Jeez, what a year - and I mean that in both a good way and a bad way. This year has certainly been an eventful one - much too eventful, I’d say - and I’m entirely unsure of whether to go over the good or the bad first. Given that the purpose of this journal is - other than tallying up all of the numbers, putting words and figures to this year of my FurAffinity account’s existence and wrapping up the very end of the year with a neat little bow on it - more or less me digesting the events of the year one one last time a little like with my 1000 watchers journal, I suppose we’ll start with the bad, and go over it quickly. Just so this doesn’t turn into a pity party, considering nobody became a watcher of mine for vague sadposting.

Some parts of this year were pretty rough. I ended up losing what feels like a solid 3-ish months of time to various events and stressful points - June-July in particular was probably the worst couple of months I’ve had since the end of the Covid Pandemic to the point I’m a bit surprised I managed to write anything during that period at all; and a fairly sudden family death in November (coupled with a pet disappearance not long after) definitely slammed the brakes pretty hard on what had seemed to be a less stressful end of the year. Considering the amount of lost time, you can definitely see it in how the most of my output this year consisted of shorter stories, around or under 10,000 words in length, and without any single individual things managing to break the 20,000 word mark - something I’m definitely planning to rectify next year.

In terms of the good stuff, though, this year also had a lot. First off, and probably the biggest thing, individually - I finally hit 1,000 watchers (as well as recently, 100,000 views for my profile/page), which I’m immensely proud of (even if it didn’t quite have the level of impact I thought it would have upon reaching it due to how long it took to claw through the past ten or twenty followers). In a single word, I think I would say it feels validating: I must be doing something right to achieve that, even if I’m still up to my eyeballs in various WiPs and different ideas I’ve been meaning to get around to for years. On top of that, I managed to get around to finally taking care of some things I’d been meaning to for a long time - One of The Boys, Let’s Eat; I finally, finally tried out character voice practice stuff with Attack of The 50 (Trillion Plus) Foot Binky (along with properly paying homage to a character I’ve had a fittingly-giant-sized soft spot since even before I knew the term macro), and I even finally got around to writing something with myself being big and growing, with
'It Starts With a Tingle...'. On top of those, I was able to clear out all of the short stories on my giant WiPs list - it’s onto the longer stuff for next year! Hell, I even started learning to draw - nothing I’m comfortable with showing off yet, as it’s still ultra-early days even with starting to learn in February (I’m blaming that on so much happening that I had to take many more breaks than I planned/wanted to).

Beyond all of that, I’m also very proud of the amount I was able to write this year - even though it still somehow feels as though I didn’t write enough. Overall, in total - and not counting Writ Large, Starchaser or Sizing App because they were written at the tail end of 2024 even if they were posted in January of this year - I managed to write:

33 individual stories/story parts/uploads/etc

For a grand, though rough total (as a chunk of Mighty Birthday Wish was written a good while ago and I haven’t been able to find the exact point where I picked it back up this year) of:

260,000 words. Ish. Give or take a couple hundred.

Depending on how you choose to define the term novel - given that as far as I can tell the ‘official’ boundary is 50,000 words, but by convention is often anything up to 100,000 - that’s anywhere between 5-and-a-bit to 2-and-a-half full novels. Needless to say I’m both very happy with and very proud of this - though as mentioned it somehow still doesn’t feel like I wrote enough. I’m putting that down to how I wanted to be able to get to a few specific ideas that ended up having to wait until next year.

Beyond that - I think if I had to pick my top three personal favourite stories I wrote this year, it’d be a hard pick, but I’d probably settle on Attack of The 50 (Trillion Plus) Foot Binky, The Pool(toy)rooms and part 1 of The (Un)Diminished - in no particular order. Top five; I’d probably throw in Star Light, Star Bright and either Irresistible or Careful What He Wished For - or maybe New Year's Eve, 2499 Redux.

So - with all of that said - definitely not the best year at parts; but at the same time it was healthily productive and I have a lot to be proud of. Without meaning or wishing to jinx myself whatsoever - here’s hoping next year will be both much gentler and less busy.

Happy new year, happy second half of the decade, and thanks to anyone who took the time to read!

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