Hi everyone!
This quarter and year are at their end, so it’s time for the last Currently on my art post of 2025! This time, I have some news to share in addition to the end-of-year statistics!
First of all, my FFM 2025 collection Whoops is out; despite not having my drawing tablet with me for drawing the silhouette as well as struggling with the color scheme, I was able to do the silhouette with my mouse and come up with gradient and color combinations that worked well enough to use (although I am not entirely happy with the end result). I also wound up picking a different formatting preset for the text because while checking the end result I noticed that the preset I had been using did not indent the first paragraph of each section and in this collection’s case it caused some formatting wackiness that bothered me so much that I picked a non-fiction preset that was more consistent with the indentation (and, honestly, looks better to my eyes overall). Live and learn, am I right? Anyway, the collection is out and you can get it from your preferred store via its Books2Read link!
As for the World Collections, since this year I wrote nothing for any of the collected worlds, I decided not to compile the 2025 series since the only addition would have been links to my Tribble Month Collection Should Have Known Better. I’ve also been thinking about retiring the worlds I’m less interested in continuing once I have released all my Tribble Month collections (and thus can mark where each story has been collected), but that is a decision for 2026 – during which I hopefully will be able to finally get the rest of them out.
Honestly, I just might be able to get them all out before FFM 2026, since the job market prospects are still abysmally bad and I’m still competing with hundreds of other people for the same few junior developer roles. I wound up hitting the point of long-term unemployment (in my country at least, long-term unemployment is defined as 12 consecutive months of unemployment) this December too, and admittedly I’m growing increasingly frustrated with the situation. Many times, I’ve heard other unemployed people talk about struggling with their sense of self-worth in the face of the endless stream of rejections but for me, personally, the feeling this situation gives is sheer frustration. This is probably because I was able to get work in my field while in the middle of my studies and as such I have indisputable proof that I am good enough, which leaves me with the fact that so many things I was supposed to do this year (most notably upgrading my computers, especially my cobbled-together NAS) are on hold indefinitely because without a job I don’t have the money for any of them.
I’m going to try to get some certifications to hopefully get a bit of an edge in the job market, but since the most well-known (and among the most useful) certifications cost multiple weeks’ worth of food, I’m stuck with free ones I had never even heard of before they came up in my searches. If nothing else, at least they’ll show that I’ve been doing something to hone my skills, I suppose. At this point, now that my CV and cover letter template have been improved, all I can do to improve my situation is getting something more to show for my skills (and maybe starting to pray to some deities that could be of help; at worst no such deity responds and I’ll be left with research done on the subject that I can use in my writing, so it won’t be a complete waste of time and effort (lol)).
Oh well. Enough about my complaints about my unemployment limbo. Here are the last stats of this year:
Actually, a considerably better quarter in terms of progress (then again, the previous quarter was quite weak, so there’s that, haha). Nice. Let’s see how this year overall went and how it compares to last year.
Oop. IDTS sure dropped hard, both because I got much slower with progressing it as well as the “add plot bunnies” round starting to add fewer words since I ran out of NPC dialogue to put in. Oh well; last year was quite insane with that project, so it was only a matter of time before the numbers plummeted.
Now that the statistics are done, it’s time to look at the todos I put up on my previous end-of-the-year post. How does it look now that the year is over and it’s time to see how well I did? The ones struck through are done, while underlined are in progress. Bolded words are comments.
- Releasing my Tribble Month collections The first one is out, the rest are next
- Being more organized about chores Working on it
- Bringing more variety to my daily diet Working on it together with organization of chores
- Getting a job
Hoarding data- Properly starting to work out
- Doing something about my pile of speedpaint footage (even if it’s just scrapping some of it)
- Tackling my TBR pile
- Watching stuff on my TBW list
- Playing some games on my TBP list
Finally finishing or abandoning Jedova Wang’s reference- Learning more Japanese
- Improving my backup system to use my NAS better (does require getting more space on it)
Clean up my backups because they’ve gotten messy- Getting some long-time TODOs off my TODO list on Habitica
Hoarding more data
Considering what a mess this year has been, I’m surprised that todo-wise this year went this well. Huh. Neat. Welp, here’s the todo list for next year:
- Releasing the rest of my Tribble Month collections
- Being even more organized about chores
- Bringing even more variety to my daily diet
- Hoarding data
- Properly starting to work out
- Doing something about my pile of speedpaint footage (even if it’s just scrapping some of it)
- Organizing my apartment more
- Tackling my TBR pile
- Watching stuff on my TBW list
- Playing some games on my TBP list
- Learning more Japanese (and being more organized about it)
- Getting some more long-time TODOs off my TODO list on Habitica
- Hoarding more data
- Getting the next Full Collection of Whoops out
That’s all about that. Let’s see how things are going with my projects, as per my project widget:
- The Fate’s Way: Chapter 89 is still in writing. I’m still not particularly close to beating my writer’s block here but I am making okay-ish progress. I still need to redraw the regular Alyssa and also Alyssa’s friends and family and the other important people, like Matti, someday. I still haven’t found the time (and energy) to revise another chapter, though.
- Lyokostar: The second part of story 7 is still waiting for alphareading, but that’s a thing for once its indefinite hiatus ends. This story is in need of massive reworking, so it’s going to take a long time to finish when I do find the time and energy to resume it. References need to be done. I’ve been thinking about resuming this project since I do want to finish the translation but so far I haven’t had the drive to go for it. Maybe in 2026?
- I’ll Draw The Stars: I’m reworking to add a considerably big plot bunny into the fic and lots of smaller plot bunnies in the form of the background characters I researched for my master’s thesis. I’m currently working on chapter 87 out of 89. I wrote 3951 words in this quarter; it’s still very slow progress but the end of the round is already in sight. Next will be going through all the comments I had left for later and addressing them. Then? It just might be time to start editing and releasing each chapter (unless something new pops up before that).
- Whoops: I’ve been writing the story and I even defined the TODOs for the next Full Collection release. I’ve got one story ready, some more worldbuilding done (and some more on the TODO list), three stories in various states of progress and a bunch of both backstory and current-story-arc stories on the TODO list as well.
- Gaming: Habitica keeps on going. I’ve played a bit of Yakuza Kiwami but, far more notably, I played through Metroid Prime 4: Beyond since I watched my partner play it and got interested enough to play through it (it was… an experience to be sure; the audiovisual and gameplay sides are fantastic but the level design is quite lacking (it’s very linear), the writing leaves much to be desired and the final boss and ending were so. Utterly. Frustrating that it left a sour taste in my mouth even though overall I enjoyed the game). I haven’t played much else, actually.
- Other projects: I finished my FFM 2025 collection, Whoops, as discussed above. Now, it’s time to go back to the Tribble Month collections.
- Reading: I’ve read some fanfiction, not really anything else.
- Personal life: Nothing aside from continuing job hunting, getting sick a second time within a few months (and losing another week’s worth of productive time because I couldn’t do much while sick) and the holidays.
That’s all for this post. Thanks for reading, take care and happy new year!
WindySilver 