[MOUNTAIN GOATS PLAYS LOUDLY]

Happy new year!

I was having my regularly scheduled mope about nooooooooooooo I didn't DO anything last yeeeeeeeeeeeeear, where did the time gooooooooooooooo, as I do, and then I checked my Storygraph Wrapped notification.



Oh! Okay! That's where the time went!

(I got a subscription for Kobo Plus and Manga Plaza, and it turns out between those two I have A Lot of manga available to me. Whoops?)

Other things that I did last year:

• Got more hours at work! Work is being a low-key shitshow because they keep cutting staff, to the point where one of the libraries has three members of staff. In a library that is open 8:00-21:45. ("Oh but we're cutting down on extra shifts —" The fuck you are, sunshine.) On the plus side, I got an extra 8.5 hours added to my contract every week, so I'm getting an extra ~£450 a month on my paycheque?


• Had an absolute mad one in the January sales and bought a 3D printer.
  
  • It's a little one! A Bambu Lab A1 mini, and in the sale it was like £139? So a pretty good price, I think. The pro of this model is that it's basically plug and play, and as I wasn't sure if I was actually going to be capital-I Into 3d printing that was going to be my best shout. The downside is that it can only print tiny things, like 16x16x16cm. Small enough to be getting on with, just needs some fiddling.
  
  
  • I feel a bit weird showing off things that I've printed with it, because basically I had as much input in what comes out as I would with an actual printer. One day, I will probably get into the design stuff! For now, I'm poking Maker World and Thingiverse and trying out free stuff.
  
  
  • Me: I have printed so many boring useful things! D:
    Lex: Honey, you printed a torso with tentacles.
  
  
  • (My defence that it was for practical reasons – namely putting the Astarion BJD head I got on it so it's not sitting in a box – is apparently not good enough.)
  • 
    
  • Things I have printed off: tiny octopus friend, tools to make 3d printing easier, a little Solaire/Praise the sun guy as a combo xmas present/bribe for the IT Guy at work, stencils, two tiny jointed dragons that I need to reprint because the tails fell over both times, that torso with tentacles that turned out to be the same size as the head, so scratch that plan, a transparent computer mouse like the nineties never ended, and shelves.
  
  
  • Underrated feature of this thing: I can set it printing and then go do something else. I am multiplying the number of hobbies I can do at once!


• Discovered that Travelling Man import books published by Rosmei (a publishing house that specialises in translating queer Chinese fiction into English, but crucially only has publishing rights in Singapore) and have been emotionally devastated by both Priest and Mu Su Li.


• I HAVE A CRAFT ROOM NOW! We got our conservatory redone (... the most middle-class sentence I have ever written) and now it is my craft room! I have... Far too much stuff. I need to do a big purge and tidy, so that I can actually get at all of the craft stuff I have stashed away in there. But it's so nice! I have space for all of my desks, and room to move between them, and I have one of the HUGE cube bookcases in there to stuff things into. It's just currently wildly disorganised because of who I am as a person.


• Accidentally stopped talking to everyone I know? Which sounds really mean. I should uh. Fix that.


• Got new meds! It turns out that the ADHD medication I was on was aimed at Literal Actual Children so was the wrong strength, and the pharmacist who halved my med dosage last year was just a muppet who typed the wrong thing on my records. I managed to get that sorted out, so now I'm on Proper Grown-Up ADHD Meds and a higher dose. New meds are going... Fine? My insomnia is back and the negative self-talk is making a return, but apart from that it's good!


• Turned 36! I am officially A Fandom Old now and I'm so excited!