2023 Year in Review

Dec 16, 2023 | About 7 min reading time

I figured I'd make a little "year in review" post to sort of go over everything significant that happened this year, and oh boy, did things ever happen.

During this month, I enrolled in what would end up being my last semester of university for financial reasons. I've jumped around from program to program quite a bit because of my impulsiveness, and so I never really made much progress towards my bachelor's degree, though I have definitely learned some things and explored a lot.

Before my last semester of university, I'd decided I wanted to pursue medical school (obviously, this isn't going to work out). I still have a major interest in biology, particularly marine biology, health sciences, and parasitology (which I think is very underrated).

Not much happened this month, besides trying to prepare for my last semester of university. The last semester of school I'd done was before I'd been prescribed ADHD medication, so I was both hopeful and incredibly nervous at the same time.

My last semester of university started, with me taking health studies, human physiology, chemistry, English, and statistics. Everything was going pretty well at first, but for me, the first part of classes always tends to go deceptively well before I end up falling behind.

I also turned 22 during this month, and chose to stop going to therapy due to financial issues, which was meant to be temporary but has lasted much longer than I expected. Unfortunately, insurance does not cover my therapist, and neither does our public healthcare (so much for being Canadian), but they are the only therapist I've met who has any knowledge about DID at all. On the bright side, therapy with them did help me out a lot in terms of system communication and stuff like that.

I found out about the QSMP this month and started watching it, mainly Slimecicle's point of view! I quickly became obsessed.

During this month, I set up my current fundraising goal on Ko-fi, since government student loans didn't cover all of my tuition (resulting in me having to take out a private loan to cover the rest) and I very much needed to get my wisdom teeth removed since they're impacted and keep getting irritated and infected. The goal was originally higher, since I hadn't seen a dentist in a while for financial reasons and I had a tooth that had been loose for over two years at this point which I thought would need to be taken care of.

I also got my first donation on Ko-fi from WelshPixie, which I'm still insanely thankful for!

Exams went terribly, except for English, which I tend to do well in. I realized I wouldn't be able to continue without accommodations at this point, but universities here require a psychoeducational assessment for that, which costs about $4000 out of pocket and is not covered by our healthcare system. So even though I've been officially diagnosed with ADHD, autism, etc. and have documentation to prove it in all of those cases, I would not be able to access accommodations. Even if I were able to, at this point I've spent three years in university and have very little to show for it - why continue to waste my time? Ultimately, though it felt like a failure on my part, I chose to drop out.

I also created my Neocities website this month, and my younger brother gave me one of his stick insects to take care of, Otto!

I got really obsessed with building my personal website this month. I even created the Acing The Internet webring!

My family, however, seems to have been cursed when it comes to medical stuff this year. During July, while working outside in the heat, my mother fainted and broke her arm. She had to be rushed to the emergency room, where they put a cast on that initially fit okay but started to cut off circulation as the injury swelled. When she went back to have this fixed, the new cast ended up giving her the same problem and causing a lot of pain.

She ended up cutting off the cast herself the day before her appointment to have it removed, which I thought would get her scolded by the doctor (though I was in support still, because the cast was clearly doing more harm than good). Surprisingly, the doctor didn't care. Their response was essentially "Yeah, understandable, no big deal."

It seems that she's having less issues with the arm now, though I think it still causes her some pain unfortunately. She's also the type of person who hates not being able to do things on her own - which doesn't go so well when you combine it with a family that's forgetful and has issues remembering to help out around the house. I'm surprised she didn't strain the injury at some point, actually.

On that note, if anyone has tips for remembering to do chores and staying on top of them, especially with ADHD, please email me!

I started learning about and working more on accessibility and mobile responsiveness for my website this month, and I also wrote my first blog post on web accessibility!

I also moved my website over to leprd.space so I could experiment with PHP, though I maintain a landing page on Neocities as well.

On Toyhouse, I started making some HTML templates for people to use, which has gone pretty well. Most of them are free to use, but they've gotten me more followers and tips on Ko-fi even so, which is pretty neat.

My first dentist appointment in years happened this month, and it turns out my teeth are actually pretty okay, nowhere near as fucked up as I originally thought they were. The tooth that was loose? It was a baby tooth that somehow never fell out, because the corresponding adult tooth came in at a weird angle and didn't push it out. I have another baby tooth that had the exact same thing happen as well. They should have fallen out when I was twelve, but instead I had to yank the loose one out myself at twenty-two (the other one will be removed by my dentist at some point).

The dentist said my wisdom teeth should definitely get removed, because they're almost impossible for me to clean thoroughly at the angle they're at and they are impacted (which means they got stuck under another tooth and only erupted partially). Other than that, I only have two teeth that are crooked enough to impact my ability to keep them clean, and my options for that are either braces or just straight-up removing them - which probably costs less (and the weird position they're in, where they're behind other teeth, means it probably would look less weird, not more, if they were removed). I haven't made a decision on that yet, but I am working on saving up to get the wisdom teeth removed.

During this month, I started work on the Art Hive Studio, a part of Marigold Town! I also started trying to feed the birds outside in my backyard (using only appropriate food, of course) - none have landed on me yet, but the blue jays have landed right next to me on the deck!

In sadder news, my stick insect, Otto, passed away during September. He (I refer to him with he/him pronouns, though he was female, like most stick insects of his species) left me a ton of nymphs, though, who I've affectionately dubbed the Ottolettes. I currently have four of the Ottolettes, who are growing quite fast and will probably start laying eggs in a month or two. My younger brother has one of the Ottolettes as well, who he's named Clark. I also now have a shrine for my stick insects.

The Art Hive Studio had its first ever exhibition, and I joined Pixel Cat's End!

I also wrote another blog post on accessibility and mobile responsiveness.

In the good news for this month, I got my first two art commissions - one for digital currency on my art commissions thread on Pixel Cat's End, and the other for real money through my Artistree.

In the bad news for this month, my family's bad medical luck struck again, and my sibling was hospitalized and ended up in the ICU. Turns out they had undiagnosed type 1 diabetes, and none of us knew. They went into what's called "diabetic ketoacidosis" after their blood sugar levels went insanely high, where acids called ketones end up accumulating in the bloodstream. If they hadn't displayed the worrying symptoms that led us to take them to the emergency room (they are semiverbal and often unable to communicate their internal experiences to us), they would have likely died within the next 24 hours.

This was, to put it lightly, a terrifying fucking experience.

Anyways, they stabilized quickly and were able to be discharged within a few days, and now they are doing much, much better. So I guess this is a PSA - if you have any history of diabetes in your family (doesn't matter if it's type 1 or type 2), research the symptoms and go get tested. It's more common than you might think for people to go years without knowing they have diabetes (sometimes only finding out when hospitalized), and uncontrolled diabetes can cause a lot of damage. You can even test yourself at home, though you can't diagnose yourself (but it can still let you know at least if something's wrong).

Don't listen to the stigma about type 2 diabetes, either. There's lots of evidence to suggest that many risk factors for type 2 diabetes are out of your control (this podcast goes over that in more detail), skinny people can develop type 2 as well, and besides that, stigma can actually lead to people with type 2 avoiding treatment that they desperately need (doctor's appointments, for example).

2023 is nearly over!

During this month, I took inventory of my goals and cut back a bit on the things I'm pursuing. This included officially abandoning Twitch and YouTube. You can read more about my reasoning for these choices in this blog post.

I also got a referral from my family doctor to a trans-friendly endocrinologist, so I can go back on testosterone. I talked more about this decision in this blog post, but at the time of writing that, I hadn't yet gotten up the courage to bring this up to my family doctor. He responded quite well, thankfully. The endocrinologist he referred me to apparently doesn't have a super long wait-list, at least not according to a friend who was prescribed testosterone by them. Maybe a few months to a bit less than a year? I don't know, but I'm hoping it's only a few months. I'm going to call their office next week too to double-check that they got the referral, because I seem to have bad luck with that sort of thing.

In other news, I've been considering converting to Judaism again. I mean, I had been considering that on and off for the past few years, but I thought I had finally decided for sure that I wouldn't convert. It makes no sense that it's calling to me again now of all times, too, because I've been seeing insane levels of antisemitism online in response to recent events.[^1]

I think if I do convert, I will likely convert through the Reconstructionist or Reform movements. Who knows, though?

I've also made a lot of progress on the outline of my interactive fiction game this month. Not so much on the writing, but that's fine, I'm not rushing myself to get a demo out. I would like to have the demo out by March 2024, though we'll see how that goes and maybe readjust as we go along.

[^1]: I am not Zionist, and I fully support the free Palestine movement. I don't think criticizing Israel or even believing that it shouldn't exist is antisemitic. There are, however, quite a few white gentiles who are using the movement as a shield for antisemitism, and that is inexcusable.