Time flies by quickly when there’s a pandemic going on, doesn’t it? With 2021 coming to an end, I hope you had a happy celebration of whichever holiday your culture and/or religion observes. Stay healthy, stay safe, stay vaccinated, and let’s all do our part to make sure 2022 is the last year we’ll have to deal with this nonsense.
With that out of the way, I thought I’d take this occasion to give a recap of my activities over the course of this year, as well as what I have planned for the next year.
For starters, the blog itself has seen more activity than in any previous year. It had occurred to me that, given my sparse output of new works, I should start these update logs, just to keep people up-to-date and myself accountable — not that it was all that effective at that, no thanks to my life itself being a rollercoaster ride for my mental health, with far more downs than ups. At least things are starting to look up again in that regard, though, and I’ll continue to further work on myself the next year.
As for TGA-related stuff, I’ve managed to…
- Draw something for TGA’s 8th anniversary
- Release a new album
- Redesign and overhaul the website
- Create a Discord server
- Release one final update for COL
- Take and complete no less than three song commissions
All things considered, I’d say it was quite the productive year for me. I’ve also resurrected my YouTube channel, but the game videos I’ve been uploading on there aren’t quite within the scope of this team’s activities, so of course I didn’t put them on the above list.
Recently, the website has also surpassed 500,000 hits. Thank you all for your continued interest and support! If I had any amount of confidence in my drawing skills at the moment, I’d definitely be drawing something to commemorate the occasion. As it stands, though, you’ll just have to take this single paragraph instead.
On the topic of music commissions, they’ll continue to be open for the foreseeable future. Go here if you want to apply for one, and see here for a collection of tracks I’ve written over the years! My Twitter will be where you can be kept up-to-date, should the situation change in any way. I’m looking forward to your patronage.
Regarding the next year, I have the following resolutions:
To start with, obviously I want to begin development for the second game in the Mukai Project as soon as possible, preferably as early as January. I have my doubts that I’ll be able to actually finish it within the year, but I may or may not keep a public devlog.
I also plan to work on a new album and have it finished and put up for sale before the end of the year. Even for a 10-track album, it should be doable so long as I keep on top of my game with my time management and work ethic.
Additionally, in order to keep my momentum going with regards to composing, I’m going to aim for posting at least one new song every month, whether that be a commission or something I wrote for myself.
After years of burnout, I’m going to renew my efforts to get back into drawing again, as well. A lot of it is going to be practicing the basics, but training my mindset is also important so that I don’t end up burning out again.
Finally, just as a personal thing, I plan on taking the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test next July in order to try and get at least N3. I don’t really have any use for it other than bragging rights, but sometimes, that’s all the motivation you need.
And I believe that’s about it. Happy new year, and see you in 2022!
Gensakudan Blog ― 懐古世紀日誌 