Maia

Oh that's such a good idea! Would definitely solve my inability to count 😅

Picture of a rough single crochet square of yarn

For the new year, I’ve started learning to crochet 🧶

It’s very rough around the edges (literally), but it’s just practice and my first attempt and I’m excited to be learning and to tangibly see the progress in the thing I’m physically making

(tips about making your crochet less stiff welcome)

And I think that's everything! Thank you if you read, hopefully this time next year I'll have positive updates on all of my goals :)

6/6

And last, less of a goal and more of a loose idea, but I have occasion to pick up the equipment to record for someone else's YouTube channel, and I've tossed around the idea of uploading my own videos too, probably longform video essay content, but I'll have to come up with some ideas and see.

5/6

So in the new year, I'd like to affirm to myself that it isn't selfish to have wants and to sometimes put my own wants ahead those of others. There have been people in my life who have taken advantage of this tendency, and it isn't good for me and I need to cut those people out.

4/6

Putting myself first - One of my unhealthiest traits is the tendency to put my own wants and needs on the backburner as soon as someone else expresses a desire for something, which has led to me deprioritizing myself and telling myself that what I want isn't that important

3/6

Finishing my certification courses - currently doing the Google Data Analytics and Tableau Business Intelligence Analyst certifications
Meeting people IRL - I've been fairly isolated since COVID and lost contact with most people I knew in uni, so I'd like to go out and meet new people

2/6

Things I want to accomplish in 2025:

Getting into Grad School - Would love to do my MPS in Data Science where I did my undergrad
Full-time employment
Becoming physically healthier - Going back to the gym regularly, cooking healthy and filling food, sleeping more reguarly

1/6

Things I accomplished in 2024:

Graduated from college!!!
Retired from a volunteer position that was draining my health
Figured out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life (data analysis + viz) and started self-teaching to make up for the time in uni when I was unsure and took the wrong classes

One of my Habitica challenges is to post my New Years resolutions on social media, so I'll use this as a space to talk about both what I accomplished in 2024 and what I hope to accomplish in 2025, to verbalize my thoughts and hold myself accountable.

#HabiticaResolutions

Chocolate chip cookies

Lemon bars

Tried my hand at some gluten-free baking today for a friend with celiac disease. Chocolate chip cookies and lemon bars 🍜🍽️

Related, discovered putting coconut oil in chocolate chip cookies. Life changing advancement in cookie technology.

Dinner tonight inspired by my good friend @finchinator2.bsky.social 🍜🍽️

Yup! Smoked for four hours then finished in the oven for another two.

Obligatory turkey picture 🍜 🍽️

I think that's about the end of my rant on this topic. I don't doubt that my take on the situation will piss people off and land me accusations of Nazi apologism, but as someone who was quite literally in charge of the site's safety for a significant amount of time, I wanted to say my piece.

At the end of the day, Smogon is a community with a lot of flaws, but an incredible amount of work has gone into it from so many different people, and I think it's just as important to recognize the depth of that change as it is to talk about the past.

-rebuilding our content management system and redesigning our home page. Having worked closely with him for years, I can say with certainty that he is literally just a stressed-out mid-30s guy who wants to crawl in a hole and code and not engage with the public, not some purveyor of Nazi dogwhistles

-take accountability for actions long in the past and, idk, confess to secretly being the world's most self-hating group of Nazis or something.

chaos himself has been, for the past year and a half or so, embroiled largely in upgrading our forum software, migrating our database-

-that I and a lot of other people have done to keep the site a safe place for people of all backgrounds.

It truly seems impossible to win at this stage, with one side screaming about how we're too woke and how we ban too quickly for things like transphobia and the other wanting us to-

The creator asks that we not get angry at her, and I'm not angry, just a little wrung out, because the title and the bulk of the video and the comments from people who clearly already had opinions and just wanted to shout about how evil Smogon is serves to undermine the work-

-possibly say on the topic that would rectify those wrongs. People who are upset about this are likely to remain upset, regardless of what he says or does, and even things like rebranding will likely be painted as an attempt to cover up the site's past.

Since he's made it clear in staff and contributor spaces that this is a part of his childhood and the site's history that he regrets.

I don't think it's fair to expect him to wear what 16 year old chaos did as some sort of mark of shame 20 years later, and I'm not sure what he could-

-and very little talking about the actual change that occurred, apart from criticizing it for being slow and passive and calling out chaos for not digging this up and parading it around himself

Far be it from me to suggest that hiding history is a good thing, but I'm not sure what he is meant to do

-Having tough conversations shouldn't come at the cost of losing that nuance, because, yes, this did happen, but a video that is "actually about" the way queer, neurodiverse, and other minority voices helped change the trajectory of the site spends a lot of time talking about where the site started-

These sorts of conversations are important to have, and ignorance of our history only leads to us repeating it, as we see with so many real-world examples in the modern political landscape.

However -

There's ultimately a good message at the end of the video - people of minority groups should take up spaces in their communities, and we do have the power to change things.

I do understand why this video was made and think it is a worthwhile topic, despite me crashing out for ten posts about it.

If that is what the video is "actually about" then I don't know why the first 37 minutes were straight up just talking about how chaos is trying to hide the past and suggesting that there was something more sinister at play than an edgy teenage joke with only a brief mention of how current Smogon is

It's only in the last five minutes of this video that the creator refers to "what this video is actually about," what she says is "a community that escaped from the 'edgy Nazi' trap."

- but does very little touching on how things have changed and how Smogon has improved, apart from some talk about our charity bowls and reference to Smogon being "starkly" different than it was in the past

That said, the creator does touch on, at points, the idea that Smogon and its community has "changed," including talking to my bestie Finch, one of our most public creators and figures, about how Smogon's brand as it is today is innocent and not ill-intentioned -