saltheartfreak

Imma lil' late to the party, but imma do it anyway. Spring

The year started with the regular curse of being sick. Had caught a flue while celebrating Christmas with family. It took a while to get rid off, but thankfully recuperated without issues. Finally got my appointment for the X-ray of my nose and sinus. And the conclusion was... meh, the sinus is just a lil' inflamed. Here take some cortisone nose spray. And so started my long and neutral medication. At least the docs told me that it wasn't anything serious, or anything "sickly" in my sinus that could get worse. So that felt reassuring. By April, I was getting comfortable in the Archive I had my internship. Some tasks was still a bit too complicated for me still. But I soon got help with that and my stress levels got down to normal again. Summer

Early summer was exciting. My bf, Joeltheswedishdragon moved in together with me here in Valleyland. Almost 9 years since we got together, and it was finally time for the big challenge. It took a few weeks for both of us to become accustom to the new change. But once we both got comfortable we both were laughing at how long it took us to do this. But as they say, "Better late, than never." So majority of the time when Joel moved in, was focused on getting all the things we needed and anything he felt was needed, now that we where two in my apartment. Autumn

It wasn't until early autumn I got my creativity back. And started to go ham, both art wise and animation. I am in the mist of colouring. But I finished an animation I call "Gnome cat". Which is an animation inspired by one of the cursed cattos from my collection. Proud over that one, most of all with how long it took me to finish the animation and the tech/tool issues I had along the way. Took me 8 months to animate, so that should give you an idea on how long it is. Hopefully I will be able to upload it here soon.

When October rolled around I wanted to challenge myself, tis was the season of challenges after all. But nothing caught my fancy. So I did my own challenge, and thus. HallowMorph was made. First time I did pixel animation, and it was so fun and I am happy I got around to do it. Will defiantly do more in the future since I thoroughly enjoy Pixel art/animation. Winter

When November rolled around, I was on a roll. But then, the curse struck. And Joel and I got sick in one of the worst flues we have had in a long while. Took us a month to recover from, and during this time. I weaned myself of my cortisone nose spray. I had been on it for almost a year. And I felt enough is enough, it doesn't really do anything, just kept the pressure in my sinus down by 20%. So then I tried to do my own healing, and I think I finally figured out why it got so swollen and irritated in the first place, but I am speculating for the moment and need confirmation from a doctor, or the dentist. So will wait for now. But the way I found to alleviate the symptoms, and this might sounds stupid, but it's brushing my teeth both in the morning and evening. Hadn't done both in the morning and evening since I first got sick with the flue that started the sinus problem, back over 2 years ago I think it is now. Had gotten lazy to brush after being so sick so long back then. But now I am back in the habit and so far it feels like it is gone. I can only feel the irritation and swollen-ness in the sinus in the morning, before I brush. And if I skip a brushing, I feel like shite. So yea, been an interesting experience. Just glad I found a way to keep it at bay.

Been also going back to water colouring again. Really missed it and it was been fun, sadly I don't have my scanner any more, it's software wasn't getting any updates and the glass on the scanner was getting stained, couldn't clean it no matter how hard I tried. Joel and I are saving up money at the moment for a A3 scanner. My previous was an A4 so it is time for a bigger upgrade. Joel needs it to scan in his traditional animation, and for me to scan in my big A3 watercolour art. Hopefully we can make space for it in our tiny apartment. For the last 2 months I been working on an animation of a "tomte" (Swedish gnome) reading a book by a candle light. I am cleaning up the roughs at the moment, and hopefully I will be done with it soon too to showcase here.

But in the mean time, wish you all a Happy new Year and bless everyone for their support and cheering during this year. I really appreciate you all. Love from lil' Sal.

Fun Facts

24 pictures/animations uploaded to DA this year.

11 new watchers.

Around 3100 pageviews this year. (51.2k)

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The first drawing of 2022:

The last drawing of 2022:

The first and last animation of 2022:

An other year, an other review.

Spring

I swear, am I cursed or do I have bad luck. The start of this year was once again spent being sick and incapacitated for the majority of the 4 first months of 2021. This time, it wasn't in my lung and throat, but for the first time in a long while, it made a nest in my sinuses. And what a nest it made and felt very at home in my body.

I don't know if this year was the worst, or last year. But I would like to say last years flu broke me physical, this "thing" in my nose broke me both mentally and physically. It killed my voice, made me cough up blood occasionally and made me faint and black out and almost hit me head as I fell. It was a battle for the first 2 month and then it turned into duels and would be rematches and me winning every time by a margin.

During this time, I was of course at home and continuing my internet interaction with the twitch art community. And upon joining them, has been one of the best chooses I have ever made. I am more confidence in my art and learning new techniques and tips n tricks. My socials skills also saw an improvement which I am immensely pleased about. All in all, lovely gang and feel very blessed to be part of it.

Summer

Early summer I felt I was healthy enough to come back to the second hand, but I returned for only a few months, to be then let go off. Since the idea was for me to have a work try out at the second hand and a working therapist would observer me and see how many hours I was capable of doing and what my strong points and weaknesses are. So once investigated, it was time for me to return to SPES (Arbetsförmedlings) and find a work place or at least an internship.

Autumn

By early autumn, the "thing" in my sinuses was not acting up as much and I felt 70-80% restored. My voice started to return and with that my mood and personality also. I was also visited by a friend from the art community during this time, and had a lovely time spent with her and her family, exploring Valley land and going on mushroom huntings.

SPES and I then became extremely lucky, by chance, finding a internship for me. And it all happened thanks to my coach from SPES asking me: "Sal, I just wanna throw an idea at you and see if it might be anything for you. How would you feel visiting and see if we can find work for you in the archive?" I didn't understand or knew what working in the archive would entail. So she explained, and she had me at "sorting documents", and off we where to see if we could just visit and see the work that goes around there. And hocus pocus, I landed my internship at the archive.

I was in extreme reality denial and I felt lucky and not worthy for landing such a well fitting internship. I have been in a bliss and every time I go to the archive for work, me and my boss always do something new and interesting and I learn new things about the municipality and it's history. Can't wait to learn more and I honestly hope and pray I am able to stay there for a long time and learn more. I am forever and never satisfied with learning history, I want more and forever open to new knowledge.

Winter

My healing continued, feeling 90-95% restored, meet a nose, ear and throat specialist doctor and sent for a CT scan. I am almost restored and honestly hope and there is still something left of the "thing" so I can at least get a closure and an answer to what it was/is. I need to know so it will not come back and how I can be prepared.

Well, they will defiantly find something now, got sick after celebrating Christmas with the family. But the worst has already past, and now I pray I won't catch anything the next year.

But I know that to prepare for the next year, I will eat more whole food, which I had been slacking off on the last 2 years, and that might have in term contributed to why I had been so sick at the beginning of the previous years. So never again. Good eating, exercise and SAUERKRAUT.

Thank you all for the wonderful support I have received this year. Thank you for the Llamas, follows, favourites, comments, core membership and fragments. I thank you all for your generosity.

Blessed be you all, good luck to you all the next year and may your life be filled with light.

Love from lil' Sal.

Fun Facts

28 pictures uploaded to DA this year.

9 new watchers.

Around 7620 pageviews this year. (48,9k)

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The first drawing of 2021:

The last drawing of 2021:

The first and last animation of 2021:

And we are back into the ring~

Spring

A mild and relatively snow-less winter graced our presence this year. Despite the mild weather came heartache and hardships... Early January I started my internship at the 2nd hand a bus ride away. New people and new work task. Was at first volunteering to act as the dishwasher for the things we were going to sell. Which was good, because it gave me time to get to know my regular work-buddies and at the same time, socialize on my own term.

By February I was enjoying my work immensely. But life would have it's surprises prepared for me.

Soon to be mum-in-law passed away. It hit my soon to be in-laws hard and we are still healing from the event. She passed away in her sleep, she had been sick for a long time, so I think we were somewhat aware that she didn't have long. I did get to see her and hear her speak my name one last time, before she passed away the next day.

We got the message late in the evening. We weren't there when she passed, we had just returned to my bf Joel's flat. Possibly because of stress and worry I had become sick with one of the worst flues I have had in my life. So we decided to quarantine ourselves just to be safe. Soon to be father-in-law wasn't alone at least, since one of Joel's older brothers was with him, so that made it easier for us to focus on getting me through the night and surviving the weekend.

After 4 rough nights of coughing, slime nose, fever, going in and out of continuousness and having no energy, I returned home with the help of papa who fetched me.

For the coming 2 weeks the flue symptoms persisted and I was laying and wasted away on the sofa, no energy to sit up. And was hard to even eat or make food. Slept way those days. the next two week was better with most of the symptoms gone. Only the fatigue remained, and took a long time to get rid of it completely.

But back I went to the internship, and I got to try to do bird's nests in the wood workshop. Was fun since it was a bit of precision work, which is my daily bread of love.

Then came the funeral, by then the government was talking of restricting our social interaction and how many people could be congregated at the same place. But luckily we got to have the funeral in peace before the shit hit the fan. Around a hundred people showed up. Lots of relatives and friends which was pleasing to see. I'm glad she got such a warm and big send off.

Summer

The internship continued, by this time the 2nd hand had have it's door closed from the public since a February. And my boss decided it was time to do a big clean up of everything, now that we got the time to do so. I got to help sort and throw away our book collection, at least those my boss did not deem worthy of saving for the customers.

Got some free books out of it. So that was nice.

By this time Joel and I was still working on the freelancing project and treading through the mud as best as we could to finish the comic for the client. But I knew that we wasn't giving it our all. And our schedule was non-existent and we didn't really have an idea of how we were in relation to the deadline. So I took the matters in my own hand and did a mini-deadline schedule for me and Joel, so we could get an idea of how many days we could spend on a page before we would be tight on time.

Was the best thing we could have done. And I should have done it sooner, but life happened.

Autumn

We finished the comic by a four day margin. By the time we were done, both me and Joel were having an existential crisis. He had it worst the first weeks. For me it slowly got worse. And after a few weeks I realized how extremely rusty I had become, for only colouring digitally for more than a half year. Imposter syndrome hit me hard. And I fled to the art streaming community on twitch. It has helped me some what. Helped me get the energy to finish the latest clip I was working on Popula. Wasn't much left of it, only had to clean the lines, so it didn't take much energy from me.

Winter

Since then I have had technical difficulties on my stationery computer. So I have now moved to using my laptop mostly, which I'm not used to and don't know if it can handle the programs I use. Will dedicate a day to try and install them and see how they run on the laptop. Sadly I have been procrastinating, and I'm trying my best to get back to my usual self.

By this time the internship continues and I have gotten better at socializing, for the moment I'm at the "unpacking department" were we go through stuff that comes to us and sort it. Been fun and interesting, mostly because you get to see strange things come through, and sometimes some really old stuff that we need to ask each other and figure it out together what it can be.

An unpleasant start to the year. And a nerve-racking and draining summer. But life is slowly returning to normal, though the new "normal" is something other to wish for. I'm glad I live where I live, and have been grateful for it during the year.

I hope the flue I got in February was the worst of the worst and don't have to go through a similar ordeal again. I am immensely grateful for Joel, for nursing me back to health despite his family situation.

I am also grateful I got the chance to help Joel with the comic and complete it. We both learned a lot from it. And I got a taste how stressful it can be, most of all when you just wing it in the dark... Definitely not something I want to repeat again. But if I have to, I'll fudging do it again.

May the coming year be filled with light and more heart warm moments. Blessed be those fighting for the highest form of love and light. Love to you all. It is so.

Love from lil' Sal.

Fun Fact

3 new pictures to DA this year.

2 new watchers.

Around 2620 page views this year. (43,900)

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The first drawing of 2020:

The last drawing of 2020: