Art thoughts first. As I mentioned on my recent-ish portrait, recently my life has been at a bit of a turning point; a mostly positive one, I suppose, but I still feel uncertain about things.

At least lately I've been able to get back into art a bit, which has been nice. Not a lot, because on average I'm having long and busy days more often than I did in other years, and I still have to manage my energy all the same.

I'm finding that even so, I'm coming back to my art projects more easily, which is a good thing. And I'm also spending more time on other non-art projects than I used to be able to, so basically also trying to divide my time between things.

When I can, art-wise, I've been working on a full-ish body shot of Nox because thinking about the designs and the wings thing started to make me want to address that, as I hadn't really looked at any of my secondary sonas in a while. Also been working on the banner I want to put up on my profile here, though the character drawing has kind of taken priority for now. As often in the past,  Akorr has been very helpful in terms of back-and-forth discussion about art, which has also served as a motivator in both cases.

Other thoughts now. On the weekend I read that Dragoneer had passed away, which I was a bit surprised by. I didn't know him but have always been aware of his role with FA even when I first started using the site back in 2007 or so. Just a bit ago before I started writing this, I saw the newer journal announcement about the fundraiser and was kind of glad to see the goal had been met, I donated what I felt I could too even so, because I know that life and unfortunate circumstances are something hard to deal with, fully aware that every little bit can help.

About 3 years ago I lost a friend (they had a very pervasive form of cancer), and last year we lost some work colleagues; the thing that always strikes me about someone's passing is that there is so much they knew and experienced that they were never able to share with you, either because you didn't ask or because the opportunity didn't present itself. Also 3 years ago, I started writing a draft to Dragoneer because I was curious about some of the community's and site's history, as well as how the website was used then vs. now, taking his particular experience into special account.

I'm sure I've said something like this before... Do what you can, when you can, because you might not get the chance to do it later. I never completed that draft. We might not be able to do something because of our own health, as I am familiar with, and we might not be able to do something because sometimes stuff happens outside of us that stops what we wanted to do from being a possibility.

Simply... Sometimes a door closes which you can never, ever, open again.