the-last-airbadger

[the-last-airbadger]

My 2024

It’s always a weird moment when you realize another year is about to draw to a close. Did I know that it was almost 2025? Yes. Did I fully realize, writing this on the 29th of December 2024, that the year 2024 literally would only last like two more days? Nope. Not at all. Somehow the future is always closer than I think it is.

But is that necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think it is. I, for one, am quite excited to get into this new year. Besides, I always love the end of the year and the start of a new one. It is both a time of reflection (which I greatly enjoy – there’s a reason I always make these yearly posts) and a time of new beginnings, and I can’t help but feel optimistic as I consider the potential that a fresh start could hold.

The Beginning of 2024 vs Now

Maybe the reason for my optimism is the progress I made in the last year. When this year started, I was working a job I disliked, and struggled to find my way as a newly-employed adult. Full-time employment was a challenge in its own right, what with the little amount of free time I suddenly had, but the fact that I hated my job didn’t necessarily help matters. I remember feeling insecure and helpless, not really knowing what I was doing or how to change my life in a way that would make me enjoy it again. My confidence took a hit, and I remember how I would constantly try to think of ways out of this corporate life. What if I wrote a book and got rich? Then I’d never have to work again. What if I became a famous youtuber? What if I could sell my art? Every day when I went to work, all I wanted was to find a way to get away from there.

As for my personal life… well, I felt pressured to work hard on my skills to find a way to get good enough to do them professionally, which led to a lot of stress. I remember thinking that no matter what I did, I just didn’t seem to have enough time to do the things I felt I should to and the things I wanted to, and also have a social life on top of that. And to be fair, I still don’t have that balance figured out exactly, but the stress I felt at work and the stress I placed upon myself to perform after work really made for an exhausting existence, not to mention the fact that I also had to follow a course with homework that took almost a full day each weekend. It’s no wonder I wasn’t exactly thriving at the start of the year

And now?

Now I have a job that I actually enjoy. My colleagues are fun to be around, and on most days, time passes fairly quickly. I have enough to do, I have something to occupy myself with, and at the end of the day I go home feeling satisfied with the work I did. That doesn’t mean that I’m always excited to go to work. I’m still sad when the weekend is over, I still don’t want to get out of bed when my alarm rings in the morning, but I don’t dread it anymore, and once I’m there I don’t actually mind being there. Now, it’s just that I’d rather do other things, and that is such an important difference to me. It may not sound like much to some, but a year ago, I genuinely didn’t think it would be possible for me to find a job that I liked, or even one that I could live with. To me, this is honestly the best case scenario, because it means I don’t have to escape the corporate life anymore to be happy. I don’t have this impossible mission anymore. Instead, I can just… live my life.

My personal life has drastically improved as well because this change. Now, I can live the weekends free of dread and worry for Monday. My free time is actually mine, and I can enjoy it without even having to think about work, which is probably the biggest improvement. I also no longer feel the need to stress myself out over devoting myself to an alternate future. I still struggle with finding a balance between social life and personal life, balancing my chores with my various hobbies, and constantly feeling like I don’t have enough time to do everything I want, but I’m in a place now where I can finally take the time to find this balance. Finally, my personal life doesn’t have to take the back seat anymore, and I can’t describe how much my life has improved because of that.   

The Best Things about 2024

Despite the rough start, I can actually name several things that were great about this year! The most important one is the personal development and growth I’ve gone through this year. I followed a course on personal development that really taught me a lot, not only about myself and what I want and need, but it also about life in general. It taught me the value of living in the moment. It taught me how to trust myself, and showed me how much more capable I became when I did. It showed me how often I still get caught up in my own thoughts, and showed me how freeing it could be to stop worrying and start doing. I’m the type of person that even worries that I’m getting personal development wrong. With every step I take, I am cautious, because I’m so afraid of getting it wrong, crossing my own boundaries, overextending myself, making a mistake that will damage me irrevocably or something like that… and honestly the most freeing advice I’ve gotten this year is that all of that… is okay. That sometimes you have to cross a boundary to even find out where it is. And though I’m still scared, I'm doing my best to take that advice to heart, and just… do what I feel is right, even if I get it wrong. Even if it hurts and even if it sucks, I’ll still grow, and I’ll better for it.

And some things did suck. I went through a period where I wasn’t really on great terms with a close friend, and it sucked! But I did learn a very important lesson there too: that I can trust myself, even if others do not. Everyone, ultimately, experiences everything differently, and just because someone else’s experience differs from mine, doesn’t mean that mine is no longer valid. I used to live life needing validation from this friend for every choice I made, because I didn’t trust myself to get things “right.” Now I know there is no one objective “right” way to do things, and that if I cannot do the “right” thing, I might as well do what I believe is right. So even though it sucked, this experience taught me an important lesson that I hope I’ll carry with me for a long time.

Okay, now for the more lighthearted and happy part of this pitch, because I did say I was able to name several great things that happened this year, and name them I shall!

The first thing that pops up in my head is ARTMS! My girls ARTMS finally debuted this year after the disbandment of LOONA in 2023, and boy did they deliver! Their title track exceeded all my expectations and their album was everything I'd hoped for! It was literally the perfect debut for me, and I can say with full confidence that they are now my new favorite girlgroup (sorry Loossemble)! And to make matters even better, I actually got to see them LIVE in Cologne in October! After just barely missing Haseul at the LOONA concert in 2022, meeting her and the other girls of ARTMS was a dream come true, and that night was probably one of the best nights of the year! I’m even sitting right in front of her in the picture we took, it was literally perfect!

And talking about meeting celebrities, I also got to meet Matt Mercer this year! It was awesome to get my picture taken with him, and I even got him to sign a picture for me. It’s always so surreal to meet someone you admire and look up to, and it was amazing to meet him and have a conversation with him!

Another cool thing that happened this year is that I actually got to try out voice acting in a professional studio! I'd once applied for an internship there, and though I never actually got it, they did invite me to come to their voice acting trials, which meant that I actually got to try out voice acting in a professional setting, which was amazing! It was terrifying and exciting and even though I’m now quite certain that voice acting is not for me (at least not in the industry of Dutch Dubbing), it was such an awesome experience that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss. I'd been so nervous, but the exileration of actually doing it and acting and singing in front of professionals and getting good feedback was unlike anything I'd felt in a while! I still remember standing outside after having just done that, and realizing for the first time since finishing my studies that I'd actually reached a point where I didn't want to go back to that time anymore. I realised that I’d grown too much since then to want to go back to being the person I used to be. I was finally ready to look to the future and find something even better.

After that, I started finding joy in challenging myself and tried to do more things that were not only fun but also a bit challenging. I accepted a solo part in my choir performance (which was also a highlight of the year) even though I was nervous to sing for an audience. I love singing and letting my voice be heard, so I said yes. I also said yes to being a dungeon master when my family asked me to. It scared me to be a dungeon master because I was afraid of getting things wrong, but I did always want to try and see if I liked it, so I said yes. I also travelled to a different country without my mom or dad for the first time, which was another milestone for me. And I went to Walibi fight nights to experience several haunted houses. Was it terrifying? Yes. Was it also the best time I’d had in a long time? Also yes. Totally worth it.

As for the smaller joys of life, there were plenty of those as well. I bought myself a switch, a new gaming monitor and a PlayStation 5, allowing me to finally release the inner gamer in me. I started spending more time with my siblings. I did a 24 hour readathon in which I managed to finish three books in a single day (which might be a new record). I created some cool drawings. All the SHINee members released new music. I discovered a new favorite band. I baked brownies. Life was good.

My Resolutions for 2024?

Okay, so now it’s time to see if I managed to complete all my resolutions this year. The resolutions are always my favorite part, and since I’ve already written quite a lot of words in the previous sections, let’s just jump straight into it!

Life goals

Save money. I want to have reached my goal in at least two of my savings accounts, I want to be halfway to my goal in at least 4 accounts total, and want have saved at least 1/6th of my goal in my emergency backup fund – Success! I’ve reached my goal in more than four accounts and have saved 1/5th of my goal in the emergency fund, so I’d say that is more than enough

Buy a car. – I put this on the list last time because it was something I was working towards. I did actually almost buy a car, but eventually chose not too because it wasn’t the right fit. Now I still don’t have a car, but I do still have the money I saved for it, so I would count this as a partial success as it will make it significantly easier to buy one whenever I do decide to get one.

Move out. – Unfortunately, housing is kind of a problem in this day and age. I’m looking hard, but I haven’t been able to secure a place to live just yet.

Keep going to the gym, lose some fat, and build some muscle! For my surgery, I have to lose around 5 kilograms before April, so, to give myself an actual measurable goal: I want to weigh less than 70 kg in April, and around 65 kg by the end of the year. As for the muscle… I’ll count on pictures document my progress there! – big success! I weighed 68 kg in April and currently weigh a little over 65 kg. As for the muscle, I don’t have pictures to show it, but I’m like 99% certain my biceps have grown.

Writing Goals

Finish writing a draft for the first half of my book. If anything, I think I probably should have written at least 8 chapters. Maybe 10… - I know this happens every year, but I completely gave up on writing once again. I don’t know what it is, but every time I start I just… get overwhelmed and quit. It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just that writing takes a lot of effort, and I usually prefer to spend my free time relaxing instead of “working.” That’s not to say I will never pick it back up, but at the moment it’s just not a priority, and I don’t want to force myself to do something when I don’t feel like it’s the right time for it. I do want to try to find the joy in writing again sometime, and I do definitely want to face and overcome whichever obstacles are holding me back from doing that, but forcing myself to write really just isn’t working. I think taking the pressure off might actually be more productive.

Build a habit of writing – Yeah, another fail. For the same reasons as mentioned above.

Reading Goals

Read 24 books! This year, I’m going to set my reading challenge at 24 books. It’s a bit of a random number, one book less than my previous goal, but 24 a year means exactly two books a month, and that feels reasonable!  - Finished my 24th book today!

I still want to work on trying to reduce the amount of unread books I own. I think I’ll make a list of 10 books I own now that I want to have read by the end of the year. Those books are going to be: The Hero of Ages, The Anatomy of Story, Rule of Wolves, Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality, Cress, If We Were Villains, The Dawn of Yangchen, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods and The Fault in Our Stars - I finished all of these!

Read more non-fiction books and classics on my phone! I want to have purchased and read at least 3 books on my phone! – Fail… I read one of them! But then I lost interest in the second book I was reading because it required to much focus to be read on public transport… and I kind of didn’t want to read it. So yeah, fail there….

Read 4 classics! – I didn’t read a single one. Did buy one though. It’s going on the list for next year

Finish 5 series! – I finished 4 of the series I set for myself, so almost!

Finish my Heroes of Olympus Reread – I decided to focus on unread books instead this year, so unfortunately I did not read any Heroes of Olympus books

Art Goals

Finish the character poster of my own D&D character! I already have the frame ready, and it’s starting to look so cool. I really want to finish this drawing as soon as I can! – Success! It turned out pretty cool

Finish at least 1 of the two art projects that I have planned for my D&D group – unfortunately I didn’t finish any of them

Draw 5 digital character posters – Okay, I didn’t exactly draw the posters that I meant to draw when I wrote this goal, but since I also said I wanted to improve my digital art skills and draw characters, I will count this as a success. This year, I made 5 drawings of the characters from my D&D party wearing various silly hats, and though it started off as a joke, those drawings actually turned out really well and I was very proud of them, so I am counting this one as a success!

Finally use the paint my grandparents gave me last year, and make a painting – It saddens me that I still haven’t done this. I need to block out a day for this so I actually do it!

Fill 2-5 pages in my physical sketchbook with coloured drawings, using the new coloured pencils I bought this month. I bought these pencils for a reason. I want to learn how to use them – I haven’t even picked up these pencils all year… another thing I need to plan a day for. I won’t give up!

Other Goals

Finish 5 games. I’m once again going to try to finish Subnautica: Below Zero and Skyrim, since it’s starting to bother me that I still haven’t yet. I definitely want to finish Baldur’s Gate. I also want to finish my replay of Detroit: Become Human. As for the final game… I don’t know. Maybe if I ever come into the possession of a PlayStation 5, I’ll finally get to play Spider-Man 2! If not, we’ll see! I’m sure I’ll find a nice game that I really want to finish next year! – Yes to Below Zero, Detroit: Become Human and Spider-Man 2! No to Baldur’s Gate and still no to Skyrim. I won’t give up!

Actually properly check out the Doctor Who audio adventures – I totally forgot about this goal….

So that is 6 successes, 3 half-successes, and 10 failures… Not the best ratio, but I think where I went wrong this year was setting too many goals. Throughout the year, I kept getting stressed and burnt out feeling like I never had enough time to do anything in my time off. The thing is, even though it’s true that I have less time for hobbies than I used to, I still have plenty of time to myself. The real issue is that during that time, I struggle to enjoy a lot of it because I’m to preoccupied with arbitrary time limits that I put on myself. But really, does it matter that much if finishing a book or a game takes longer than I thought? Does it really matter whether I finish that book this year or next year? In that sense, I think changing my perspective is actually what is going to make the difference. Being more productive and reading more books is never going to get rid of that stress because there will always be more books, more games, more things to finish. Doing more isn’t the solution. So I want to see what happens if I do less.

I think it’s time to accept that I simply have less time for my hobbies than I used to. A year ago that thought would’ve deeply saddened me, but right now, it feels kinda freeing. My life is still good when I am not reading a book or playing a game, and I want to enjoy those moments more without worrying about the books I am not finishing. I want to enjoy connecting with people, going outside, investing in my body and in the environment, try new things. And when I do have some time to myself, I want to be able to simply experience the joy of reading a book or playing a game – or making some art if I feel like it – without feeling the pressure of achieving something. I think that will be my biggest goal for 2025.

Expectations for 2025

Oh boy, I haven’t actually given this much thought yet. I truly don’t really know what to expect from the next year, but I’m going to give this my best shot.

In 2025 I’ll officially sign a new contract directly with my current employer (instead of an intermediary) which will last for the entire year! So on the job front, I’m not actually expecting much change this year. I will earn a bit more money, but that will be the only significant change on the job front, and I’m completely fine with that. I have no intention of leaving any time soon, and I’m not looking for any new challenges this year. I’m hoping 2025 can be the year of settling in, finding that work-life balance and focusing on enjoying life.

And talking about enjoying life, I already have several concerts and outings planned for 2025! I’ll go to Dan and Phil and Porter Robinson in February, the PlayStation concert in April, and Stray Kids in the summer! I’m quite excited for these. Especially Stray Kids, since they are a group I never really expected to be able to see live!

I’m also planning to go on a trip to Paris with @the-official-pentacorn and @asiandutchgirl in march, so I think that will happen, and then hopefully I’ll be able to take some time off in June and September/October as well! I also hope that I’ll actually be able to find a house and move out this year, though I couldn’t say when I think this will happen… I think either it will happen very soon, like in the first month of the year, or somewhere halfway, when I’ve had more time to look around and find something. I also heard rumors that ARTMS is working on a new album, so I’ll look forward to that too!

And finally, my biggest expectation is also the last one: phalloplasty. When I got on the waiting list for phalloplasty, I calculated that if everything went as planned, I’d be off the waiting list in December 2025. Which means that, if everything goes well, I might have my surgery date by the end of the year. I don’t think I’ll actually have had the surgery itself before the end of the year, but I am expecting to have a date by then. Possibly in January? That would be a nice full-circle moment after the last surgery, which also took place in January. I’ll be honest, it is kind of scary to think that surgery is actually getting so close, since it’s such an intense surgery. Still, the sooner I get it over with the better. The thought of not having that dysphoria anymore… it would make everything worth it.

2025 Resolutions

Okay, so like I said, this year I want to focus on simply enjoying life. I’ve been way to stressed about productivity, optimizing my time, and I feel like it’s slowly breaking me down from the inside. I’m constantly exhausted, and feel disappointed in myself whenever I’ve “wasted” another hour.

This year, I want to let go of all of that. I don’t know how to break that down into a manageable resolution, but I just want to put that out there. I think, actually, that the best way to translate that into my resolutions is to just set fewer, smaller, more manageable goals. Kind of in a “less is more” type of way.

This year, let’s just have fun and try to sit back, relax, and enjoy life. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to challenge myself at all! In fact, I feel like on average there is actually a lot of fun I miss out on because I'm too afraid to either fail or stand out. This year, I want to challenge myself to try new things that I think I'd enjoy regardless of whether or not I think I'd be good at it. I also want to see if I can learn to enjoy challenge for what it is, and learn that I don’t have to be good at it immediately to enjoy it or get some kind of value from it.

Still, these challenges can be as big or small as I want it to be, and this year I want to focus on the small ways I can challenge myself. For example:

Playing a game at a higher difficulty than normal to really challenge my gaming skills, but also lower the difficulty when I get frustrated and it doesn’t work out. Trying something “difficult” is a challenge I’d usually rather avoid, but I also have to learn that not succeeding at something “difficult” doesn’t mean I’m a failure and that I suck.

Finally painting on that canvas! I’m scared to do it because I don’t want to mess up and ruin it, but if I don’t use it… well my grandparents gave me that gift for nothing. Plus, I think it could be really fun, because I do like painting.

Sometimes the small steps are just as important as the big ones, and for me, not caring about being good at things might actually be the biggest challenge I can set myself. So I want to challenge myself to just… do things and have fun.

Still, I will be setting some resolutions, because I do appreciate having a little bit of a goal and direction. So without further ado, here are my goals for 2025!

Life Goals:

Move out. I’m getting closer to my goal each year, and now, for the first time since I first wrote down this goal as a resolution a few years ago, it actually feels manageable. I have the money, I know what I want and where to look for it. All I need is to find the right place (and have a little bit of luck)

Get a surgery date for phalloplasty. This is not something I can actively work towards, but phalloplasty is a life goal regardless, and I hope I can get a little bit closer to that goal this year

Wear a tank top in summer. I want to keep working out to the point that I feel confident enough to wear a tank top this summer and show off my arms. In a way, this is just another way of saying I want to keep working out, but even if my muscles don’t grow the way I want them to, I hope I can find the confidence to show off my arms regardless

Reading Goals:

Read 10 books! This year, I’m drastically lowering my reading challenge. The pressure of having to read 2 books a month really made me dislike the reading challenge this year, and I don’t want to repeat that. I just want to enjoy reading.

Finish all my unread books. One challenge I did enjoy in 2024 was the challenge I set myself to read all the unread books I currently own! As of this moment, I only own ten more books that I haven’t read yet, and I want to have finished those books by the end of 2025 (hence the number 10 for my reading challenge). To make this goal more measurable for next year, the books I want to finish are:

20000 Leagues Under the Sea

Darkhearts

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The Druid’s Call

If This Gets Out

This Book Kills

Dune

1984

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Percy Jackson: Wrath of the Triple Goddess

Winter (Lunar Chronicles book 4)

Creative goals:

Finish one D&D art project! I have a plan for a drawing in mind… now I just have to actually make it!

Use my unused art materials! This is kind of an extension of the two goals I failed last years, but I really want to make sure that this year, I use each of the art materials I didn't use last year at least once! I want to:

Use the paint my grandparents gave me two years ago. I really hope it's not too late and the paint still works. If not... well they gave me another painting set this year, so I will try that one out instead then!

Draw one drawing using my colored pencils. It really would be a shame if I bought them only for them to collect dust, so I want to use them at least once this year!

Sing and let my voice be heard. I realised recently that I really enjoy singing, both on my own and in front of people, but I'm always kind of afraid to do it because I'm afraid of a. making mistakes and sounding horrible and b. taking up that space. Taking up space is a challenge for me regardless, but since I want these resolutions to be measurable goals I think that nurturing my singing and challenging myself in this way will be a great way to practice doing that. So this year, I want to either take singing lessons or record a full cover of a song and post it online.

Gaming goals:

Finish 5 games! I will also make a list of which 5 games I want to finish specifically, but I will list that as a separate goal this time. This year, as long as I finish 5 games in total, I will count this goal as a success, regardless of which games they are. As long as I had fun playing them, that’s all that matters!

Now for the specific list of games I’m hoping to finish this year! This is mostly to give myself direction and a list of games to prioritize, but if I find another game in between that I really want to play, I won’t stop myself from playing that game. Still, these are the games that are currently highest on my priority list, and that I would like to finish the most:

Skyrim (I will keep putting this one on the list until I finally finish it)

Baldur’s Gate 3

God of War (PS4)

Horizon: Zero Dawn

Heavy Rain

God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn are special cases on this list, in the sense that I would prefer to have finished them both before April if possible. As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to a PlayStation concert in April, and since these are both iconic titles for the PlayStation, I want to know both games and their soundtrack before the concert, as I am expecting them both to feature in it! Still, should I end up short on time, I don’t necessarily have to have finished both before the concert. Simply having played them for a while would also be enough

10 goals. Still a decent amount, but nowhere near the 19 goals I set last year. I really hope that setting fewer goals and taking my time to meet them is going to help me relax a little bit next year. I’m looking forward to playing my games and reading my books and just taking my time with it. After all, anything I can’t finish in 2025, I can always get back to in 2026!

So there you have it! Another year done, another yearly post written. After a challenging year of self-discovery and new insights, I hope I’ll be able to take what I’ve learned and find a balance in life that works for me! But that is all still in the future. For now, all I need to find is a bed to lie down and sleep in. Thank you so much for reading this post, whoever you are, and I hope 2025 will be as fun and relaxed for you as it will (hopefully) be for me!

[the-last-airbadger]

My 2023

I almost cannot believe how quickly this year passed by. It feels like one moment it was only February, and then I blinked once and suddenly Christmas carols were playing on the radio again. I think part of the reason this year went by so quickly was because I didn’t do much…? for most of the year? For a good solid 7-ish months I was just stuck at home applying for jobs day in and day out, and that type of life is just not very eventful. That doesn’t mean nothing eventful ever happened though! If you look at the big life events that happened this year, I actually did quite a lot this year! It was just a very slow process to get from one step to the next, with a lot of nothing in between. But in the end, I got where I wanted to go, and that is what counts! Now it’s time to figure out where to go next…

The Beginning of 2023 vs Now

I was in a very different place in my life at the start of the year. First of all, I was all caught up in a crush on one of my friends a year ago… It’s both weird that that was already a year ago and hard to imagine that that still felt like such a big deal back then. The situation escalated a bit in the first month(s) of the year (which I will not go into, but those who know know [eyes emoji]), but in the end it worked out for the best. I got over my crush, and we’re still very good friends, so I’m much happier about that part of my life at the moment.

Another big difference between me at the start of the year and me now was that back then I still had my reproductive organs. I had surgery at the start of the year, in the second week of January, and I feel much better now that they’re gone. Even though it wasn’t exactly fun to spend the first two months of the year in recovery, they were well worth it. So not only was I able to rid myself of worries and discomfort, I also got another step further in my transition.

The final big change: Back then I was technically still a Master student. Now I’m a graduate with a job. Is that a good change? Well, I’m definitely a step further in the grand path of my life, so technically that’s a yes. But does it feel like a step forward? I’m not sure. Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a student. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I can earn some money now and start building up the rest of my life, but I do often feel that I was happier back then. In that sense, it sometimes feels like I’ve taken a step backwards. But I guess progress in life isn’t always linear, so we’ll just have to see where next year brings us!

So yeah, in multiple aspects, I do feel like this year was the year I grew up a bit and moved on to the next stage of my life. So even if I’m not entirely happy with where I am now, I am proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish!

The Best Things about 2023

Hmm… this one is a hard one this year. I mean, it’s not like nothing great happened, not at all. But I do feel like there were fewer stand-out moments this year compared to the previous years. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of great things that happened this year. First of all: surgery! Of course, the surgery itself wasn’t great, but the result of it definitely was. I already feel much better in my skin than before I had surgery, and though I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be, I’m glad I got to take a big step forward this year.

Then, to get a bit less serious, another great thing that happened this year was that my brother bought a playstation! I’ve played so many cool games this year: Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stray, and more… I never thought I’d enjoy playstation games this much, but man have I spend many hours on my couch gaming on the playstation. It was awesome! And that reminds me that I also got a new Laptop this year, which I’m also super happy with (my old one was falling apart), which also allowed me to buy some awesome new PC games, so I think you can say it was a good year for games! And Spider-Man 2 and Baldur’s Gate came out this year, which is pretty cool too!

In March, I received my Master’s degree, which you could say is also a big highlight of the year. I still can’t believe I’m completely done with my studies. All these years that felt like such a faraway milestone… it’s so weird to suddenly have reached it. Which reminds me: another big highlight was my first salary! I’ve earned money before, but nothing beats your first grown-up salary.

I don’t want to make this too long, so I’m going to go through the next few highlights a bit quicker, but that definitely means that these are less important. They are perhaps a bit less grand, a bit more trivial, but no less important to making the year what it was. This year, I saw Dan Howell live again, I bought a tablet and started learning how to do digital art, I went to Toverland with friends (I was so excited!), I celebrated October 3rd in Leiden for the first time, I also went to comic con for the first time, my D&D character died and got a boyfriend (sort of), many great movies were released (Across the spiderverse, guardians of the galaxy, the D&D movie, Barbie, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, many of which I saw in the cinema with friends), great music was released (SHINee Hard, Taemin Guilty, Loossemble and ARTMS… what more do you want?), I got new glasses, aaand I think that is about it? Oh no, wait, how could I forget! The new doctor who episodes!! I was so hyped about those, and they did not disappoint! It was great to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate back in doctor who again, and it looks like Ncuti is going to be a fantastic doctor too, so I can’t wait for the new season to air next year!

So yeah, despite the fact that I may not consider the year 2023 as a whole to be much of a highlight year, many great things did still happen this year, and I’m very glad that they did!

My Resolutions for 2023?

Oh boy. I already took a quick look at them earlier today, and there are definitely a few that I did not complete. However, I do happen to know that I did set a lot of life goals that I was quite sure I was going to reach, and that I have in fact succeeded at most of those, so it might not be all bad! Let’s just grab last year’s list and see how well I did this time!

Life Goals:

Have Surgery! Obviously, my biggest goal for the year is to just finally have my hysterectomy and vaginectomy. I know it might seem like a bit of a cop-out to put something on my list that is very likely to happen, but the recovery is going to be tough, and you never know for sure it’s actually going to happen until it has happened, so if I have had surgery and recovered from it, it will still feel like a major accomplishment – Success! I had surgery, and it was indeed tough, but I got out better on the other side. I made it through, and I’m proud of that

Find a job! The next big goal is to find a job so I can start my new life as a certified adult – Another success! I found my job a bit later than I initially expected (in the end I started in November rather than in April like I’d thought I would), but a success nonetheless!

Move out! It’s going to be difficult to find a place to live in this economy, but once I have the money it will be my main goal. It really is time for me to have my own place. – That’s a fail, I’m afraid. Partially because I only found a job in November, but also partially because I think I underestimated how hard it is to even find a house. Granted, I haven’t tried yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’ll be challenging before the end of next year. Especially since I’ve realized that it might be smart to save a bit of money first. So yeah, that was a fail, but I still really want to move out, so I’m going to try again next year!

Get on the waiting list for phalloplasty. I really need phalloplasty, so the sooner I get on the waiting list, the better. – Success! I got on the waiting list on October 13th, after a phone call with my surgeon. Right now, it looks like 2025 (or maybe 2026) is going to be the year of Phalloplasty for me, which is still painfully far away, but at least I know now that it’s slowly getting closer every single day. Slow progress can be agonizing, but at least it’s still better than no progress at all!

Save some money. I have many saving accounts that are currently empty, and I have very little money overall. However, once I have a job, I might actually be able to save some money, so I hope that next year I’ll be halfway to my goal in 4 of my savings accounts. – I’m going to count this as a fail, since I’m not even halfway to my goal in one of my savings accounts, unfortunately. I am saving money right now, but unfortunately this year the amount of money in my account decreased significantly before I finally managed to earn something new. So yeah, no success on saving just yet, but again, a good goal for next year!

Buy a new laptop OR a piano. My laptop is falling apart a little bit, and I haven’t played the piano in ages, so I hope that I’ll be able to buy either a new laptop or a piano sometime next year! However, whether I can get a piano or not will depend on whether I’ll have my own house, whether there will be space in that house, and how much money I’ll be earning haha. – Success! Bought a new laptop as soon as I got my first salary in November and honestly that was probably the best purchase I’ve made all year. No regrets!

As soon as I'm recovered enough from my surgery, I want to do push-ups regularly again so I can build up a little bit of strength again. However, it's going to really depend on how long I'll take to recover after surgery, so I don't know whether I'll actually be able to do this. – Okay, this is more than a success. I didn’t just start doing push-ups again, I’m actually going to the gym every week now. I don’t think I could’ve predicted that I’d ever become a gym person a year ago, but that’s the fun thing about life, isn’t it? You never know exactly what is going to happen!

Reading Goals:

Read 25 Books! I know that’s a lot less than what I read this year, but I feel like I will be busy enough next year with other things, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have for reading. Still, I don’t want to neglect reading completely, so 25 books! If I succeed, I can go higher again the year after! – Fail, unfortunately. I read only 21 books this year. I haven’t really figured out yet how to combine reading (and my other 10 hobbies) with working full-time, but that will be a challenge for next year!

Get to a point where I only own 5 unread books at a time. I’m so close. I know I can do it – Nope. Currently have 19 unread books lying around in my room… :(

Finish reading at least 6 of the 12 series I’m in the middle of. I realized this year that it happens way too often that I start a series and don’t finish it, and then when I decide to continue the series I’ve forgotten what happened in the previous book, and that’s just a shame. So this year, I’m going to finish series instead of start them, and hopefully next year at this point I’ll only be in the middle of 6 series instead of 12… - Nope… I finished a grand total of 3 series… Very sad…

Read 5 Rick Riordan Presents books. I still want to catch up on these books as well. I’m in the middle of 2 Rick Riordan Presents series at the moment, so if I finish those that’s already 3 books. Then the next Rick Riordan Presents series I want to read only has two books, so I want to try to read those too. – Another fail… this is starting to get a bit depressing…

Keep reading classics. I want to read at least 2 new classics next year because I do want to keep reading those even though I’m done with my studies. However, I also don’t want to force myself to read too many of them against my will, so I think 2 is a good number. – Success! Yay! I’m glad I still managed to read some classics this year. I might be done with my studies, but I’m not ready to let English Literature go just yet. There are still so many classics that I haven’t read yet, and as an ex-literature student, I feel like it’s my duty to read as many of them as possible!

Keep up with new releases! And by that I mean, read the new Truly Devious book, Percy Jackson book, and Nevermoor book in the year they’re released, so in 2023! – Another success again! Nice! I read all of these books except the Nevermoor book, but that’s because that one got postponed, so it hasn’t actually been released yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to read that next year!

Art Goals:

Make 5 big art pieces. By that I mean I want to complete at least 5 drawings where I give them my all – colour it to my best abilities, add a background, and most importantly, don’t rush it! I want to make sure they are the best I can do. – Fail, but close! I finished 4 big artpieces this year, and I’m almost halfway through the fifth one! So I did my best!

Draw 2 more character posters for my D&D group. I drew 2 characters last year for my friends and framed both drawings, and they turned out so well and were so fun to make that I want to draw our entire party like that. However, they also took a lot of time, so 2 in a year should work. – Success! I drew one more character poster, and then made a drawing of our entire party for our DM. Currently, the only character that’s still left to draw is my own, so I will hopefully finish that one next year!

Other Goals:

Finish the following 3 games: Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Subnautica: Below Zero, and Skyrim. If I finish other games that is cool too, but these are the ones I really want to finally finish! – Okay, so here’s the thing. I finished quite a few games this year: Life is Strange: Before the Storm (as I said I would!), The original Life is Strange, Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Stray, Professor Layton and the Spectre’s Call… and I also once again played a lot of Sims, so overall not such a bad year! But did I finish Skyrim and Subnautica: Below Zero? ……..

Finish the Heartstopper comics and watch the Netflix show – yes and no. I finished the Heartstopper comics, but then a new one came out in December which I don’t own yet. As for the show, I finished the first season! And then the second one came out, which I haven’t watched yet. So…. Kind of? But not really…

Check out some Doctor Who audio adventures! I put those off for when I needed to recover for surgery, so I should really actually listen to some of them while I’m recovering from my surgery. – Again, yes and no. I did check one out, but I only did so this week, and I haven’t gotten very far into them, so… yes? But not really in the way I meant.

If I do actually manage to get a piano, I want to start playing regularly again. It’s been way too long since I’ve done that (however, if I don’t manage to get a piano, I won’t count it as a fail, but will leave this goal for 2024, since I don’t know if I’ll be in the position to get a piano this year) – Hmmm, another ambiguous one. I don’t own a piano yet, but I am trying to get into the habit to play at least once a week, for about an hour on Sunday mornings. I haven’t really built up the habit yet, but I am working on it. So… kind of?

So that’s 19 total of which there were 8 successes, 8 fails, and 3 ambiguous answers. Honestly, I don’t think that’s so bad! I thought it would be worse, but I honestly did quite well this year, if I may say so myself! Only the reading goals could use a lot more work next year…  

Expectations for 2024

This time, I find it much harder than usual to kind of know what to expect next year. I used to have a bit of an idea how a year would go, with school and university and all, but now? I don’t know. The future feels very blank and empty right now, which sounds kind of depressing but could also be a good thing. Empty means open, and open means that anything could happen. There could be so many cool things waiting for me this year without me even knowing it yet!

But a prediction like this is of course no fun without any specific examples, so I’m just going to try and guess what I think is going to happen. After all, the more wrong I am, the more fun I will have next year when I look back on this. So, right now it looks like I will work at my current workplace until the end of June, after which I can either decide to stay or move on to something else. I think I will decide to move on. My work right now is fine, but not something I want to settle for, so if I get the opportunity do try out something else I will definitely take it. So my guess is I’ll keep doing my current job until June, and then move on to the next one. In the meantime, I think I will mostly spend my weekends focused on my hobbies and my social life. I will keep going to the gym each Tuesday (and hopefully get a bit fitter!), keep going to Choir every Thursday, and try to find out how to balance working full-time with having a lot of hobbies. I will also keep saving money each month, so that when I’ll finally find myself a house, I’ll have enough money to actually furnish it. I also think I might end up buying a car at some point, since that is just going to save me so much time (and maybe even money too!). So, if I look at how my saving is going right now, I might be able to buy a car somewhere in the summer, which I might actually do.

I also still want to move out next year, after I’ve saved some money. So I think I will spend the first six months saving, and will then start seriously looking for a place to live. I don’t know if I’ll be able to actually find something before the year ends, but I want to at least have put the wheels in motion by then. And if I do find a place to live, I think that can go two ways: either I find a place somewhere in the same area that I live now (so in either one of the biggest adjacent cities), or I will find a place with a friend and live in the city where I used to study back in the day. Either way, I think I would be happy to have my own place. And if I have a car, nothing is really that far away.

So I’ll work, buy a car, move out. Take another few steps on the great path of life. I’ll turn 25 in June, which is already a major milestone in and of itself, but I’ve also always thought that 25 would be the perfect time to meet a lifelong partner, so maybe I’ll actually get lucky this time! You never know what the future will hold, so I might as well dream a little.

I probably won’t make any major progress in my transition, but I will get closer to 2025 which will hopefully be the year of phalloplasty. Plus, for the type of surgery I chose, I’ll need to lose a bit more weight, so that will be another goal I will work on in 2024. I’ll try to eat healthy and take care of my body, and hopefully reach my first goal before my appointment in April.

As for the rest of my year, I think I’ll have to leave that open. I do think I’ll renew my contract in October if I get the opportunity to, but other than that I have no idea what the future will hold. I know I want another job eventually, but I don’t think I will make drastic changes this year. This year will just be for exploring. Exploring what I want, exploring what I am good at and how I like to spend my time. My guess is that 2024 will be a relatively calm year where my life stays roughly the same. But 2025… something tells me that will be the year of big changes. So maybe a bit of calm before the storm is exactly what I’ll need.

Oh, and ARTMS will probably release an album this year. I’m looking forward to that!

2024 Resolutions

And now it’s time for my favourite part! Plans for the next year! I’m excited, motivated, and probably way too ambitious because I’ve once again got many plans for the coming year! I’ve mentioned most of my major goals already in the previous section about my expectations, but I’ve also still got many smaller, hobby-related goals that I am quite excited about! First of all, I really want to make this year the year of reading and writing. I’ve been getting into reading again this week and I am really realizing how much I’ve missed it, so I’m going to try to work it back into my life again, and I’ve got a plan for that! I want to be much more intentional with my time this year. After all, I keep complaining that I don’t have enough time in a day, but then I proceed to spend two hours aimlessly scrolling on youtube. If I only manage to replace my youtube time with hobby time, I could already win so many hours back! And what better to spend those hours on than reading and writing?

But that’s enough of my waffling! Let’s get into this year’s resolutions!

Life goals

Save money. I finally have a stable income, and I don’t have any rent to pay yet, so that means it’s the perfect time for saving money! This time, I want to have reached my goal in at least two of my savings accounts, I want to be halfway to my goal in at least 4 accounts total, and want have saved at least 1/6th of my goal in my emergency backup fund.

Buy a car. I don’t know if I’ll actually end up doing this, but right now this is something I want to work towards, so I’m just putting it on the list.

Move out. It’s time. Once I’ve saved a bit of money, it really is time to move out. I’m almost 25, and I definitely don’t want to keep living with my mother for much longer now. Moving out is a big change, and it feels a bit scary to have to truly start relying on my own income and money-managing skills, but that’s exactly why I should do it. It’s going to be hard to find a place, but I’ll sure as hell give it my best shot!

Keep going to the gym, lose some fat, and build some muscle! For my surgery, I had to lose around 5 kilograms before April, and I have a feeling it’s only going to be more after that. I’m okay with that though. Before covid, back when I was still skinny and somewhat active, I weighed significantly less than I do now, and I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to get back to around that weight. So, to give myself an actual measurable goal: I want to weigh less than 70 kg in April, and around 65 kg by the end of the year. As for the muscle… I’ll count on pictures document my progress there!

Writing Goals

Finish writing a draft for the first half of my book. Originally, I wanted to have my whole draft finished by the end of the year, but looking at the speed of my writing right now and considering how busy I will be once work starts again, I think getting halfway there is a much more realistic goal. Though I love being ambitious, if my goals are too unrealistic I tend to give up, so I think I’ll actually accomplish more here by putting the bar a bit lower here. So finish half a draft! I don’t think I’ll be able to pinpoint exactly where the halfway point of my story is, but I think I’ll know whether or not I have reached that point next year. If anything, I think I probably should have written at least 8 chapters. Maybe 10…

Build a habit of writing. I want to try to find a fixed moment every week that I can devote to writing. How else am I ever going to finish that draft?

Reading Goals

Read 24 books! This year, I’m going to set my reading challenge at 24 books. It’s a bit of a random number, one book less than my previous goal, but 24 a year means exactly two books a month, and that feels reasonable!

I still want to work on trying to reduce the amount of unread books I own. However, I feel like trying to read all 19 books I own now, plus all the books I might buy and the books I might get as gifts throughout the year, is simply not feasible. Therefore, I think this time I will instead focus finishing at least half of the books I currently own. In fact, I think I’ll make a list of 10 books I own now that I want to have read by the end of the year. Those books are going to be:

The Hero of Ages

The Anatomy of Story

Rule of Wolves

Aru Shah and the Nectar of Immortality

Cress

If We Were Villains

The Dawn of Yangchen

Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane

Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

The Fault in Our Stars

Read more non-fiction books and classics on my phone! One way I feel like I can significantly increase the amount of time I spend reading is by reading more books on my phone! Usually, the biggest reason why I don’t read while travelling is simply because pulling out my book often feels inconvenient. Either it’s busy and I have to stand, or my bag is so full I can’t find my book, or I only have a few minutes before I’ll have to stuff my book back in my bag again and rush out of the vehicle. But what do I always do in those situations? I pull out my phone. So if I just purchase some books in google books – something like non-fiction because it reads similarly to a webpage, or maybe a few classics because those tend to be quite cheap on there – and read those instead of scrolling reddit… I think that would be good for my reading goal! So this year, I want to have purchased and read at least 3 books on my phone!

Read 4 classics! Like I said, I want to keep reading classics, especially since I’ve been enjoying reading classics so much more now that I no longer have to. As for which ones… well, I definitely want to have read 1984 at least once. I also really want to read more Virginia Woolf, so I want to read at least one of her books this year.

Finish 5 series! Currently, I’m in the middle of 10 series, and that’s way too many. So I want to finish at least 5 of them.  I especially want to finish Aru Shah, The King of Scars Duology, The Mistborn Trilogy, and the Lunar Chronicles. The 5th one I’ll leave open for myself. I guess that one is going to depend on what I feel like reading this year!

Finish my Heroes of Olympus Reread. I reread the first three books of this trilogy in 2022 and then never continued… I really want to reread the final two books in the series as well.

Art Goals

Finish the character poster of my own D&D character! I already have the frame ready, and it’s starting to look so cool. I really want to finish this drawing as soon as I can!

Finish at least 1 of the two art projects that I have planned for my D&D group. I won’t go into detail here in case one of them ends up reading this, but I have two pretty cool art-related gift ideas for my D&D group, and I want to have finished at least one of them!

Draw 5 digital character posters. I really want to develop my digital art skills, as well as create some more character posters for some of my own characters. What better way to work on both of those goals by combining the two and drawing some digital posters?

Finally use the paint my grandparents gave me last year, and make a painting

Fill 2-5 pages in my physical sketchbook with coloured drawings, using the new coloured pencils I bought this month. I bought these pencils for a reason. I want to learn how to use them.

Other Goals

Finish 5 games. I’m once again going to try to finish Subnautica: Below Zero and Skyrim, since it’s starting to bother me that I still haven’t yet. This is probably going to be the third year in a row that I’m going to try to finish Skyrim… I better actually do it this time. As for the other three, I definitely want to finish Baldur’s Gate. I also want to finish my replay of Detroit: Become Human, as it would be a shame to quit halfway through.  As for the final game… I don’t know. Maybe if I ever come into the possession of a PlayStation 5, I’ll finally get to play Spider-Man 2! If not, we’ll see! I’m sure I’ll find a nice game that I really want to finish next year!

Actually properly check out the Doctor Who audio adventures. I’ve started one of them and really enjoyed it, so next year I want to have listened to at least 4 full 8th Doctor Adventures CD’s on Spotify. I have a feeling I will like those

And that is about all I can think of! Really, I feel like if only I can manage to free up enough time to work on these goals, 2024 could be a wonderful year! I may not have my dream life just yet, but that doesn’t mean I never will. I’ll keep working towards my goals, and hopefully get closer to finding out what my ideal life looks like every year. I don’t know what this next year will have in store for me, but I’m ready to find out!

Last year's post: (x)

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"We were always heading for this."

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Across The Spiderverse + Trivia

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She’s everything. He’s just Roy

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you don't have to do it all alone. I know it's scary and vulnerable. But societies and communities naturally form precisely to prevent this; they exist because nobody can do it all themselves. We are meant to rely on each other. We exist together so we can be vulnerable as individuals, but still strong and powerful as a community. It is our duty as fellow humans to give what love and care we can, count on the fact that someone else will even when we can't, and be open to receiving it ourselves. That is the pact of humanness; that is what we owe to each other.

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im so tired of the "we shouldnt criticize andrew tate fans, they're kids they don't know any better 🥺" and framing these boys as victims meanwhile those boys are being misogynistic bullies to the girls in their classes.

boys are coddled and treated like their beliefs and actions are harmless meanwhile girls' suffering is ignored. sure the boys are "just kids" but so are the girls.

imagine being a girl trying to learn in this sort of environment.

teenage boys are engaging in abusive behavior towards their girlfriends that they learned from andrew tate and your primary concern is the left doesn't coddle men and boys in this discussion about misogyny?

framing all andrew tate supporters as "young boys who don't know any better" ignores the support he has among adult men. in the UK, 26% of men aged 18-29 and 28% of men aged 30-39 agree with his opinions on women.

looking beyond andrew tate specifically, young men are more likely to feel threatened by feminism than older men. 50% of gen z men believe that feminism has gone 'too far'. there is an epidemic of misogyny among boys and young men.

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😔

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"Kids can't be transgender!"

Right and they can't be autistic either. We all know that children don't have brains that's reason they can't have neurological disorders like autism or gender dysphoria.

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They are gonna be so personal to me

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this makes me want to cry

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My kids!!!

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Maeve's abortion episode in Sex Education is probably my favourite in the whole series. It's so well-written. It's very strongly pro-choice while also humanising the pro-lifers. And I love Otis and Maeve in that episode, as well as all of the side characters. I still can't get over how awesome it is!

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