What I've Been Up to In January 2023

Sick of being sick...

We had quite a lot of rain and wind washed over northern California from December to January, and after one of my son’s volleyball tournaments, I promptly came down with a cold/flu. Fortunately or unfortunately it was COVID-negative. Tested many times.

It first came with a sharp sore throat, then a few days later became a very productive cough. There were also some nasal symptoms, which I always get more severely comparing to throat symptoms, but this time it was the coughing that did not want to stop.

Then of course it went to my sons and they also had this cough for pretty much most of the month. The 5 year-old even had a few days of severe fever.

At the time of this writing, I myself finally is at the end of the sickness. Still a few times a day the throat feels weird when I would have a bit of dry cough, and a bit of sinus infection. The kids are in better shapes than I am.

I am just sick of being sick.

Here are the things that kept me busy this past month, aside from the day-to-day ‘job’ related stuff…

Creating and hacking stuffs

Game Dev

• ‘Qin’ - an action game based on the story of China’s first emperor - hasn’t been a very productive month for my game development progress. Aside from days being sick, or taking care of sick kids, I tried to implement a little inventory system for the quest items but didn’t get far this month.

Drawing

• Weekly project drawing (Tang poem 唐詩) - I am now at 99 drawings of the overall 100 drawings goal. (actually at the time of this writing I am done with the 100th!). It’s been a journey and I am going to start thinking about the next art/drawing project

  

• Study drawings - realizing I need to practice and study more about how to capture certain objects, backgrounds, I try to do one study drawing a week. Here are the ones from this month:

  

• (new) Fan Arts - and… I still want to have fun with the characters and stories I love, so I’ve tried to do one fan art drawing per week (only 2 this month)

  

Writing

• I continued to write 3 pieces a week on the 唐詩一百畫 (100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems) project - extending from the drawings, I am adding translation, reflection and additional notes for each poem. This is shared with my Patreon members every week!

Web, Merch Store

• My Patreon members continue to get all the full resolution arts and pre-released book writing every week! I am also looking forward to providing soft copies of my books and games to my patrons later this year.

• Website and Merch Store - no updates, but check it out!

Consuming Stuffs

• Reading - started reading “The Dead Are Arising - The Life of Malcolm X” (somebody gifted this book to me on Xmas…)

• Gaming - Been on Shadow of Tomb Raider, and Horizon Zero Dawn - specially the latter.

• TV/Movies - finished Euphoria season 2 (that Lexi’s show was really something!), The Last of Us (yes! it is really really soooo good!)

• Learning - continue with Udemy course on Rust (programming language)

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).