Nicky Wrapped - 2023

Boy, what a year. I feel like I say that every year but this time… wow. What a year. It was a mixed bag to say the least. January to February are non-existent in my head for reasons I will mention later. I got a nice big CRT TV and I think I streamed some PS2 games on Twitch, that’s all I can remember.

March was nice—I discovered Decker, a HyperCard-like program that lets you create all sorts of things! A Decker project, or deck, is made up of a bunch of cards that you put whatever in. Drawings, sounds, buttons, text, databases, etc. I made a zine with it about my feelings towards AI art and how creating things is the best thing you could do, probably. There’s more useful stuff you could do I guess but making shit just because you can is hard to beat. I also made about 1/12 of a movie inspired by Skinamarink but then I stopped because it’s actually pretty hard to improvise a film on a 0 dollar budget.

April saw the return of my love of photography. Well, I guess I always love taking pictures but I got a 35mm point-and-shoot from my neighbor and used film for the first time since high school and it really got me going. Unlike some hobbies of mine that I get real into for a month and drop it until I come back to it a year later, this one is still going strong. I recently got a Canon Powershot S2 IS from craigslist earlier this month and I’ve taken pictures just about every day with it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

May saw the return of my telnet bulletin board system, Big Beautiful System. This was nice to bring back, as I needed a small & very chill space online to post without worrying about a huge unintended audience taking me out of context and yelling at me for things I never said. Check it out in an ANSI compatible client or with the web portal on this very website!

Speaking of online spaces—in June, I got banned from Twitter. I was being mean to transphobes the same day Elon Musk said some extreme trans extermination shit. 10 years of posting, gone. And I really don’t care! Twitter was not as useful to me and my art “career” as I used to think. I’ve gotten plenty of traffic from other places, more so than Twitter in some cases. And I no longer fear becoming The Main Character of the Day again! I started reading more and also vlogged a bunch. Remember vlogs? They’re BACK. Getting banned from Twitter was the second best thing that happened all year.

Later in June, I drank my last drop of alcohol which ended up being the best thing. I had been a heavy drinker for about 6 years and it was getting really bad. Pint of gin a day bad. Going into debt to buy liquor bad. I was drinking so much that there are large holes in my memory I’ll never get back. Bits of the past 6 years a complete haze. I had to stop, and slowly tapering myself off of it had failed in the past so I dropped the stuff cold turkey. That ended up being the right move, even considering that the withdrawals put me in the hospital to start July.

I made it through the worst of it and through sheer willpower, I haven’t drank since. I even quit weed because without the alcohol, it just made my anxiety worse. So the 2nd half of the year has been a sober one. July was fully taken up by recovering from the withdrawals and dealing with an extremely painful double ear infection. I don’t even swim, why the hell would I get Swimmer’s Ear? Life is unfair.

In August, I released my 9th annual summer single “MORE RINGTONES”. I like making art that people use in a practical way, like ring and text tones. I wish I released more music than that but I no longer place my entire self-worth into how much music I release so it’s fine. I make all sorts of things and I don’t need to prove myself to anyone. September was all about reading and attempting to write. Read like, 6 books. I went many years reading just Finnegan’s Wake and posts online so it was nice to branch out. Something then got into my system and I NEEDED to figure out how to write fiction. Attempted a short story and failed spectacularly. Maybe I’ll try again later.

October was boring and not much happened. I mean, World Events happened but I mean in my own life. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. November was all about getting back into the swing of making music and also starting my next Game Boy game, which will be coming out on my 28th birthday (January 19th). And then, December...

December really sucked. One of the worst months in a while. My girlfriend’s mom went missing on the 4th and since then, every update in the case has been bleaker and bleaker. To respect the wishes of the family, I can’t share a lot of details. As of this blog post, there’s a lot we still don’t know and we’re trying to stay positive. There’s still a chance she could be found alive and until we hear otherwise, I’m choosing to believe it will happen. The situation has made the holidays even more painful than usual but we’re hanging in there. It’s hard to know what to say about it really. It’s been surreal and I hope we learn what happened soon. Please keep her and my girlfriend and the rest of the family in your thoughts.

So… yeah. 2023—a mixed bag! Some good, some quite bad. My resolutions going into 2024 are to listen to more music and read more books. Low stakes, but very do-able. I’m hoping for a much less stressful year. At least without toxic social media and actual toxins in my system, I have a better chance at tamping down a lot of the stress myself. Here’s to another year. I hope we all have a pleasant one. Oh my god I just remembered it’s an election year oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Nicky Flowers - 12/31/23