Hello, and good day!

I am feeling curious to ask openly at you about: Where are you in life?

For me, it has been over five years since I have created a Battle of the Bits account: And while I still differ from having reached the skill I desire for myself in artistic scopes, I feel that I am slowly making progress: I most often find myself studying about than practicing; I seldom get to see materialized output I intend of I do, or at all: I have most recently been focusing on drawing; at a moment, I decided to make myself a comfortable desk where I can rest my elbows on, to focus on drawing for long sessions while protecting my tendons from overwork, and began to read about making a table, I am intending to, with bodies I have been told would be gifted otherwise. Reading about anatomy of dragons and other creatures, lead me to gather clay from hard red soil around my house to model a dragon I can use to support myself on practicing in giving illusion of 3D space to drawings of mine, with: My mother gifted me clay in the meantime, and used it to model a dragon I currently am feeling satisfied with: By, I am feeling desire to preserve it, by using it as a guide to make a digital 3D model based on, and currently find myself reading about.

I have lately been beginning to cook more: The output of I have most received accolades for, is a cookie, using the next recipe:
-Mix into at dough; cookies are softer the least beaten is the dough:
187g of floor
110g of margarine
150g of white sugar
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 egg
-Mix 130g of diced nuts with the dough, or a grated or chiped big chocolate bar.
-The dough now weights for me about 670g: In this case, divide the dough in portions of 56g for 12 cookies
-Put on a preheated oven, at over 170 celsius degrees: The hotter you put it at, the more it maintains its form, and the softer it gets. Turn the cookies after they get a slight yellow tone on its top. Take off from the oven, to cool for 30 minutes on a grid platform, after the, now bottom of the cookie gets a slightly more golden tone.

I am feeling desire in my chest to read about where you currently are in life, and feel pleasure about fantasying of going back to this thread, and both acknowledge also then future periods of, that you may want to share about and update here!

I am extremely drunk so if this makes no sense so be it. But, I just finished my first year of composition school and I'm super duper happy with how it's going. I'm pulling good grades and I've made some wonderful friends and I've learned so much fantastic stuff. I also met a fantastic girl hehehe. (though of course, girlfriends are temporary, trackmania nations is forever).

I have unfortunately gotten into watching star trek. This is taking a lot of my time up, but this is time I would have otherwise wasted so no loss I suppose. Either way I'm very happy with how everything is and I look forward to my second semester of my composition degree :)

@Minerscale this Star Trek? ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui6g23ygov8

Where I am... Will life get bigger like a Marvel movie? Or is everything going to get smaller, more personal, and niche-oriented?

I've adopted "Think Smol" in the hopes that there will be a worldwide "smol backlash" in all possible areas, but even if not, you can live in a Smol World after all, if you want to. Germinating a studio concept with a set limit for how much it can expand, like a closed system / self-contained tiny universe

Smol is Cute is Power

I started watching TNG

Heyyyyyy, so I haven't been around in a pretty long time... Hi everyone!

It sure seems like a lot of new names have appeared since I was here last. That's great! Looks like the community has grown pretty steadily in my absence, and that makes me happy.

To answer the question in the topic title, for the past 4 years I've been working full-time delivering pizzas and poutines for a local joint, which has been surprisingly lucrative, but has also taken away a lot of the free time I used to have for music and other pastimes (mostly because I work 9- to 12-hour shifts, during nighttime). Our current predicament in the world also brought more even work to restaurants like the one I work at than before, which means even less free time as a result.

Also, in other news, I have a baby girl on the way! She's expected to be born in March 2022.

So yeah, I feel like my life has taken a turn for the best in the past couple years, although I'm kinda sad that it has resulted in Bit Battling taking a bit of a sideline. This isn't the first time I've said this, but hopefully I can make a comeback in some capacity... Even if it just means partaking in a couple OHBs every now and again!

À bientôt, BotB...

hi oli!

fun thread idea, i will enjoy reading back on it and checking in on everyone, in the distant future mayb when i am grey in the hair and long in the beard, much like some admin or other whose name escapes me.

here is a cool piece of cookie making tekkers which my gf who is big into baking has been trying: you can grate carrots and put them into cookies, and they will not come out tasting like vegetable, but like carrot cake!! especially if you increase the ratio of brown sugar to white, and stick a little cream cheese glaze on top when they're done. perhaps, if at some point you are on the hunt for new avenues of cooking adventure, you might recall this thread and give it a try.

as for my own life, since roughly the same time i started regularly participating on BotB, i have been a support worker at a brain injury service. i work in the rehabilitation wing, which means as well as doing all the kind of stuff you have to do to keep people alive, i'm also doing physio sessions, speech & language therapy, working on people's personal recovery goals etc. it's a great feeling to see someone you've been working with make measurable progress, and just generally the job delivers the kind of fulfilment you can only really get from socially valuable work.

the flip side is that the health & social care industry is one which does not recognise such concepts as "weekends", "holidays", "regular sleep cycle" etc. which causes me a great deal of headache trying to attend OHBs.

it is also why i have a morning shift on christmas day, and why i'm here on BotB right now instead of at home with my family feasting & getting pissed. but they're coming to pick me up after work tomorrow and we're going to "do christmas" on boxing day!! that'll do.

now i am expressing many hopes of a happy present and happier future for all BotBrs in this thread and for the futurist reading this post right now!!

also, for the first time in my short life, i have signed up to a patreon! guess which one? ;0

fckin unemployed babeyyyy

as usual in a deep dark hole

i hesitated to write something here until now, but now i feel like leaving some notes at least.
life cldnt rly be any better for me atm.

own apartment since mid-2021 now, i spent all my time doing what i love over the last months including lots of music, streams, other personal projects. i feel like i was very productive and (almost) everything was so much fun to do.

i met so many more of my friends again than in 2020. a lot of great afternoons and evenings. i also traveld through germany a lot more again to meet some of my friends from other cities again after several years.

finished my university degree (final grade "good", which is very good for someone lazy as me xD) and im so happy to be done with my bachelor thesis, which took so many hours of early 2021.. but i got the best grade 1.0, so it was totally worth it.

im talking to the best people i cld imagine every day, the friendships i had over the past 10+ years are still growing and existing, the new ones are fulfilling and making me happy too.
i found a very special person to talk to on a daily basis which improves my mood by a lot, too!

now its almost 2022, and the next goal is to find a job, since i dont wanna live off my savings for another 6 months,,, even if i could.
i wrote some applications last week and already got the first invitation to an interview. not sure if this one will be THE thingie i want, but we will see. i luckily have the luxury to choose something, since theres a big range of jobs.
hoping to start earning my own $$$ in january/february and then i will see where to go from there.

looking very bright and positive rn,, but the best thing about it all is the fact that even if one or two, or several things go wrong, i have plans B, C, D, [...] and theres no realistic way for me to end up being completely fucked.

as for baking cookies and cake, i finally got a good bowl for christmas, which i can use to make the dough. i got lazy and never bought one myself, but now i can finally start doing tasty things too :D//

with that being said, im looking forward to 2022 after such a life-changing 2021 and i also hope for some new challenges, experiences and inspirations!!