2024, A Year of Upheaval
2023, to me, ended with sudden death that shook me to my very foundation and shaped what would become a year of a multitude of changes.
With the grief of that loss haunting the back of my mind 24/7, in 2024 my first big change was to impulsively adopt a second, stray Pug dog; another major and, perhaps the most important change of all, was that this year I finally found the strength to leave a years-long situationship that, hard as I tried to make it work, was constantly dragging me down instead of uplifting me. By the latter half of the year I moved to a new apartment, traded my online-gaming habit (addiction?) for meditation and journaling, ditched Discord and social media for traditional art and online 3D courses. Also, 2024 was the year that for the first time in my life I traveled to another state by car, all by myself, and with my reignited love for solo-traveling I got to visit new places by plane, bus and car.
Throughout most of the year I endured the back-breaking toil of having a full-time job, my freelance projects and volunteering on an animated show out of love and sheer passion– and the combination of the three of them had me working up to 14 hours a day, for days and months on end, weekends included. With both burnout and tendonitis constantly rearing their ugly heads my health soon deteriorated. Because of it, I started hitting the gym more regularly and among the changes I made to make sure to be more healthy and went outside more, even though I’ve been living in CDMX upward of two years now, for the first time in my life I dared to ride a bike in the middle of chaotic Mexico City and now it’s become my most preferred transportation method when I’m out and about in town.
At first I was really scared because I thought that, in the middle of the onslaught of all these drastic changes, I would feel very lonely. As someone who lives alone and works from home, Discord was, after all, a major source of company in my day-to-day life. However, quite the contrary started making itself clear: The more I returned to my own dreams and hobbies, thus realigning myself back to my true-self, the more anxiety dwindled and the mental fog cleared. Silence wasn’t punishment for daring to set boundaries– silence was the true reward and cutting out the external noise made way for calmness and much sought peace of mind. Plus, a huge perk of still being in the midst of civilization (unlike the ol’ artists of yore who dropped everything to go live in the mountains or all the times I left the country) meant I could go out and reach out to my friends and family and hang out with them whenever I felt like it.
Speaking of ol’ artists of yore, I ponder about it constantly and I don’t know exactly why but I feel that most of us artists and creatives will, at least once in a lifetime, get struck with a pang to leave everything behind and just go live a monastic life somewhere far away, with no human contact at all- the fever dream of being alone with only our creative impulses for company. I know I definitely have felt like this each and every single time I moved abroad and away from everything and everyone I knew. The latter half of the year, after I went and quit all my former bad habits cold-turkey, has felt exactly like that. Radical as it was, it was exactly what I needed but mercifully I could endure the storm from the comfort of my own home.
If I have to be honest, the first six months of this year were an awful uphill battle with my environment and especially with myself but here I stand, at the end of it all, and I am very proud of myself for, despite all the anguish and tears I had to feel and shed in order to grow, I no longer give my time away to games and screens. Of course, there are days when I still long to heed the siren song of my former habits– the almost subconscious pull to just drop into Discord and spend my life away mindlessly playing games. However, the painful lesson death taught me at the end of last year was that life isn’t eternal and daily life, however rote and busy, is still full of choices:
Do you choose to stay as you are or are you willing to move, to change, to challenge who you are and what your real hobbies and soul-nourishing activities could be?
This question looms and permeates my every day and some days I am better with self-discipline and some others I’m not– and that is okay. I strongly believe the path to self-understanding is never a lost cause– it hasn’t felt like one to me despite my struggles and my wanting to sometimes go back to what is familiar and comfortable. So far, so good.
For me, as an artist, social media and A/I scraping has completely sucked the joy of sharing things online and, as gainful as this half a year of reveling in solitude has been, I’m still an extrovert through and through. I still need people to talk to and to exchange ideas and dreams with.
In this new era of decaying social media, I want to find a way to bid for connection with others. I refuse to go back to social media because the anxiety doomscrolling gives me and all the bad things the algorithm insists on shoving down my throat just isn’t worth it. Hence why here I am, typing my feelings away despite being no wordsmith. I have my own pen and paper journals but I want to attempt to write here, in my little private corner of the internet, whenever I feel like sharing something worthwhile or inspiring. My reach here may be minimal but it feels a little safer, which is a mental priority for me at the moment.
We as humanity are in the thick of war, inequality and anguish– hopelessness threatens to be our new normality. Yet, I hope that whatever words and images I share here can brighten someone’s day, even if by sheer chance, if only for a fleeting moment. Let’s not yield our dreams to apathy nor nihilism.
We’re in this together.
My Latest Creation
One of the things I’ve been trying to teach myself for the longest time has been 3D via Blender. At work, the opportunity presented itself where we could create a marketing video for an upcoming release and I saw a golden chance to try my hand at making a 2.5D illustration for the background.
Due to time constraints because of end of the year madness and an upcoming holiday break, technically the video wasn’t approved… at all. Yet, my co-worker Andrew and I doubled-down and crunched a bit over the weekends and on our holiday vacations because we were dead-set on delivering a fun, little trailer for the very first announcement for Katawa Shoujo Piano Collections. We are fans of games ourselves, so we thought it was worthwhile to deliver something nice for the fans even if it meant to do a little crunch on our side. Even if no one saw it or it ended up forgotten because the announcement landed in the midst of the holiday break, we didn’t care, for some things are worth the sheer pleasure of witnessing them come to life.
The thrill of creating, just for the sake of it, is a feeling neither A/I nor pr*mpters will ever come close to understanding.
Background Illustration for the Marketing video of KSPC
Current Inspiration
Shido-Lab’s “Mini Camper in the Rain. Painting Watercolors of the Lake.”
I am thoroughly OBSESSED with Shido-san’s mini camper adventures. For the life of mine, I cannot stop fervently consuming every video he’s uploaded: From the way he carefully and lovingly created his little cabin to the way he uses it to explore and draw nature-filled, breathtaking places in Japan– my heart is exploding with overflowing inspiration and unbridled wanderlust. Now, I’m deeply aware of Japan and Mexico’s stark differences in road traveling: Japan’s roads have convenient 道の駅 (Michi-no-eki, lit. “Road stations”) whereas Mexico has barely maintained roads at best and an increasing record of road assaults and violent encounters at worst 💀 However, if Mexico’s roads weren’t so dangerous for solo-travelers I would be smack dab in the middle of creating my own portable cabin too!
Soundtrack Recommendation
Although I work in Video Game Music, and thus that is the kind of music I’m most immersed in, I’m always on the lookout for all kinds of albums or soundtracks to work to. A couple of days ago I watched Elemental for the first time and, amazing visuals and storytelling aside, the OST instantly stood out to me. Since then its soothing and New Age-ish vibes have been a constant when I’m in need of deep focusing. I definitely recommend it!
Thank you for reading. With much love,
Isa.
