2023 in review
Date: 12/29/23
Tags:
#witch and bard
Ending the year with a work in progress. I started this a while back and don’t know if it will ever be successfully finished. These characters are close to me personally and while I want to share them I don’t want to speak too candidly about them at the moment. I’m still exploring their story and for now I’m just enjoying drawing them.
2023 was a year of fresh starts. My biggest accomplishment was opening my business, DnA Artists, with my long time work partner A.OK. We attended 5(!) zine fests, opened an online storefront, and consigned our work to two zine shops. It’s been hard work, and I don’t think I could have done it without the support of A.OK and our family and friends. This has been a long held dream of mine, to own my own business and to support myself off of my art. We are just getting started and I’m optimistic that we can build a sustainable business. If you are interested in supporting me, please consider subscribing to our newsletter to get updates about where we will be and new releases in our online shop.
In 2023, I (re?)established my own website, which you are reading this blog post from now. I wanted to break away from the grind of social media and keep my work somewhere safe from the whims of big tech and advertisers. Speaking of, I left twitter and created a mastodon account. Was that really just this year? Limiting my social media usage has been a boon for my mental health and freed up time and space for other things.
Outside of my art practice, I began to examine my relationship with shopping and consumerism. I watched many of Hannah Poston’s vlogs on her no-buy year and was inspired to try my own no-buy month. I even made a zine about it! It was a great experience and I am planning to take what I learned into my budgeting for 2024.
I read a lot of books, but didn’t quite hit my goal of 75 for the year. That’s okay, I like to have something to work toward for next year. This list includes graphic novels, poetry, and some novella’s so the number 75 doesn’t really signify much. It was just a goal to get me to pick up more books.
I continued trail running, backpacking, and camping. I ran a sub 30 minute 5k which was not explicitly a goal, but definitely something I’m proud of. I revamped my weight training routine to support my other health goals.
Currently I am ending the year with a bout of covid, not the most optimistic way to go out. But overall the year has been good to me. I am looking forward to 2024 and hoping that it brings more good things to me, and to you. I’ll share my goals in the next post.
Happy New Year!
-Dana
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