Some Reflections on My Path Over These Years (a.k.a. About Me)

Well, how did I ended up in this brony life? Was just casually browsing the Need For Speed World subforum of Tieba back in mid-2013, and saw someone had a forum signature of Rainbow Dash (this one derpibooru.org/images/57659), got quite puzzled like "was MLP that cute? (of course I only knew MLP as the few glimpse of G1 on TV in 2000s)". Found G4 out of curiosity and fell for it only after a few episodes at S1E03-ish, watched EVERYTHING over 1 weekend afterward and then the inanity of no more pony to watch.

So I searched for some fan-made contents, found the great Turnabout Storm, Double Rainboom, The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine, My Little Dashie and all that you-early-years-Bronies-would-know stuff. Plus that Rainbow kinda became the waifu at first glance of a OZE's art when I was just cheking around the forum before even watched S1E01.

Also there was coming up with a ponysona which ended up kinda based on the specific F-14D BuNo.164603 of VF-31 squadron circa 2006, at least for the gray body and crimson in the mane. Paid commissions in the Chinese FIM community aren't really a thing back then, instead just be friend with those who draw and if you are lucky they'd draw you someday. Got into a QQ brony chat group too and knew some Star Wars fans among the bronies to formed a small group who are still quite close to me today. But generally those days weren't too decent due to me being a quite edgy aerospace fan in a community of more... common people, just a middle school kid day-draming about naval aviation, MINI-Z RC models, Macross Frontier, Battlefield 3, and all those cool stuff.

And the ancient Pony Personality Test fresh from 2013, did it again in 2021 but wasn't that much of a change (I think).

Then the big change was when I graduated from middle school, had a enlightening trip to Russia (wish it wasn't with a tour group though) driven by the passion for Metro 2033 series, then it was hell. Chinese high schools are bad in many ways, don't even have full weekends off and I gotta get up at 5AM for choosing to go home at nights instead of living on-campus. I practically snapped in a month and refused to continue after the national day 7-days (or was it 5) holiday. Ended up with enrolling in the Queensland international program and off to Australia in early 2016 aiming for an aerospace career after a few months of English training with the educational agent, had doubts but I adapted much better than domestic high schools.

Back in the community, I met some new friends, messed up with some old ones, still kinda lonely and trying to get new OC arts all the day. 2017 was generally much better than 2016, even started to draw ponies with pencil and got quite close with Oofy Colorful, was one of her closest friends actually who re-translated her pony name from the original not-making-sense version and had collab on some comic translation until things went meh in 2018. Tried writing pony OC fics since I did some zombie fics also since 2013 at the Tieba subforum "Innawoods Bar", but that didn't really go anywhere, still a nobody as brony.

A lot up-and-downs and drama, but I entered the Boeing Enterprise Team at Balmoral high school since 2017, graduated as the topgun in the Aerospace class since I was the only aviation geek in the 10-ish students. Went as far as hearing the teacher said "Qantas 747s are retired" which I felt doubts about and immediately checked Flightradar24, found a Qantas 747 in flight, then smirked and raised my arm to correct my aerospace teacher. Truly was the only one in that class who deserves the top-ranked award but surely had to go through the painful stages of accumulating the knowledge base and still being the nobody online.
https://twitter.com/WZNGT/status/1290516846421057536

So 2019, university days with Royal Melbourne (Manehattan) Institute of Technology for aerospace! Courses were cool and terrifying at the same time, developed some more skills on making Ace Combat 7 aircraft skin mods and translation for Metro 2033 Fandom wiki entries for subforum "Metro 2033 Bar", didn't read any theory book but just "knew Chinese, knew English and went for it". Went a bit crazy about earning some pocket bucks for buying pony arts though, but the business attempts of getting Formula 1 racing team shirts from Australian sites at sale price and sell them to Chinese fans didn't work really.

At least all started to shine in 2020, had some really bad things happened IRL though, but I got commissions of AC7 skins from time to time, and joined Fimtale (local FF equivalent since it's English only here) shortly before being recruited into the Chinese translation team of FOE Project Horizons. Did some chapters for the FOEPH team but then realized that I should do it on my own, started with a few short fic of Space Ponyos universe, then Fine Print and some Admiral Biscuit‘s, all with proper permission for sure (it's like Rule 0).
https://fimtale.com/u/WZNGT/topics

Then I bought a Wacom Tablet with the thought to give digital drawing a try in 2021, I guess I made it to show-style-lookalike but that was about it, good enough for showing some random ideas and providing the draft when I commission other artists anyway, still yet to draw my 25th pic after 1 year.
https://derpibooru.org/images/2783986

The money issue continued though, tried to look for home tutoring job for middle school kids and translation gig but no outcome. Participated in the public contest for Wodzkid Studio which does video subtitles in Feb. 2022, ended up in the 2nd place out of 12 ppl and joined the team, only 1 job assigned per month or so but at least they pay me a bit for the efforts. Dropped the pony fic translations for the time being since university's just too busy and you don't get a penny for fic translation, readers' compliments at best is still too ascetic for a student with skills while good pony arts always cost quite some money. Honestly wish that I can just get out of this nobody state that I've been in for nearly 10 years, even just 80USD a month from side gigs would probably make the anxiety go away...

I guess that's the story for now, nearly the end of Year 3 Semester 1 of my Aerospace Engineering program, full time job is not that far away but I just want to achieve something before stepping into the professional world.
PS: If I get to choose I'd want to live in an eternal year 2012, things were better back then IMO. Or definitely Equestria, you don't have all these annoying physics rules there.