The year behind and before

I usually don't pay much attention to the turn of the year, but this time, I feel the potential of the coming year with excitement and am eager to do much with it. I think it may be because I used to mark off each year by its summer, with the trip to Minnesota being the standout thing, but now I live here.

So, as a few entries ago I looked over the art of the last year, I will overlook what happened and what I got done, to the end of going forward into the new.

At the beginning of last year, I was playing a video game that I'd been anticipating for years, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. It was amazing and solidified these series, now as one story, as definitely my favorite games ever. I did some fanart and there's more yet to do, and I have much to say as well in defense of the worth and beauty of video games as stories, which many conservative Christian folks don't seem to believe in.

I finished the second and third chapters of my first major comics work, my fancomic Batman: Decadence. Working on it is always a mad rush that is very nervewracking and good for my drawing skills.

I experienced my first Easter at a typical Novus Ordo church, and overall, it was not a pleasant experience. I mean, I know the Mass is the Mass if done validly, which I believe it is at said church, and indeed has infinite merits and we receive the true Lord in the Eucharist Which is infinitely precious, worth every pain imaginable, worth dying a billion times to obtain.
But... why oh why surround Him with Ugly? Why sing wannabe showtunes with heretical lyrics? Why--Please, No, Stop--Why tromp up and take Him in your hands and then chew Him loudly when you've been chewing gum all through Mass and never genuflected once???
I think I know why.
Not all the people who do thus, but the people who worked so hard so that this would be the norm, never believed in Christ at all. Which makes the numbers of Catholics in adulterous unions and using contraceptives and approving of sodomy start to make sense. On that note, 2015 was the year I stopped insisting to myself that Pope Francis just had to be a good pope, and realized more than ever before how bad things have gotten in our civilization, and resolved to speak out more about it.

I started writing a column for the newspaper at which I work. What I wrote was not unrelated to how bad things have gotten in our civilization, as I dealt with the supreme court decision on sodomite "marriage", Planned Parenthood selling parts of slaughtered babies, and the ascendency of socialism, as well as more pleasant topics like how much I like fiction, old stores in the nearby town, high school football, and Christmas.

I assembled some of the pages of the Liturgical Calendar Coloring Book into themed collections: Apparitions and Titles of Mary and Saints who fought the forces of Islam. In regards illustration work, the year was bit patchy, as, due to balancing the day job and household work, I sometimes took longer than forecast to deliver and clients were very patient, for which I am grateful.

Overall, it seems that 2015 was the year of me settling into having a day job and being one of only two people to manage a house, without parents around. I hope to make 2016 the year of fitting all the other things I want to do into this framework. ^_^