Good morning Reader! 🎁

I sincerely hope your holidays are going wonderfully so far, and that your year is concluding peacefully :)

Speaking of the new year, since we are right about to start the new one, I thought it would be appropriate to look back on this year and everything that happened this year — including everything you’ve seen if you’ve been subscribed to the newsletter for a while!

This will also give you an idea of what to expect from me in the coming months :D

Let’s jump right into it, we have a lot to cover!

Looking back on my year 🍃

To say it briefly, this year has been a blast. Before listing what I did in 2025, I thought this was a pretty mundane year, and I was even sad to not have made more art overall; but my perception was very wrong!

Let’s look at some highlights:

I self published a children book

After working on it since September 2024, I finally finished, illustrated, and published my first book. It was 7 months in the making!

And I shared all the process with you on this newsletter, which was another big undertaking in its own way. I learned a lot! I was happy to celebrate with you when everything was done; and to give away the book to so many of you! :)

I started tabling at convention

This was a lifelong dream of mine: showing and selling my art at anime conventions and markets. Alone it’s a lot to handle, but thankfully I had friends to make this process so much easier :)

In total, I did 3 different events, from small art markets to a big expo in a stadium. Transport and language barrier have been a struggle sometimes, but this has been an awesome experience; and I hope to have more opportunity to do physical events this year!

I finally put together my fictional city

Another thing I’m super proud about is successfully completing Inktober! This in and of itself is not something I’m used to, but this year I managed to make it work with my schedule.

But most importantly, the project itself is very close to my heart: I drew a different location of my fictional city every day.

On top of pushing my creativity, this forced me to put my ideas into the real world rather than keeping them all in my head. I definitely needed that!

And on top of that, I also finished a city map a few weeks ago, which was on my to-do list since forever!

I opened my print shop!

After months of preparation and tons of requests during the year, I finally made the jump and made it possible for people to order my art!

And the response was overwhelmingly positive. I truly thank everyone who made an order — I hope it made you or someone else happy this Christmas!

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My big failures of the year 🍂

You see, I’m sharing all of this not only to celebrate, but also to inspire you!

I am myself very motivated seeing other people accomplish their goals and pushing their boundaries... but this can sometimes be a double-edged sword.

On a good day, seeing someone accomplish themselves can motivate you to go further on your own goals; either by modeling or by healthy competition. But on a bad day, it can feel very bad when we only see the success without any context around it.

So I would like to share some of my “failures” of the year with you, and some of the lessons I learned with them :)

Publishing my book was a disaster

To put it shortly, self-publishing a book didn’t go as I expected. Even discarding the long delays and high cost for ordering samples, the math just didn’t add up:

Even if my book was thin (around 33 pages long) printing costs a lot of money. Since it’s illustrated I wanted it to be in color and with a decent quality — and this skyrocketed the cost. And the colors aren’t even that impressive!

As a result, I invested a lot into this book and got very little in return. And I sold no copies outside of my own network, so having the book be available on sites like Amazon didn't do anything for me.

If you want to read more about it, I invite you to read the newsletter I published at the time:

​Why I sold exactly zero books (on purpose)​

In addition to this, I also know the book could have been better! Especially the story, as I’m a much better illustrator than writer. But this is sadly a given for any project, flaws are way more obvious in retrospect :)

Conventions are hard!

Yes, very much!

The very first time I was tabling at an event, after standing up and preparing for hours I made a whopping… 50zł. That’s about 11€!

If you want to read the full story of my first convention, I invite you to read more here :)

​My first convention was a disaster (almost)​

But beyond this first incident, conventions were not super profitable for me. On average, I made enough to pay the admission fee, but clearly not enough for how much I invested in good quality prints and products — which I’m personally fine with, but it’s not a reality people often share around!

I know how I can improve it of course, and I’m looking forward to doing more conventions, but if you look at the raw numbers a lot of people would be disappointed.

And a project that went nowhere

Back in June, I briefly announced a big project I was working on: ArtRooms, an open collaboration with artists!

The idea was a website where anyone could draw a room and a character, and after the submission closes they would all be laid down and explorable like a collaborative adventure game.

So, what’s the catch? The catch is that after working on it for weeks, I barely told anyone!

Let me explain: I was obsessed with this project for a while, and once it was basically ready I shared it with some friends and even this newsletter.

But when I reached that point, I took an honest look and realized I didn’t have the bandwidth to handle and promote such a project now. Quietly, the days went by and this fell by the wayside... after such a build up nothing happened! What a bummer 😔

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And those are just my public “failures”! I have way more in my personal life. For example I wish my progress in Polish were more noticeable after a year of learning and even more living in this country. I also wish I had done more illustrations!

But I don’t consider them “failure” per se; they are rather unmet goals, or information I just didn’t have back then. In other words, learning! 🤓

Some of them I feel a bit bad about, but this is not the end of the world — I’d rather have things not work out perfectly than have them stay in my head.

My big lesson for the year

In short, the biggest thing I learned this year is how important it is to put things into the world, rather than keeping it in my head.

Now this sounds obvious, and I should know this by now. I’ve been publishing things on the internet for almost a decade!

But what I mean by this is to also share to help people to understand what you’re making. Invite people into to work. And not keep things vague when they don’t need to be.

This means sharing and explaining even things that are obvious to me, because surprise surprise people are not reading my mind!

This very newsletter has been a wonderful way to practice this. 2025 was the first full year of publishing these weekly emails, and I realize now how much it helps me not only share my art more deeply, but also structure my thoughts in a digestible — and hopefully entertaining — way for you guys :)

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for following my journey this year! In 2025 I published 48 issues, and I’m excited to continue in 2026!

What are my goals for 2026?

Now, what about New Year’s resolutions? Have you made yours?

For me, I tend not to really have any goals for the new year. I have some for the coming weeks or months, but nothing too far into the future.

The reason stems from a simple observation: almost every time I look back in December, I barely remember what my goals and projects were at the beginning of the year.

Sure, it helps to have everything documented in my newsletter now, but it all feels so foreign and distant! So why would I want to set specific achievements to reach so far in advance?

Instead, I prefer to set an “intention” rather than specific goals or habits. In other words, a way to say “this is the direction I’m going towards this year”.

I often forget my goals at the end of the year, but I usually go roughly in the direction I intended; never perfectly, but it’s still the same direction :)

So, what are my intentions for the coming year?

My intention is to follow what I learned, and share more of my art and world with you guys. This might take many forms, standalone illustrations for example, but also bigger projects.

But the overarching theme will always be to make better art that is welcoming, and above all that makes you feel happy :)

If I can make you smile with an illustration or a story, then mission accomplished!

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Alright, that was a lot to go through!

I hope you enjoyed this retrospective and following the journey this year.

How was your year on your side? Is there anything you learned or are grateful for?

I really encourage you to take a moment to pause and appreciate how far you’ve come. I would have missed so many things if I didn’t have to document it!

So take this time today if you can. You can even reply and brag about your victories to me! I would sincerely love to see it :)

Thank you once again for being with me in 2025. I wish you a wonderful day, and an amazing year to come!

And above all,

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Take care,
- Nighten

This email is part of my art Newsletter. Invite a friend to join the club:

​https://club.nighten.fr​

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