So here we are at the end of the year. 2024, what a doozy. Gotta say that there are a lot of lessons packed into this one for me: a lot of pains and a lot of gains, so to speak.

First, let me say that this is the first new year I've dreaded in a long time. There are a lot of grim things on the horizon, though I am well equipped and not alone. The last time I dreaded a new year would have been the coming of 2004, in which I would turn 18 and be exposed to a cold cruel world (as my Dad had managed to instill into me). It was also the year I knew we'd lose our house, and be exposed to a cold cruel world (there was a bit of melodrama in high school you might guess).

Incidentally, it was all a lot less terrible than I feared, even with some additional nasty surprises, and very few good ones.

The typical end of the year contemplation includes what we've accomplished, what we've learned, what we look forward to; That general performative optimism demanded of us in grade school to train us for whatever consumer hellscape comes into vogue. But I digress, cynicism is usually only useful for impressing hipster youths and armchair generals.

So I guess the biggest change out of the year is I quit drinking. I found myself drowning my sorrows to a fairly bad degree, and ultimately had to quit and let myself cry for a while around the 4th anniversary of my Dad's passing. I lament that grief is a part of my life now.

Coupled with that was a return to regular exercise. I needed some form of stress relief, and constant mild to moderate exercise kept me afloat. I lost a lot of unhealthy weight and I am now more or less back to how I looked before this whole insane mess started when my Dad got sick.

I finished a Warhammer 40K army, with a second about halfway done at this point. Years of meandering with what I should do finally gave way to the solution of just putting together what I wanted to make when I started back at the turn of the century. Using the old rules sets and my old parts and just with my old ideas where preservable.

Finally following up on an old idea, I started Vampire LARPing. I had meant to find a group a few years ago, but was too preoccupied with drinking. I had found myself watching various vampire webseries on Youtube, starting with LA By Night, and fell in love with the concept. I attempted to join a group in 2022 but they disintegrated soon after their single game with me.

Play has always been an important thing to me. It's something that a lot of forces in my life have tried to discourage me from since I was a kid, thinking that I was too overly focused on it to the detriment of my responsibilities. Truthfully, I constantly sought escape from a variety of hostile forces that in hindsight really resented me for that and created a self-fulfilling cycle of abuse.

The first few Vampire LARP games were mostly a fairly subdued affair for me, focusing on politics and getting to know who is who, both in and out of game. It brought me to a community of neurodivergent queer nerds and allowed me to make new friends for the first time since before my life went to hell.

I really only started enjoying myself when I joined the Sabbat game, which you might guess would be scarier and darker, and in some ways it is, but mostly I found it to be as close to innocent childlike play as I have ever encountered in my adult life.

It's probably important to mention that I built this blog, fulfilling an old promise to myself and to my Dad. It's been good to have an outlet for my thoughts and to feel I have even a tiny refuge from the social media megalith.

So it doesn't really sound like much, hobbies and health. But what else is there to be offered? I've made great strides with my mental health, and I don't need to take my medication anymore (the side effects were threatening to collapse my life). I don't spend as much time terrified and hiding, nor do I lash out at the people closest to me anymore. The world doesn't feel so impossible, even though it still scares me.

Yeah, I guess that's a pretty big thing, a lot of the rips and tears inside of me healing. There's still a lot farther to go, though. I'm still grieving over what is lost, and I'm still unsure how to move forward. I'm still here at the bottom of winter, wishing for sunny days that feel like they'll never end (But I guess they always do).

So what's next? Well, I guess there's getting my friends together to watch Sonic 3 this weekend. There's a show on the 10th with a band I really like. DnD after that. Was thinking of taking a vacation around then.

Life is probably never going to be like it was, and likely never was like how it feels like it was. Not all of the time, anyway. But I guess that holds true the other way too; it won't always be winter. I hope to do more exercising, and to go to lots of cons in the summer wearing lots of stupid costumes. I hope for more Warhammer armies to be finished and for more blog posts about the past. I hope someone hot kisses me with tongue if I venture to be honest. I hope for good cartoons I somehow have never seen. I hope to DM a weekly RPG with some of my old friends maybe a couple new ones (and please not DnD 5e). I hope Mom and I find some peace and she can carry on. I hope every fascist crawls back into the dark and everyone reads a good book with good ideas and hopefully takes them along for the ride. I hope for me and my crew to have movie nights, and board game nights, and for me to do karaoke and revel in the shock and awe of a crowd who's never seen an Asian guy scream Dragula before. I hope to draw again, and write stories. I hope for a warm hand holding mine.

I dearly hope that whoever reads this someday does so far and away from fear and sadness. I hope I am one of them.