A reflection of a chaotic 2022

So, 2022 wasn't exactly a great year, for me. Yeah, things started getting more back to normal in terms of places being fully open with COVID protocols easing up, and countries re-opening for tourists, but on a personal and professional level, things just took a turn.

I'll try to be brief on the recap, but March was when I lost my tooth implant from a decade ago thanks to a box of Milk Duds when I was watching Dog in theaters (a very forgettable movie, btw; THE only reason why I remember seeing it was because I lost the tooth not long after coming home and polishing off the box), and my old dentist wouldn't take my health insurance, so I had to go to another one that was pretty far from town, despite having an office where I live; I thought they could just give me a new implant and I would be covered, but they told me I had to pay 5 grand out of pocket, just for a bridge, and that my provider doesn't cover dental for teeth "that aren't in the front". 

So, that wasn't fun, especially since I was still saving up for that trip to Japan, and stuff. Then, a month or two later, I was asked to take a blood test by my doctor (which we were told to go to one place, but when that place wouldn't take my insurance, we were then told to head to the clinic inside the Walgreens near my house), and when the results came back, I was basically told my cholesterol levels were in near dangerous levels, and if I didn't take action that I would get diabetes, so I started to eat different by making sure I was under 200MG of cholesterol every day and also making sure I walked (and later, ran) a block and back every day after dinner. The good news is that I've lost 10 lbs since starting the diet, so I feel pretty confident my next blood test will be better than last time!

Then in late September/early October, my dad started to not eat because everything tasted bad to him, and he had to go to a few different doctors to get checked out, and it turns out he has a lymphoma mass in his stomach. They first said that they caught it early enough, but when they examined him again, they retracted that statement and said that it wasn't quite the case, so he had to start chemo around Halloween. Right now, he's lost a lot of weight, but he's been eating again, so I'm thankful things didn't go too south, but he's going to be getting treatments every 3 weeks until early March '23 at the earliest. 

While this was all happening, Eli went on a 2 week vacation around Halloween, and when they came back, they had computer problems for 2 months, which severely impacted our page production (along with having to abandon Gobtober) and the plans we had for the end of the year, and unfortunately, because we weren't able to get to give people as much as we were able to until Eli got new computer parts a few weeks ago, a lot of people left the Patreon...

And, of course, I got a bad cold on my birthday that knocked me out for the rest of November, and December was a bit of a cluster, because we weren't able to complete Wolfcember due to the PC parts getting delayed, and when Eli got the computer, it broke, and had to be sent back for repairs, so I lost more patrons in the process.

Christmas kinda represented the year as a whole, funny enough; it was at a very abnormal 80 degrees outside, but the solace I had was that it was the first time all of our relatives were in the same house since before the pandemic.

So, with all that said, my plans and wishes for 2023 are simple:

- I would like to try and produce more SFW art, compared to last year; the NSFW art, while it's kept a lot of the existing patrons around, hasn't really attracted a lot of new ones to join, or others to return. Hopefully, we can make something neat once every 1-2 months, to try and attract new and/or returning patrons; I have some neat ideas that I've been wanting to do for a couple years now, and fingers crossed that the new year will finally be the time to get them made! We'll still keep producing NSFW stuff, of course, but I wanna try and do other stuff, too!

- I would like to try and get the schedule to be back to normal again; with Eli's computer problems finally behind us, I'm optimistic that we can finally get back to making 2 pages, every week! Once we get that ball rolling again, we will hopefully see readers and patrons come back, and my statistics graphs won't be a literal rollercoaster anymore. 

- I want to try to write more often; I had bouts of depression (due to the events I wrote above), especially towards the end of the year, and it kinda sucked dry my incentive to write ahead of time, so I would like to at least start writing more of ACES Chapter 3 and the rest of the current Moonlit Brew scene when the next pages get finished and uploaded, and our upload schedule finally normalizes.

- And lastly, I'm hoping this will finally, FINALLY, be the year I can go to Japan. The country fully reopened, not long ago, so the only thing holding me back, now, is my dad's treatments. I'm hoping he'll be in the clear once he's done, and we can finally get stuff planned again.

I was gonna make this a What To Expect post, but, due to how long this post already is, I think I'll wait a couple days and make a more proper post, but in the meantime, I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and here's to a much better, much less chaotic 2023!