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2016 is dead!!

8 years ago996 words

As the world outside explodes in celebration, and people surely bond with and appreciate their many loved ones and all that, I'm here alone in the quiet of this little room, as always. I don't actually mind though, at least not at the moment; I've been keeping frantically, giddily busy recently with something inane and rather selfish that I'll talk about in another post. For now, I'd like to review last year's resolutions; I'll write new ones in a separate post.

First, a bit of a review of the year. I have only the faintest of gleanings of what the world's view is on it; I've heard that 2016 was particularly bad because of celebrity deaths, Harambes and some kind of trumpet or pantsless duck becoming incredibly powerful or something? But I have no 'social media feed', so the little dribblings of news I do catch glimpses of now and again feel alien; like that's The World, and there's very little overlap between My World. Perhaps I'm too self-absorbed; I usually get the feeling that 'everyone' else is all swimming in that big stream and I'm not. But anyway.

(But to be clear, I know that Derek Trunk has become Emperor of Americania and allied with the Martians, spelling doom for us all. I'm not that out of touch!)

For me, I found out I had a brain tumour this year, and had brain surgery. That's literally been one of my worst nightmares all my life, so it's deeply surreal to think it's something that actually happened to me. That it's still in there. That one day I'll have to have potentially life-wrecking surgery to 'fix' it. Hmm. I try not to think about it.

Other than that, what have I even done? If anything, it feels like a year of stagnation, or worse than stagnation; of going backwards, rotting emotionally and psychologically, losing interest in things that used to give me pleasure. Every year for the past four years, I've made a 'summary of art' thing, like ∞ this one ∞. My one for this year is unshowable though; not only is it full of holes, of woeful neglect of creativity, the slots that are filled mostly are with naked ladies. Though I'm aware that loads of guys choose that particular subject matter for obvious reasons, I've written before about how it clashes with my idea of my personality, and the impression I want to give off to others... so I prefer to keep that to myself. It means that most of what little creative work I did do will remain private, pointless.

I have actually returned to making things with surprising enthusiasm over the past handful of days, a welcome resurrection of my old passions... but I'll write about that some other time. It's why I'm feeling quite okay at the moment rather than consumed by despair about my many failings and deficiencies.

Perhaps at best I could say that 2016 was a year of self-reflection and discovery... But that'd be unfairly generous; it really was just a waste. Besides, I've been 'finding myself' forever now, and I've still not truly got off the ground... Hmm.

Anyway, I wish I had better things to say. For now, I'll just use this year's happenings - or lack thereof - as some kind of lesson... or something.

But I said I'd go over my resolutions. I wrote them in my Alora Fane blog ∞ here ∞. They were:

Find a girlfriend
Another year alone. Oh well!

Get Taming Dreams going
It's strange to think I was still actually in 'games developer mode' at the start of the year; that feels like a lifetime ago (though again I mention the pleasant - though very recent - resurfacing of old drives that I'll talk about soon). Obviously that didn't work, and if anything my games development has suffered more than any other aspect of my life. Such a shame. I don't think it's the end though; just the inevitable burnout after years of essentially non-stop headbutting of a wall that just wasn't breaking down.
...Interesting that that's the way my mind chose to describe that.

Earn at least some decent amount of money
I haven't come close!

Overcome fears of social media
Again, not yet... Maybe soon, but I don't know. I hear so many people speaking negatively of social media that I wonder whether I'm actually 'lucky' to be 'free' of it. Hmm.

Have another profound spiritual experience
I feel I've drifted further away from the light and into darkness... to put it tritely. If anything, the elation I felt about spirituality not too long ago has been mostly replaced by stony scepticism. Another shame.

Learn to drive
I didn't even get started. Learning I had a brain tumour made it seem unwise.

Pass my first university year with good grades
Gasp, something I actually did! I won an award for doing the best on my course of hundreds on the exams and everything. Not bad considering that I barely revised and switched career paths rather drastically (and got stupidly good grades when I did Video Games Arts too).

Get better at addressing emails, messages, etc
I still ignore a lot of things that I shouldn't... though I've had less and less correspondence the more I've drifted away from games development. I reply to comments here sometimes... but then not at all other times. I wonder whether this is ever something that'd be anything other than fickle.

So there. I planned to grow this year, but I'm actually worse off now than I was at the start. All I can say is that hopefully I won't be saying the same thing a year from now (unless fate decides to set off the bomb in my head).

...By which I mean "Happy New Year, and I hope everyone has a wonderful 2007 or whatever it even is now!!!!!!!"