grateful for...

making room for gratitude, some crazy health stuff, and a cheesecake recipe!

It’s been a tough, long year! I’m sure for many, many people. But despite all the pain and weariness and bad luck, I’ve got a lot of gratitude for the things that brought me joy this year.

My eyelids are still swollen and red and itchy. And I’m having a really hard time with my health these past few weeks. Honestly, this whole year has been challenging in regards to my body. I’ve been pushing myself a lot despite how weary and in pain I am. Trying to rest in between work, popups, obligations. I still want to see my friends! But sometimes my skin feels like it’s covered in needles and I’m on fire. Before anyone gives me advice on how to fix my health, trust me- I’ve tried and continue to try everything. I’m in immunotherapy and (as minimally as possible) using steroids. I’m taking antihistamines and just… trying my best! Drinking a lot of water, trying to lotion up and shit. I’m just complaining right now, cause being ill and feeling bad all the time sucks. I’d do just about anything to wake up feeling normal and well. I’m sure the day will come when that will be true. I’m hoping that day will come!

If you follow me on instagram, you’ve probably already seen this comic. I think I drew it around two weeks ago? I’m sharing it on here too for archival purposes. And cause it’s a fun comic and very related to what I just talked about.

Weirdly enough, it’s my most popular comic on instagram… the second most popular being the one about how I ended up in the hospital a bunch for my neck back in January. It makes me wonder if people either resonate a lot with or just enjoy content about uhhh pain and suffering? One of my coworkers previously mentioned that he posts videos on tiktok a lot, I think he used to be a teacher or something? And the videos where he talked about his negative experiences popped off way more than the ones that were more positive. He didn’t like that social media pushed him to be more negative, so he stopped doing it. I think I’m noticing a pattern of my more negative leaning comics or negative experiences reaching a broader audience. Which is a shame! But I don’t care about the algorithm and I’ll keep making comics about whatever I want lmao!!! And I hope more of them are about more positive experiences, considering they’re all slice of life comics. I am manifesting more good things happening to me basically- please please please.

doyung took this photo with my toy camera

I’ve been cooking a lot lately, but I promised I would post a cheesecake recipe for the paid subs this newsletter. So I will dedicate the rest of this post to that! Again, most of this newsletter is free, but some kind souls decided to paid sub anyways, so I wanna give those few people something to enjoy besides my gratitude. :-)