Been meaning to write this for a little while, but I haven't been feeling up to it.

I had a nice new year's eve. My usual ritual of making mimosas and enjoying them with a tub of ice cream while I watched streams (in this case, Gamegrumps and MST3k) while chatting folks up as the new year ticked over timezone by timezone. Managed to scribble a few things for friends, which is always fun when I can.

New Year's Day was a little more muted, as it rained most of the day and my allergies had me sneezing and blowing my nose the whole time. I did get paid (normally my paycheck comes through Fridays) so that was nice. Friday saw the completion of a yard cleaning I'd set up, the weeds had just gotten out of control for me so now it's all cleared out and I should be able to manage it with some weed spray and the occasional check. That's the hope anyway but for now the place looks a lot nicer.

I had a nice christmas too. Low key, I had dinner with my sister, her daughters and friends of theirs. Got some nice gifts from them and my friends. Seemed like a lot of people were leaning into the festivities this year, which was a nice feeling.

Haven't done all too much with the new year. I did get back to Silksong. I took a break a little while ago because I was just burning out on Bilewater and I needed to give my wrist a break. Happy to say I not only conquered Bilewater and Groal I downed a lot of other bosses and I'm ready to finish up Act 2. Been really loving the game, it lives up to the hype and was worth the wait. It isn't without criticism, but it really is an excellent sequel and I look forward to what Team Cherry does with the DLC.

Also still playing WoW, I'm looking forward to Midnight, have played with the new Housing feature some, it's impressive. I'm not a big housing person so it's been very casually playing around with it and just getting decor as I stumble on it but I think it'll be a neat way to kill time once it opens up fully. Otherwise I've mostly been running alts through Delves for Heroic level gear in order to finish up the Mythic transmog appearances for my Priest and Shaman (cuz I like the colors) Only missing a couple pieces for each but RNG has been very unkind and running alts through timewalking has been sorta frustrating because I've been getting a very unusually high amount of jewelry and trinkets. Still, they're upgrades for those characters so not the worst thing. If I finish the tier sets, cool, if not, it's not the worst thing. I already got the mythic appearance on my Mage so I'll be happy enough with that.

Been meaning to get back to Eiyuden Chronicles and Quartet to finish them up, then going back to Sea of Stars to check out the DLC campaign that got added. I also went back to Deltarune and completed the Super boss fights for Chapters 3 & 4 (Luckily 3's appears at the end, so I beat it and then just had to replay ch 4.) I still absolutely love the game and I'm excited to be ready for Chapter 5, Tobyfox never fails to surprise and delight me so I'm hooked on whatever he wants to put out.
Long story short I have a lot of games to play. I still need to get back to Baldur's Gate 3 (Still in Ch 1) and Kingdoms of the Dump, which I've really really enjoyed so far. And I got a bunch of games for x-mas I've been wanting to play. I'll get to them... eventually >>;

Anyway, big thing going around on bluesky was listing your achievements. I'll be fairly honest, I can't really think of much. Not trying to be hard on myself so much as so much of this year has just been a blur, a lot of bad vibes and just trying to keep folks from afloat and from spiraling out. It's been soul exhausting. Everyone is depressed, tired, broke, sick, and we never know day to day what foul thing is going to happen next to put us all on edge. I think I managed to help though. I can't say how much but I did what I could.

I do have some pleasant memories this past year. Further Confusion was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it again in just a week and a half. Deltarune and Silksong coming out were big highlights, stuff I've been waiting on for a while. I missed Anthrocon but instead went to Biggest Little Fur Con which was a lot of fun. I had a really nice trip in August to surprise my sister for her birthday (She had -no- clue, it was good).
I picked up The Tainted Cup on seeing a lot of recommendations for it on Bluesky and I was very pleasantly surprised, it's a banger of a fantasy detective novel and I've already picked up the sequel to read sometime soon. I finished reading a lot of Doctor Who, Shadowrun and DnD books, also Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick which was hilarious.
My own writing I'm still struggling to work on bigger projects, even finishing stories. I've managed a few small things here and there. I did start posting practie stuff to pillowfort which I think has helped quite a bit. I have ideas I'd like to work on, maybe even stuff to get published eventually but we'll see.

I've reconnected with some people and I think made a new friend or two. It has overall been positive and I'm happy to have all these people in my life.

I'll be honest my mood has been up and down pretty drastically the last month or so. Partly from the *waves paw at everything* Just a lot of stress to deal with, so many people hurting and needing help, the worry of what else is going to go wrong and if I'm doing the right thing or setting myself up for failure, where I don't feel like I'm just stuck in stasis anyhow. I think some of it is just seasonal depression. Less sunlight, lot of folks sick and cold and miserable. And my old habits of seeking affirmation and intimacy from folks that I don't think are capable of giving it in the ways I want. Gets frustrating.
It'll pass. I know that. I am in an okay position overall and I think things will start to stabilize, though for some things it might take to the end of the year. Hard to say. I'm still hopeful, anyhow.

I'm still trying. All I can do is take one step forward at a time and keep going. I don't think I have much else to ramble about. 2025 as a whole was kind of a trashfire with just a handful of bright spots. I got through it, just like I plan to get through this coming year and bringing as many of my friends along with me as I can. I hope we all make it through, take care of yourselves everyone.