A New Year And A Lot Of Reflection

• Date ❧ 07/01/2025
• Mood ❧ Reflective
• Music ❧ Butcher Vanity - Vane Feat. Yi Xi
• Currently ❧ Drawing & Designing Characters

A little bit late but HAPPY NEW YEAR! Here’s hoping it’ll be a good one huh?
I won’t go into my Christmas. It had its ups and downs and for some reason that time of year always tends towards not great for my family so I’m always a little apprehensive about it. But hey, at least I don’t have to think about it for another year

I’ve decided I’m not doing revolutions or goals this year, just because I never keep them and then feel like shit lol.
The only things I’m really focusing on are business stuff & fanfic.
Business stuff is going well. I set up a Ko-Fi for it recently so we will see if that bears any fruits. I’m thinking about putting my pattern brushes up for sale on it as a bit of a tester!
As for fanfic, I spent last week basically going through and giving actual titles to every single WIP I consider active and made a new to-do list. It’s fucking long af (300+ fics please help me), but I’m pretty resolved to essentially focus only on things on that list and try to get it down a little
As for posting fic. Eh. I have another backlog I accidentally accumulated but atm I have just… SO over editing it’s unreal I will probably try to get some out over the weekend.

As the title says tho, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately, mostly on my experiences within the Mortal Kombat fandom. I’m not leaving, and still very much enjoy creating content, but I can’t lie, I do think my time in the fandom has done terrible things to my mental health.
Because the thing is, when I started posting back in 2020, I never expected to get any attention. Then suddenly, I got a swarm of interest and people admiring me. Then as the fandom died, those people were suddenly gone. And it’s like, the logical part of my brain tells me that it is just a loss of interest in Mortal Kombat, but that fucking evil bitch of a voice in my head likes to whisper that it’s a loss of interest in me specifically.

I am going to be completely real with you all: I genuinely think between 2022 and 2023 I was having a full on mental health crisis. 2022 was a miserable year that just snowballed to get worse. I don’t have a fucking clue what was wrong with me in 2023 but looking back my behaviour for that entire year was so fucking erratic.
Either way, part of me wonders if that 2023 period put a lot of people off me. I suddenly wasn’t the quiet fanfic writer who mostly kept to themselves and instead I was just this manic mess that people wanted to stay away from. I mean I can’t blame them if it was, I don’t think I’d have wanted to deal with 2023 me either.

About midway through 2024, I had another minor breakdown, that latest maybe a week, but I made some snap decisions during that time. It was mostly stuff like leaving discord, muting & blocking a whole bunch of people, putting distance between myself and other people. About a week after I did this I came back to my senses and was like “wow I’m going to regret doing all that later”.
But the thing is… I don’t. I don’t regret leaving any of it behind because being away from it all made me realise how fucking awful it had been on my psyche.

And before anyone says anything: I don’t blame anyone for any of this.
It is just unfortunately the way my brain is wired and that’s absolutely no one’s fault and no one’s burden except my own.

I do have some other thoughts, but for now I think I’m keeping them to myself. I just needed to get this out somewhere and my website is a little less intrusive than anywhere else
Hopefully now I’ve recognised all this, it’ll be easier to not get stuck into a cycle. I think I should write more journals on here, just so I’m not sitting on bad feelings constantly.
Anyway, heres to 2025, hoping it’ll finally be my year lol.