Hey ya’ll, MrBlitzy here!

First, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday this year, spending time with your friends and family, enjoying the gifts you have gotten or given to each other, and feeling proud about the things you may have accomplished this year. Either way, I am hoping everyone is doing well currently.

Mine was swell, the family was happy and got their gifts, and I gave a good amount of friends some games I believe they’ll enjoy! I got DAP, Digital Audio Player, as a way to get a bit more into having a music library on a separate device and enjoy it without the annoyance of notifications from my phone.

Besides that, I did want to go over my usual yearly goal of getting at least one written work out a month, which I did achieve. Compared to last year, I posted roughly 20 with 8 short stories or so. This year… I did a little better, roughly 23 written works. I don’t count the Nicole ones as two as they are just the same with different endings. Speaking of which, let me know if you guys want to tackle more of that stuff. Still, it is a little better than before, it might be because for a few reasons: 1) I think I have been doing a tad more work on stories, resulting in longer results than intended, which takes more time. 2) I get distracted playing games as I am a video game enthusiast and part of what I try to do is work through my backlog of games that I should play. 3) Motivation has kinda been all over the place in the last three months of the year, partially because of the previous reason but there is more to it.

I plan to keep that goal going but try to put more work into getting around to lore material for my Sonic AU, like actually getting around to posting some backstory/origin works… hopefully with an illustration. I do got a lot of ideas I want to do and just need to really do better organizing myself.

Vent Warning
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Yeah, I’m not gonna deny that this year was a tad hellish in ways. From family related issues to drama between friends to damages towards my self-esteem.

RL-wise, to keep it short… It's mainly a bit of an internal strife between my parents. They have moments of arguing here and there, some of it gets tossed onto me. My mom may toss judgmental comments at me or criticize anything I do for very little reason or try to understand from my perspective all too well. It has gotten better over time but… there are still moments of issues here and there.

Online-wise, it’s been messier. A lot of paranoia and stress I’ve seen from people I know to some rather rough interactions. To explain the former, the year hasn’t been great for several people I know because either they are lost on where to go in life, breaking down from the stress of working and putting up with current events, and personal drama that may or may not die down. I don’t know exactly how awful it might be for people out there exactly… but I will say this, take a deep breath. I’ve been in some really dark places plenty of times in the past, wanting to give up on anything I care about because what I might do won’t really matter, feeling my wellbeing and efforts won’t be appreciated by those around me, and thinking I might not have an decent future ahead of me. A lot of this was during and after college as I did have to put up with a few stressful courses that were either difficult to really study and understand or the teacher was…less than ideal and not being able to really get a job related to my field afterwards, even after making use of a paid internship. I do fear the job market might be very unfavorable for folks like me because experience might be more painfully favored than education and job boards being too bloated with job scams, especially when I almost fell for one. Still, I kept trying to figure out what else to do, where to look, and if I really had a chance. I was able to find work as a caretaker for my dad, which help give me a jumpstart to getting paid for doing something. My mood got better after putting in more work trying to speak with people I can feel comfortable with and express myself a bit more. I finally got the courage to try work on a creative talent I had neglected for years… writing. What I am saying is… don’t quit, you still have a chance to turn things around. Don’t doubt what you can do. People like us are capable of doing a lot for ourselves and others, whether it be drawing, giving advice, or pulling another friend out of a horrible position. Even if things seem all too bleak, keep moving forward and something is bound to change, hopefully enough to make you smile and think everything will be alright in the end.

Second, I’ll explain the rough interactions. It’s hard for me to socialize as I am quite an introvert who struggles to fit in with a lot of crowds, especially huge ones. To put it simply, I stress too much about expressing my ideas and showing off pictures I enjoy because of how often I get ignored trying to do so and just knowing how anyone would react to some of the niche and odd scenarios I tend to cook up in my mind… which leads me to being a tad more like a lurker who might say something. Funny enough, I can be a bit of the opposite in DMs with people who may happen to share just about the same interests as I do. Sometimes I can be too expressive about the stuff I have and what I might come up with… which tends to lead to one-sided friendships, one where I am the one doing most of the work to keep someone interested in me while they are more than likely trying to reap some benefits from me. By this, I mean they either try to be friendly and make it seem like they are invested in what I do just to see if they can get something off of me for free or I have to make myself interesting to them to even care… especially the latter.

To put it short, I’ve tried to be open and meet people who seemed cool and like the stuff I happen to enjoy… only for them to really hardly care past what I happen to get, which really sucks when you are interested in them and their designs. Hell, it sucks even more when it comes to those who enjoy Sonic stuff like I do. Someone I used to be okay hanging with because they dig the same type of stuff as I do and had some pretty fun characters I’d like to do stuff with but… they cared way more about what they wanted and barely cooperated. Anything I offered that didn’t happen to include their favorites or pleased their ideas would more or less be ignored/pushed aside. It was miserable enough that I really took too long to remove them, they can goon about their favorite fluffy sheep from the comics with someone else. Perhaps I should have kept that phrase “Never meet your heroes” more in mind. Yeah, stuff like that really hit my self esteem.

I’d say towards the last quarter of the year, I really began to feel awful about myself, felt I wasn’t good enough for people, or if they even cared about anything I shared. It led me to second guessing what I should write, how I should do it, and if it even sounded good enough to continue. It got so bad that I struggled to express much of myself to people very close to me because I believed they’ll barely care about any of the things I am usually invested in and just cater more to what they like. I am still in that kinda funk but that’s kinda what led to a hard decline in motivation to write for good while, only barely able to scrap some things together for October and November.

I will take several faults because I definitely should have put more effort into socializing with familiar peeps better but anxiety and shyness sucks. At least I am overcoming those little by little, even with a few hard setbacks. I am also pretty bad at keeping up with a lot of people at times and I end up forgetting. I'm better at folks approaching me than I am at trying to catch up with them. I apologize for being shitty at remembering.

I’m slowly getting back to a proper spot after posting the Nicole story so thanks for the support on that.
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Vent over

Yearly Goals and Organization

Anyways, I intend to keep the same goal as before, get one written work done a month for next year. The difference is trying to put more emphasis on longer, more storyesque works here and there while getting a bit more shorter stuff that may be simple or experimental. Along with those, try to get back on some sequels to previously established works. I’ll try to get another Wrestling Blowdown thing done.

I’ll also try to get a proper planner going so I can organize my ideas more and actually sort out how to really go about writing my stories instead of winging it as I go. Yes, I have not been doing an outline for any of my previous works, now you know why these things kinda take a while and end up pretty long.

Socializing?!

I have been meaning to somewhat try socializing better, both inner circles and my bluesky. For the latter, I have been pretty nervous just trying to post anything like humorous ideas, questions, and the like because either they end up sounding bad before I post it or nothing it wouldn't be something worth batting an eye at. Then again, I could be overthinking it. So I’ll be putting effort trying to chip away at those fears and just post what I like.

This will be just for bluesky. I think I’d rather let my twitter be more defunct with how awful it is becoming with how much AI is truly being injected into it, and my DA might as well rot for the same reason.

Trades and Collabs

I have been seeing about being more open to trades… with close folks I can trust because granted I am a writer so I don’t know how much value it holds with those that draw but I can at least try to be as good word wise, right?

I am gonna let it be more known, I am open to discussions or any potential collaboration with people who have been invested in my Admiral Blimp Empire works. If ya’ll have any questions, feel free to shoot me a note or so and I’ll provide answers, to some extent. I can’t be spoiling a lot of my future ideas too soon!

Regardless, here is to hoping we all have a better year!