A Small Cup of Tea: No Promises

It's the last cup of tea for the year 2022~!

But first, I want to thank you all for checking out this newsletter and my other creative endeavours over the past year. I appreciate you all so very much. 2022 has been a very busy, very productive, and pretty decent year for me in terms of my career: Can You Sign My Tentacle? won an Elgin, I did more convention travel than ever before, and while I didn't put out a lot of content over the year, I am very excited about the stuff I'm actively working on at the moment.

That is in large part because you all find value in my work and support its growth. Thank you for doing so, and I hope that in 2023 our collaboration can only grow, because I can't wait for you all to see the stuff that's cooking for the next few months.

If you want this newsletter to grow in particular, the best way to support it is via a donation to my Ko-Fi!

Low Resolution

I am going to be brief: I don't have a resolution this year. I haven't even thought of one.

There are things I wanna do, to be sure: finishing the poetry collection I've been sitting on for years would be nice; all the cool kids have novels, so I would like to finish one of the... dozen or so I've been nursing from since before I pubbed my first short story up to now; I would like this year to have a greater publication ratio than the last, but I can only solve that by actually submitting more; and I would also like to put out a large RPG project, of which I have now hatched three new ones.

This cup of tea is not about the myriad videos and blog posts about how to shift away from resolutions to goal-oriented future planning, or about whether I need a new notebook or to start bullet journaling or make an appointment to see whether I really have ADHD or if I just hate making things--I trust you all, and the rest is not anyone's business.

This is about a few things:

first of all, congrats. You're here. I'm glad you made it. This has been a strange year, just like... the last few? But I appreciate that, despite a lot of hardship and a lot of loss, we can still have each other's company.

Beyond that: the way that we continue to make it is not carved in resolutions, or arguably even goals, but in the ways in which we carry about ourselves effortlessly from our hearts and our consciences. I trust you to be loving, compassionate, discerning people who take no shit and won't let anyone else take any, either.

I don't want to say what kind of year 2023 will be, not for fear of jinxing it, but because there is no real merit in rating a dish when you haven't tasted a single bite of it, let alone licked the plate clean. We're still dealing with the last desserts of 2022. I want to cleanse my palate before I form an opinion.

But I do want to say I look forward to... struggling. Just like I did last year--struggling to write, struggling to leave the house, struggling to feel valuable or loved or creative, having to make an effort every single time--because what I've learned even while it sucked was that being willing to make that effort at all is the very thorny part of the otherwise rosy sweetness of life, that if I hadn't made any effort you wouldn't even know what I thought mattered about me or about you or about the places at which our hearts intersect. I want to struggle so you know that you--your attention, your consideration, your support--mean something, and that I do not take that value for granted.

There is still a lot of upheaval in the shadow of our past few years, and we still haven't gotten really much better at resolving much of it, but some of us have managed to become better siblings and better neighbours in the face of it. Some of you have still found the fortitude to make beautiful things, stand up for those around you, and brighten the world in general. All that matters to me at the present moment is striving to be more like that, even when I know sometimes I lack the will to get out of bed or to be seen. But I also want to have more patience for the parts of me that lack such will, to dare to tell myself that this is fine. And if you know that you will struggle in the new year too, I wish you find the same patience for yourself.

So, let's show this new year what we're made of. Together.

Today's Tunes

I'm gonna have a lot more to say about the 73rd NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen in a few days (if you see me live on Twitch this week you better pour yourself a stiff drink and come watch!~), but for the moment I just want to leave this here:

This is just one of the songs I have a lot of feelings about, and if you want to hear those feelings, you're gonna have to wait for that stream (or a future cup of tea).

The Leaves

So that’s all for today.

A reminder that you can help keep this newsletter and the rest of my work afloat by supporting me on Patreon, buying me a coffee on Ko-fi or sending a donation via PayPal, or by buying one of my small game projects over on Itch! '

I have a poem coming up in the massive Issue 50 of Uncanny Magazine, and I hope you'll check it out by either buying a copy of the magazine or reading it online when it drops in early February.

A reminder that I am on Cohost, on Mastodon, on Tumblr, and on Hive Social @therisingtithes, so if you're migrating to any of those places, feel free to hit me up!

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed this cup of tea--and Happy New Year!