stay interested in all of them. Who knows, maybe there’s a part of me that just gets bored and doesn’t like ideas that it enjoyed earlier (even as recently as an hour ago).
Whatever the reason, I’m trying something a little different this year. I’m going to phrase it as a ‘gift list’ to myself, 12 different gifts, no more than one a month, for the year ahead. Things I can do that will hopefully make me happy, things that will make me feel accomplished, and things that will keep a little more goodness in my life. Goodness knows that the recent events have taken a bit out of it.
Anyway. Let’s go through the gift-list for myself. Maybe some of you can help me keep accountable to this stuff.
1: Research and connect with my Cherokee heritage. With some Native American connections through my mom’s side, going back at least a couple of generations, I’ve always had a vague, kinda low-key pride in having that bit in my family tree. Yet, I’ve never really dug into it, and I feel like I should. It’s something that, as a part of me that I do take pride in, I should know more about. Pride without knowledge is merely arrogance, after all.
2: Prioritize personal writing. I say it every year, and maybe this will be the year that I actually do it. I want to do stories that aren’t just porn commissions. I want to do erotica that touches my own interests more often, and I want to do something that isn’t furry, as well. Something that maybe I can publish. I touched on an idea last month that I’ve been slowly developing, so maybe this one will stick around. As long as I keep loving it and bringing it back in.
3: Get in touch with asexual/queer community IRL. Having discovered that I’m asexual – or, at least, on the ace spectrum, leaning toward aegosexual – a couple of years back, it feels only right that I push myself to be part of the community, as well. Particularly IRL. There’s lots of good ace community stuff online, just like there is for a lot of us under the rainbow flags, but there’s something about IRL stuff that really does better. There’s more…substance to it, more people, and without the screens in the way, there’s something more understanding, more connecting. And I need that right now.
4: Learn asexual history. Queer history in general is something that is always at risk of dying out of the living memory. We learn a lot of national history (propagandized in a lot of ways, but still getting the basic bits out there), and there’s a general consciousness of a certain amount of historical basics, that certain things actually existed, inasmuch as the heteronormative stuff is written down and learned and taught. Queer stuff? Muuuuuuch harder to just have by osmosis. Since being ace is part of me, just like with the Cherokee stuff, I should bring some of this into my life, too.
5: Read one fiction book per month, minimum. The fuck kind of writer doesn’t read? I have been letting this slip for too long. One book a month, minimum. I need to keep the writing in my life, and that means keeping the reading in it, too. Starting small, with a young adult book called “Elatsoe” by Darcie Little Badger, and seeing what else I can put together over the course of the year. Hopefully a big bunch towards the middle with the WorldCon stuff being local this year, but we’ll see.
6: Figure out my clothing ‘style’ and put together a few looks. After literally decades of stubbornly refusing to care about fashion and looks and style and just pulling the first thing out of the drawer and wearing that (and doing a bit of introspection to realize that was defiance rather than choice), I want to figure out what my look is. Drac used to have his robe before going to his current suit. I want to spend some time figuring out what me, the author, should look like, and what I can do to enjoy that.
7: Decorate my room. Similar to the above, I never really had the option of doing much room decoration in the past. Either we were renting and I couldn’t do much without risking damage to the walls or something, or we were too poor to actually afford getting anything, or something else had come up. Now, I have a place that I’m staying for a significant amount of time, there’s no real worries about damaging stuff so much, and I can kinda do what I want. The question is, what do I want to surround myself with? Again, what is my style? I want to figure that out.
8: Put out an erotica anthology. I put out enough porn that this really shouldn’t be so hard. I could go back to some of the Kink-Tober/Kink-Vember pieces and expand them, or take some of the pieces I’ve done for myself and edit them, or something. I want to actually have something out there that’s more my own, and maybe something a little special as a result. Who knows? Maybe people might buy it.
9: Find a happy place between my asexuality and my libido. Those of you that know, know. Those of you that don’t? Sex-neutral and sex-favorable aces, and some sex-repulsed aces, still get a lot of weird signals from their libido that doesn’t always gel with the general sense of attraction with others. It’s very easy to have a moment of weakness in fantasy and go ‘Maybe I’m not ace, maybe I should get some action.’ Then you open something like grindr, or some other app, and you rapidly realize nope, nope, nope, still ace, still not interested in that. Part of this year could – and probably should – be spent on figuring out that happy space where I’m good with who I am – and more confident with it – and dealing with the signals the libido sends, because clearly something isn’t getting what it needs.
10: Find out if driving is possible. I avoided learning to drive for two reasons: to avoid giving my family more power over me when I was still living with them (because I would have become the new chauffeur with how things were going and lost even more free time) and because I get serious panics getting in the driver’s seat. With the former no longer a concern, I want to see if I can overcome the latter, because in the US, not being able to drive (and not living in a large city) means getting ANYWHERE is a pain. If I can learn to drive, this is the time to do it. If not…well, then I know and I can stop pushing on this.
11: Build up my online community and build an offline one. My discord community is a nice one, but I want to be more reliable with it, and make sure that there’s plenty of stuff going on whether or not I’m there to run it. We’ve had irregular movie nights and semi-regular game streams, but I want to add some more stuff so that there’s stuff there for people to enjoy outside of, you know, work stuff. And outside that, I want a small community of friends locally, as well. I’ve spent my life with online friends, and while I’ve gotten to know a number of them and enjoy them, I want to have people I can hang out with in person without going on a plane somewhere. This year, I feel like it’s a possibility to get that.
12: Build a personal cookbook. I do enough cooking that I really should do something about that. If nothing else, it would give other people in the house a list of stuff to make if they wanted to, instead of me making everything. And who knows, it might give me more ideas rather than churning out the same things all the time.
Well, that’s the list of 12 gifts I hope to give myself this year. I wrote those out over the last few days, but with the bad news I got after that, I’m adding one theme to the list. Something in honor of someone who isn’t here anymore.
13: Prioritize joy, be shameless in enjoying what you enjoy, and be the hero that you always dreamed of being.
This is what I’m taking into 2025. Fingers crossed I can give myself all these gifts at some point.
repanbo
~repanbo
I wish you all the luck and offer what support I can, go kick ass!
Danji Draconid
~lurdanjo
Really good list. This inspires me to make something similar for myself. A lot of those I even relate to, such as trying to figure out exactly what my sexuality is as well as "my" clothing style and needing to read more. And I need to chat with you again, it's been a while.
Kaleth Orebiter
~bleakdragoon
Nice list, and a way better approach to initiating positives changes in one's life.
