No, this is not my first post of 2019.

Yes, January is a free trail month so I haven’t started this year officially. My blog will be updated before the second week of February and I’ll follow up on how this trail month felt together with what I’m expecting for 2019.

(See Mother of Sarcasm’s Instagram for more of these nice memes)

Just kidding, I also hope that there exists such a thing as a “free trail month” for a year and we can regret halfway then say “let me back to 2018 because 2019 sucks” or stuff like that…too bad technology is not there yet so we are still incapable of reversing time at the time of writing. So, if you’re like me that is still somehow living in 2018, give yourself a good slap and remind yourself to not write the wrong year in dates again :3

Well, nothing really changed much since 2019 started anyways. I’m still buried in assignments and revision notes for finals as usual, hanging out on Discord during my free time, spend a good majority of my time alone doing stuff I don’t remember (probably also school work), etc. Maybe that’s why the meme on the top of the post is somehow relatable to me - my semester will only end at 2019/1/25 (including final exams) so I will still be doing exactly what I am used to do in 2018 until January ends. Of course, I’m not implying that you need changes for a year to officially start, but when everything is kept constant it’s really boring. Guess that’s why we are always trying to find new ways to turn current things into new things, the human race needs them.

Anyways I still did something to start off 2019 a little uniquely. Last year I decided to join the osu! Malaysia community in their Discord channel doing a simple new year countdown, this year I joined a few osu! players to play some multiplayer matches instead. Sounds a little funny but having a game that started at 2018 but ended at 2019 is a kinda cool way to celebrate a new year, at least we enjoyed it. Then, I went to Steam to clean up my wishlist…not kicking those games out, but the other way round.

Uh…I guess that’s worth it.

As the first post of 2019, just let me do a quick recap on how 2018 had been - I don’t really think I’ve done a lot, but one never know until the counting is done - let’s start.

I don’t think I have done anything notable throughout January since that entire month is taken by classes and stuff, until middle of February or something I guess. If there’s really something…I guess it’s going to be one or two random drawings that I have done that ended up to be presentable. Back in that time I was still drawing on papers with mechanical pencils instead of on virtual canvases with graphic tablet. Now thinking of it, it’s been a very long time since I last drew something on paper, not sure if I can still do the same after so long. Even the friction between pencil leads and paper surfaces feel a little unfamiliar to me now, not sure if I should feel happy or sad about it lol.

February is a little unique, because it’s when @futuremind invited me to Steemit :) I can still find the chat logs if I scroll long enough in Discord but I guess we’ll just leave it there, because it’s so long that I might end up scrolling and forgetting that I need to write this. There aren’t too many posts on my Steemit page, scrolling a little reaches the bottom and apparently I dumped all those drawings I did in January or before that onto Steemit…I don’t even remember what I have written that long ago, but my #introduceyourself post… dang, I never recalled writing something like that.

My first post on Steemit, together with two more stuff that I posted on Steemit right after it, happen to be a drawing, and another drawing :)

How the heck did I wrote a poem out of my own drawing.

Apparently I was also surprisingly active on the Dogecoin subreddit during that time. Mostly for the memes (I guess), but due to some weird luck and encounter I met a few more redditors that are interested in doing something Dogecoin related, and I helped them - that’s like my first coding-related “job” apart from the internship I got in the past. Now I’m not really handling that for them anymore (I’m not in their Discord server anymore too), but I guess they had done something nice with the base my previous code gave? Not sure about that anyways, but that’s some notable thing I have done for 2018, I could say.

Oh, and there’s Illy. I mean…I accidentally nuked its code when migrating files. Sad stuff but maybe I’ll revisit the idea again when I’m bored. Hey, GitHub has private repositories for free now so I could abuse that?

Surprisingly it didn’t took me that long to start meeting people and joining communities on Steemit. Apparently I wrote my #cn introductory post on my own…and that then lead me to a few groups by @wilhb81 and @davidke20. That’s also one of the reasons I am part of #teammalaysia now. Now thinking about it I am a little amazed at how people chained with each other…it’s interesting to watch and is even more interesting to be part of it myself. Time flies and I’m a senior there now…yeah, so I should be a little more active around combing through posts and curating them it’s really hard to predict on what will come to us, like being a senior is totally out of my expectations. Probably it’s just important to enjoy the journey and play around it as life throws unexpected stuff on your face :D

(But still I should really curate more in 2019)

Ah and yes, I bought my first mobile game in 2018 (welp, there goes money). Cytus II is somehow worth it I guess, I even wrote a review…I guess that can be considered as a review? I even spent some on Tower of Saviors…wew, wise people once said that once you start spending on these things you never go back…good luck to me.

I have left the osu! Malaysia Discord server somewhere this year because of some personal reasons, but before I had taken part in their Spring Artwork Contest (or whatever they called it). It’s a little weird joining in stuff like these but it’s so casual and meme-ish that no one really cared about what did you submitted - it’s just for fun. Now that I have left their server I’m not sure if there’s anywhere else that can provide stuff like that, but the memories of people discussing those submitted work are indeed nice :)

And it seems that I had also written short stories on Steemit during 2018. To be honest I don’t even remember writing them…now that I found one I recalled that I have actually written more stuff like that. Some in Chinese, some in English, but what really surprised me is that I could write short stories…where had my imagination went? Lol.

Mobile games aren’t the only thing I started to buy last year, I also got a pretty decent graphics tablet. Probably that’s the best purchase I have made last year because I could abuse it for literally everything, from drawing to note taking to being a mouse replacement to even gaming, it just works. That’s kinda the reason why everyone in class is asking for class notes from me and why I’m always drawing with graphics editing applications instead of on raw paper, it’s just a little too convenient and nice to use. I won’t lie that I would want to get a Wacom tablet if possible, but the price…I guess I’ll make it as a motivation for me to post more on Steemit lol.

Probably lastly I also became the leader of some huge in-school project of the community service course and it is indeed an unforgettable experience, in both ways - hellish and fun. I have some recaps on it here and in some way I guess this somehow changed me quite much for 2019. Probably I can’t feel the change myself but who knows :3 You aren’t supposed to “feel” soft skills anyway, you use them instead.

That is probably not all, there are much more smaller things that I didn’t include above, like submitting my first pull request to a GitHub repository and get accepted, switching to Linux for (almost) full time, attending both nights of concerts in Comic Fiesta and meeting the osu! community in person, etc. Turns out, it seems that I have done something throughout 2018 then :)

You really know nothing before you count.

Not sure if I have some resolutions for 2019, but if there’s one, is to continue doing things I love <3

Huge shoutout to everyone that made my 2018 great and let’s look forward for a better 2019 and sorts…a very late happy new year and hope that you are able to keep on doing what you love too. Not very ready for 2019? It’s okay, you can always still consider January as a trail month, just don’t tell anyone about it, and no refunds ;)

See you soon,
–Lilacse

--- Posted from my blog with SteemPress.