2025.11 Journal

Intro

I wanted to try doing one of these since… other Small-Webbers do it, lol! Also, it suits the monthly and weekly schedules I want to introduce to my internet usage, so why not?

Life

(IRL:) I don't have to move!! Yay.

I still haven't gotten my income up. Man…

My resumé and web-portfolio/professional-site have both seen major improvements, but I don't know how much that like, means anything, considering my life situation is still very much the-same-as-before-I-improved-them minus me not having to move in with other family anymore. Yet.

IDK.

*Makes a snow-angel out of a pile of rejected job applications…*

Late Q4 doesn't really feel like hiring season, so whatever. Maybe in the New Year.

Creativity (and the Internet)

I've still been kinda creatively incapacitated since Late-August-Early-September, but I've been mentally healed enough to use my sketchbook at least. I post some drawings to Ko-Fi, cause, like, idk, paying to be there means those people want to see it, but…

…posting things onto ✨Social Media™✨ still feels like:

bothering people with content they did not ask me for.

sending my art to lose and die in the Attention Economy Battle Royale™

because it's not good enough in a vacuum and out of its context,

but also because it's just not good enough.

So, I don't wanna, for now.

To combat the feelings above, I've been given the good advice by multiple friends of [just treating Social Media like a personal archive] instead of seeing it as an Attention Battle Royale or giving people stuff they don't want.
The problem is I accidentally… made… a Whole Personal Archive Website , which makes using Social Media as a personal archive redundant.

So I feel like my website stole a strategy I could have used to make my Social Media experience healthier… from my Social Media profiles, haha. akjsdhfalsdf And… I like building and improving my website and posting on it. But I know it'd be a lot more convenient for a lot of my friends, buddies, and acquaintances if I were to post where they actually scroll: the timeline.
So now I don't know what to do, haha…

Anyway. Some sketchbook drawings and digital doodles almost made it to the website's Art Gallery , but then I was like, "I change my mind, I don't wanna", last minute.

I feel like Social Media kinda makes us treat each doodle and drawing as a standalone soldier (in the Battle Royale)… Some of the drawings I "nevermind"-ed, like, it's not like I think they don't deserve to see the light of day, or something. I just think I'd rather release them as part of a sketch compilation or zine or something. In those contexts, even the scrappiest, trashiest sketches are part of a bigger picture of context—whether that context is a fictional story, or general artistic progress—instead of each doodle having to fight for its worth on its own: in my site gallery or in the algorithm.

Ok, hard segue.

I've been writing!! Again!! I've been moving Demi-Human Diaries: Fear of Falling out of Scrivener and into a combination of Obsidian and Aeon Timeline. Not that anything's wrong with Scrivener; it's just Obsidian's bi-directional-link graph thingy helps me ensure each chapter hits on the narrative and character themes I want. I have a metadata field at the top of each chapter document that lets me link to the document for each narrative theme or character theme that I touch on within that chapter, handy stuff.

I feel like in this process, the story is like, 99% staying the same, minus some clarity edits. So it's kinda like… an editing pass before the inevitable editing pass that'll happen when I pick storyboarding it back up, haha.

Life (cont.)

I've been making working on Fear of Falling (writing or drawing), along with working on bettering my portfolio and resumé my No Zero Day actions and doing that has helped me feel good about myself. In small ways. 🥹

Fortunately, or unfortunately, scrolling Social Media way less also makes me feel good about myself. Social Media (when it's just endlessly and aimlessly yanking on feeds and timelines) is just a sushi-conveyor-belt of comparison, for me. That or just time-wasting brainrot. Unless, I come to it with a search query, something specific I want to research, or a specific user profile I want to visit. So, you may have seen bits of me here and there, in those use cases. That's the way I like to browse and engage with Social Media, now.
It's weird, but I'm weird, and it works for me, so.

(Also, please, if you make things I care about… make sure that you're RSSing it somehow so I can subscribe to notifications and binge-consume them! In my free time! Even if for you, that means Tumblr + custom theme or something… I want to consume y'alls yummy art/writing without having to waste time yanking on the timeline or falling into comparison spirals, thank you.)

Posting my own User-Generated Content to Social Media is still an uncomfortable area for me, so it'll be a bit, haha.

Regarding Recaps

Though I've been lacking in public-facing art, I've written a lot of public-facing Blog posts and File Cabinet documents this month.

I'd been planning for a while to make (separate from monthly journals) list-format monthly recaps of like, all the good stuff I've posted but like…!! 💀💀💀 No one wants to read a handful of long-form text posts of me just realizing the default way we as a culture use the internet and Social Media these days isn't the best for me!! Warrghghgh...
So no November recap list.

I'm hoping in 2026 when I can get my creation rhythm (and subject matter) back to normal I can make those recaps… properly…
But I'unno. For now, I'm just chilling. Creating things in whatever way I feel safe, and tryna get my day-job income UPPPP!!! All while keeping my brain safe.
WARRGGHHH!!!

Ok, see ya.