(I meant to put out this journal at the turn of 2019, but something came up that I'll get into more later on)
I feel optimistic about this next year.
Both good and bad things happened last year, both to me and to society in general it seems, but I feel optimistic that we'll see a net positive for this year compared to the woes of last year.
This last year was a pretty strange one for me, so now I figure a year later, I can give a sort of "Year in Retrospective" for me for the things that happened.
A LOST FRIEND
I lost a long-time friend of mine toward the beginning of last year, after we had been in conflict for about a year prior due to the trials and tribulations of life.
There's not much I can say about it, really. Life is a trial and sometimes it can put someone into a really dark place. My friend was in a dark place for over a year, and our friends and I watched him get progressively worse and the increasingly erratic outbursts that were decreasingly like the him we knew were disconcerting to say the least. I don't want to get into what went wrong in his personal life, but basically it all came to a head in late January of last year when I realized that his negative behavior was starting to affect me in a profoundly negative way, and between that and the death of Deedee a few months prior, I just wasn't handling it well at all.
I sort of confronted him about his behavior, and it was quite apparent that he had given up on our friendship probably about three months prior to this, because I was holding on out of loyalty to him as a friend (you know, that whole "through thick and thin" thing?) while he didn't even respond, and I found out the next morning that he had left all social circles that we shared, and had blocked me.
That sucked.
Me being an extremely loyalty-driven person, I didn't take this well.
It took me over the course of 2018 to really fully come to terms with it all, both the loss of a friend and the loss of Deedee.
But in the end, the only thing I can really say of him is
"Thank you for being my friend."
And if I could offer up some advice from my experiences?
We came into conflict because our differences were emphasized, instead of our commonalities.
The one thing I would want everyone to take away from this story is
"Focus on your commonalities that brought you together in your relationships, not the conflicts that drove you apart. Almost all conflicts will seem so petty in the end compared to the severity of losing a cherished friend."
A MALICIOUS EX-COMMISSIONER
Another thing that happened last year was actually the reason I originally started writing this journal on New Year's Eve.
Things escalated after the event so I had to put off the journal until those things sorted out.
Basically, an ex-commissioner I had had several sour experiences with randomly messaged me on New Year's Eve, and the conversation was enough to remind me why I was planning on blocking him come New Year anyway. Oddly, he blocked me instead, when all I did was politely inform him that our previous commission attempts fell flat because he would drop conversations and not resume them. (and that I didn't appreciate being blamed for their falling through)
He basically responded with "okay this was a bad idea" and had blocked me on Discord before I could respond to his saying that.
As I was first writing this journal, I talked to a friend about him and my friend concluded that he messaged me because he joined a server my friend helps run, saw me on the server list and decided to message me.
When this is done for harassment purposes (which the chat with him was construed to be by the server admins), that's a pretty bannable offense, and the server admin and my friend banned him from their server after collecting extensive screenshot evidence from me in order to conclude if his behavior was toxic and/or malicious or not.
I woke up the morning after they banned him to a message of
(odd considering that's exactly how I'd describe how he treats artists)
This being something someone should never joke about, I was fully prepared to name names and write and post a screenshot-filled journal JUST about my caustic experiences with him, but I was advised by my friend and the server admin that he will probably not actually do anything, so I should only share the journal if he escalates things further.
Being said, the server admin noted him back with "We'll be adding your name to a public blacklist to warn others of your toxic behaviour, vindictive and malicious treatment of artists. Ciao." and he responded by accusing the server admin of "block evasion" because presumably he blocked me and thought I was the server admin XD;
A NEW PUPPY
Some positive things came out of last year, though.
Come March(?) of last year (I know I posted a journal leading up to it) my family bought a new puppy from a breeder that I actually know from the art community. He didn't wish to be named, but it's such a small world that he only lived maybe 8 hours away from my family, so my parents drove to take a look at the puppies and chose the puppy that became our dear Poppy~
She's now an 80lb ball of love, and I noticed that at some point I stopped comparing her to Deedee, and I took that to mean that she had slowly healed my grieving heart and filled it with love again.
I remember having a moment where I was looking at her while house sitting for my parents on a trip, and I thought to myself ".....Fuck. She's wormed her way into my heart. =A=; If she died tomorrow, I would still remember her for the rest of my life, just like Deedee."
May my family enjoy Poppy for many years to come~
EMOTIONAL GROWTH
Another positive to come out of 2018 was that over the course of the year, I had several interesting psychological breakthroughs in sorting out my own issues with negativity.
I have several tendencies that have plagued me for years, but I don't think I really was truly aware of them until they came up last year:
I tend to take things as worse than they are.
I tend to internalize negative experiences easily.
I tend to read into silence
Together, I found they told a story:
I have trouble differentiating between my own bad thoughts and reality.
I learned the first and second when I would have a bad experience with someone, conclude "okay, this person is just that way", and with like 6 different people last year, I was told that the person wasn't the way I saw them when talk of the person came up with a friend months later.
The third I learned in December when something happened and I asked a friend about it and I thought my friend was giving me the silent treatment. This happened several times in the next couple days, and I began to panic and it was affecting my sleep. After we talked about it in detail several days later, I had to learn the hard way for the sake of my own sanity that "Silence doesn't have to mean anything more than silence", and I used to be someone who would often worry I'm being given the silent treatment.
Now I think it's just healthier to assume it means the person just didn't respond yet or even forgot, and that I should poke them for response after adequate time has passed. (my friend even told me to do this if she goes silent again XD; )
Putting them together though, I realized in the shower one day that they all had a common thread in my having a tendency to take my own negative thoughts as potentially based on truth so I would take them seriously, when they're really just negative thoughts and nothing more.
As all of those individual tendencies seemed to share this as a common thread, I speculate that if I resolve the common thread, the offshooting tendencies should be resolved as well because their emotional basis goes away.
So, I hope this has all been a good development in me shifting to a more positive mindset, because negativity hasn't helped anyone.
STATE OF HEALTH ISSUES
Another positive to come out of 2018 is the state of my health.
While not perfect nor even resolved, it APPEARS through working with my doctor this past year that we have worked through virtually all of the problems that came up with me, and the last remaining issue could very well be my sleep issues. (...which is ironic because the sleep issues were the biggest problem I ever faced
;;;; ) But... It really feels that we've come full circle, because resolving this issue means resolving the problems that kicked off my health issues to begin with back in 2011 when my health got all fucked up by overexerting myself for a year straight at a college that was rated WAAAAAAY more difficult than my fragile body could handle.
As my mentality improves, though, I really do believe there's a link between emotions and physical well-being. I'm still dealing with a fair amount of issues, but it seems as I come to terms with my own emotional issues, my physical problems (health issues) become easier to deal with.
Once my sleep clears up and I clear out my back log of commissions and other various unfinished things that I want to finish, I have a game project I have all planned out that I wish to pursue, as after playing with using Game Maker 2 last year, the experience helped me better identify what would or wouldn't be easy things to make at my own current skill level, and I believe I have identified a project that I would find satisfying.
It scares me to talk about it because I feel like every time I talk about a project or post something before it's finished, it is cursed to obscurity. It's like a weird superstition I have after it happening over and over and over again in life ; A ;
(...I don't know which psychological damage it would tie into, but this is something my doctor also identified.... I have... kind of a fear of trying again after having a bad experience. My several previous attempts at making a game failed (mostly because health issues) and it scares me.... But I should persevere. Every time I make a journal and talk about a game I want to make, I take it really hard when I can't follow up, and I don't want this to be another false start.... I'm scared, but I'm doing my best to take life step by step and day by day and remind myself "it doesn't have to be like last time")
So, I guess that was my year.
Here's to a wonderful 2019!!!