Goodbye to 2024

Well, this was certainly a year. One of the worst in quite a while, particularly with that November finish. But in these last few days of 2024, I’m looking back and giving myself — and all of us — credit for what we did or at least tried to do, and for what we’re going to do in the months to come. So get ready for some horn tooting, because you and I and all of us deserve it — toot toot!

Worked like hell for this election and beyond

It was, as the cliché goes, the most important election of our lifetime. And we didn’t do so great! But we left it all on the table, didn’t we?

For a couple of years, I’ve known that Twitter was dying and would become a terrible place to organize, so I worked hard in 2023 and 2024 to build a presence on Bluesky, which became a great place for electoral mobilization. I found a bunch of amazing folks who shared practical things we could actually do to help get out the vote, and boy, did we. You can find a bunch of my favorite people in the fight in this starter pack of practical politics on Bluesky.

I personally spent many hours writing postcards via Postcards to Swing States, sending letters via VoteForward, and phone banking and text banking for a slew of groups and campaigns. I also wrote up some posts that folks found useful, constantly shared links to volunteer opportunities, and did a bunch of other stuff, some of which you’ll see under their own individual headings below.

Of course all throughout and especially now, electoral politics is never enough. A massive, ongoing part of the fight includes supporting organizations and people who are defending vulnerable communities (which basically includes all of us) in the months and years to come. A bunch of electeds are signalling pretty hard that they’re ready to roll over when it comes to defending immigrants and trans people in particular. I recommend adding all your electeds — especially your local city and state reps — to your phone contacts so you can call them all the dang time to push them to do the right thing. And I recommend finding local groups — everything from mutual aid groups to public libraries to immigrant rights groups — that are defending vulnerable people and supporting them as much as you can.

For folks on Bluesky who frequently post practical suggestions for things we can do to help our communities, feel free to check out my Always Something We Can Do starter pack — and much love to everyone who’s using the #DidThisToday hashtag to share the things they’re doing to help their communities. I find inspiration there all the time — y’all are the best.

And of course I want to give a special virtual high five to LOLGOP, Celeste Pewter, Elana Levin, Bree, Mags Colvett, Peacef’Owl, Joe Katz, Emily Quinn, and PrisonCulture — all essential follows on Bluesky if you want practical suggestions for things we can actually do to help each other, whether electorally or through other means.

Drew this, along with a few other “I Voted” sticker designs, to encourage people to vote early.

These were fun.

Raised money for Asian Americans for Democracy and some Senate candidates.

I finally figured out how to create fundraiser pages on ActBlue this year, and I used ’em to raise over $8,000 for Asian Americans for Democracy and over $12,000 for US Senate candidates Colin Allred, Jim Tester, and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Yes, we lost. But we tried!

Worked with a bunch of incredible comics creators on the Stop Project 2025 comic

An all-volunteer group of comic book artists and writers worked like hell to put out the Stop Project 2025 comics, which you can read here. They remain a valuable resource to get a handle on what Project 2025 supporters have in mind for our country in the months and years to come.

Made a bunch of helpful starter packs on Bluesky

Bluesky ain’t perfect. But it’s miles better than Twitter or the other big alternatives. So I’m happy to have helped folks find each other on Bluesky by creating a bunch of starter packs that hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people used. You can find them in the “Starter Packs” tab on my Bluesky profile – they include lists of creators I’ve worked with, local news outlets, comics people, more comics people, AANHPI creators, analog photography folks, People Who Get It, and much more.

I also wrote up a couple of posts on Bluesky that people have found helpful – including Bluesky hygiene and safety and Why I ditched Twitter for Bluesky – and hope you will, too!

Donated a bunch of books and helped raise money for the Romancing the Vote auction

Romancing the Vote is a great initiative created by awesome romance writers who raised a mind-blowing $189,469.49 for Fair Fight and VoteRiders in an auction this July. I was proud to donate a bunch of books to the auction that collectively raised over $1000 for them.

Got folks to sign up for Bystander Intervention Training

Back during the surge in anti-Asian violence in 2021, I found out about the bystander intervention trainings offered by RightToBe (then called Hollaback). So after the election, I started plugging them again, since we’re in for more targeted harassment of vulnerable people, and a bunch of folks responded by sharing the links and saying they did the training. Please do check out the calendar of free online trainings — they’re incredibly helpful. This isn’t about weird vigilante tactics — this is about learning techniques for safe deescalation in the moment.

Improved my sleep habits

Here’s a super personal one! In 2024, I got into a bad habit of staying up too late and feeling deeply exhausted all the time. Part of this was due to the fact that 2024 was deeply exhausting! But after the election, I made a very specific commitment to going to bed earlier and trying to get at least seven hours of sleep a night. And I am sorry to report for fellow night owls that yes, NOT staying up until 2 am every night actually has made a huge difference. I was still tired during the day for the first week or so, because sleep deprivation doesn’t get cured overnight (ho ho ho), but after two or three weeks I began to really feel the difference. Highly recommended if you can manage it!

Fixed up my websites

Once a year or so when I get a little time, I go onto a digital hygiene kick and dig into my computers and websites to fix up a bunch of things that have been bothering me. And over the last week or so, I’ve fixed a dozen small but significant issues with both this blog and my work website, and I’m pretty darn thrilled. Much of this includes details no one would consciously notice but me — like reducing wasted space by tweaking CSS code to tighten margins around elements. But all of these little things add up and make a website more welcoming to visitors, so I’m thrilled. A big high five to Gilia tricolor on Bluesky who shared some code and made the challenge of digging into CSS much less daunting.

Did a lot of good work stuff

I’ll go into this part of it more on my work website, but in 2024 worked with a lot of awesome people, wrote a lot of good comics, and dug into some secret projects I can’t talk about yet. It was a hard year for creative work, but we did it, and we’re gonna keep doing it.

Best wishes to everyone. 2025 is gonna be hard. But let’s figure out how we can help, pick our lanes, and keep it moving, as always.