2023 December Roundup

Happy New Year~!! 🎍✨ I hope everyone is enjoying 2024 so far. As usual, I've made quite a few goals for myself, this time focusing a lot on daily habits rather than specific outcomes. It's working really well! But there's one last thing to tackle before I can completely let go of 2023: my December roundup! Here's what I got up to in that busy, busy month.

Patreon Rewards

For the last reward of the year, my patrons received an adorable chibi reindeer, perfect for the season! The main drawing was completed all in one go, my final livestream of 2023, and the background was added digitally afterwards. I dropped the rewards off at the post office on my way to the annual Christmas run that I do!

Patreon is my main income stream and the biggest way you can help me keep making cute, colorful, and fantastic artwork. Currently I am saving up to buy and install a utility sink in my studio, which will eliminate lots of time and trouble when dealing with messy media! Please click here to join and support my work 🥰

deviantART

One of the pieces I uploaded to dA in December was Chibi Moon Knight, drawn as a thank-you to my biggest Twitch supporter, Exie, who had reached a one-year subscription milestone 😄 It was doubly awesome that Moon Knight was requested, because he's one of my favorite MCU characters!

Click here to view, fave, and comment on deviantART!

You can also commission me at any time for a chibi caricature of your own! Click here to get started on Square or here to go through deviantART.

Livestreaming

My last month of art streams went wonderfully! I have a new schedule for 2024 now, so be sure to check my Twitch page to verify timing and sign up for go-live alerts. Here's the recording of my final Lucky Dip of the year, which I think ended up being one of my best Lucky Dip drawings of 2023 ✨

Charity Fundraising

This is the second year in a row that I have chosen The Protego Foundation, which is inspired by the Wizarding World for its animal advocacy, as December's featured charity. It just makes sense to me, because the end-of-year holidays are magical!

We had 22 unique Twitch viewers in December. My donation formula is $0.10 USD per unique viewer, with a minimum of $10 and a max of $100. This therefore comes out to a $10 donation to The Protego Foundation!

As usual, I donated a little extra to cover the processing fees ❤️ If you also believe that all creatures are magical, please make a donation to help protect them!

Other News

I actually have quite a bit of other news to share this time! First, I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Test at the very beginning of December 🤓 It was my first time taking the test and I won't get my results for quite a while (I think the soonest is the end of this month) but I feel confident that I passed!

Me at the testing location with two of my siblings, who joined me for the trip to Portland, Oregon.

Next, while I have announced it through other channels already, I wanted to share here that my illustrated postcards are now available for purchase at the new Catalyst Arts Collaborative shop here in Boise, Idaho! If you're in the area, I hope you'll stop by and support all the local artists selling their creations there 🥰 Here's a video I took to show what the shop is like:

Finally, as I promised at the beginning of last year, I'm going to review my 2023 goals and share my 2024 goals with you. Not only is it nice for me to do this and see how things went, I hope it also inspires you in working toward your own goals 😊

2023 Goals Review

• Career 🎨 I will create 12 new, large, full-color illustrations.
• 16% complete! I created two such illustrations.
• Education 💮 I will sit and pass the JLPT N2 exam.
• I dropped down to the N3 when I realized I didn't have enough study time. Other than that and the fact that I won't know if I passed for at least a couple more weeks, this goal is complete!
• Finances 💸 I will make, rather than buy, birthday & holiday gifts.
• I have one more gift to make, for a late December birthday, but other than that, this goal is complete!
• Health 💤 I will go to bed on time on work nights.
• Thanks to Pokémon Sleep coming out, I actually surpassed this goal! Ever since day one of the game's release, I have gone to bed on time EVERY NIGHT, even on weekends and vacations! I've been working toward this for YEARS so this might be my proudest achievement of 2023!
• Hobbies 🎮 I will play Animal Crossing every day.
• While I wasn't able to play every day, I'd estimate I played at least 6/7 days a week on average, so my underlying goal of enjoying my hobbies and switching off of work mode each day was achieved 😄
• Travel 🛳️ I will cruise around Japan with my husband.
• As you may have been reading in my Japan Adventure posts here, this goal is complete!
• Family 👩‍🍳 I will host seasonal family dinners.
• Complete! And I will be continuing this new tradition! I always wanted to do it, and I finally made it happen 😊
• Relationships 💌 I will send a card or letter every week.
• This was my least complete goal. I succeeded for the first half of the year, perhaps, but I realized it's ironically more difficult to write once a week than every day. Which is why I actually increased my letter writing goal for this year!
• Reading 📚 I will read & review at least 26 books.
• As with the JLPT goal, I dropped my expectations for this goal when I realized I wouldn't have enough time. My new goal became a book per month, 12, which I achieved! The very last book was a Christmas present I received from my sister 🥰

Overall, I'm quite happy with what I achieved in 2023! Even the goals that were difficult were valuable because they taught me more about myself and gave me a chance to practice my mental flexibility. I'm stoked to build on the momentum this year!

2024 Goals

• Career ✒️ I will spend 50+ minutes each workday on Gryphia writing.
• Education 💮 I will spend 20+ minutes studying Japanese every day.
• Finances 💳 I will pay off all credit cards.
• Health 😌 I will meditate every day.
• Hobbies 🎮 I will play a Nintendo Switch game every day.
• Travel 🐮 I will visit a Farm Sanctuary location.
• Family 🕊️ I will do my pet care routine every day before breakfast.
• Relationships 💌 I will write a letter every day.
• Reading 📚 I will read at least one page every day.

And that's all for now! I'll let you know how these goals went next year 😄 I hope you enjoyed reading my final roundup for 2023. I'll be back with another post soon. Until then, please stay happy, healthy, and safe!