HIVVER|W1NTER|XEIΜΏΝ

Everyone’s making these this year but I’ve been doing them for 4 years now so I’m more hip & With It.

I Jest, I Jest. I got into the habit of doing things like this starting 2020 because, as we all know, that year proved certainly quite interesting. So here I am, upkeeping the tradition on a NEW WEBSITE at 2AM after partying hard (playing board games) with my siblings & drinking enough coke to make my stomach absolutely pissed at me. (…oh man the demons that came out of me at 7am…. folks… i haven’t held onto life so hard since this happened to me a few years back).

I’ll be sure to plop the retrospectives up here from the previous years & back-date them. I’m still organising things between 3 different websites and trying to head into 2025 a lot more… Collected than I have been in a while.

So, after reading my 2023 recap earlier today, I’m happy to say, that for me, personally… 2024 was not that bad… it wasn’t GREAT but the ups and downs kind of equalled everything out to a net nothing. I feel like I did a whole lot of Nothing. Lots of Waiting…. like… LOTS of waiting… for nothing & not knowing what to DO while doing all that waiting. Let’s slap some pros & cons down why not?

So, like, QUITE up & down this year. The name-change wait was pretty excruciating and the process right now is still like… Ongoing. I’d like to make a post detailing it a lot more in case it would help someone else in my situation. I went a bit… unconventional about it, and maybe it’ll help others in a similar spot. Plus it’s just kind of wild documenting a process that’s so convoluted for No Reason!

Anyway.

Let’s see if I can remember how this year went. I promised to take notes but I didn’t and I’m starting to wonder at my neuro-divergence’s lack of diagnosis. Haha. Too bad THAT also costs the magic number: $4000+ so we’re putting THAT off one more year~

Here we go:

---

THE MONTHLY BREAKDOWN…

JANUARY — This feels like 500 years ago. Waiting Waiting, painstaking waiting. It’s been 4 months since I put my name change in. I get a notice, yay application was RECEIVED…as of [end of January] it will take… FOUR MONTHS FOR THE DECISION TO BE MADE… M-more waiting ok…;;; We take it easy bc 2023 was Insane. We also have a tiny con here to donate all our proceeds to the efforts in Palestine. It’s a really nice little show! Tas & I have been together for [redacted] years!! Exciting!!

FEBRUARY — Wow our con-season started early tbh. Maybe that’s why this year felt so long. We had Montreal Maker’s Market’s Valentine’s show this month. Slower show than the Holiday one which makes sense. We have a calm February, start getting back into the swing of things.

MARCH — Tas’ birthday month. We’re always spending this month cutting things down to the wire preparing for Calgary expo at the end of April. Honestly. This is all a blur. We’re also preparing for PINTOPIA 2 (Backerkit’s Enamel Pin Prompt)… this is also the month we spend scrambling for commissions… and footing Ghost’s vet bill bc the poor guy also has to get his teeth pulled… (Ghost… does NOT like to be handled… so… this was pretty much a nightmare situation for us).

APRIL — Ghost’s recovery… poor guy. I was really proud of myself the two weeks we had to give him medication. It was such a mental turmoil. Ghost was never a nervous cat BUT– he was always really wary of us actually handling him physically and I had to give him 2 doses of antibiotics, 2 doses of one pain killer, 1 dose of another painkiller… into his mouth, the thing that hurts him. Anyway he took his cone of shame off the second day he was home (AAA) and then I was the only one who could approach him (because Tas usually works with him on the whole ‘picking up’ training so he’s always wary of them (AAAA x2)) He didn’t like me much by the end of those 2 weeks. I think I missed a couple of his shots by the end but he’s better now so I guess that’s all good?? Oh yeah– also 7 Deadly Pins launches, successfully on backerkit for PINTOPIA and I guess we dip for CALGARY EXPO (and find out that everyone’s gonna be in the BMO for 2025 so that should prove interesting this year, I think).
ALSO WE GOT INTO OTAK BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH LETSGOOOOOOOO!!!

MAY — The name change decision is looming, I get a call but its just bc they need Tas’ ID idk to make sure they’re a real life person who can vouch for my feelings or something (the lady on the phone was nice and said I should be getting a response abt my name change… soon… but it shouldn’t be an issue) hahaaaaa;;;;
Oh well hey, our Dino Plushies launch and succeed pretty well but wow yikes those testing fees are insane (and totally fucking useless now, $4k (what the fuck is up with this number??) down the drain whateveritsfine) Also we do our usual Gauntlet and have TCAF (we were invited by other Hive artists to do a stamp rally which was really cute and fun ;;A;; so sorry again for forgetting our stamp ffs i promise we’re more professional than that) & MCAF which is always a blast~!

JUNE — God that name change… my dudes… my bros… I call them up like “teehee… is there any chance I can get an update?” and the same lady who called me about Tas’ ID goes, “:) no”. So I’m waiting….. and waiting…. and waiting (and just about peeling my skin off about it lbh)

JULY — JUST before I decide to call them again, fucking irritated at this point– what’s that… in the mail???? MYGOD????? YAHOOO!! YIPPIEEEEEE!! It’s official. ITS LEGAL. My name!! (also a list of things i gotta get working on to change–shhhh–). Happy MTL Comiccon… wow that show fucking sucked!!!! We did half our sales we made the year before!! It’s Dismal! Wow! We just spent 4k on vet bills!!!!!! aaAAAA!!!

AUGUST — We do Otakuthon it goes well, but we definitely didn’t do as good as we did 2 years ago… but we’re in a recession and we’ll take what we can get. I also get my funky lil photos taken for my new Medicare card & my License…. oh the license, more on that in my other post about The Process, I think. Happy Birthday 2 me I’m now 3[redacted] years young :> Also we got all our pins for the 7 Deadly Pins so that means we’re shipping things out in September!

SEPTEMBER — Oh hey we actually made it back to Ottawa Comiccon this year! It was nice! We did better than we expected but we already had an …. extremely low bar for it this year. So we decided to book a table for 2025 and see if we can get an upward trend going! This is our last big con b4 the

OCTOBER — Prism Knights!! Plushies!! OC-Tobers!! A tiny break to do some spooky shit!! I swear we blinked and this month was over. I think I only managed a few OC-tobers before quitting because I just couldn’t focus long enough and none of them ‘felt right’ (looking back on them I really like how a bunch of them turned out so maybe I was just overwhelmed/frazzled and couldn’t really focus). I spent a lot of time with friends this month… but it’s been a rough year for them and my mental capacity is just so fucking angry at the state of things for them. UGH. Things are getting better though, we’re all getting through it one day at a time.

NOVEMBER — The longest month ever!!! I don’t know this month stretched on and on. It was pretty nice. I actually beat NANO this year! I reformatted Prism Knights One Last Time for its anthology. We didn’t get the hardcover (I’m still bummed but maybe one more time… in the future…) Canada Post goes on strike… honestly good for them. I was really rooting for them this holiday season. Disturb that peace, fight for those rights! We end the month off with 2 back-to-back weekend events.

DECEMBER — And start this month off with 2 back-to-back weekend events. I’m exhausted. But I’m also missing my writing routine so I start up a new routine to write 500-1000 words a day. You can read about it on it’s landing page (or start post). I scramble to pick up gifts bc the post is still on strike (unfortunately they’re sent back to work before demands are met…. way too late to make up holiday sales so like honestly it feels like salt in the wound for small businesses who were in support of the strike, watching CEOs & the Government take their rights away. I’m angry!! I’m so mad at this!! And I’m also mad at every Canadian Shithead who went on screeds about how Canpost sucks!! You suck!! ARGH). Christmas was quiet this year, half the fam’s on vacation in the sun. I’m happy to stay home and rest and recoup… except we spent the last week overhauling the W&W website……….. that’s not REAL work is it??

As I was writing this, my year of seemingly Nothing sure starts looking like a year of actually A Lot Of Things because there’s 365 days to do shit. I just know I didn’t entirely succeed at all of the things I set out to do.

---

2024’S GOALS…

Okay lets see, my Resolutions or GOALS from last year included:

• Pick a writing project & finish it. It wasn’t the draft I was EXPECTING to finish but I DID progress on that one during NaNo AND I did FINISH a draft (and am almost done a SECOND draft on a different story) so I’d say, mission success!
• Finish one whole sketchbook. That’s right we’re going back to traditional baby (at least for fun). Haha … haaaa ohhhhhhhhhhhh noooooo past me is always so funny when i make goals like this… they just never wind up working out but the thought… was thereeee…;;;
• Try a new art medium: lino-cutting, screen-printing, wood burning, puppet making. Something you spend time making for fun. turns out all of this Costs Money which we’ve been trying to save this year and we got scrapped of $8k this year in misc overshot expenses so I also didn’t really get to do this, this year… I actually miss doing photography which I lapsed entirely this year. Egh.
• Read More. WE MADE EFFORTS. I’m in the middle of reading a couple things right now. Nothing finished. God I love doing it though. I might give myself a more concrete goal for next year.
• Pitch Something. I didn’t FINISH the pitch but I’m working on a pitch I’m hoping to finalise this year forreal.
• BONUS — Make a very short solo-comic. Nope…;;;

Half & Half….. honestly this pretty much sums up my year quite well. Lots of Trying not much Finishing as I’d like but it’s all steps towards a better 2025?

---

2025’s Goals

This year I’m splitting these up into concrete & personal I think.

LETS START WITH CONCRETE.

• READ 30 BOOKS THIS YEAR
• UPKEEP DAILY WRITING GOAL (500-1000 WORDS/DAY)
• FINISH DAILY PHOTOS PROJECT
• FINISH A SMALL SKETCHBOOK
• FINISH THAT PITCH

AND THEN THE PERSONAL/VAGUERIES

• GET OUT THERE MORE/BE MORE PERSONABLE
• TRY SOMETHING NEW THIS YEAR
• GET YOUR HEALTH CHECKED (IMPORTANT, DUDE)
• LESS… TAKE-OUT.
• BUILD BETTER HABITS

These make sense to me, anyway. I don’t have any of my work goals up here because that’s work and those promises are scattered and fluctuate… also this is my personal space, whatever. I don’t gotta answer to yOU– (sorry I’m feeling really funny this mor–afternoon as I wrap up this post at almost 2pm.

But we still have One More Order Of Business.

---

THINGS THAT STUCK OUT TO ME THIS YEAR…

A lot of my reading list is Shorts because I didn’t do MUCH reading but SHORTBOX always comes in clutch and I’ve been devouring TOR’s library of short stories lately. I’ll make a post on that later as I really start making my way through the library because reading short fiction has been REALLY fun lately!

Movies…. and TV… just haha HMM wowee. I love film LOL.
And Games… I really thought we did more but all these titles really just sat wiggling in my guts.
I would add a list of shit I listened to but you could also just READ THIS POST about that instead.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS

They might be Hot Takes, they might be Not Takes At all but here’s some thoughts about things I interacted with this year:

• Short fiction good actually.
• PAPER MARIO 64 is a better game than THOUSAND YEAR DOOR.
• AGE OF ASHES — we’ve been playing this game for about 5 years and wowee am I still emotional about it! our GM did a fantastic job with the closing scenes I still get misty-eyed thinking about all our characters from this game ;A;
• LOVE LIES BLEEDING its the best movie ever. I’ve watched it I think 7 times this year. Just thinking about it makes me wanna watch it again. Its OST pretty much wrote my pitch script for me.
• DES ROCS i love… my beloved. My music. God I found so much shit For Me this year.
• SPENCER SUTHERLAND a friend showed me their THE DRAMA album, it didnt hit my 2024 Tunes post this year because I only listened to it in DEC but its been on repeat since.
• TEXT RP IS EVERYTHING TO ME its something I don’t talk a lot about but so much is going on in our little adventures every evening. We spend hours playing out our own scenarios. Its just fun! Organic reading and writing just for entertainment’s sake.
• THE PALE BEYOND someone else PLEASE play this game I am DYING to talk about it and I’m still SHATTERED and EMOTIONAL about it.
• NIGHT IN THE WOODS kinda meh, kinda overrated. Its ok. Didn’t age as well I think.
• DREDGE hmmm haha wow. i really need to play it again. The new DLC is out……… maaaaybe….. its time.
• SONIC 3 MY GOOOOOOOODDDD SHADOWWWW– fuck this movie was just stupid fun.

---

Okay that’s enough reacting. I’m sleepy. It’s time for me to go take a fat nap with my son. I’m wishing myself, my partner, our cats, and YOU, reading this, with a much better 2025 (yeah even if 2024 was Okay or even Good to you, you deserve it).

Let’s kick it in the ass. Onward & Upward.