2024 Reflection

2024 is over. I spent most of the year making comics, but before that I was mainly writing. And my first post of the year was written, so let’s start there.

In my review of New Pokemon Snap, I quoted Todd Snap on the importance of enjoying Pokémon photography:

Photographing wild Pokémon well takes patience. The mark of a pro is when you don’t just put in the time–you enjoy it.

This still hits home. A lot of my hobbyist work in the past, whether art, writing, or game design, was primarily driven by a sense of ambition and perfectionism. Yes, I wanted to do those things. But I also wanted to be great. This often drove me to practice, and I did improve. But it also made me miserable. At different points in my life, I’ve fallen out of love with writing, drawing, and design. I’d go from moving my pencil every day to not touching it for months. I burnt out.

So when I started making comics in the Spring, I knew I wanted a different approach. I wanted to draw in a way that I enjoyed doing. I wanted to prioritize the process over the result. So I experimented, looking for that happiness.

I restricted tools (no straight-edges). I loosened those restrictions. I drew physically, I drew digitally. I tried grayscale, flat colors, and simplified color washes. I scripted, as is normal, but I also drew the comic first and figured out the words later. And when life was too busy for a typical post, I tried condensing. Can you fit a review onto an index card? That was a fun experiment; I’ll likely bring that back if I’m ever that busy again.

I made a lot of comics this year! And I love them. But Todd, how much did I actually enjoy making them? Honestly, it’s been a mixed bag, at different times both thrilling and discouraging.

Figuring out my general thoughts is always enjoyable, and structuring them into a script is pretty natural to me. Penciling has been hard; tyranny of the blank page and all that. And what if I pencil something so badly that the whole comic falls apart??? That’s given me genuine anxiety. But then inking is usually fun, and while colors and tones have been tough, I at least enjoyed doing a more simple coloring for my Echoes of Wisdom comic, so that’s already a better approach for me than what I had before.

At one point in time, I would have looked at these pros and cons and thought: how do I maximize the pros and minimize the cons? If working from a blank page is hard, how can I avoid that? How can I make this feel easier, more pleasurable? Now, such a lens is useful, but how else can we look at this problem? And, Todd, is enjoyment really the most important part of making art?

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg describes her approach to writing as continuous practice, something you do even when you don’t feel like it, and trust that it will give back to you. She says:

This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run. It’ll never happen, especially if you are out of shape and have been avoiding it. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop. And you stop, hungry for the next time.

Enjoying art creation is important, but it’s not all there is. I don’t want to have a fair-weather relationship with my creative practice, I want that relationship to be steadfast. For me to grow in 2025, I need to be more loving and compassionate with myself as I write and draw. There will be many times that are not enjoyable, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthy. The work is still worth doing.

Looking ahead, I’m sure I’ll still experiment, but not with the expectation that it will be easy, or always enjoyable. Instead, I want to be more accepting of the fact that this simply will be work, and that I need to have a better relationship to that work. Because while my process has had its ups and downs, I really do love this site, and the comics that I make. Ups and downs included.

2025 Resolution

My resolution for 2025 is to build a more loving relationship with my writing and art through consistent practice. That doesn’t mean that I always enjoy it, in the way Todd Snap says I should. Love, at its best, is more complicated and fulfilling than enjoyment. Sometimes it will be easy, and sometimes it will be difficult. Sometimes I will be happy with what I make, and sometimes I won’t. But I believe that the work is worth it, that creative practice, when you balance earnest diligence with compassion for yourself, will nourish you back.

And as I’m working on this, I also hope to make something you enjoy reading. That would be nice, too.

My Games Of The Year

I didn’t actually play that many games this past year, not much more than what you can read about on this site. Of the games I did play, my favorite was Penny’s Big Breakaway: its sense of joyful movement was worth the effort of learning its tricky systems. Arranger was a close second.