Since it's the end of the year, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how 2018 has treated me and what I'm hopeful for in 2019.

First: 2018 sucked. On pretty much every front. My biological father finally died after spending 2 years fighting an incredibly rare and invasive form of bile duct, liver, and pancreatic cancer. I'm glad that he had reasonable health for about a year of this process, since that gave me an opportunity to say some goodbyes and finally really talk to him completely about what did and didn't work out well growing up. I regret that I couldn't convince him to finish The Left Hand of Darkness before he passed, but I suppose that is incredibly apropos as none of us get to choose when we say our final goodbyes. He will be missed, even if he is only remembered in songs and tales from those of us who can't safely use his name.

On the mental health front, it's been a mixed blessing. 2018 is the first year where I have had steady access to the hormones I need to stay alive (mostly conjugated estrogens and finasteride/spironolactone) and anxiolytic medications. Except, of course, during the periods of the year I was in Texas tending to my dying father. Which was part of what made this year so tough.

Financially, 2018 has been disastrous. The last year where I lost this much money to insurance headaches was 2015, when I was a target for the forces of truth and honesty in games (argh) for signing my name to petitions alleging that women should be allowed to develop video games. I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to pay for rent beyond the first three months of 2019, especially given that the foibles of my life have lead to breakups and inability to guarantee that I'll still be employed in California after April or so.

Overall? I'm hoping 2019 is better for me on all these fronts.

Wondering how you can help me? The biggest challenge for me right now is stability of income. When I'm working on interesting full time projects (games, art, programming, or otherwise) it's pretty easy for me to de-stress and manage things like moving or packing my belongings. However, that's not been the case for me since 2015. So if you'd like to help me out, I could use regular comissioners, new people following my patreon, or at least kind words about my art and weird writing. With tumblr finally purging queer creative works as "too adult" and with LJ/DJ/Dreamwidth no longer reliable places to post writing, I have very few outlets that actually pay living wages for my not video games.

I'll likely be reopening for complicated comissions (comics, multiple page things) around mid-January. If you want to reserve a spot, as per usual, just comment on this post saying you're interested and a way to get in touch of you off of Weasyl (email works best for me).

Folks waiting on art from me: I'm hoping to have everything that's marked for delivery by FC shipped or available for at-con pickup by January 16, barring unexpected travel delays or further medical issues impacting me or my family. thank you again for your patience in 2018. Now let's all have some joyeuse soirées (or sleep them off, european friends) and bonne années in 2019.

Happy mew deer!