2024 in review + photo dump
Dec. 31st, 2024 10:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlrocki need to write a mini media wrap-up or music post later but i'm pretty behind on listening for the year so i'll get to those eventually :') lol but i did want to make a mini yearly retrospective just for the fun of it first! alas i am not getting any younger x__x
this is going to be rambly and personal and pretty stupid. and image heavy (apologies)
january
last year (2023) during christmas i went to cdmx with my family and on the way back took the initiative to stop in dallas by myself, so i basically spent new years at a hockey game and explored the city on my own for a few days :') beat the hawks 8-1 just for me and my oscar loving heart... it was my first time there (i've only been to texas once before and that was austin for cota23 LOL. discovered the joys of 3L coke bottles) and i basically just worked in the hotel and watched a lot of hockey the entire time, but it was nonetheless very special and lovely!!! i also met up with tanya and got boba/lunch with her the day i left ;__;
i'd really like to go back esp because i want to watch some mavs games too but i'm thinking it might not happen this year because of other commitments... but i'm positive we will rekindle our joint slay sooner than later!
beautiful xmas cards and pride bucket hat and pets calendar T__T also watching them lose in regulation to monty was so beautiful and funny and devised personally for my own entertainment.
february-may
honestly speaking i was in a terrible no good bad awful place these 4 months :__) it's funny saying this was my low point of the year because it's literally 1/3 of it LOL but... without getting too into it my health's just been a really big struggle this whole year, and on top of the usual severe depression and anxiety i've had to strugglebus through either insomnia or hypersomnia and crasy chronic fatigue issues that have just left me feeling very defeated most of the time. (26 year olds with master degrees and grievances against health insurance companies rise up...? no? sorry)
in march i watched a lot of hockey and did a mini trip through the pnw (amazing how vancouver is just worse and more expensive seattle π great donuts though) to see the stars multiple times which i enjoyed a lot! but it was also a stressful moment because of just like... my inability to sleep and my extreme sewersidal ideation at the time lol and my constant panic attacks. again overshare but looking back now that i'm on medication that actually helps, it's been such a wild jolt of realization to be like oh the 10+ years i've spent deeply hating myself and constantly wanting to die aren't actually part of the usual person's stream of consciousness... i think i just spent so long normalizing this deep intense all-encompassing misery and the echo chamber of my intrusive thoughts that it was a shock to suddenly have a relatively empty brain.
but anyway! may is when i started lexapro and even though i came into it with 0 expectations, it somehow literally saved my life lol so i can't help but be grateful for that. i really don't think i'd be alive right now without it completely frankly speaking... i spent so long waiting to die that being generally fine with being alive is a weird thing now. at this point however i was still struggling extremely with my sleep problems + a whole host of exacerbated fatigue issues from med side effects, and no matter what i tried (and i tried everything short of dr prescribed meds which i eventually got to "reset" my system) i would sleep like 1am-4am every night (fine every now and then but imagine this progressively worsening for 4 months straight...) and occasionally couldn't sleep at all to the point that i had difficulty walking, was always out of breath, and was generally just in constant fatigue and agony :')
tbh i don't even really know what i changed between then and now because i somehow seamlessly transitioned into hypersomnia and can sleep 16+ hours a day and at first everyone was like well it's just your body adjusting because you need to heal from the sleep debt but now i'm like is it really? lol maybe i'm just an eepy guy. i don't know but it's better than the extreme insomnia so i shan't complain :(
a little joy of this time period though is that in february i purchased a silhouette sticker machine and got a bit more into doing my own crafts! nothing serious of course but just learning how to make stickers was fun, and i started developing my chibi style for 814 more... looking back my chibi style for them in january was pretty ugly but slowlyyyy throughout like april i managed to standardize things a bit more. and then i got my first acrylic keychains made and learned how to crochet and created my mclaren koala! but lowkey idk if crochet is for me some of this stuff is too complicated π
hoping to make more (and better) merch in 2025... but let's not get ahead of ourselves. also my diy pc binder <3
i b doing stupid shit...
june
of course: mtl gp time!!!!!!! i saw risa so many times this year omg how are we not sick of each other already π but it was such a great time and i love our budding yearly gp tradition so much. i also got to meet an oomf who spontaneously drove up to montreal for the weekend and overall had a great time. but i have a mtl24 post so i won't rehash everything.
otherwise like i said june was for recovering my health and trying to fix my sleep... i really wanted to go see an osteo per h's recommendation when i was in canada but couldn't really commit to it. honestly idk if pt is in my future but we'll see how my body holds up in 2025...
omg mini makeup/skincare travel bag shot :') i wanted to draw it a while ago but i was too lazy so here's the photo. i love my kose mist that i really just bought because it's lilac and has moomin on it (2 fav things) but it's actually pretty good
also the stars broke my heart this month but it was kind of for the better since i had that week to focus on f1 lmfaooo. i saw a guy in an oilers jersey at the track and got so annoyed i was seething...
btw the girls who get it simply get it i fear.
july-august
beautiful olympics !!! and f1 summer break... i went crasy over diving yuri but we already know this. also i lowkey think they might have broken up or are just super stealth idk i haven't bothered looking on xhs in forever so i'm in the dark... T__T anyway i'm sad about how weird the attention got but i still love them and am excited for 2k25 diving events. ok sorry not the point
this summer was definitely about regaining my strength and getting better at Being A Real Human Person again T__T still chronically fatigued but striving to be less of a catatonic zombie... also went to a lot of crafts/art fairs in the 2nd half of the year which was loads of fun :') wait let me find some haul photos...
I LOVE PIKMIN!!!!
also i did not know this at the time but this is when my girls were born!!!!!!!!!
btw i had a phase during the summer when i tried to get into fragrances but like cheap simple entry level little products but then i was like what am i doing.... i don't think this stuff is for me either π
september
for my birthday weekend i visited risa :') i actually have a lot of great photos from this trip, maybe some of my favs of the year... but to respect her privacy i will not post anything identifying. but if u follow me on ig you've seen most of them
anyway i turned 26 and felt very old and tired about it all!!! i've known some people online whom i still follow since i was 13-14, and very soon i'll be at twice that age... but it is what it is. anyway chel shipped me a handmade jellycat-esque rubik's cube crochet gift and i literally cried at it no joke T__T complete with the scramble so i could recreate and solve it... also got more into Cozy Steam Games and played SO much fields of mistria at risa's place lol.
of course we painstakingly created this jellycat cake that i'm quite fond of!!! listen we are not bakers and it was a whole ordeal collecting all the materials and ingredients to produce this but she was cute and it paid off in the end. i had leftovers of this for breakfast like 4 days in a row though because we also kept obtaining more sweets faster than we could finish them... (my passion is forcing risa to buy donuts with me)
also i started playing pikmin bloom but we already know this........ very motivating when you have problems walking :)
october
the most important month of them all................... 2chi adoption month!!!!!!!
again the thing with cats is that when you commit to adopting one it can actually go so fast... i wrote the story here so i won't rehash but it's so funny how Not Calm i was for those 2 days and how i kept cryptically posting BECAUSEEE I WAS LITERALLY FREAKING OUT. like what if someone else somehow takes those cats before me... of course my heart was open to things falling through or bonding with different cats but i kind of just knew from the moment i saw their listing that i wanted it to be Them. and i'm so glad it worked out T__T also i literally made myself so anxious i got some kind of horrific stress migraine and was dying for that entire weekend and even several more days afterward which is kind of pathetic... but i'd go through it all again
have learned a lot being a cat mom in 2 short months and i really think it's the best thing that's happened to me all year and maybe in my entire adult life LOL. i really wish i had the words for how much they mean to me and how much purpose and structure and joy and whimsy they've introduced into my daily routine... i think in the time leading up to getting them i was just dealing with so much like, insurmountable grief and loneliness in a way that i can't really describe. it's hard and embarrassing to put into words but i think i just knew it was finally the right time.
i've spent a lot on them already since cats are expensive responsibilities but not so much that it's an absurd, impossible number (esp considering the baseline cost of buying pets from a breeder... only adopting from a rescue is a non-starter but to think adoption cost covering early vet fees/microchip/spay/vaccines + all upfront cat furniture and essentials and a month of food can still be cheaper than the starting cost for a ~purebred kitten~... i think anyone who breeds scottish folds should dye but that's another thing). i honestly think i could scale up to more cats and deal with it fine, but it's more of a situational constraint atm (aka who i live with) rather than an issue of personal limitation... i'm 100% sure that i'd like more cats or other pets in the future but that's something i can't concern myself with atm. i just love my girls so so much!!!
if u want to cry look at these old photos of them when they were scrungly & just-rescued vs now TT__TT
november-december
i got so annoying about 2chi that i ended up making a separate blog for them so i wouldn't spam everyone all the time. of course i still spam moderately but not to the degree that i could...
who's the cutest girls of all time... yes you areeee yes you areeee. i have a shared photo album of them with like 400 photos and i get annoyed if people don't acknowledge them regularly enough π
in other news... i saw svt with risa, jess, and siyao!!! hadn't seen siyao in a while so that was really nice. they got to meet the girls when they were still pretty recently adopted and fairly small (around 4lb, they're about 6 now) and then we went over to jess's place and saw sesame in her beautiful adult cat glory and i was like Oh that's how full grown cats look π they really grow up so fast!!!
in 2025 i want to go to more k-pop concerts but the problem is that i only want to see several groups and the likelihood of them touring... well. π it's rough out here
december has been a month of reflection and frantically catching up with music (which i have failed to do meaningfully... ah well). i'm not a particularly festive person but we visited my brother over christmas and i bonded with his doggos and also took pretty photos at the museum and ate lots of food LOL. also i missed my cats so much that i cried when i came home a week later and they spent the whole night curled up in my arms...
i drew so many silly little things that for once in my life i had more than 8/9 to put in an art summary post, but idk if i should make another entry going through more pieces when none of them are particularly impressive... so here is the art vs artist i posted on tumblr lol:
i don't think anything in life is particularly easy but we keep going... in 2025 i am looking forward to drawing more, hopefully finishing my current fic wip, taking photos of the little joys in life, reading real books again, and seeing another concert.......... i want to see NEWJEANS and KATSEYE so you see my dilemma :( but we'll make something happen i'm sure of it. one step at a time
grateful to have all the people i have in my life who continue to show me grace and patience and kindness. love you all so much and hope we can continue to make good memories no matter what life brings us!!! lots of love and good wishes for next year... sometimes it's enough to survive
ππ
this is going to be rambly and personal and pretty stupid. and image heavy (apologies)
january
last year (2023) during christmas i went to cdmx with my family and on the way back took the initiative to stop in dallas by myself, so i basically spent new years at a hockey game and explored the city on my own for a few days :') beat the hawks 8-1 just for me and my oscar loving heart... it was my first time there (i've only been to texas once before and that was austin for cota23 LOL. discovered the joys of 3L coke bottles) and i basically just worked in the hotel and watched a lot of hockey the entire time, but it was nonetheless very special and lovely!!! i also met up with tanya and got boba/lunch with her the day i left ;__;
i'd really like to go back esp because i want to watch some mavs games too but i'm thinking it might not happen this year because of other commitments... but i'm positive we will rekindle our joint slay sooner than later!
beautiful xmas cards and pride bucket hat and pets calendar T__T also watching them lose in regulation to monty was so beautiful and funny and devised personally for my own entertainment.
february-may
honestly speaking i was in a terrible no good bad awful place these 4 months :__) it's funny saying this was my low point of the year because it's literally 1/3 of it LOL but... without getting too into it my health's just been a really big struggle this whole year, and on top of the usual severe depression and anxiety i've had to strugglebus through either insomnia or hypersomnia and crasy chronic fatigue issues that have just left me feeling very defeated most of the time. (26 year olds with master degrees and grievances against health insurance companies rise up...? no? sorry)
in march i watched a lot of hockey and did a mini trip through the pnw (amazing how vancouver is just worse and more expensive seattle π great donuts though) to see the stars multiple times which i enjoyed a lot! but it was also a stressful moment because of just like... my inability to sleep and my extreme sewersidal ideation at the time lol and my constant panic attacks. again overshare but looking back now that i'm on medication that actually helps, it's been such a wild jolt of realization to be like oh the 10+ years i've spent deeply hating myself and constantly wanting to die aren't actually part of the usual person's stream of consciousness... i think i just spent so long normalizing this deep intense all-encompassing misery and the echo chamber of my intrusive thoughts that it was a shock to suddenly have a relatively empty brain.
but anyway! may is when i started lexapro and even though i came into it with 0 expectations, it somehow literally saved my life lol so i can't help but be grateful for that. i really don't think i'd be alive right now without it completely frankly speaking... i spent so long waiting to die that being generally fine with being alive is a weird thing now. at this point however i was still struggling extremely with my sleep problems + a whole host of exacerbated fatigue issues from med side effects, and no matter what i tried (and i tried everything short of dr prescribed meds which i eventually got to "reset" my system) i would sleep like 1am-4am every night (fine every now and then but imagine this progressively worsening for 4 months straight...) and occasionally couldn't sleep at all to the point that i had difficulty walking, was always out of breath, and was generally just in constant fatigue and agony :')
tbh i don't even really know what i changed between then and now because i somehow seamlessly transitioned into hypersomnia and can sleep 16+ hours a day and at first everyone was like well it's just your body adjusting because you need to heal from the sleep debt but now i'm like is it really? lol maybe i'm just an eepy guy. i don't know but it's better than the extreme insomnia so i shan't complain :(
a little joy of this time period though is that in february i purchased a silhouette sticker machine and got a bit more into doing my own crafts! nothing serious of course but just learning how to make stickers was fun, and i started developing my chibi style for 814 more... looking back my chibi style for them in january was pretty ugly but slowlyyyy throughout like april i managed to standardize things a bit more. and then i got my first acrylic keychains made and learned how to crochet and created my mclaren koala! but lowkey idk if crochet is for me some of this stuff is too complicated π
hoping to make more (and better) merch in 2025... but let's not get ahead of ourselves. also my diy pc binder <3
i b doing stupid shit...
june
of course: mtl gp time!!!!!!! i saw risa so many times this year omg how are we not sick of each other already π but it was such a great time and i love our budding yearly gp tradition so much. i also got to meet an oomf who spontaneously drove up to montreal for the weekend and overall had a great time. but i have a mtl24 post so i won't rehash everything.
otherwise like i said june was for recovering my health and trying to fix my sleep... i really wanted to go see an osteo per h's recommendation when i was in canada but couldn't really commit to it. honestly idk if pt is in my future but we'll see how my body holds up in 2025...
omg mini makeup/skincare travel bag shot :') i wanted to draw it a while ago but i was too lazy so here's the photo. i love my kose mist that i really just bought because it's lilac and has moomin on it (2 fav things) but it's actually pretty good
also the stars broke my heart this month but it was kind of for the better since i had that week to focus on f1 lmfaooo. i saw a guy in an oilers jersey at the track and got so annoyed i was seething...
btw the girls who get it simply get it i fear.
july-august
beautiful olympics !!! and f1 summer break... i went crasy over diving yuri but we already know this. also i lowkey think they might have broken up or are just super stealth idk i haven't bothered looking on xhs in forever so i'm in the dark... T__T anyway i'm sad about how weird the attention got but i still love them and am excited for 2k25 diving events. ok sorry not the point
this summer was definitely about regaining my strength and getting better at Being A Real Human Person again T__T still chronically fatigued but striving to be less of a catatonic zombie... also went to a lot of crafts/art fairs in the 2nd half of the year which was loads of fun :') wait let me find some haul photos...
I LOVE PIKMIN!!!!
also i did not know this at the time but this is when my girls were born!!!!!!!!!
btw i had a phase during the summer when i tried to get into fragrances but like cheap simple entry level little products but then i was like what am i doing.... i don't think this stuff is for me either π
september
for my birthday weekend i visited risa :') i actually have a lot of great photos from this trip, maybe some of my favs of the year... but to respect her privacy i will not post anything identifying. but if u follow me on ig you've seen most of them
anyway i turned 26 and felt very old and tired about it all!!! i've known some people online whom i still follow since i was 13-14, and very soon i'll be at twice that age... but it is what it is. anyway chel shipped me a handmade jellycat-esque rubik's cube crochet gift and i literally cried at it no joke T__T complete with the scramble so i could recreate and solve it... also got more into Cozy Steam Games and played SO much fields of mistria at risa's place lol.
of course we painstakingly created this jellycat cake that i'm quite fond of!!! listen we are not bakers and it was a whole ordeal collecting all the materials and ingredients to produce this but she was cute and it paid off in the end. i had leftovers of this for breakfast like 4 days in a row though because we also kept obtaining more sweets faster than we could finish them... (my passion is forcing risa to buy donuts with me)
also i started playing pikmin bloom but we already know this........ very motivating when you have problems walking :)
october
the most important month of them all................... 2chi adoption month!!!!!!!
again the thing with cats is that when you commit to adopting one it can actually go so fast... i wrote the story here so i won't rehash but it's so funny how Not Calm i was for those 2 days and how i kept cryptically posting BECAUSEEE I WAS LITERALLY FREAKING OUT. like what if someone else somehow takes those cats before me... of course my heart was open to things falling through or bonding with different cats but i kind of just knew from the moment i saw their listing that i wanted it to be Them. and i'm so glad it worked out T__T also i literally made myself so anxious i got some kind of horrific stress migraine and was dying for that entire weekend and even several more days afterward which is kind of pathetic... but i'd go through it all again
have learned a lot being a cat mom in 2 short months and i really think it's the best thing that's happened to me all year and maybe in my entire adult life LOL. i really wish i had the words for how much they mean to me and how much purpose and structure and joy and whimsy they've introduced into my daily routine... i think in the time leading up to getting them i was just dealing with so much like, insurmountable grief and loneliness in a way that i can't really describe. it's hard and embarrassing to put into words but i think i just knew it was finally the right time.
i've spent a lot on them already since cats are expensive responsibilities but not so much that it's an absurd, impossible number (esp considering the baseline cost of buying pets from a breeder... only adopting from a rescue is a non-starter but to think adoption cost covering early vet fees/microchip/spay/vaccines + all upfront cat furniture and essentials and a month of food can still be cheaper than the starting cost for a ~purebred kitten~... i think anyone who breeds scottish folds should dye but that's another thing). i honestly think i could scale up to more cats and deal with it fine, but it's more of a situational constraint atm (aka who i live with) rather than an issue of personal limitation... i'm 100% sure that i'd like more cats or other pets in the future but that's something i can't concern myself with atm. i just love my girls so so much!!!
if u want to cry look at these old photos of them when they were scrungly & just-rescued vs now TT__TT
november-december
i got so annoying about 2chi that i ended up making a separate blog for them so i wouldn't spam everyone all the time. of course i still spam moderately but not to the degree that i could...
who's the cutest girls of all time... yes you areeee yes you areeee. i have a shared photo album of them with like 400 photos and i get annoyed if people don't acknowledge them regularly enough π
in other news... i saw svt with risa, jess, and siyao!!! hadn't seen siyao in a while so that was really nice. they got to meet the girls when they were still pretty recently adopted and fairly small (around 4lb, they're about 6 now) and then we went over to jess's place and saw sesame in her beautiful adult cat glory and i was like Oh that's how full grown cats look π they really grow up so fast!!!
in 2025 i want to go to more k-pop concerts but the problem is that i only want to see several groups and the likelihood of them touring... well. π it's rough out here
december has been a month of reflection and frantically catching up with music (which i have failed to do meaningfully... ah well). i'm not a particularly festive person but we visited my brother over christmas and i bonded with his doggos and also took pretty photos at the museum and ate lots of food LOL. also i missed my cats so much that i cried when i came home a week later and they spent the whole night curled up in my arms...
i drew so many silly little things that for once in my life i had more than 8/9 to put in an art summary post, but idk if i should make another entry going through more pieces when none of them are particularly impressive... so here is the art vs artist i posted on tumblr lol:
i don't think anything in life is particularly easy but we keep going... in 2025 i am looking forward to drawing more, hopefully finishing my current fic wip, taking photos of the little joys in life, reading real books again, and seeing another concert.......... i want to see NEWJEANS and KATSEYE so you see my dilemma :( but we'll make something happen i'm sure of it. one step at a time
grateful to have all the people i have in my life who continue to show me grace and patience and kindness. love you all so much and hope we can continue to make good memories no matter what life brings us!!! lots of love and good wishes for next year... sometimes it's enough to survive
ππ
