Guess the feeling of years going by is something you have to get familiar the older you get.

I set out to finish one piece a month for 2024 and managed to pull it of, despite cutting it close a few times. For every finished piece, there usually was a few sketches that did not eventually lead anywhere - not to say that they didn't serve any purpose, sometimes it was just fun to doodle. Feeling like my artstyle is still a bit all over the place, looking at the pieces I managed to complete - being the result of trying things out to find and figure where I might eventually want to settle. From other perspective, being sort of all over the places does feel like me - getting into things and out of things. I do quite often wonder how others feel about seeing pictures that are quite a distance from each other content vice. I do consider there to have been progress anatomy vice, but colors are still such a pain for myself. Knowing and understanding about color theary really are two different things.

2024 was not a kind year overall. Work vice our company community that I had grown quite attached to was forceluffy split in half due to business decisions and I had to say goodbye to a lot of people I really respected and genuinly had fun to work with and geek out was heartbreaking - layoffs still happening and future yet looking a bit hazy. This made me to distance myself from my work-self and looking this in retrospect, has been a good thing despite the hurt. I've come to believe its a lot more healthy to focus on your privite life and bonds than once forged with a shared need to get bread on the table - not to say that I don't care about the people around me on work, just that I should not put so much effort into something that can be torn down because of money and business. It's much more healthy personally to focus on stuff like chub art and people to share personal obsessions with.

However, 2024 had one very bright highlight and oh boy I was - and still am - so happy that I finally got to travel to Japan. Ever seeing and experiencing media from Japan, I've longed to get to see and experience the country and the country myself and boy it did not dissapoint. A lot of things are very well tought out there, like - traveling is super easy even for foreigners and IC-cards are so handy! To see public toilets being literally everywhere you went made me so relieved, because I really have to the worts stomach when it comes to traveling - ahaha. Getting to experience Eorzian Cafe in Osaka, Super Nintendo World in Universal City, Ghibli park in Nagoya, the many arcades in Akihabara, visiting Kemoket 15 in Tokyo, drinking the vending machines empty of pocari and melon soda and all the incredible food and views - ahhh, just going back to those memories makes me smile from my heart out. c: I absolutely intendo to travel there again and experience much more that Japan has to offer! Genuinely the best two weeks of my life, thus far.

I've lately been spending a lot more time browsing art over at Bluesky than on X (still hate calling Twitter that). X still has many people that I respect and want to keep following so I've kept staying online there, despite again not being on board what has been discussed about the platforms future of being something of a everything app. I'm personally much on board with the approach of Bluesky giving the power to the users to determine what they want to see and being user focused. Naturally, there's no way to tell what the future of even the now bluer skies looks like, because at the end of the day they are also a company that needs to make money to keep the lights on - but I'd like to keep hopefull that they could find a different path than the other social media platforms. Even though we as individuals cannot really have control over how things turn out, at least we have power to focus on what could make our lives better and focus in civilized interactions with eachoter.

My personal hopes for 2025 is to keep making more art and improve and maybe at the same time, find a community to be more interactive with and share and talk about art and interests - that mean so much to me. Despite things seem to look in the world, here is to hoping that this year ends up beign a bit kinder to all of us and us in turn, being kinder towards each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeqhtDOhX6Y