Clairikine Comics: Mixtape Monday: Car Drive 2014 + Yearly Recap

Today's Mixtape Monday features the newest instalment of my yearly mix series, Car Drive - initially just something I put together to listen to in the family car, now pretty much a chronicle of the past year told through songs. If you had a year full of transitions, professional ambitions and the occasional instance of suckiness, this mix just might be for you! I got to give it a spin while driving up and down the coast of Northern California, which was pretty cool and didn't alienate too many family members.

You can listen to it (minus Cooper's "This Year") on Spotify.

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Also, due to time constraints, I'm not doing a recap comic this year, BUT below you will find an unsorted recap of stuff I did and enjoyed. Read on below the cut, if you are so inclined!

In 2014...

I got to attend Berlin's top-notch re:publica 14 conference, drew people and got retweeted by Johnny Häußler.
One of my favorite bands ever unexpectedly put out a new album. It was not as complex as the last one but I still listened to it over and over and over. (No, I'm not talking about U2.)
I read Tables In The Wilderness by Preston Yancey and found myself turning to our copy of the Losungen (a German devotional) more often. I followed this up, weirdly, by enjoying episodes of the Bad Christian podcast.
Other podcasts I discovered and enjoyed were Welcome To Night Vale and Less Than Live with Kate or Die. (Kate Leth was also the reason I started listening to Night Vale).
I happened to see Welcome To Night Vale live in Berlin at the Passionkirche and it was the best thing ever.
The other best thing ever was tabling at the Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival and meeting and/or chatting with Marc Ellerby, Lucy Bellwood, Danielle Corsetto, Cameron Stewart, Babs Tarr, Brenden Fletcher, and so many other people.
These best things ever may well have been topped several months prior when I was interviewed with Comic Invasion Berlin on FluxFM.
I tabled at Comic Invasion and for the first time people came to my table saying they wanted to follow up on stuff they'd bought from me at a previous convention.
Two very longtime friends of mine came to visit and it was amazing.
I went back "home" to France for a couple weeks, had awesome times reconnecting with good friends and came back to find that my home was in Berlin now.
Unrelated: French politics were crap. (As was the news in general.)
I signed an actual lease with my name on it!
Two good friends of mine got married and we all got to hang out in Brandenburg for a weekend.
I visited Stockholm one last time* before my parents ended their 10 years of work in Sweden and relocated to NorCal. (*No telling when I will come back. Tyvärr.)
I visited Hamburg and Potsdam and promised myself I would travel more in Germany.
I visited London before going to Thought Bubble and told myself I would come back to London (with a lot more money saved up).
I finished the brunt of my first big comic project, Master of Survival, and told myself I would try to do more fiction in 2015.
Noémie had to take a backseat to other things this year, but the work sessions I did have with Sarah confirmed that we're on the right track.
I started a Patreon and have three very generous backers so far. I intend to relaunch it very soon with new reward tiers.
I read more comics, drew from life more, and generally worked more towards becoming the kind of artist I'd always envied other people to be. I also realized that envying other cartoonists' lives is bullshit and everyone has their own unique way of making it work.
I continued connecting with peers, some through the monthly Panel Up meetup in Berlin, others via Twitter or conventions.
I got into superhero/floppy comics via the DC universe, of all things (props to the new Batgirl and Gotham Academy, as well as the shows Arrow and Gotham).
Other TV shows I fixated on to varying degrees were Orange Is The New Black, Orphan Black, Elementary (not so much the second season, which I found very uneven, as the current one) and Modern Family. I was highly ambivalent about Sherlock series 3.
I loved Guardians of the Galaxy. I did not like Mockingjay Part I. I still haven't seen the last Hobbit movie (and I don't really plan to).
I got more interesting freelance work in illustration and comics, and I aim to pick up more freelance work this year in general.
I went to California for the holidays, spent a long weekend in the Bay Area, visited San Francisco and spent over a hundred bucks in various comic stores - including Isotope, who now stock my stuff (:D )!