Howdy. It's been a real long time since I wrote one of these.

I put this together with the intention of writing to both my DeviantArt and FurAffinity audiences so there may be things I type that applies to either or. I think it was long overdue to replace my previous journal with something, considering that it's been about 2½ since my recent writing on FurAffinity, and a whopping 6½ years since that last one on DeviantArt. At least it was a rather productive amount of time since, having gotten back into art at the start of 2020. We don't need to talk about what else happened that year but at least it had benefits.

As 2025 is beginning to close up, I realize I've been letting myself slip in a few areas that I usually like to have kept up on, one of which is a yearly art summary that I never put together for last year, and here I am not having done the same thing yet. It's not that much trouble to make, perhaps in the next couple of weeks I'll put some time towards it. The last month and a half has been extremely busy in the world of retail but the last few months have felt exceptionally tiring, but more so a steady repetitive tiredness, if that makes any sense. Even as I sit here almost two days after Christmas, I feel pretty sleepy and ready for bed! The little silly feelings has kept me from uploading a backlog of art from May that I need to catch up on, so make that two things I'd like to do in the weeks of the New Year.

I like to think of this year as one filled with socializing and branching out in ways I had not done before. I've met a lot of new people and feel like I've broken out a piece of a shell I'm squished inside of. I'm not out of it but I can see outside. It's allowed me to have made some wonderful new friends as well. As an American, this year has also been filled with a lot of... Slop? Turmoil? Doom and gloom? Stress? Really, most of this stuff is referring to things outside of my control, as a bystander to a much greater entity, enough to have made me retire from Twitter entirely. When I wake up in the morning, I'm always checking my socials first thing, to see what's new with everyone, messages I missed overnight, and to catch up on uploaded art; the same thing I've been doing for basically a decade or more! But sometimes I'll load up the News app on my iPad with the humorous thought of "what headline's gonna make me upset this morning?" And there's usually been something depressing every morning. It doesn't bother me for more than a few minutes, especially following said story up with colorful art, but I also like to think this is a trait of being ADHD. It's probably best summed up by [the GIF of Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson pretends to be shocked at the Dacia Sandero supermini automobile was delayed - "oh no!" - and immediately moves on - "Anyway..." - as if nothing was wrong].

Through the negativity that looms all around, there's still been pockets of positivity all around. I got to go on a few trips this year and are some of the most memorable experiences I've had in a long time. Hopping on a plane and going somewhere is much less of a hurdle than it was five years ago, and it feels very routine now if I decide to go somewhere; it's just tedious to go through the checking process. And expensive. Between that and a number of wonderful times online with friends to play games, chat, laugh at videos, there's plenty of reasons to keep going with moments like these. It was also amazing to be one of the first to get a Nintendo Switch 2! I waited outside one of my local Targets for three hours to nab one at launch, and can check off my bucket list that I not only bought a brand new console with my own money, but at launch, and waited outside a store at stupid o' clock in the morning just to do it. It meant something too getting to enjoy this with other friends who had done the same, we got to be the first to enjoy this system and play Mario Kart World.

Back to art, I've had an idea floating around in my head for quite some time that I'm leaning more and more towards making it happen. This is mainly geared for my DeviantArt gallery as that's the place with all of my art. While I've been on the platform for 15 years now, I did take about a 5-year hiatus from 2014 to 2020 following the passing of my Dad, with about... three pieces drawn in that time frame? Four? It was extremely minimal, so I really have pieces from my beginnings in 2010 to 2013, and then the time skip to 2020 and onward. But the idea I had in mind is, once I've caught up on uploads, is to revisit all of my clunky art and edit the description to include a new comment about that piece. What I was thinking of at the time, what my thoughts are on it now. Of course, my feelings about quality are likely to be the same for them all, I don't like much of my art quality then so it's gonna be cringeworthy going and doing this! But I felt it could be fun, kinda like a commentary for a film or TV show by the cast or crew, a little look into the creator's eyes on why they did this or that. Perhaps think about redoing art pieces as well, I know people do that too.

In fact, maybe that's a goal I can set for next year, or rather, a motivator. Over the past few months, I've also been struggling with motivation and energizing myself to draw. I've started this process of scribbling something rough on my iPad when I have an idea for a drawing, just to see if I can make my vision possible. If it feels a little too tough to go through with, it usually demotivates me from continuing, but if I can cobble something decent together in that moment, it usually sparks the interest in wanting to follow through and properly draw it out, which has been an uncommon occurrence. Heck, I've noticed that just starting to draw properly gets my motivation going and I can complete something! So long as I'm not feeling sleepy either, that usually kills my mood, and it happens a lot, thanks work. However, a goal proper is to reintroduce myself to drawing three-quarter drawings and expand that into moving away from that too. Much of my art for some time now has been relying on the mirror/symmetry tool built into Sketchbook. It makes drawing something a lot easier and some of my favorite pieces within the last couple of years has been because of that tool, but I feel like I've been using it too much and I would like to get away from it. I've only sketched one three-quarters in the past few months so hopefully in 2026... I can do at least two?

Anyway, that's about all I can think of wanting to share and update on. Again, journals on both platforms were in desperate need of a replacement, so here's what I put together. I'm very much alive and always checking here and there! As I shared above, I have made the rare move of erasing my Twitter accounts near the start of the year. To be brief on why I did, the quality of the site was dramatically falling, and I don't exactly trust a platform like that when the owner of the site also became a government worker, and what data they can easily pass to the other. That might not mean much, but at the time, I wasn't sure what to expect. Nowadays, there seems to be a new reason not to have been on Twitter every month. Instead, all of my attention went to BlueSky, which is essentially the same thing but very barren of features and much nicer. Therefore you can find me there as doughisaur.bsky.social, or on my DeviantArt page; I upload art on all three platforms...when I remember to keep up with it, that is!

Thanks for reading and enjoying what I make, see you in 2026!