New Year, New Me?
I felt inspired by 32-Bit Cafe's "New Year, New You" event to create a blog for this website and respond to the event's prompt:
Make a page or write a blog post that explores a reflection on past decisions (good or bad), or brainstorms / shares plans for the future.
2025 was actually a pretty great year for me. Life isn't perfect, but I feel like I'm happier than I've ever been. At the beginning of summer, my best friend and I celebrated our one-year best-friendiversary. Chatting every day and hanging out every Friday gives me something to look forward to, and it's really helped me more than I can say. I don't usually like discussing my education publicly, because it's no fun, but I got all A grades this past semester, and I'm really proud. So far this semester doesn't actually seem like it will be so bad either. The hours are really long, but I'm having fun.
Site Goals
I'm pretty pleased with my site because this was a very productive year for it. A simple goal I have, though, is to publish a few of my work-in-progress pages. I have a few shrines in the works for some of my favorite characters (that would be Kouign-Amann Cookie and Fusakin if you were wondering… ahaha…). I also have a work-in-progress page regarding the cool stuff I got out of a subscription service I was subscribed to. Finally, there is at least one OC page I need to get done, since I have accidentally neglected this character; my apologies to him.
I never want to give off the impression that the purpose of my website is to attain views/followers, so I've always felt hesitant to address these sorts of things, but I did notice that my site has over a thousand followers now. So while it's true that I'm not focused on the numbers, it does feel nice to know that a lot of people resonate with my site for one reason or another. I do love checking my guestbook and drawbox for comments and submissions because they really make me smile. So thank you!
Art Goals
In 2025, I got really into pixel art again, particularly joining a bunch of pixel cliques/clubs. I want to join more actually. I have a few in mind. In 2025 I created a 32x32 site button, and just this month I also created a new, alternate 88x31 site button and refreshed my primary site button. I would like to finish a 400x20 site banner too. I think it would also be nice to have a go at making some cute adoptable pixels for my visitor's toy boxes.
I'm already excited for Art Fight again, but that's not a surprise. I'm always excited for the next Art Fight, like, the minute the last one ends. It will be my TENTH ART FIGHT too. I'd like to try attacking more friends/mutuals from the Neocities/indie web community. I think that would be fun.
Recently a lot of my drawing time has been devoted to…
Game Development Goals
December of 2025 was really exciting for me because I finally got to share all of the new character designs and artwork I created for the remake of my fan game, Hope Restoration, and I received a very positive response! It has really motivated me to try my hardest to get the prologue and first half of Chapter 1 out by the end of this year if I can. Even if I don't, I'm still really proud of myself because I've come a long way, I think. To give you an idea of how far, I found a diary entry I wrote in December of 2022, around the time I was at my lowest, creatively:
I can't work on my project anymore without feeling ashamed of myself. It feels like I already failed. I have sort of brought up the possibility that I’m throwing in the towel on it. I don’t think anyone really gets it, though. They say I should just go ahead and give up if it will make me happier, but I know it won’t. It’s not that I want to give up, but I want it to be better than this.
I don't know if I can ever properly explain what I was feeling around that time, but I was really hurting. It seems silly in hindsight, but I allowed a hurtful interaction to cause me to hate my art and characters for a long time. Withdrawing from the community for a while and restarting the project was the best decision I could have made, though, because I'm proud of it, and I'm happy that it reflects my current skill level and progress now. I'm most grateful for my close friends who have been motivating the whole time and hyping me up.
Another goal I have for Hope Restoration is to collaborate with other developers more often. It's really common for developers in the community to collab and draw characters together for holiday illustrations and the like, and I want to take part! I'm a little shy about reaching out, but I'm determined…
That's about all for now, I think. This prompt seemed like a nice opportunity to bring a diary back to this site. I know this entry isn't particularly interesting, but it was enjoyable to write. I also did this event's second prompt, which I had a ton of fun making!
Customize your own Butterfly or Moth!
You can make them static or animated. Why not put a jar for it on your site too!
