Oh my, if people didn’t remind me about it, I wouldn’t have realized that today is the last day of 2003. Granted that I had not gone through new year’s eve since I started to write LJs, I had a minor dilemma that I need to resolve. It is a tradition that before the end of every year I would write a review of the entire year into my physical journal, the kind that you use pencil and paper and remains permenant and is immune to server crashes… you know what I mean.
I had the thought of doing it this year on my LJ. On one hand, there are quite a few memorable moments that’s worth sharing, and on the other hand I found a large chunk of what I want to write should remain discreet for its harmful contents. So, as a remedy, I’ll write part of this year end review here and its entirety into the physical version. Hmm. Here goes.
I think that the most unique thing about this year is that while no new significant friendship was formed this year, I’m happy that those that started lasted, unlike the ones that I had back in OCC or further back through bad times that shall remain obscure to my memory for life.
It is rather strange, also, that I had the privilege to take a whole year of Japanese out of sheer interest. It consolidated my fansub watching as a weekly habit, and boarden my horizon a bit so that I wouldn’t be ashamed to step foot in Japan in the future. Oh well, by the time I had the money to go back, I’d probably be so rusted in Japanese that I’d revert to trying to speaking english by spelling everything in katakana – and look like an idiot to the spirit of a true gaijin.
I’m not sure if it’s a worthy topic, but I’m financially in heavy debt, and this year I’ve spent considerable time just worrying about what I should do after I get out of college. There’s always what I WANT to do, what I CAN do, and the option to compete for a fast food job with 16 year old high school kids. I’m not sure if it’s a good term to describe it, but I feel *sticky* for being in a situation like this – not entirely trapped, but nonetheless bound by some measure so that I cannot do everything I wanted to do as before.
On the game and art department, Ronin become my first “commercial” success – at least I’m reassured that I have not lost it when it comes to game design, and so a game career is not completely out of my hand… however, I’m totally slumping on the art department. Despite my increasing collection of art books, I’m not seeing improvement, and it’s taking longer and longer to churn out just average art. Not to mention that I haven’t done one CG save for the CAE T-shirt… I’ve been away from life drawing for too long and the effect shows. I really should stick to my plan and go back to OCC after I graduate to take more life drawing classes. The new art department should be built by now and I’ve heard it looks really nice.
As for disappointments – AX sucked this year. Everyone either staffed or were simply not there. Besides the typical book hunting, there wasn’t much that was worth my ticket. The cosplaying scene seems somewhat lacking (or there’s just too many Naruto fans), the Arcade too expensive, and this year’s Masquerade really, really sucked – I’m not asking for anything professional, but God there has to be a better MC than the one they had for that night.
Hmm, I actually did not make a wish list last year. Actually, I do have one, but as the year progresses it reached a rather depressing and disppointing ending, so it’s not even worth mentioning. As for the coming year, my biggest wish/goal would be to secure a solid career that pays my debt, and hopefully be able to start regularly working on a webcomic. I think I’ll drop the silly “get a date” wish this year. I have known that I have no capacity for relationships for years and still I had the childish hope that someday, something would turn out. It has been the source of sorrow and grief for many years in the past, and now that I have more important things to think about, hopefully I can push the whole idea off my head for awhile.
I was trying to draw something cute for Christmas, but I ended up drawing a gun toting gambit (from X-Men). Hoepfully I’ll be able to come up with something kawaii when I wake up.
Maybe.