A Year in Review - 2025

Last year, I wanted 2025 to be the year where I 'perform', me getting out there 
with frequent art uploads and building a fanbase, etc. I fell flat on my face 
and unfortunately that wasn't how 2025 went at all, but I don't feel bad about 
it, because it wasn't a result of being lazy or anything. I've managed to work 
harder this year and probably learn more than any year previous, and I am 
really happy about that. Overall, this has been a great year for me, with very 
high highs and very low lows, but I always believed in myself throughout it 
all, and I still do now. I'm becoming more confident in myself and my 
abilities, and I'm starting to make my life into what I really want it to be. 

Ive come to learn that most skills take a very long time for someone to reach 
their highest level of performance, most researchers say 10 years and/or 10,000 
hours. And that is 10 years of hard work, it's very easy to let that time pass 
on by and not learn or improve much at all. I've certainty been victim of 
letting that time pass on by, especially when I first got into art. One needs 
to practice deliberately, challenging ourselves, experimenting, and correcting 
mistakes over and over again in order to truly improve. 
And so I know that art is going to take a long time for me, and I still have a 
long ways to go. I'm not sure when exactly I'll be highly popular, and when I 
will be able to tell my most precious stories that have been simmering in the 
back of my head for years, but that is OK because I know it will happen one 
day, because I am here to embrace art as my lifetime journey. I am blessed and 
grateful that the circumstances in my life have led me to be able to pursue art 
as a career, even if I have had to deal with many difficult personal and 
financial moments, especially this year, but everything that I've made it past 
has only helped me become a stronger person and understand how to explore 
deeper ideas and tell better stories because of them. 

In addition to really taking in that art is going to be something I seriously 
pursue for the rest of my life, another factor of motivation came after I 
watched '2001: A Space Odyssey' this year for the first time, and it made me 
realize the importance of the pursuit of making my own masterful creative 
works, and makes me want to understand how to create things at such a high 
level, because I appreciate these masterful works so deeply. The amount of 
resources that someone has does not matter when they dedicate themselves to 
become a master of a craft, because Stanley Kubrick was able to make that film 
all the way back in 1968, which has a compelling story and great visuals which 
still hold up to this day! And there are people today with all the modern 
technologies available that don't take advantage of it at all, they just make 
quite basic low quality content, which is becoming more prevalent than ever 
before with AI slop these days. So although our tools matter and can help us 
quite a bit, I think it's easy to see that it is still up to us to utilize 
those tools well to create our best works, and I have a deep drive inside of me 
to learn how to create my best works. It would not be satisfying to me to leave 
the creation of my own artworks and stories to AI or even just other people, I 
need to understand it myself too. 


Also, here is a small article I wrote a few months ago, which I never ended up 
posting because it felt too short. I wanted to integrate it into my end of year 
review blog post, but then as I wrote the above text, I didn't feel like most 
of it fit good anywhere, so here it is on it's own: 
After enough website related improvements and fixes piled up, I decided to take 
the time to do a small overhaul to my website once again! I also thought that 
now would be a good time to do it, since starting in 2026 I would like to do my 
best to focus completely on weekly uploads and building a fanbase with my art, 
which unfortunately I have struggled with this year. The website is still 
largely has the same core layout as before, but now I've added more icons and 
gifs, since I've been inspired by many neocities websites. And while I would 
still like to keep my website minimalistic overall, I have been wanting it to 
look a bit more stylish and expressive for awhile. There are still a few pages 
that are a work in progress, but overall I'm happy with the layout and icons 
that I have now, and I think everything looks even better than before! So I 
think this will be the last major overhaul for my site for awhile, and from 
here I'll be making small additions and improvements from time to time. 

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