December was for rest and doing things that weren’t writing or editing. This was leaking into January (it’s technically the 4th now) so I’m just going to shoot this off and be done with it.

Tarot

I finally opened my tarot reading services to the general public. I didn’t intend to, but a friend of a friend inquired and I decided to go for it. When I announced it, I ended up with a total of 6 clients over the course of two weeks. It was a little nerve-wrecking with the first couple of clients, but it got easier as I went along. I honestly had a lot of fun, and it was satisfying that nearly all the readings resonated with something they had on their minds. I just opened bookings for early January. Hit the link above for details.

My running joke this month was that I’m a professional tarot reader, given that I’m between jobs.

Gaming

Palian life got flipped turned upside down this month and it was the server segregation’s fault. They launched the Asia Pacific servers, alongside the European and North America servers. I think many didn’t expect the chaos it would cause before the company went on a long vacation.

It became starkly obvious that cross-server play allowed us to actually collaborate with other players. The AP servers were very dead at first. Nobody responded in chat when we called out flow trees and groves. A lot of us felt as though we were the only ones on the server. We were cut off from our EU and NA friends unless we had VPN.

We learned later that it’s hard for Switch players (also launched around the same time) to use the chat interface. That is if they spoke English at all. As a result, they banded together outside the game, unaware that there is an existing culture of collaboration in place. Some groups moved like mobs – rushing in and chopping all the flow trees without asking themselves why everyone else was waiting around. I’ve seen this gradually get better – now people do wait and signal the location with flares if they can’t use the chat box. But there’s been a lot of outrage on the official Discord server, including from yours truly.

But the perk is that I am now active on the Palia Discord, made many friends and went on several foraging parties with them. Since I discovered that my VPN is still active, I also went on foraging/mining parties with random players who were stranded alone on their server. This happened twice; we were legit the only two people on that server and it was GREAT. I hosted one player who needed star-quality sushi over in my home, where we made the dish and several others. The hilarious moment was realising I was browsing my fish collection for something to cook like it’s a Chinese seafood restaurant.

Coming Next

• Will I return to the job market next year?
• Decluttering continues. There are flea markets coming up!
• I am slowly going through the Year Compass for the first time. More on this next report.

Links Roundup

• Scandal Rocks Publishing as Debut Author Is Linked To Fake Goodreads Accounts That Review Bombed Peers
• ‘Nudify’ Apps That Use AI to ‘Undress’ Women in Photos Are Soaring in Popularity
• Copyright claim against Tolkien estate backfires on Lord of the Rings fanfiction author
• Meta’s new AI image generator was trained on 1.1 billion Instagram and Facebook photos
• Dozens Of Statues Were Buried In A Mud Bath For 2,300 Years, Preserving Them Perfectly
• The poster’s guide to the internet of the future
• Ancient Chinese city found perfectly preserved at the bottom of a lake