A Heavy Hearted End of the Year
This page contains talk of suicide ideation and depression. Reader discretion advised
2025... and I guess this decade as a whole. It can be summed up with these images I've drawn over the years.
This year has been horrible for me, many others, and the wider world & has left me demoralized and terrified of what comes next.
For a run down
- My country's nightmarish political state. I don't feel safe being outside of the closet & every day feels like another right removed or act of violence committed as protests fall on deaf ears
- Rise of fascism, censorship, and the death of online privacy. Especially within the back half of 2025 alone. I find myself uncomfortable working on my online presence if I don't know what I'll be able to post, or if I can do it in a privacy respecting way. My biggest fear is not knowing if I'll be able to stay in contact with people while keeping my online & IRL life separate.
- The way Youtube handled this (AI scraping your watch history to check your age) killed LPStube for me... again. This one stings because this was a hobby that's completely ruined by terrible platform changes. First their handling of COPPA and now somehow watching too many LPS videos can get half the site restricted (seriously, Youtube is surprisingly hostile towards toy communities)
- I'm not sure if I want to pursue art as a career anymore. Between the above, how user-hostile websites have already gotten, generative AI taking art jobs, and feeling priced out of pursuing artist alley, it doesn't feel worth the energy.
- All of my interests were negatively affected one way or another; I feel priced out of the toy hobby, Bemani OSTs got DMCA'ed off Youtube, also PC part prices keep skyrocketing so I guess I can't even start that project anymore.
- I got scammed out of one of my accounts. I got it back & caught on before I forked over any money. But it caused me a lot of mental distress, especially with trying to clean-up and save face afterwards.
- Struggling to stay in contact with people. I am in contact with some online friends & joined a few servers. But I've barely seen people IRL. I tried going to a few events to remedy this, but nothing has come of any of them.
- Tensions at home.
- A loss in the family. I ended up postponing my goal of moving out due to this.
- Declining health. Mental health mainly, but I haven't been feeling well physically either.
- Ended up holing up more than I'd like to. I've tried to leverage arcade trips, the library, and toy hunts to help drag myself out. But it's been getting harder.
There's probably more I've forgotten. Part of me thinks I'll mentally black-out most of 2025 in a few years. I've entered each year since 2020 with caution, but I feel like no matter how much I get my hopes down it always ends up worse than what I ever imagined. 2024 was miserable enough for me already. 2025 has been worse, and left me uneasy on what's to come.
To be honest, I've been dealing with a lot of suicide ideation this year. The last time I felt this strongly about it was in 2020. Seeing a world that has only gotten worse since I graduated college has left me feeling like there's not really a world left for me anymore. I majored in a dying industry & lost the ability to be openly queer, and fascism is rising globally. I feel like the only thing that's keeping me from killing myself is ironically, I think I've developed a fear of death. I don't want to go into the details of my fear, so just know both suicidal thoughts & thanatophobia combined with anxiety is not fun.
It's honestly one of the reasons why having my hobbies ruined hit so hard (especially LPStube). In a way, IIDX and LPS hunting had been things I've been using to try dragging myself out of the house, but it's hard when I'm feeling apathetic towards both. And even so the good things feel very small & more like distractions. Because as much as people will say you have to cling on to the small things no matter how small to keep going... well... A DJ game and a few craft projects aren't going to stop the rise of fascism. It's also why I'm scared of loosing contact with people. I won't dive into my home life, but not having people irl to talk to has become increasingly upsetting as I don't know if I'll be able keep contact with people online.
I feel like at this point, I'm an aimless wanderer. All goals ripped from beneath me watching as the world crumbles & the doors of opportunity are patched over before I even knew they were there. And the rise of censorship & privacy invasive policies & laws has left me uncomfortable starting web-based projects too. I've had to put a WIP project on hold because it's a violent monster-hunting thriller & political drama, and a lot of these waves have been affecting violent content as well.
To be honest, I'm considering backing out of an online presence entirely. I've been doing more data-hoarding than usual. While I want to keep this website up to the best of my ability, this is a reminder that I'm ok with my work being saved for private, offline viewing. In the event I do go offline, I guess to those I somehow matter to you'll at least have a few PNGs to remember me by.
I've seen some people are trying to enter 2026 enthusiastic despite everything, but to me it's hard to do so. I feel like post-graduation has ruined my morale to the point I can only enter the year scared of what lies ahead. I don't really know what goals or projects I want to do when I don't know if my ability to do them will be taken away from me.
I guess there were a few good things that happened to me that year, albeit very insignificant compared to the above. But you'll have to go back to the main article for those.