Time really seems to fly by nowadays, and yet another year has passed!
2011 was a pretty exciting year, and I would say full of mostly happy things. All of my friends and family have been absolutely supportive, and fortunately we have all been in more or less good health. I got to go to Paris for the first time, something that I have wanted to do ever since I was 12. I have continued to be involved with Neko Neko Maid and Host Club, and got a chance to see all the wonderful people I met last year at Mechacon again this year. I finished my first qualifying paper, and had the opportunity to present the work in that paper on two occasions. Financially, I've been doing well, and have been able to continue expanding my Lolita wardrobe, as well as indulge in a new 3DS and games for both of my DS consoles.
Of course, it wasn't all roses... Aaron's sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, and has been undergoing treatment for it (fortunately the outlook is very positive right now). My sister is still continuing to struggle with developing her career as a pianist, although she has shown signs of improvement in the past year. On a lighter note, my original Youtube channel was taken down, so now I am starting from scratch again. I am struggling greatly with my second qualifying paper, and that's something I will need to work out very very soon.
Generally, I don't really believe in making resolutions or anything for the new year, since I don't tend to keep them anyways (nor do most people, from what I've heard). However, there are certainly things that I would *like* to, or *hope* to do in the coming year. Many of them involve learning or re-learning languages. After my trip to Paris, I've decided I really need to re-acquire my former fluency with the French language, and I've been making an effort to read more books in French at the very least. I have also been slowly teaching myself Japanese, mainly through absorption by reading blogs and such in Japanese. I hope to continue this trend and eventually become moderately competent at reading, if not comprehending Japanese.
Of course I would like to be better at regularly updating my blog and other social media. I've started using the Tumblr queue, in hopes that it help me maintain a more constant posting schedule. That has been working well for the past month, so I'm hoping to start enforcing regular posting on this blog soon. As for making regular Youtube posts... well, that I would like to do, but often depends on whether I've had time to practice, whether conditions have been right to record... so while that would be lovely, I think that's a farther off goal at the moment.
My friend and I have managed to snag a table for the ACEN Artist Alley this year, and I have been busily manufacturing goodies for that. I would like to eventually get into a more regular pattern of making these things and eventually setting up an online shop on this site (I tried etsy for a while, and eventually decided it just wasn't for me).
I have been rather lax about practicing my instruments this past quarter, and I really want to make sure I keep up with my piano, so that's something I definitely want to work on. Related to that, I want to do more live piano+singing covers, as well as get back into composing songs of my own. Maybe an electronic keyboard should be my next musical instrument investment... Of course I really ought to practice all my myriad other instruments as well ^_^;;
I received a beautiful wonderful amazing Wacom Intuos drawing tablet for my birthday/Christmas, so a big thing for next year is getting myself to draw more, and teaching myself how to do digital painting at least mediocrely. Hopefully you'll be seeing more of my art posts as a result of this XD And in connection to this, here's a little doodle I made for my "Plans for 2012"
Happy New Year!!
