Happy new year all! Welcome to 2026. I even typed it correctly first try.
Overall, 2025 was a pretty difficult year. A lot of struggle both with personal things (creativity, flow, got sick several times), but also external things (the state of the Internet and other political crap).
That being said, things are feeling better and I've found a better state of equilibrium.
On Patreon, things are continuing to change. Taking a break definitely helped. Having the "permission" to give myself time away from making things will be useful in the future to prevent burnout.
I want to get back into making original music, but I do like the cadence of Sketchbook tracks. Keep the stakes low and if original music pops up too, all the better.
Music in 2026
The biggest change I am making relating to music in 2026 is that I'm taking a break from posting on streaming services. I'm genuinely grossed out by how Spotify treats it's artists, customers, and how it spends its revenue.
I will be posting music to here, obviously, and Bandcamp when albums are complete. I also continue to post Sketchbook stuff as public domain on my Itch page.
I do have some albums planned, but trying to scale back on the quantity. This is my current list.
Touch Grass - Originally wanted to do this for NaSoAlMo a few months back, but doing vocals and songwriting is very hard. My motto for this album is "be scared; do it anyway".
Additional Drones for Drones - This is mostly for me. I listen to the first one constantly and I need more variety.
@Odds - This is a silly collaboration album with Soopurkul for another entry with our group The Try Hard Club. We have done two of the four planned streams, so this will probably be out in May or April.
Quiet Spaces, Vol 6 - I have some ideas on another Patreon-exclusive album. If I'm not feeling Quiet Spaces, I can always try Autoplagiarism, Side C.
Community Remix Album - I skipped this in 2025 because of burnout, but I want to get back to doing these.
Abstraction Good Stuff - Album yet unnamed. I've been collecting all the music and sketchbooks into album buckets, like I did with Friend?. Want to start getting more of those out.
Development
Development is something I want to get into more again. I miss programming and building things. In 2025, I rebuilt the Two Hour Album Challenge site to be completely self-hosted and not rely on Google services to handle things like form/song submissions. I'm very proud of that system.
During my holiday break, I started building Concentric, which is a mix of a blog and a wiki. Still a prototype; there's no real design to the page yet. I am using this as an outlet to write more or just kind of document my personal experiences. Still a lot of work to do, but it's been fun to build more modern web apps.
As far as game development. I've been working to finish up Fever Break, the game I started in February last year. Hoping to wrap that up this month.
I have two other game projects I want to work on this year. Darkness Sleeps is a twin stick Vampire Survivors-style game. Hivemind is a mining and Missile Command-style defense game (similar to Dome Keeper or Wall World, if you've played those).
Writing
I've only been talking about it for like 5 years, but I finally finished the initial draft of my book!
I have a ways to go with it. But I feel that editing things will go much faster than writing them. Once I do a few passes at it, I'll share a draft with you all.
I'm looking forward to passing on the knowledge and inspiration I gained from the Two Hour Track Challenge project.
Finances
A pretty boring year for TallBeard Studios. Pausing the Patreon and getting completely burnt out doing commissions didn't help things, but glad things are relatively stable even when I get derailed.
TOTAL $10,778.99
Invoiced Work - $3,470.74
Songtradr (Pretzel) - $2,415.73
Gumroad - $1,802.66
Patreon - $1,592.82
Steam - $812.69
Itch - $351.19
Twitch - $125.65
Google - $101.82
Distrokid - $99.86
BMI - $5.83
EXPENSES $4,762.80
Federal Taxes - $2,777.00
State Taxes - $841.00
Office Expenses - $609.16
Charity - $385.94 😽
Taxes and Licenses - $150.00
Again, it's not gonna pay the mortgage, but it's nice to have some extra scratch when things get rough. Got some new tools and software for the studio too, which is always nice.
Let's Go!
I think that's it. I've been working on recalibrating my brain when it comes to interfacing with the Internet and my free time. I feel like it's helped a lot for my mental health.
Wishing you the best for this new year. Much love to you and yours and thank you as always for your time and support. 💖-b
(prior year wrap-ups: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 20212, 2020, 2019, 2018)