What I've Been Up to In Feb 2025
Home Alone (discomfort, then joy)
Hey, how are you?
February was interesting for me, the week of Feb 17 was “ski week” for kids’ schools, but my wife took the two kids to tour a few East Coast colleges, for a whole week!! (my older son is going to be a high school senior in August~~~) I was left to my own devices (literally! 😂)
As it turns out, I wasn’t used to this thing called kids-free time! What happened to all the noises, the drama, the worries and the uninvited nagging? There is no dirty laundry hanging at random spots? No toys on the floor I needed to walk around? No extra mess to clean up? Is this what they called “empty nester syndrome?”
Fortunately, I got over that discomfort phase pretty quickly! And the joy of it! I love how quickly I get to cook and eat, how little dishes need to be done, how I get to do anything I want - and I ended up spending the last free day for a one-day ski trip. Just love it.
So the moral of the story? I will be trying very hard to “encourage” my family to travel away for a week! I recommend you to try it sometimes 😊.
Here are the things that kept me busy this past month, aside from the day-to-day ‘job’ related stuff…
Creating and hacking stuffs
Drawing
Weekly comics - comic strips are posted on all major social feeds, but of course, the best place to access this would be my (paid) Patreon page
Study drawings (#inktober52 ) - can you guess what is the prompt word for this only piece done this month :p
#FanArt (always fun to do!) I’ve completed making illustrations for each of the 14 ‘wuxia’ (or Martial art…) novels by the legendary Jin Yong. What’s next…
Writing
“100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems” (唐詩一百畫) - book 1: available as a hardcover on Amazon. Book 2 of this 3-part series is on-going! 😊
The pre-released drafts of this book are all available on my Patreon
This month not much happened on my substack “Echo of the Worlds”.
Game Dev
No updates, but feel free to play my game#1 Qin!
The Web
No updates (is a good update 😉)
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - Continue with Book 5 “A Dance with Dragons”
Gaming - Continued on God of War and Bioshock 2;
TV/Movies - Only Murder in the Building s3; finished 知否知否应是绿肥红瘦 (Story of Minglan)
Learning: started my French learning journey on MEMRiSE… Comment tu t'appelles? 😉
That’s it for this issue of my newsletter! If you really finished reading the above, I thank you, and wish that my sharing would either entertain you, or inspire you (if you’ve been thinking about your own creative projects).