Kicking Off 2022 with Isolation and Revelation

New Year, New Blog, New Motivation, everything has just been drastically changing for the better and I think some of these changes have been long overdue. Starting with moving my blog to my website haha.

My partner Nick and I kicked off the year in separate Quarantines after being exposed to COVID. At first, the complete isolation was daunting even for an introvert but after losing myself in the Animal Crossing DLC that I'd been dying to find the time to enjoy I was able to do a deep, uninterrupted, introspective dive into figuring out what exactly I want and how I'm going to obtain it in 2022. And suddenly everything just clicked.

I got back into bullet journaling which I hadn't done since February 2021. My digital painting skills leveled up and I brainstormed fresh art print/sticker design ideas on the daily.

After being stumped on my manuscript for the past six years I expressed to my editor part of me wants to just toss the whole thing, save the character development parts of the story and start from the top entirely. He suggested an alternate way I could start the story. For a second I thought no that would be crazy and then the entire plot came to me and the initial heart of the story was revived.

I redesigned the cover for the 5th time, mostly for myself as motivation to turn this novel into a reality and I moved everything over to Scrivener which I ended up impulsively buying. I love outlining, plotting, and drafting my work on paper the traditional way and then typing everything on google docs but the scale of this particular project has gotten out of hand.

My editor lost track of which google doc is the correct one because there are so many iterations, none of which were completely finished and my outlines and ideas for outline changes have spread across my notes app and various scraps of nearby notebook paper like wildfire across California. At this point it feels archaic to not use modern software to keep everything typed up in one place. So I invested in Scrivener and told myself it's time to stop running away from being organized. So far it's been just as incredible as every Authortuber has described.

Quarantine has also given me the ability to create art uninterrupted and while doing so I realized as each day passes I fall deeper in Love with the idea of becoming a full-time artist you would meet at an Artist Alley, craft fair, or pop-up shop. The thought of filling my home with cutesy shipping supplies, working out a routine and a system to process orders, and spending hours of my day going over stats of how much art I need to order to plan for an upcoming event just makes my heart sing. So I've decided alongside RedBubble I'm going to rebrand my resin shop and merge it with prints, stickers, pins, etc.

Nick played a huge part in helping me come to the decision of rebranding instead of terminating the resin shop and starting entirely from scratch, which admittedly would've been more of a chaotic impulsive decision I could see myself regretting. I've fallen back in love with the idea of making shiny resin creations that spark joy so I'm excited to experiment with new colors and glitters in the upcoming months.

SO WHAT'S NEXT?

ACTUAL CONTENT! I'm going to be making TikTok and Youtube videos [Links at the end of the post] for my Art Channel and my Author Channel to promote my upcoming Webtoon Heroic Himeko and the first book in the LGBTQIA+ Scifi Fantasy series J. & S. Adventures #1: Murder at Craegar Manor. Realistically I think I'll be launching everything in the Spring and Summer but we'll see where the tide takes us. I will also be blogging about various topics, art & writing updates, general life updates, the occasional potato chip review, and rants about oddly specific things I don't generally talk about like how much I hate most designs for ceramic sinks.

SCREENWRITING COLLABS Nick is not only the sweetest Golden Retriever Gamer Boyfriend I could ever ask for but he's also a talented screenwriter and filmmaker. Several weeks into the relationship it dawned on both of us that we could write together which makes sense considering screenwriting is the very thing that sparked the entire relationship haha. He's also inspired me to both start and finish the screenplays I've let collect digital dust. I seldom talked about it last year but alongside everything else I had going on I began plotting an animated feature about Samurai Shiba Inus and a Hallmark-style Christmas romance but with a s*** ton of cursing.

FINALLY SOME BLOG POSTS I'm going to make it a goal to post at least once a month and gradually get into the habit of posting regularly and on a consistent schedule. If you as a reader would like to read more about my artistry or writing feel free to comment your questions and I'll answer them in the next post.

Thanks for reading my sporadic stream of consciousness and have a great week!

-JustJanejira