2023, a̵ ̵y̵e̵a̵r̵ everything in review. · 12:27am Dec 30th, 2023
Normally I'd say something witty here, but I don't think I will this time around.
I guess I'll go ahead and start with the biggest thing on my mind for this year: my dog, Cody, passed away from a heart attack. I still habitually glance at his bed, expecting to find him sleeping quietly whenever I walk past it.
Everything since then so far has been a blur. On the same day, my little brother turned twelve, which... normally I'm the one that deals out emotional whiplash through my writing. That's all I'm going to say about the matter.
Everyone in my family, save for myself and my sister, caught covid at almost the exact same time. Christmas celebrations were called off, and for the better part of a week now, my entire universe has largely been shrunken down to just my bedroom so that I don't risk catching it myself either.
Emotionally, at least, I think I'm doing a little better now. It's helped so, so much to build that little memorial shrine I've mentioned for my dog. I hope that, wherever he is now, he'll be able to find his way back to his toys and treats that we've laid out for him.
I still tear up at almost any mention of him, and the past several days have been ones that I've spent scrolling through years-old pictures, and sharing them over text with my family because we can't share them face to face right now.
This wasn't how I thought I'd end 2023.
I thought that after I was done with finals for the semester, I could spent my few weeks off finally devoting more time to my personal projects. Pick up writing for some more chapters of Fractures now that the pressure to hit word-count goals for NaNoWriMo was over. Maybe even pick up a programming project that I was interested in starting.
But so many times now, I'm finding myself sitting blankly at my desk, just... staring. I don't know what to do. I don't know what I should do. I don't know what I can do.
I know I shouldn't dwell on Cody so much. I hold his memory in me, and I can't let my grief take over my life.
I was finally able to break out of the loop--if only just a little--two days ago, when in one final push, I finished the final chapter of What If.
I didn't have it in me to make something comedic, or overly exaggerated in celebration of the milestone.
Somewhere along the way, the chapter became a tribute to Cody, who I always knew would be sleeping or playing with his chew toys behind me when I turned around. I hope this isn't too disappointing compared to the boisterous plans I had with a thousand hand-drawn MS Paint recreations of every chapter. But it's what I managed to put together.
The opening chapter of What If 2 is a sort of representation of all that has gone through my mind regarding writing these past eight (soon to be nine) years on this site. A bit of disbelief--that I'd really come as far as I did. Some doubts that still weigh me down. But ultimately, the turning of a new page. A new beginning, in a very literal sense, both in context of the story, and of this part of my life that's so suddenly come to a close.
In about a year, I'll be sitting here again, likely with graduation plans on my mind.
I first joined Fimfiction in June of 2015. I had just finished 7th grade by then, and was about to start 8th grade. Next year, if all goes as planned, I'll be getting my bachelor's in Computer Engineering.
I don't even remember what my biggest worries were in 2015. Maybe it was something I brought to school one time to show my friends, but subsequently lost out in the field during lunch. I know that it was sometime the year before, in 2014, when I'd truly begun doing any sort of creative writing with the intention of sharing beyond my close friends.
Those worries seem so little now compared to the things that linger in my head now.
This year, my little brother will begin 8th grade himself. I wonder if he has those same middle-school worries that I did. I wonder if he, like I did, has a pile of bookmarked fanfictions on his browser, because he hasn't yet made an account on whatever site it is that he may read them on.
I want to think of this year as the year of throwbacks.
So many things this year either resurfaced or ended, in more ways than one.
Before Cody passed away, the major throwbacks I had in mind were my Fractures project, which is loosely based on that ancient piece of writing from 2014, the return of Numa Numa guy with a new video, and I guess the rapidly-approaching completion of What If. All things that'd seen the better part of a decade or more between "milestones".
And now, I guess, after recent events, almost exactly thirteen years after we'd adopted him, Cody has left us again.
I'm still not fully sure what I want to do with my life. Not because I have a lack of options, but rather that I constantly find myself being pulled every which way. I love to write. I love to tinker with older electronics. And I certainly have a deep interest in the ongoing evolution of technology, too. But translating interests and hobbies into a job, even after I get my degree, is still a big worry for me. I plan to intern at a software company this summer, but mostly only to gain experience in the field. It's not really the sort of thing that I think I'd want to do in a career going forward.
But I guess that's why being flexible is good. Being "well-rounded" in the skills I've picked up, whether through schooling or through my hobbies. I just wonder how far that flexibility can take me in finding a career based around what I actually want to do.
I wonder how long I can keep doing this.
I'll fully admit that I've lived a pretty sheltered life so far. The pandemic set things back even further with my social life. Not being able to go out and meet people does that to you. It's only in these past couple of years that I've made some new friends again for once. And not just casual friends that I might share a meme or two with from time to time, but close friends. People that I feel comfortable being vulnerable with. People that I want to talk to as much as possible. People that I've grown inside-jokes with. People I can keep secrets with.
I think that, up until last year, I was probably the most isolated I could be in college, short of continuing to take all my classes online after the worst of the pandemic subsided. I just showed up for classes, answered whenever I was called on after raising my hand, and left.
I'm glad things aren't like that anymore.
At the beginning of this month, I even stayed behind to talk with some friends after finals were over! We were waiting for another mutual friend to finish, and we joked about how maybe they'd finished the exam and wandered off to somewhere else already, though they did eventually show up.
We even made a habit of finding each other in the lecture hall, filled with hundreds of students, and point each other out, taking photos of each other and poking fun when we couldn't find each other from the crowd. And, though it was frustrating at times due to scheduling conflicts, I had fun working on the several group projects that I had this semester. It's been nice being able to talk to people face-to-face again, even if it may have seemed daunting at first.
I could've spent the entirety of my undergrad experience keeping only to myself. I'm glad that I didn't.
And, I guess, taking things back to topics more relevant to my time here on Fimfiction, I'll also go ahead and say that I finally completed a duo of stories that I'd long-considered to be nearly dead. I had very little motivation to keep writing Pony-Me's reboot and Splintershard, the former because the concept had become stale to me, and the latter because the underwhelming interest in the story had grown into discouraging levels of apathy.
But I pushed through, and completed them both. I made myself become excited in those fics again. I'd before found myself locked into a strict plan from beginning to end, but it was by returning to why I wanted to write those stories in the first place, that I'd finally found my motivation again.
It's a little weird to think that back in 2019, I was preparing to leave Fimfiction entirely. Possibly even to abandon my hobby of writing. I think it was writer's block back then; I distinctly remember something about how around that time, almost all semblance of comedy and joy had left my writing for a bit. I don't entirely remember what kept me around anymore, but I think it might've at least partly been that I found myself unexpectedly diving into the writing community far more than I previously had. It was around that time, a month after I'd considered, but then held off, my plans to leave the site when I made a Discord server, initially aimed at being a gathering place to talk about a long-cancelled story of mine. I think I might've gotten the inspiration to do that from GMBlackJack and their Sea of Stories server, which at that time had somewhat of an emphasis on their ongoing stories. But, my own server eventually shifted into a "writing community" server, where rather than revolving solely around a single story as its focal point, it was now anyone's stories.
And once again, I found myself making new friends. Even some very close ones, in fact.
I think it's that sense of community, that companionship that surrounded me, that kept me anchored.
I think that's really all I've got on my mind for now.
As always, thank you for reading. 
I am not a talkative person, nor I don't like to write much. Less is more and all that.
But, ah... I feel that something must be shared here. So I'll be brief, I suppose. A creative person's life is often the one that of many intense feelings, and anxieties, and doubts, and pain, and loss. It is okay. And we as fiction writers are often trying to reiterate and expand on a simple thought, a hopeful promise that everything will be fine in the end.
So... everything will be fine.
But it requires a journey first.
Happy holidays.
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To add to that, if everything is fine in the end, that means if things aren't fine, it isn't the end.