JANUARY

I got the job! It's just as a cook at (to be as general as possible to avoid possibly doxxing myself) a hospital-like setting, so nothing too exciting or anything, but it's got good benefits and the pay's pretty decent, too. As I said before, it'd be a reason to leave the house...

...

I thought it'd be cute to learn how to embroider / cross stitch to make customized shirts / whatever -- I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time, but I've forgotten just how much of a pain in the ass thread / embroidery floss is to work with! I've seen people online putting it on little spools so it doesn't immediately tangle up on you and found a way to wrap them up fairly nicely like 75% of the time. So, wrapping a spool either takes a minute or so, or is an hour's worth of thread untangling hell...

I'm kind of embarassed about how open and honest the last entry was... I keep wanting to delete it, but stop myself at the last second. I think looking back at this sort of thing in the future would be interesting, at least, so might as well keep it. I've gotten an email back already for one of the jobs, also, so things are already set in motion...

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I was flipping through some old journals and I didn't realize how often I draw and talk about bugs?? So, to keep this online journal authentic to my physical copies, here are a couple of bug doodles, to lighten the mood a bit:

I want to make a little sketchbook page for this site, actually! The major sites I can think of where people post art (DeviantArt, Tumblr, Instagram, etc) are kind of annoying to use and have all the negatives of social media where you get obsessed with "interaction," etc. I'd rather just have a backup place to upload art, in case I lose a sketchbook or there's a glitch with the app I'm using or whatever. (Also, I still just think it'd be fun to design an online sketchbook with full CSS freedom rather than the minor customizations you can do on modern sites. ^^)

I had a very bad last couple of days (and last couple of years, frankly), mental health-wise. I've basically become a hermit after the pandemic. Like, I've never had an active social life or anything crazy like that, but I at least went to in-person classes and had regular social interactions like playing board games once a week. Now I've graduated college after two years of online classes, and six months of nothing following that... And that's all caught up with me and I just completely broke down and cried for two solid days about my lack of direction in life and various childhood events...

This doesn't sound very emotional at this point because I've genuinely cried everything out at this point. I want to actually start stepping out towards something, rather than just living in whatever hellish suspended animation I've been trapped in for the last three years. I sent out some job applications...

I understand that there are a lot of other problems I have to deal with and that I won't like automatically be cured or whatever from this, but I just think that it would be much healthier for me to, like, actually have a reason to regularly go outside and not just stay in my room rotting all day, y'know?

I guess I'm writing this all out as a marker or symbolic pivot point of my life or some attempt at actually making me hold myself accountable for change...

Finished that book I mentioned the other day:

It's been a while since I've done one of these (this specific variation of a Coptic binding), so I ended up having to redo the first couple of signatures a few times but, after that, everything else went smoothly. Blue and brown make for a surprisingly nice color scheme, actually!

A poem to describe the Tumblr experience:

another day, another debate --
or rather a continuation of the same debate
we've been having since the start of time.

it's all an extension of the same--
regardless of time or place, person or race,
we always come to the same conclusion:
that is, no conclusion, nor any possible solution.

how can we come to a conclusion
if we can't even agree what it is we're arguing about?

In middle school and high school, I used to genuinely obsessively use Tumblr. I had a moderately popular fandom blog and based my entire life and personal sense of selfworth around using it, hitting the post limit and having certain 'milestones' of notes or something that I wanted to reach each day. It was all incredibly pathetic and unhealthy in every possible way. Unsurprisingly, I absorbed all the "Tumblr-y rhetoric" during this time and all that entails, as well...

Now, I just find it all so boring! Cat videos are cute, but not very intellectually stimulating. "Discourse" is everywhere, but quickly devolves into ad hominem and mutual calls for the other party to "kys." Every conversation, no matter what it's initially about always gets derailed to the same topic... It's so depressing. Like, I want to be involved in some kind of "community," but they all have the same problems...

...

Also, I got a new bookbinding commission recently! It's gonna be a coptic journal with a foresty vibe.

Only moderately related: I spent, like, all of yesterday scrolling through Spoonflower and daydreaming about fabrics I want to buy, particularly this one and this one, but there are so many others... I also found some Etsy shops that sell vintage Pokemon fabrics, sold only in Japan. Aaaah..

I'm honestly, like, a very task-oriented person. I want to feel like I'm doing something "productive," whatever that means. But that doesn't actually translate to anything, y'know? If I can't think of something "worthwhile" enough to spend my time on, then I just do nothing all day and hate myself. I also tend to get caught up in: 'oh, maybe I should do this... hmm, no, this would be better... what about a little bit of that?' and keep switching between a bunch of different little things and get nothing done, at all. On top of all of this, I feel guilty for "wasting" time on hobbies when there's something "more productive" to be doing... My brain's just a horrible mess and I can't seem to succeed at anything -- there's no win condition, just self-hatred and guilt...

...

In lighter news, here's a cute picture of my cats actually tolerating each other's existence for once:

The tortie on top is Nazz and the ginger boy on the bottom is Gus. I also have another cat, but she was probably sleeping in a box on the other side of the room when this was taken.

Hello, happy new year, and welcome to my first journal entry! There are a few reasons why I decided to start making a little digital journal-thing:

• I've been teaching myself html / css / possibly even wanting to branch out into some Javascript at some point, and little sites like this make for good practice.
(I've still really been struggling with making things that look aesthetically pleasing on various screen sizes, and are still readable...)
• I've been really enjoying looking at the different little pixel arts and designs you can find in both main series and spinoff Pokemon games. Thanks, Spriter's Resource, you've changed my life!
(this specific background and picture are from one of the diplomas you get at the end of HGSS after filling out the Pokedex, btw.)
• I really like the cute designs you find on this site, or in old school DeviantArt Journals, or cutesie journal layouts on Tumblr or Instagram or whatever, but, simultaneously, as a person, I tend to be more utilitarian, y'know? Like, I bought a bunch of washi tapes and post-it notes to go in my analog journal, but, while I find them fun to look at, I feel no internal urge to actually use them and making layouts in advance is a bit of a pain and hinders your actual writing, which is what I think is actually important in a journal... So, something like this would (hopefully) allow me to microdose on various cute little formats without it becoming too overbearing -- that's the hypothesis, at least.

Anyway, yeah, I was already making these little pages, but had nothing that I really had planned to live on them... And I guess I could do worse than just writing random little thoughts out occasionally, yeah? My analog journal tends to be more of a common place book / reading journal, but I basically use the rest of the site for that, so maybe this will be a bit more personal? Who knows?

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In other news, I got a new laptop for Christmas! My previous one... he was slow and his fans were constantly on full blast, struggling for breath even with no tabs open or programs running. It's for the best that he's finally been put out of commission. His ancestors have been waiting for him in laptop heaven... The new one is very fast and basically silent by comparison.