Phew! Finally made it through the pile of submissions that had gathered in the past... 4 to 6 years or so? Life and career reeeally took a hold of me, even though I had a very... Tumultuous career during the Covid years.

Long story short (longer somewhere in my journals), back in 2017 (if I remember correctly), I basically transitioned by complete accident from the IT network field to the field of software testing. 2017 up until 2022 October I worked in a... Okayish company that in the end backstabbed me in a rather filthy manner. Thankfully before my unemployment had even started properly, I already had a new job lined up from a competing company. In the end my office ended up moving a grand total of... Around 10 to 20 meters to another side of the literal fence. Talk about lucky. Since then I have been working for this current company in the same kind of job, manual software testing that is. Instead of elevators however, I now work with industrial cranes and the like. One could say my career has therefore been full of... Ups and downs. Hue hue hue.

That said, during these years things... Happened. As they tend to do in life. I started DnD a year before software testing became my career and have been a DM for a group of now 5 players for about 9 to 10 years. Still going strong and it has been amazing. Covid happened like it happened for us all in early 2020 and while I refuse to say that Covid has gone anywhere, I for one have still not caught it. Somehow. Or if I have, all tests have turned up negative so it is impossible to say if I have actually had it or not. During the Covid times I also started reaching out to old friends, both furry and those outside of the fandom. On the other hand, some friends dropped off the radar. It happens, but it still sucks. Sometimes I wonder if the fault was in me, or if they just moved on in their lives like I did in mine. To some, I hope the best. To others: You betrayed my trust and what I thought was a genuine friendship of multiple years. I hope what you got in return was worth it, for you threw a permanent friendship away like it meant nothing to you. Do not expect to receive a warm welcome if I ever see you in Finland or elsewhere in the world.

On a more positive note, I got into an extremely long distance relationship (other side of the planet) with an extremely kind, generous, caring, loving and all-around amazing individual. I could not be happier. Going strong for the 5th year now, 6th year soon, despite the distance. Yes, incredibly stereotypical furry behaviour, I know!

So what's next then? Well like I mentioned in an earlier journal, Twitch streaming is still very much a thing I want to start doing. I am not expecting immediate growth, I am not going to be making it into a secondary career, none of that stuff. It happens, if it happens, and even if it does end up happening the goal for the streaming is to showcase games from my childhood and formative years that I hold extremely near and dear to my heart. Mainly PC games, but if I can get a capture card or emulators set up, then console games as well. We will be starting with, surprise to no-one, Overlord 1, Overlord 1: Raising Hell, and Overlord 2. The games from the era before the anime that shares that name but has *nothing* to do with the Codemasters games. If you have any games you would like to see me tackle on stream, feel free to comment down below! Always looking for new, and old, things to play and share!

Another thing I want to get back to is writing. I still have 3 fantasy books worth of material in my head, and I am not getting any younger. So keep an eye out for those. Despite the rampant AI scraping, I do still intend to upload said writing here and in DA most likely, perhaps a few other places as well. We will see.

And finally: I have arouund... 20 to 30ish submissions from these past years sitting in my FA inbox, now that I finally managed to clean it up manually. A task that took well over half a year, yikes. That's what you get when you just let art pile up! Some of these pictures are from artists and feature the characters of said artists and their partners that I no longer am in contact with (see above, shit happened), some are from people that I still am in contact with and consider my friends. Regardless of these things and whatever the relations between me and the artists and/or people who own the characters that appear in the art, I once commissioned or got gifted these pieces. They do still hold a place in my heart and feature my own characters. Therefore, I will be uploading them after having mulled this over in my head for the past year or so. Art is art and deserves to be seen, especially in the modern era of payment processors and tech bros wanting to censor and cancel everything we as online weirdos hold near and dear to us. Regardless of the interpersonal connections behind those pieces of art during the time they were made and now.

To those of you still reading these little brain-dumps of mine, to those who still follow me and consider me a friend: Thank you. Sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I hope to see some, hopefully a lot of you, in Twitch once I start streaming there. Not always, naturally, timezones and life events and all that. But if you have the chance to pop by, I would be glad to see you there!

Here's to a, hopefully, good and better new year 2026 once it rolls around in about a month. If I don't make a separate yuletide journal, I wish you all a lovely yuletide as well once it rolls around in exactly a month as well. See you around and take care, and apologies for dumping art in your inboxes soon!