october 26th, 2023, 12:46 am

i come here to write with barely a drop of battery in my computer, ready to turn off the lights and forget about the world. i read a manga called inside mari today as per a friend's recommendation and it was such a compelling story with beautiful art; i haven't read manga in months, yet i blazed through all of its 80 chapters in the span of less than 4 hours total, with interruptions, of course. it was raining all day, the sidewalks were slippery and the skies were gray. people were sleepy, i could tell. i got to class late again, but i made it. my professor asked me about it (and damn it, i forgot to email her something i owe her but i'll do it tomorrow) and i was as honest as i could be and told her about my transportation situation at home. i wanted to tell her about everything else, too, about the overarching circumstances that have made these past few months such an unpredictable rollercoaster, or maybe i just feel it more acutely now that i'm older and this is just a continuation of everything that came before it. who knows? i ate lunch alone, i met with a professor and rambled my head off based on her questions. i was being genuine, but a part of me can't help but feel that i was putting on a show and deceiving myself somehow. like i was lying to her and to myself at the same time. is this really what i want to do? am i this passionate about this? or am i infatuated with the idea of being passionate about this? can i be passionate about any one thing? i feel like i restrain myself. i wish i could be everything at once. i know that i don't know everything and i never will, but i wish i did. i work best on my own, i did tell her that too, and it's true. but maybe i'm just arrogant and uncooperative, or i tell myself i enjoy my independence and self-reliance because i don't want my being alone to hurt. i went to the library today, too, more than one, but i didn't pick up a book. i just worked on my statement of purpose following my professor's advice and polished it up. i was able to get some important questions answered, which was nice. i greeted a professor in that room who i admire from afar, never having taken class with him. it led me to think "hey, maybe he's not as cool of a person as he comes off to be in the brief times you see him" and then it got me to thinking about how quick i am to idealize people, and how quickly i tear down that idealization and flip it on its head. i walked past a boy who i thought i admired the very first time i talked to him, but realized he's full of himself and thinks he's above everyone else. he doesn't even have the decency to say hello in the halls, and i know what it's like to be wanted, to be warmly welcomed and happily received by people. i'm happy that even though i still idealize people, i'm able to realize more quickly how flawed and imperfect they are, and to choose who to cling onto and who to walk away from. i guess. y'know, i also thought about the shackling expectations of people towards me, and i wished i could just float freely, unquestioned, to just exist boundless. you can tell a lot about a person from their sense of time. week after week keep topping upon each other at a rate i can barely keep up with, and someone declares a few days to be eternal? but you know what? it's not nearly enough for everything one wants to do and to be. we are not the same. and i can't be responsible for that lamentation you've chosen, i really can't. i also wondered if my pursuits are inherently selfish. i see what motivates other people, the need to help others, to fix the world somehow, and i can see such selflessness to it, and when i contrast it to myself i find that i pull towards myself, like i want to claim something as my own. i'm not sure what the direction of my life will be right now. i know logically there is nothing wrong with it, and it's to be expected. i felt the strange urge to cry today more than any other day this week, maybe because of how productive it was to the means of preparing for the future. then i thought about how those emotions i keep suppressed might pile up and burst out of me someday. i'm glad it's thursday tomorrow. i'll get to call my doctor in the hopes he'll give a shit about my case, and i'll be able to pick up that stupid document. there's not a day where i don't feel a pang of inadequacy, but i can withstand the discomfort if it means nonconformity. i would hate to be like everyone else.

october 24th, 2023, 4:42 pm

i tried to write this entry yesterday from my phone but i quickly learned that neocities is NOT a mobile site. at least not its text editor. i'm writing from the library, where i'm holed up yet again, by choice, in this new habit i've managed to maintain in recent times. nowadays i spend my free time alone in libraries and i like the freedom of it as much as i do picking up books even if just to read their prologues or their introductions, where i end up focusing a lot more on and appreciating the academic approach these editors and esteemed researches take to compile information in their publications. i feel like i have to pay more attention to that, to the many possible outcomes of pursuing expertise in the field of literature... i'm comforted knowing that i really do enjoy this. yesterday was not too different from today: i missed my first class, then arrived directly into the library to read. the topic of the day was utopian literature and i learned a lot about it, read a few papers contained in the book and picked up on some characteristics and some terms i hadn't heard about previously. out of that i gathered a source of possible inspiration for a story i'm co-writing with a friend containing our original characters, so maybe soon there'll be a flood of inspiration for that project. yesterday i filled my dnd sheet for the campaign my childhood friends are starting and we played for a bit, though we couldn't get much done (and i haven't introduced my character yet) due to how late it already was and it being a school night. there was this moment where my friends' mom cracked open the door a bit and presented us with a pint of ice cream, at which point everyone cheered and rose from their seats to rush into the living room after it. it stuck with me because everything about that moment made me feel like a little kid again. i hope i have more moments like that with people. i know that around them it's not hard at all! and it's nice to have. i wanted to write about this feeling yesterday, but the wi-fi wasn't cooperating so i couldn't log on here. i barely thought about it today but i feel bad, anxious and uncertain and on edge more than i'd like to be. i have these moments of distraction where i'm so joyous and comfortable and calm but then reality smacks me in the face and it's back to the neverending dread. there's deadlines looming over me. i have to write a statement of purpose and fill in an application due HALLOWEEN, and i want to get it done sooner so i don't have to think about it that day at all. so i guess maybe on sunday or monday at latest i'll allow myself that. tomorrow i have to meet with someone writing me a recommendation letter, provided they don't cancel on me last minute like they did last time... tomorrow i also hope to go check the warranty status on something, then i'm supposed to meet up with a friend and i have tutoring to do, among other things that will keep me pretty busy in the day. on friday i have to take a test because bureaucracy failed me as it fails everyone and now i'm falling behind on something that i should have gotten forever ago! but timing sucks! and life isn't perfect! and my life isn't entirely my own either! y'know sometimes i feel like i'm falling behind literally everyone else because the concept of me not having yet acquired this stupid piece of plastic gets similar reactions to confessing murder. i understand the social expectation but it bleeds into my feelings of inadequacy with so many other things and i can't help but feel inferior DESPITE knowing that i'm in no shape or form or measure inferior to other people. i hate feeling that way and it happens all the time. that's just what happens when you're someone of my background and with the layers of identity that i have. on asexuality alone? i have this banger text in my brain comparing that experience to a very mundane example that i hope will instill the guilt in others that's been projected onto me through direct and indirect means. society! (i become the joker). just joking. but anyway, all this to say that i wish living for me were a quarter as easy as it is for other people who just don't face the kind of hardships i've had to my whole life. hrm. i'm glad this is a website journal and not social media and i can just say this. but to end on a more positive note, i'm still excited for halloween and the events surrounding it. though i honestly haven't had the time to sit down and think about it much. what else is there to say? i don't keep a diary outside of this, but i'm starting to think maybe i should. were it not for how accesible my belongings are compared to an obscure website that you can't possibly misplace or fail to hide in your room, then i'd keep one. the idea of those kids' padlocked diaries doesn't seem so bad.

october 21st, 2023, 7:19 pm

guess who? after my little disappearing act from my beloved site i've come back and done a bit of redecoration, hehehehehehe. ten days until halloween! and ten days until... shudders... certain important deadlines concerning my education. but regardless, i'm not too stressed about that yet, provided i take care of everything this week and don't postpone anything. it's impossible for me to summarize everything that happened in the last few months, so i guess i'll just recap the recent changes in my life? if they can be called that. i've gotten better at waking up to my alarms, i think (the triple whammy of my phone and my nintendo dsi). as prophesized, i got a mad scientist costume for this year's halloween and the story behind that one is a bit funny because i wanted to emulate an original character's design, who is a mad scientist with split red and blue hair, right? but i couldn't for the life of me find a wig like that online. so the next closest thing was half red and half white, and you know who else has red and white hair... yeah... so i got a fem!todoroki wig in the hopes that i could spray paint or dye the white half blue, but as it turned out from my strand tests, that was going to utterly ruin my wig. next time i should just get a fully white wig for my OTHER mad scientist character, whose hair is completely white. i've been rewatching adventure time and that has been fun, i tried to draw some more but it's still hard to be consistent, BUT i've been READING. a lot. pretty consistently, i'd say. i've taken to visiting libraries in my free time and picking up just about any random book that piques my interest, just as i did as a kid, and i find it pretty liberating. i told myself i would do a lot of halloween activities, as many as humanly POSSIBLE, and so far, so good i'd say! last night i went to a halloween party at a club, the first time i do something like that. and you know what? it was super fun! i actually had a blast after the first quarter or so of being there where my head was killing me and i felt the hollow pang of hunger from having left my house without having eaten before (i did not intend for this to happen but it did), plus the strain of my vision due to wearing very dark sunglasses without my glasses. i wish i had contacts for this sort of costume, i feel that wearing my regular glasses breaks the immersion of my costume, you know? i'm looking forward to trick or treating and to participating in the upcoming halloween events that i can. there's a few big updates in my life i didn't mention that i'm remembering now, like the fact that my childhood friends came back after having moved out a long time ago and living out of the country for a long time, and now we're back to being neighbors and getting to hang out often. i've been doing more stuff outside of the house and it's felt really nice. my friendships with irls have been going well i think! it's nice to run into people when i'm out, i always think that i feel more alive when i do, and that reminds me of just how long i spent being locked and stuck in place, living minimally because of the social distance and not being able to go adventuring with others, and that sort of necessary contact. oh, and i got an email asking for penpalship! it made me really giddy after an empty inbox for months, and i'm looking forward to talking with this person further! i think that's about it on the life updates i'm willing to give here. hopefully i can write short updates from hereon, though i will say this end of the month is gonna be a pretty packed one. after october 31st things will be a lot more chill, if things go as planned...

august 21st, 2023, 10:10 pm

ehehehehehehehehehehehe EHEHEHEHEHEHE WHAT A GREAT DAY!! I HAD SUCH A GREAT DAY I'M SO HAPPY!!!! okay so: today was my first day taking class in person on campus after whatever the fuck LAST week's deal was... and it was also the first day with a borrowed car since over a year ago from the whole year and a half we've been carless. so i woke up at 8 am, but i got to leave for class at like 9:47 and still got to class on time (late by a few minutes, less than five). my writing workshop class is in a classroom with a/c!! and a professor i'd taken online classes with before, and it was really nice to have the class dynamic in PERSON, y'know? it's just different. but yeah, she talked about how important it is to protect the space of creation and reading in an age of distracting and the push and pull of everything else, which i very much agree with!! the class is full of cool people, though it's a fuller section than i imagined (we're like 13 people, but not dissimilar from past writing workshops i've taken; i've been in groups larger than 14). i hope to make a few friends there hehe :) after that class was over, i roamed and eventually ran into one of my good friends, so we walked around together as we caught up and stuff. we came upon a box of books outside of a lab classroom, so we peeked and asked about them, and got told they were free for the taking. i took three: a brand new, wrapped in plastic NEW copy of "chekhov's doctors", medical stories written by anton chekhov; a communications theory book, and a book on the wounded body and its importance for narrative. i began reading the latter while waiting for the train, i'm looking forward to that reading already. we eventually split ways, though we agreed to meet tomorrow for french toast if all goes as planned with another friend of ours. :) i went off to heat up my lunch at the student lounge, rice and avocado if you're wondering, and then i sat down in the air-conditioned area to eat it before heading to my last class. ran into someone who complimented my purse, and i complimented their backpack; i got their name on the off-chance i'd meet them again somewhere, since i was rushing to go to class... very nice interaction! made me smile. got lost trying to find the classroom but so did the rest of the class so HAHA! and when we did meet, we only discussed the syllabus and got let go 20 minutes early, a time in which i went to go print something i needed from a resource room. after that, i simply left! just walked to the library, ran into someone, walked with them to the train station while chatting, then ran into my sibling and was able to get the train fare to pass and go home. aaaaaaafter that, i tutored, then my last student had to cancel, and then i met up with my friend. MY FRIEND WHO I MISSED!!!!!!! AAAAAGRHRGHRGHRGRH I'M SO HAPPY AHGEHRBHEBEGEHEGBHEE we hung out and caught up and it was nice!!!!!!!!! fantastic day, and i'm so excited to have classes every day in PERSON god i MISSED this. i'm feeling pumped to do the things i need to do, i really am

august 20th, 2023, 12:02 am

okay, i swear i'm normal again. my last post on here was overwhelmingly depressing, but i'm feeling much, much better now! let's see, what's new since then... had a couple of more early rising days to drop my siblings off at school, doing necessary things left and right, tutoring, preparing for my own back-to-classes but the first week is over. and good news, now we have a car we can use! we had been dealing without a car and exclusively on public transportation which gets expensive FAST when you're financially hanging on a thread and a good number of people, not to mention the round trip and it being daily. on friday i got to hang out one on one with one of my best friends who came back from overseas and will be around for about a month, and we had a really fun time catching up with each other and just roaming and quipping, as per usual. i swear no matter how much time goes by between outings or between being in the same land mass, when we come together again it feels the same as ever. i'm lucky to have people i met on my very first year, you know? that's extremely rare, i think. our mutual friend couldn't make it this time but we'll make plans to hang out over the next month and it'll be a blast. i feel really bad about having made a bit of a mess of things on that friday, because here's what happened: my dad had to get this seal thing at the bank, which closed at 4:30 pm, and us, dealing with no car, picking up my siblings and the credit card being on the ownership of the other parent who couldn't get it to my dad in time, etc. then you know. the thing is my dad and mom didn't communicate with each other for the thing because they just cannot work things out normally LMAO so they had ME as the messenger in the middle. while i was out with my friend. it feels extremely rude, it feels disgusting, it feels HORRIBLE to do that to a friend when you're out to spend a good time together. i hate it when my parents involve me in solving time-sensitive house tasks while i'm out! WITH MY FRIENDS! TRYING NOT TO IGNORE THEM TO ANSWER MY PHONE! IT MAKES ME LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE! PLEASE STOP FUCKING DOING THAT TO ME! I'M FUCKING BEGGING YOU! i get it that i'm fast and reliable and good at problem solving but i wish they wouldn't do that shit to me when i'm out, it just makes me stressed and it makes me dissociate from the present moment and it makes me distance myself and fuck up social and public interactions and yeah. i can't stress how bad it feels, and i apologized a million times but i don't think apologies can unfuck that, you know? like i'm messing up the nice moment with my stupid family shit. but whatever, i still had a really nice time. i just wish i didn't have to interrupt so much of it with this stupid fucking time-sensitive ordeal, for god's sake. back to the hangout itself, we went to a little park and walked around, then to the mall, we ate wonderfully mid chinese food and some ice cream! and he called me funny not once, not twice, not thrice, not four times, but over five times, which is a high accomplishment of praise, naturally. we took some silly pictures and it was a very nice time. i don't go out with people much but every time i go i always have such a blast (usually when it's this kind of one on one or small group interaction, big groups are a very different story) and yeah, i hope there's more of that on the horizon (with no outside interruptions, of course). then today, i had to wake up at 8 am to accompany my neighbor to church at 9 am (and i woke up at 9 am on the dot after receiving a call from her, and told her i'd be ready in 5 minutes, and spedran getting ready in about eight), and after picking up some school materials there we went to the pharmacy, i helped her shop for some goods and got some lip oil from her as a little gift, we went back to her house and made microwave personal pizzas and ate that before i had to go off to tutor my student. tomorrow i'm supposed to help her set up some appointments in the afternoon. i also have to do a writing assignment, so i'll be doing that tomorrow. and planning ahead for my lessons... beloved people are returning this week from overseas endeavors! and next month, my closest childhood friend will be returning. i'm feeling really happy about all these returns. people i can spend time with who are close! i love my friends, i love them so much and i want to do more stuff outside always, i love adventuring. and i also love stupidly domestic activities, i literally could not care less about expensive capitalist activities, we can lie down on the floor and eat burger king nuggets. i don't care! but yeah. the little joys of life and all. today one of my cats stole the trans flag i had up on my wall and it was extremely funny, i can't NOT include a picture of that. so here:



let's see, i jammed out with one of my best buddies on spotify, i started reading perfume by patrick süskind again (PHENOMENAL novel, i read it in like 2017 so it'll be great to read it again), i took an hour and twenty minutes long nap, organized my resource list again and added some newly found sources, and had a pretty sedentary day at home. now that it's past midnight is when i feel more energy to do things than i did for hours. i was gonna keep watching metalocalypse, but then i didn't... so i might do that tomorrow, so i can be in time for the movie's release. OH DID I MENTION THE FIONNA AND CAKE TRAILER because i watched that yesterday and my fucking god does it look hype! I LOVE ADVENTURE TIME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGFH. wait. wait, i forgot to talk about the artist i met.

encounter with an artist

so my mom is friends with a very talented local traditional artist, and while talking with him she mentioned a work of art i'd made for a spanish literature class back in 2019 (it was don quijote fanart, yes) and so she asked me if i had a picture of that work, which i did. i sent it to her, she sent it to him, and he got overwhelmed with emotion and passion; he asked when i'd made that, and then he said i have the quality of a great portrait artist as he could tell, and he said he wanted to buy me some watercolor supplies and that he'd head to the art store later (as in two hours later) and i was like WHAAAAAAAAAT HOLY SHIT because this guy is an old man with lots of art experience and he's REALLY. FUCKING. GOOD. i'm not kidding. my mom describes him as a local van gogh of sorts, and i can see what she means by that. this man really knows his stuff, he's traveled to museums just to stare at original works' BRUSHSTROKES and he's all for studying traditional art from the classics, from centuries prior, which i also get. i've been caught up in drawing my stylized art with no dedicated studies, much less traditional art, since i've been relying on digital programs... and i think i should start drawing exclusively on traditional media for a while again. and just focus on realism, like he very much advised me. i haven't been drawing much this year, if at all, and much less studying art. my best improvement in art has happened when i've used sketchbooks and drawn on a daily basis, like i did back in school when i was away from the screen for long periods of time, and bored in class... coincidence much... anyway, yeah! i took this as a sign from the universe to keep getting better at art. i could be cracked, i could be SO cracked if only i applied myself. and speaking of art, my friend simultaneously paid me for a five-person wallpaper bust portrait commission which i WILL get started on this week. i don't wanna leave him waiting for long, he's my number one customer and he's seen the improvement of my art over the years... i also have to work on another commission (sweats) (turns to lotus) forgive me. i WILL give you gay people and it will be epic and NOT cringe. i also have to draw a logo my mom asked me for... gotta remind her to send me her concept doodle... am i done talking for this? wait, no, okay, the artist. so i offered to meet up with the artist at the art shop since it's very close to my house and i walked there. he has a funny mustache and beady old man eyes, and i shook his hand and he talked for soooooo long about classic artists and traditional art and observation when making portraits and lights and shadows, and then he told me to pick materials i needed and he'd tell me when the budget caps off. i felt so awkward picking myself, like how do i just... grab an art material and go oh yeah you could buy me this maybe if you want? but i think i handled it relatively well. i grabbed a toned tan sketchbook YAYYYYYYYYYY I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO TRY THAT ONE OUT, and a carson XL watercolor sketchbook (sexy SEXY fucking sketchbook i fucking looooooooove the carson XL line. i have a multimedia one that's small but i've been wanting to get a new one to motivate myself to draw), and then he told me about the trois crayons technique and bought me some pencils for that, a pencil set in fact. so i will be digging into this technique soon. also he told me he had a client who wanted a portrait of eyeless illuminated jesus christ and he wanted ME to make a sketch for it and present it to him? and that he'd name a price and then pass us the money? like? ARE YOU FORWARDING YOUR COMMISSION TO ME? maybe it's because he's not religious and therefore not willing to paint jesus himself. he told me he could hook me up to art clients, which is so mentor of him. i want him to whip my art into shape. i NEED outside discipline. I WILL BE YOUR PUPIL SIR PLEASE PLEASE GIVE ME ART HOMEWORK. but anyway yeahhhhhhhhhhhh that's about it for this week's most eventful days. i took the bus and train a lot. next week i start classes in person proper. need to text someone tomorrow about something and not forget. and yeahhhhhhhh! phew.

august 16th, 2023, 9:07 pm

honestly, i feel like shit right now. everything is shit. i'm sick of the agonizing strife that is adulthood and dealing with the ridiculousness of everything. everything is insanely expensive, everyone is unbelievably selfish, and i feel apathetic and bored to death. we're starting off the semester strong by not starting it, in an unsurprising turn of events, so all of my energy has gone into helping with adjacent matters at home. everything takes so much time, everything costs so much, and people are fucking stupid. i feel cynical and depraved and angry at the world. the good thing about journaling is that nobody's getting notified on their phone when i write, and nobody has a way to respond to it directly because a response isn't necessary in the first place. so in short, i can be as pessimistic and as much of a faithless asshole as i feel like being. the beginning of the day was nice, although regrettably very early (and due to the lack of sufficient time for preparations yesterday night, i was only able to sleep about four hours, which i complemented with another hour or so of napping today afternoon.) lots of going around on public transport, which i enjoy enough when it's not a pain in the ass, and walking under the sun which i hate. i ate a good sandwich and got to listen to some fun local banter. and then of course as the day goes on, yelling matches break out, finances bite back, and all the bullshit of living in late stage capitalism. i wish i was a robot with no needs, who didn't have to eat or to go outside or to do anything. blasting music into my ears saved me during the worst years of my life and probably is partly responsible for my shit audio processing, but right now i don't have headphones to block out the noise and i kinda want to bash my head into a fucking wall. i'm tired, a lot more tired than i say i am and a lot more tired than i seem to be, and i don't think anyone else will ever understand how fucked up it is to juggle the things i do to survive the cards dealt here. but whatever, i don't give a shit. i'll go through the motions like i always fucking do and fuck around and find out. everything feels so tense and warm and i feel just about ready to bite someone's head off metaphorically. i had some moments today where i felt unreasonably annoyed by people being, to put it bluntly, extremely fucking stupid, but that's just my personal judgment and frankly i don't even know why i'm trying to explain myself in my own private internet journal. why are there so many stupid people out there? the world is crawling with them. i'm as fascinated by the inherent humanity of human beings as i am appalled by the choices to be selfish, to be ignorant, to be fucking pricks for no good reason. it's no wonder workers are striking all over; this is no way to live. lately i've been feeling more and more jaded when i scrutinize the decimals on prices and get excited over sales. this is the razor that's been shoved down our fucking throats! i don't know how i'll muster up the will to wake up and do the things i need to do. on days like these, it all feels so damn pointless.

well, i got a bit of a trim to my hair yesterday and i organized my bed today so i'll cling to those bits of sanity, but i don't know how much i can promise myself when my attitude towards everything feels so bleak and so unapologetically cynical. funny how i feel the need to tack on a bright side to this fucking mess.

and now, as a note that the people who need to read this won't read: if you guys start fucking yelling at each other right now i'm going to lose what little miserable drops of patience are left in my fucking body and i'd like you to TRY to tell me to calm down or shut up. seriously. to whoever's reading this and thinking "wow, how violent", surprise, surprise, i'm a flawed, angry, cynical human just like the rest of you. i never promised a really cute and clean diary.

august 14th, 2023, 10:34 pm

today was practically gifted to me. yesterday someone had canceled their due tutoring with me, and when i woke up this morning for my morning session, that person canceled too! hurray for me! so i slept for a while more and then i just took it easy for the rest of the day. it feels like a reward just before the start of the semester! i already got the first couple of emails from my professors today, so the semester is certainly approaching... literally in two days hahaha! but anyway, today i listened to some new music, which was nice (i logged it in my music journal), and i watched all about lily chou-chou (2001). the movie was extremely confusing, very gripping and hazy, and a dense, DENSE text. i understand the criticism towards its density, which in a way suggests vacuity, but i agree with the impression that the director was simply presenting the story in an inaccessible manner to the general audience. i understand why this movie holds its current standing in japanese cinema, though. and i recognized the sample used in parannoul's beautiful world, which was arguably the most excited i ever felt in the course of the entire two hours and a half. heavy trigger warnings to anyone planning to watch this movie, as it deals majorly with bullying, sexual abuse, suicide, harrassment, exploitation and yeah, you get the picture. you can probably find a more comprehensive trigger list online. i think this movie lends itself to an analysis considering the extremely harsh climate of bullying in japanese schools (namely the cultural phenomenon of ijime that is so prevalent and damaging to the japanese youth. it's nothing like the bullying we see in the west, though both are supremely fucked in their own right. following up on this movie, i'll be watching a short film called and so we put goldfish in the pool which lasts about 30 minutes, and i came across it while reading an article on the denpa genre of fictional works (i think i lost the link now)... will be reporting back on that film with a latter edit to this entry. edit: this short film exceeded by expectations by FAR! what a brilliant little film on youth, mundanity and the experience of growing up in a society that feels unchanging. it's only 27 minutes long, so i highly recommend this film to anyone who likes film or brief media laden with meaning and clad in bittersweet tones and summer hues. i felt a pang in my heart at the montage at 17:54. something about it really struck me, about friendship, the friendships that carry on and the ones we leave behind, the inevitability of things, the passage of time, growing up, coming of age. i already went through middle school, and i can appreciate the time i spent with everyone, even if we didn't all stay together in the end. needless to say, this was nothing like the summers of my childhood, but it feels appropriate to watch this movie while thinking about the end of my summer.

but going back to the beginning of the semester, i guess i should take a moment to reflect on this summer, and to begin to say goodbye to it. it was a good summer, all things considered, though were it not for the scalding temperatures it would have barely felt as a summer at all. though i should say it felt like more of a summer than the last two summers have. i think last summer was especially torturous for me, since it was the first summer where i was practically fully employed, not by a big company or as an employee but with an outside obligation tying my time to another household. having to wake up at 7 am during the summer was NOT a fun experience and i hope i never have to repeat it. i think there was something truly maddening about it. this semester i expect to be a fairly easy-going one, considering it's the last in the program i'm doing. it won't be the end of my studies, but its culmination will be really important. i hope i'll be able to spend my time wisely, with good people that i enjoy being around, and that i'll prioritize the things that matter. i've had enough of wasting my time because of people who aren't worth all the hastle, or living inauthentically. since the summer is officially coming to its end (as a period of time, anyway; summer ends in september), then i feel the need to make some changes and make it feel like a transition. i'll be changing some of my phone and desktop wallpapers and hope that it does something to my psyche.

august 13th, 2023, 2:01 am

okay, okay, you got me. i got lazy with the last diary entry; i really did type that in jokingly at first as a very simple version of my day while showing off my code to someone on stream, and i was all "i'll come back to write this properly later" but nope. but it is true, on thursday i went with my friend and some other mutual friends plus some of their partners to a bowling alley and we ate pizza afterwards, then got ice cream and it was genuinely such a fun time. i got mint chocolate flavor because god bless choco mint. we also reminisced on our middle school and high school days, which were insane in retrospect and it's a miracle we survived all the turbulence and drama at all. fun times, fun times. friday was not too eventful. today, however, i went to my first ever powerpoint night with friends; we made powerpoints on any topic we wanted and presented them to each other. and i, of course, chose vocal synths because i'm very normal about vocaloid and all of its adjacent culture. :3 my ppt was 60 FUCKING SLIDES LONG, and that was me holding back. i would've written soooooo much more and included a lot more slides if i wasn't, but alas... the point is they were fascinated by my presentation and i got them invested in the phenomenon that is the world of vocal synths, so i hope that at least one of them will pursue it down the path of insanity i have. hehe. he. i brought my rin plushie to the presentation with me and set her in front of the tv, and i played a bunch of samples of vocaloid music. i loved seeing their jaws drop whenever someone did something funky with their vocals EHAGEHE THE PURE GLEE OF IT ALL! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS! also when i showed the yuzuru iori VOICEROID slide everyone started clapping and i got backing voices of opinion that he's the best ikemen to come out of the industry here. i absolutely loved everyone's presentations, they were so full of their personalities and i was enthralled by every topic, and i binged a series of songs called criminal idol on yt thanks to my friend's recommendation and it was awesomeeeeee. good vocals, good tunes! it was also the first time that particular friend group could get everyone in one hangout at once in a looong while so i was very happy to spend time with everyone. now i'm actually really tired and sweaty so i wanna bolt into my room and blast the a/c on my face so byeeeeeee i'm done updating today

august 11th, 2023, 2:51 am

i'm so hungry

also i went bowling and ate pizza and ice cream with friends today and it was nice :) today was a nice day

august 10th, 2023, 2:36 am

I FINALLY WATCHED ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE! WOOOOOOOOOOOO! what a delicious treat to my eyes and mind and soul. they knocked it out of the park with the visuals, the art directions, the stylization, the composition, the colors, the lighting, the animation, everything! i can't wait for the third movie to come out. what a compelling work of love for the spider-man comics. was very stoked about seeing miguel o'hara on the screen after having binged all of the 90s comics for the spider-man 2099 run. and i'm so happy that gwen stacy is trans, what a WIN. i'd say that was easily the most interesting thing i did today. the a/c stopped working again and honestly i'm growing a little tired and cynical with it. tomorrow i'm attending a birthday event... haven't gone out with folks in a while... hoping to have lots of fun, i'm looking forward to it! not looking too forward to writing to a few people to make arrangements but i'll survive i think, i just tend to overthink and the thought of inconveniencing people is terrifying to me hahahahaha. ummmmm, what else, what else... OH! i came across this WONDERFUL animated short film called La Sangre de los Unicornios, or Unicorn Blood in english. the art and the symbolism were very haunting and beautiful. it had such an enticing, disturbing quality to it. i LOVE art that makes me feel like this. i need to find more of it! i think my hair looks really pretty right now and i'm running off a burst of energy i got earlier for literally no reason. i like feeling energetic.

august 8th, 2023, 10:27 pm

so today i woke up (rather late, at that) to a very strange occurrence. a person i haven't spoken to in years, who i was once very close to, found their way back to me through one of my social media accounts. i found the timing funny considering how recently i keep entertaining the thought of just shutting down all social media profiles and just retreating into the independent internet altogether, with few anonymous exceptions... i don't blame them, though; it is a public account, though i barely use it at all these days. but i can't believe that after so many years, they're still thinking about me and trying to reconnect. it's quite complicated, really. i can't really imagine things going back to the way they once were, we both grew as people and our lives took separate directions and that's something i made peace with a long, long time ago. maybe nothing will come of it, but i guess we'll see.

in other news, i've been over the moon about interactions in my website! i woke up to a UTAU producer recommendation on my music journal's rec box and i'm head over heels with the track, it was on loop today! i also posted my music journal on melonland's forum and someone said they were inspired to make one of their own, so i was really glad to see that! and not too long ago i received a guestbook comment from someone who watched eternal sunshine of the spotless mind because of my diary! i can't stop smiling and giggling about it, the fact that a person i don't know on the internet found me somehow and read through my entries and then decided to watch this movie and enjoyed it. there's NOTHING that social media could do to top a feeling like this. making this website is one of the best decisions i've made this year. i'm so proud and excited! HEHEHE

august 7th, 2023, 11:31 pm

i woke up really missing my childhood home today. it's not the one i grew up in as a toddler or anything, i was 7 at youngest when i moved into that house, but i keep coming back to it over and over, like my mind won't let me forget an inch of its walls. i had a dream last night that i was moving back in, renting it out as an apartment to its current owner. i will transcribe my 10 am ramblings from my notes:

"rented out the old house and was gonna be roommates with (a highschool classmate) and someone else, the stove was different, there was a stamp collection there, was making salami sandwiches, thought about gardening outside, organizing the kitchen and the shoes around the house, the plan was to keep it as rent until buying it in the future."

i remember a long while ago before we moved out, my dad entertained the idea that when we did move, we'd just rent the property until one of us was old enough and had the money to buy it back. and just own it. and i really liked that idea, i would've loved to be the one to buy it back someday, if buying property were so achievable in an economy like this. if i had to save towards anything, it would be that. and at first it was rented out, but eventually someone bought it. i don't resent anyone for that, it's just the way things are. but it sneaks into my dreams often, you know? i have so many dreams where i'm back there, and sometimes something is a little off, if not eerie, or just different, but always, always the outline of the home that i remember. and the feeling that i know it like someone knows the alphabet or how to breathe. i know i'm not the only one who feels like this, but i don't really care about that part. this pain feels unique to me. it was the house where i was a kid, where i grew up and felt myself growing up, whether it was too fast or in complete, ignorant bliss; i think somehow it was both at once. it was the house where i had all my toys and played with them, and where my childhood friends, then neighbors, would knock at the door before noon to go outside and play until dark. a huge mango tree in front of it, where i collected countless fruit and cut them open for a snack with a plastic knife, and shoved them into my tiny pink backpack that i got from radioshack. it was where we moved our cat and where she spent most of her years with us, where siblings were brought in as newborns and kept in cribs and playyards, where i realized many, many things about myself and the world. i started middle school while living in that house, i kept my books in shelves on the wall, i had the best birthdays of my life, the best christmases, the worst rude awakenings. i wasn't tall enough to reach the top shelves in the small kitchen of that house, but i've entered homes modeled with the same architecture and their kitchens always feel impressively tiny to me. i had to drag my backpack up and down flights of stairs to get there to and from school. played on the wii and the ds, watched the crt tv, went on vacations to the beach, begged to go to the zoo and all sorts of things that children do. it was so strikingly simple. but anyway, in my dream, i was renting out the apartment with two roommates and everything was as i remembered it, with some signs of having been inhabited by someone who wasn't me or my family, but still having much of what we owned untouched. the same wire envelope holder with flower designs on the kitchen counter with blue tiles, doubled, one of them empty and the other stocked with old envelopes. the beautiful shelves with glass display had the same cups and jars i remember there being, and some that i didn't, but the ones full of coins that i know we spent every penny of at the vending machines over the course of our summers. in my dream apparently my mom had a stamp collection which included miffy in it, and this was something i knew. i was sorting out shoes, throwing out old sandals, pairing the shoes together, putting them in certain corners of the house to make it feel lived in. i opened the fridge and found ingredients to make salami sandwiches, so i was making sandwiches for me and my two roommates and i was very happy about that process. the stove had been replaced, it was white and blue and probably electric or not gas, because it operated strangely (likely the result of me interacting with a stove contest poll on tumblr last night) but it was much, much shorter than the one we had there before. and the cleaning products were still in the cabinets. and i shoved some overflowing objects into the closet directly at the entrance, the same one we had put the cat litter box in back then, and the one my parents hid our christmas presents in, partially, anyway. rolls of gift paper and such. and my unbearable neighbors from downstairs in childhood weren't there anymore, and in the space their backyard occupied was this cross-shaped grass area with some trees and i was thinking about how to maintain it as a garden, how to trim the grass and the tree branches, and i considered buying my own gardening equipment in the dream and it felt nice and independent. i was smiling at my roommates, happy that my classmate had worked with me on a group project once, happy to show them the place where i spent my happiest days.

when i woke up, i felt really disappointed that it wasn't real. it really did feel like i had earned back the crib of my dreams, and a while after waking up i lay down and closed my eyes and just went through the entire house in my head. i could map out every corner to perfection, the proportions of everything, the space, the stairs, the way i'd tap my fingers down the last four steps to imitate the sound my cat would make when she descended them. the way you had to pry my parents' window open. the balcony and the living room, the way they were set up when i first walked inside, and how it changed over the years. it makes me sad to know i might never step foot in there again, and my mind refuses to let go. sometimes i fantasize about going up to the door and innocently asking the owner of the house if i can step in and just take one last look at everything, though i know i'd see it so drastically changed that the dissonance in my brain would be astonishing. but i'd remember the places where things should be, and i'd stand on the same spots where i did ten years ago, and so on, and so forth. i think i'll keep dreaming about it, because i can't just shake away this feeling. i know i'm idealizing the past, the simple, childish past, and i feel like i live in the past often. but i think it's part of growing, it's celebratory but it feels like grief sometimes and nothing else. the house is not ours anymore. the house is not my home. i have a different home that houses other memories, and other childhoods, mine included, but it's not the same. of course it's not. i reminisced about childhood shows earlier, and i concluded that today has just been a day for nostalgia. i really do miss the simplicity. the family that would visit for the sake of visiting, the way i didn't know anything bad about anyone, or anything about how the world of adults worked. even the long trips out at night for christmas parties held as family reunions, and driving back from them, walking in, hauling the presents and ourselves inside, where we left the AC and the fan on so the house would be chilly when we arrived, and we'd go to sleep. i'll keep writing about it and remembering it fondly. i think last night's dream struck me particularly because of how certain it felt. disregarding all logic, and my stance that i would never change the past, no matter what, because things find their place in your life, and they happen for reasons, i really did have the home back in the palm of my hand, even if it was just for one short day in my dream. we didn't move far from it so i pass it often, yearning, wondering what it'd be like if we never left yet knowing that would have never been possible. but the long and short of it is that i miss being a kid. that's all, really.

august 4th, 2023, 3:26 am

i just finished watching eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and i finally understand everything. i get why this movie is held to such high praise, i get why my mom had a physical dvd copy of it lying around when i was a kid and why i felt so drawn to the cover even then. i get why my sister recommends it every time someone doesn't know what movie to watch, or asks for a good movie. in fact, that's just what happened today; i wanted to watch a quality movie and i expressed this out loud, and rather predictably she asked me if i'd watched it yet, so i just put it on the tv and finally sat down for those two hours. ohhhhhhh my god. the concept of it is so fucking poignant. i can't even articulate my thoughts about it without incurring in massive spoilers, so i wonder if i should really make a media analysis section or just track the fact that i watched it now and come back to do my own text analyses later. i just want to remember the fact that i watched it today, and it feels like closing a thread opened many long years ago, like i'm finally getting closure for a much-needed task. everyone should watch this movie. i feel illuminated.

august 1st, 2023, 9:02 pm

it didn't take too long for me to get burned out from updating this daily, huh? well, that's okay. the weekend was honestly not too eventful, nothing worth writing a huge ramble like i did on friday. some updates for now are that i finished a tutoring cycle with one of my students, which means more time in the afternoons for me, i've been able to wake up pretty late these days (today it was 3 pm), and right now i feel like i'm bracing for the class semester in full. it was raining really hard today, thunder and lightning and all, which meant the risk of losing power. thankfully, at home i never did, but i knew others were struggling with this. the two students i was meant to tutor today cancelled, and i presume it had to do with this. i've had some nice chat interactions here and there, and hey: i finally used my melonland forum account. the owner of the forum itself replied to me, which was a nice surprise (but not too surprising, since it seems custom among new members; very involved owner!), and as i write this entry i'm listening to the crossfade for utsu-p's upcoming album. i did some reflecting today about how happy i am to live independently and on my own terms, getting to choose who i talk to and what i do with my time, which i expressed to someone close to me. i'll probably update the music journal in light of hakushi hasegawa uploading a new single! highlight of my day! not looking forward to waking up at 11:30 am tomorrow, but i'll survive like i always do. i played among us with the proximity mod for the first time this week, and honestly it's a banger way to experience the game. i'm still getting the hang of using it on desktop. applied for some possible work hours during the semester, i hope i get some!

july 29th, 2023, 12:44 am

nature escapade on 07/29/23

it's 4 am, almost five, when the first alarms grace my ears. i don't remember if it was the first one i set, or when exactly i rose from sleep, but rise i did, greeting my cats and connecting my phone while i brush my teeth. i put my shoes on and i get ready to leave the house, and it's around half an hour until my friend arrives to pick me up. we begin our long scenic drive towards the other side of the country, into the rural side, the center, the mountainous paradise far from the city and its many, many ills. it was still pretty dark, but not entirely, when we headed out, and i got to see the sunrise from the road. we get to talk and joke around about pretty much anything on the way there, and as i'm getting to converse with their sibling i feel very comfortable and at home. our primary objective quickly becomes to acquire breakfast, since we're all pretty much running on empty, and it isn't until we arrive at the destination that we meet with the SINGULAR stoplight in the entire route before making a turn into civilization. we stop at a mcdonalds to check if it's open, and the guy gestures with his hands, seven fingers held up. it's only ten minutes until then, but we don't even get the chance to use their bathroom because the guy just reaaally didn't wanna open the place before due time, and then he redirected us to the drive-thru. we crossed the street and entered a local bakery, primarily selling donuts among other bakery goods. i ate a sandwich that almost made me cry and two heavenly donuts that made me reconsider ever stepping foot in a krispy kreme again. and did i mention the extremely reasonable, cheap pricing for lovingly-made local food? the city is rotten with capitalism and inflation! my fucking god! that sandwich carried me through the entire morning. i would literally drive there just to buy in bulk if i had a car. i will do it someday. we drive to the point of encounter, which is this little ranch owned by an elderly married couple, at around 7 am, and wait for the other tourists to arrive. it wasn't until around 8 am that we actually departed. i ended up not taking my entire backpack with me for the hike like i'd imagined i would, and in hindsight that was the wisest thing i could've done considering just how arduous and long, long, loooong of a trek it was. i think the weight of it would have legitimately tipped me over during some of the more steep routes. but anyway, i'm carrying only my phone and the clothes on my back, not to mention my glasses. they give us helmets and life jackets. it was really funny to see the guys spraying the helmets with fabric febreeze a while before having to distribute them to the crowd. we drove to another point of encounter, then got off our vehicles and began the hike proper. there was a rose apple tree and i kinda regret not grabbing one, but the group was moving fast and by the end of it, i was just so focused on getting back to civilization that i didn't bother with stopping there. they weren't completely pink yet, which indicates their sweetness, so maybe i'll get a chance to try a better one elsewhere. there were a couple of houses on the way into the trail, and i imagined how nice it must be to have such a huuuuuuuge house. right there in the countryside... granted, it's a lot more isolated, so there's objective disadvantages to being stuck in the winding roads of the rural zone, but i can at least fantasize and project that into my characters and my stories. we continue walking up the trail, down the trail, between rocks and using ropes to guide us in the very tight spaces where the mud might make you slip. the mountains surround us. there's rocks, there's moss, there's poisonous plants (easily identifiable by the spikes on the surface of their leaves; thankfully i never brushed into one, and neither did anyone else), there's the river down below and the clear, clouded skies above. the landscape is absolutely gorgeous, and i lose track of time as we walk. it's hours of walking. i get to chat occasionally, but i also remain silent for long periods at a time, observing and thinking to myself. i try to empty my mind of my daily worries, to detach myself from everything i already deal with in the city, from pointless inner musings. several of my experiences in the wilderness have been with groups of people, some more compatible with nature than others, and less compatible with the silence and the reflective mood; i find myself thinking "imagine if you were here with anyone else," and shuddering at the thought of having to talk the whole way, of not having a right to be quiet or to not pay attention to the speech of another. i feel strangely liberated. i don't have to answer anyone's messages, i don't have to update anyone other than my family on my whereabouts, i'm not tied to anyone or anything. i just am. we reach a clearing where we rest for a good while, bantering about the mundane, until we begin to walk down into the river. the river is beneath this absolutely gigantic cave of sorts, going under it through a tunnel that you can't see the end of. i had seen pictures before, but the shock getting there was indescribable. when i say that was huge, i mean it was HUGE. this is the point where i leave my phone inside a waterproof box, so i don't have any pictures or recordings of my favorite part, so you'll have to trust my descriptions. it's a wide space, surrounded by foliage and walled by the rock formations, and we set our floaties down on the river and sit in the center of them, paddling our way into the current, and into the tunnel. the tunnel space extends faaaaaaar overhead, and guess what: there's bats. there's so, so, so many bats flying from one wall to the other, and you can hear them in their habitat, and i was flabbergasted and a little apprehensive at their presence, but mostly i was impressed by the sheer quantity of them. i was impressed by how dark it got inside the tunnel. i could barely see the faint outlines of the people, hear their chatter, hear the sound of water splashing as people paddled with their hand, with their feet. some of them would paddle backwards to go faster. others would just let themselves float a little, like i did, and then paddle again. i have no idea how deep the water went down, but i'd imagine i wouldn't have been able to touch the riverbed if i tried; i think i would've been terrified to try. the weirdest part was walking into that river with my socks and tennis shoes on, completely on purpose. i had my swimsuit underneath my clothes but for the purposes of this tour i was basically swimming fully clothed, and you know what? that was also liberating in its own right. there was a moment as i floated down the tunnel where the darkness of the space and the endlessness of it were beginning to get to me. like holy shit, i'm inside this tunnel, i can barely see, the water is cold, there are bats flying overhead. it was about fifteen minutes of paddling through that tunnel. it was long. and then i compared it to minecraft in my head. but then i realized just how small our troubles are, just how big the real world is, just how real I am. i felt like i was getting over something by passing through that tunnel. it wasn't exactly the fear of the dark, something i'd gotten over a long time ago, and only comes back when i really try to think about it, but i felt brave and i felt alive. and then i saw the literal light at the end of the tunnel, and when the sunlight began to reach and i finally made it out the other end, i swear it was like entering a whole new dimension. it was paradise. i saw the large river rocks marking the path, i saw foliage wrapping over that clearing, the sun warming my face, the sound of the stream, the butterflies and the dragonflies hovering over the water and between the leaves. i was able to lean back on my floatie and just close my eyes for a moment and take everything in and god. god. i wish i could have photographed it with my mind. it felt life-changing. we spent a while there on that little part of the river, and i got to sit on the rocks where the water was streaming, but also jump off a large rock into the deeper part of it. the first time i did that the water went directly up my nose and i started to cough when i surfaced, but the second time i jumped i made sure to clog my nose. as i did the last time i jumped into a river, i was very hesitant seeing the height, but i took the fall pretty well i'd say. that second time, my life-jacket got pushed up to my head so when i surfaced it was wrapped around my face and i looked really goofy. i got to see the funny dynamic between the two tour guides, who were honestly probably around my age, and they'd treat each other meanly as a joke, flipping each other off and making bets about who can win in a swimming race, only for the other to back out of the race last second like a shitass until the guy had surfaced on the other end and make a joke about how he already swam the lap. the coldness of that river was incredibly refreshing after sweating so much during the dry trek at the beginning, and it helped while we walked back, taking an alternate route to reach the other side.

now this is where shit gets unexpected. i was hoping we'd tube through the tunnel again, but i understand why we didn't do that, since it would've probably been more of a hassle for the tour guides to get that gear back into its place if we did that. what we DID do is make it into this rocky space with a gap between rocks. it was a cave. and then we went INSIDE THE CAVE. i had never been inside a cave in my life, mind you, so this is an unexpected (but not unwelcome) surprise. i get asked if i'm claustrophobic and i answer no, but i'm not leaving out the possibility. who knows? i've literally never been inside a cave. i get really excited about it though. in order to get inside we have to enter the gap sideways. we go inside. it's so dark inside the cave, naturally, and we have to use flashlights to be able to get around. the walls of the cave are cool to the touch, and there's condensed water on the roof of it. we are told there were rumors a criminal hid inside that cave, and that witchcraft was practiced inside of it, and not to be scared of ghosts, and someone yells just to be funny. i understand the importance of helmets there and then, because if you were to bump into that it'd fuck you up for real. we exit the cave after reaching a point whereupon continuing would just lead to, if i heard the guy correctly, like 25 km of tunnel basically, and it'd be narrow and steep and dangerous. i don't get how people do that for fun. like getting into a cave, into those really narrow and scary spaces? after the horror stories i've read, i could never explore caves for fun like that. but at least it'll NEVER be as horrifying as underwater caves. that shit genuinely puts me in distress. i remember last time i went to a river i saw an underwater cave and it made me unreasonably anxious just to SWIM near that entrance, knowing that you could theoretically dive into that space and keep going. nah. after our little cave recess, we go back into the trail and make our way towards the beginning of the route, and it's probably a few hours before we get there. i start to really feel the fatigue and the sleepiness begin to hit; i'm really quiet for the most part, focusing all my strengths on taking each step carefully and on avoiding the brush of any unknown plants. i make use of the convenient ropes tied along the path to make sure i don't fall. thankfully i never did! and i take pictures here and there. after what feels like forever, the hike ends. we got asked if we wanted to take another dive in the river or if we wanted to eat lunch (did i mention the tour included free lunch?) but people were mostly silent, like everyone was hesitating to give a set answer, and the guy was like "okay so you guys are hungry, let's go eat." i'm relieved to reach civilization, my legs killing me at last, but it's like man, we're going back to cars and roads and people. but i was able to squeeze every drop of healing out of that expedition, and i would happily do it over. i honestly hope i can do everything there is to be done here in my country when it comes to natural exploration and adventurous day activities like these, because god knows i haven't done nearly enough. there's a lot of first-experiences to be had still.

we drive back to the ranch. they have food ready for us: rice, chicken and optional salad. i grab a malt beverage drink to go with it, nice and cold, a fucking classic. i eat first, and then i shower. while we're eating this one guy in the tour starts complaining about how he was left behind by the tour guides, and how his car keys weren't given back to him, and the air is awkward and tense for a while before he realizes that he had the keys in his own backpack all along. in expected fashion, the other normal patrons of this business start talking shit about the guy and i found it really funny that he basically gifted that crowd with a conversation topic for the lunch hour. i take a shower in the tiniest shower/toilet bathroom known to man, and finally i am dry and clothed. after eating a nice warm meal it feels so nice. i feel like i've had all my human needs met. literal pyramid of physical needs shows up in my brainscape. we get back in the car and we drive back to the bakery to buy in bulk, so that we can take that to our respective families and enjoy at home. my friend pays for my bulk donuts even after my own insistence, and i vow to revenge them someday. and then there's the comfortable drive back, taking the same scenic route. the day out ends a lot earlier than expected, which is both funny and very nice; it's funny because i had canceled a 4:00 pm appointment, and precisely at 4:30 pm i arrived at home, but also nice because the day wasn't even over yet and yet i'd done soooooooo much! my god. but yeah, conversations are had on the drive back, my playlists as the background music, and when i get home i say my respective goodbyes and wrap the day out up with a hug. the best hugs are the ones where you squeeze the hell out of each other on purpose. i'm so happy to have friendship in my life. i go home and deliver the bulk donuts, and my family finishes them in less than an hour. after walking with my mom to do some errands, a time during which i tell her all about the trip, i run upstairs and lie down in bed with my phone, relishing in the AC for a while. the good thing is i'd already showered during the trip itself so i didn't have to do anything else. i decided to take a nap, and take a nap i did, for the better part of two or three hours. i woke up at like 10 pm (or almost). and then i was able to actually catch up with things, and now that i'm finishing this diary entry i've officially caught up with telling this story. i've been typing away for over two hours. i'm tired but i'm happy.

july 28th, 2023, 11:50 pm

so as you might have infered from my last diary update, i wasn't able to write on here yesterday since i was swept by tutoring and preparations in between the hours. i worry that missing a day for something like this will make me forget all of the details worth talking about, but i think i have a pretty fresh memory of the most iconic parts of my day. but to summarize: i had a final tutoring session with one of my students and i was able to make it as fun as i was hoping it'd be, and they'll be sticking around during the semester so i win; i prepared my backpack for the nature hike, miraculously getting away with not doing the laundry for another day due to finding clean clothing items; one of my students missed the class so that gave me an extra hour of wiggle space (thankfully) to do said prepping; i babysat at night and got home almost at midnight to finish what preparations i hadn't yet been able to do; and finally, i went to sleep at around 2 am or so, after much, much trouble with the living room noise and the temperature, in order to wake up at the actual crack of dawn. or before that, actually. remember when i said i'd text the old babysitting gig mom back? yeah, so i haven't gotten around to that. i've been taking my sweet time in replying to some people, and it's nice to be able to say "i'm not responding right now" and stick with it just like god intended. that is to say, instant availability is a VERY recent thing, and i once more remark that we should be allowed to be online and say FUCK replying to ANYONE in this moment, you know what i mean? but i digress. let's get to the meat of yesterday, which was really the highlight of it.

so the kid i babysat was the actual funniest little man i could have hoped to encounter. he's the spitting image of his brother, and his manner of speaking reminded me of him a lot, but what got me the most is just how ELOQUENT this creature is. the second his mom introduced us (again i must remind that the last time i saw him face-to-face was when he was but a mere toddler, and i was a very small teen) there was an instant click. she goes "you can give her a tour of the house," to which he replies, "yes, i'm very good at giving tours." this kid knows his stuff and he STRUTS IT WITH PRIDE. so he shows me around the house, offering a brief description of each room while shifting his weight from one foot to the other and making very proper hand gestures, as any good and honest tour guide would. he was even so kind as to warn me about the termite-prone parts of the house, tucked way in the backyard. after his mom gives me the brief rundown of how and when she'll leave, where the keys are, the kitchen and the fridge and all, we retire into the room with A/C for a bit and just try to plan out what we're gonna do. now we're both fluently bilingual, save for the fact that his spanish is more "i was raised bilingually so my spanish sounds a little gringo but it's still clear spanish, but i can tell when you're thinking in english" than mine, so eventually we switched to english entirely and stuck with it for the better part of the night. which i don't blame him for! admittedly, i feel more fluent in english than i do in spanish these days despite spanish being my native tongue, but that's because i speak english on a regular basis, write in english, read in english, and often think in english. most of my friends do too, so most of my usage of spanish is confined to my family and a few select friends who express themselves in spanish far more regularly than the rest. also something about humor in spanish just hits infinitely funnier, and bilingual jokes are a fucking blessing of god, and even the very act of code-switching can be in itself comedic during a conversation, so i'm very, very happy that i have this privilege of language up my sleeve. but tangent about languages aside, i forgot to mention that the kid introduced me to his parrot plush, and i pulled out team sonic in all of its plush glory from my bag and showed them to him, something that i think very very pleasantly surprised him. i sat the plushies next to the parrot so they were buddies for the day. i had to call his cousin (who is also my childhood friend) several times to locate the XBOX cables and the controllers and the other consoles in the house, and eveeeeeentually we moved to another bedroom where there was a playstation 3 set up and ready for use. i need to mention that in this room there was a fucking SNES mini, an NES, a SEGA GENESIS mini and i felt insanely envious for a hot minute. i asked my friend if the SNES had chrono trigger in it. he replied "yes". my brain fucking exploded. i literally don't believe him. when he comes in september i'll have to see it with my very own eyes to believe it.

on the playstation 3, we played naruto ultimate tournament something something, a fighting game series i'm familiar with from the wii because i had that game (or a previous iteration of it) and i played the shit out of it. i was getting my ass absolutely kicked by this ten-year-old, and seeing naruto on that victory screen with a golden S at the rank was not humiliating but rather humbling. the kid has about as much of a sense of humility as a gifted kid could. throughout every match where i had my character blasted to pieces, he'd progressively go from "wow, this character is SO OP, i don't know how i did that!" to "i think i'm just really good at his game! wow, i'm so good at this game" and it was funnier than i can describe. the soundtrack for that game goes hard, i won't lie. also? it had me reminisce on my early childhood naruto phase, where i watched a good part of naruto shippuden on netflix back when it was actually a good and reputable service with quality anime on it (it had princess tutu, squid girl and moonphase, to give you an idea of the standard back then) and how often i'd LARP as the naruto characters. my favorites were mostly based on design from that fighting game series and on the episodes of the anime i did watch. ino yamanake (i did not look this up i remember her full name even now) was my favorite gal character, and i kin assigned her to myself while i gave my sister sakura. i think my brother was sasuke and not naruto because his hair was black and he was cooler than naruto. i don't remember. naruto has so many well-designed characters with interesting fighting styles and power concepts, and the sheer amount of characters doesn't detract from them as individuals. do you ever think about just how fucking IMPACTFUL naruto was to pop culture? to anime as a medium? to the shounen genre? my hero academia is actual modern TRASH. i always feel so (nerd emoji) (finger pointing up) when i say it but i know this shit is not the nostalgia speaking; anime WAS and always WILL have been better in the past, and what i've been seeing now is this bloated modern heap of garbage with a few gems if you dig well for them. only a select few, like mob psycho 100, will attain great popularity without losing its peakness. but anyway, all this to say that i might take a design note or two from naruto as a franchise, and maybe someday i'll launch myself at the monumental task of watching the anime in its entirety, knowing it's a gem from an older era that can't possibly be replicated no matter how much people try to match its greatness. but this is about my babysitting venture, NOT about naruto. i am not a naruto fan. don't get the facts wrong.

we play the naruto game for a loooong while, with a few breaks in between. i text my mom about something and suddenly she replies with an audio, which makes me go uh oh because that's pretty damn unusual. and what do you know: it turns out a well-beloved professor she once knew was evicted from her house and they were vacating the space, throwing absolutely ALL. OF. HER. BELONGINGS. to the street for garbage pickup the next day. someone had spread the word about it and my mom sent my brother to go fishing for some of these items because, in her own words, there were GEMS of books there that would be lost as trash if nobody else took them. so they filled an entire trunk with box after box of books. SO many books about literature, architecture, art, history, culture. there were some gary larson far side books! only two, both of which i already owned, but it's nice to have them around again (i genuinely think that series helped to shape my humor into the incomprehensible beastly form it's taken now); they picked up a nikolai gogol book which i was ECSTATIC about because ever since reading "the namesake" i'd been wanting to read the overcoat by him, but now i get to own a physical copy and read it on paper. it has other short stories by the guy so this is an absolute win for this four-eyed freak of literate nature. they also picked up a mark twain book, a george orwell one... i'll be consuming them sometime, hopefully when i kick my reading habits back into gear. it's honestly hard! there's so much going on every day, all the time, everywhere, and reading is such a detached, private thing that when everything is so loud and quick, it's extremely difficult to take a moment out of one's day to do that with the sacredness (i think) it deserves. i think what fucks me up about this situation is the fact that this genius of a woman, this living legend of a scholar, has lost her mind to senile dementia and now her unpaid house is being evacuated of all the belongings she collected in her many, many travels, all the books that comprised her personal library, everything that made her house a home. all of it lost, gone, thrown away like it was nothing. today my mom reminded me of her cat (she had shown him to me in her social media posts) and i felt a pang of sadness for the little guy. i hope whoever's caring for him is giving him the attention he deserves... his name is poe, like edgar allan poe... but back to the subject of her mind, it's really scary how all that intellect and knowledge can be lost. just like that. i wondered: what about her family? why isn't her family laying claim to all of this? is nobody preserving anything for her? is there no going back at all? does she know what she's lost? and it's terribly sad. i asked my mom if she felt any sort of moral conflict over this, and she smartly reminded me that if we didn't take those belongings, they would be thrown into the garbage. and it's true. and i can't believe that it's true, but it is. such is the nature of these legal, money-driven matters of the modern world.

back to the babysitting. we're playing smash bros. later (we played ps3 while the switch was charging up) and we're playing vs. on the minigame where you have to bat away the punching bag as far as possible, and he's explaining the mechanics of the game. everytime he throws the punching bag and it has a colorful blast around it as it speeds up he goes "it broke mach 1! now mach 2! it broke the sound barrier! it's breaking MACH 3!" and i'm like wow, this kid really knows his terms. and i keep missing my shots because i have a chronic diseased called "fucking sucks at video games most of the time", especially when they're competitive. he tells me out of nowhere: "you wanna know how i know all of this stuff? it's because i'm really, really stupidly smart for my age." and i started losing my SHIT at this. to know it is one thing but to SAY IT was really fucking funny to me. he reminded me a lot of myself at that age, being extremely smart and making sure everyone around me was aware that i was aware of my brains. "the reason i'm this smart is... i have no idea. like i don't know why! but for my age i'm STUPIDLY smart." his usage of the word stupidly amuses me immensely. he starts rambling about all the awards he's gotten at school and says "i've gotten a lot of achievements in my life", and then he tells me he made up a new phrase to say he's hungry. it goes: "my light pinkish internal organ located approximately underneath my left rib is yearning for food, therefore making the feeling of hunger. may i have something to nourish this feeling?" it took him a day or two to think of this, he said. i'm FASCINATED. he's literally tails the fox if he was a human child. he's so proud of himself for his brains. he should damn well be. eventually the night ends; his mom arrives, she's very very happy to see we had fun, she thanks me again, pays me, we chat about how we should hang out again sometime, i say goodbye, and then i get dropped off at home. then it's time for me to peruse the book collection i already mentioned, and prepare for the nature hike and for sleep. i'm gonna have to write about that in a separate post because this one is already TOO DAMN LONG. and it's mostly about yesterday anyway so y'know. i tried to sleep with my clothes on and succeeded save for the shoes. i cannot for the life of me sleep with shoes on. or with socks; equally as stifling. i fucking HATE shoes. i love being barefoot. i would traverse the local mall barefoot if they let me. no shoes anywhere ever. except maybe a very. very hot paved surface, because sadly my skin isn't heat resistant. i eventually fell asleep, and awoke to my alarms with no issue. now i'll make that separate post about TODAY...

july 26th, 2023, 10:22 pm

ohhhhhhhh, i've survived another day. it feels like i've done a lot even though i've poured more time into work than anything else, but i'm happy to say things have gone as i hoped they'd go! i feel clear-headed about the near future, and i'm making sure to keep as organized as possible so i don't miss a single event on my calendar. tomorrow is going to be an even longer day than today was, so i for one am glad that: 1) i don't have to wake up as early as i had to today, and 2) i have half the classes i was originally supposed to, due to my unexpected babysitting gig. it's one of my childhood friends' little sibling (not so little anymore, though, i haven't seen him in literal years) and while i haven't talked to the childhood friend in question in a really long time, it was nice to hear from their mom after so long. i'm literally a sonic fan and a geek for most things video game, so i'll have 0 trouble connecting with this kid. i'm gonna bring my sonic plushies and perhaps even my wii... or i'll just use the XBOX there and we can play sonic adventure 2 if he's down for it. it's gonna be really fun, i bet! i'm actually really excited! tomorrow we are BALLING. i need to use my time between classes wisely tomorrow in order to prepare ahead BECAUSE on friday, i'm going to a river and a cave HEHEHE I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THAT! i'm pretty sure rockclimbing is included in this ordeal, and i've only gone indoor rockclimbing, so i'm full of nervous, positive anticipation. it's gonna be a packed day, but it's right at the start of the weekend, and i'll have so much time to unwind and partake in the beauty of this world and its natural wonders that i think it could heal me. while the day arrives though, i'll think about the cute itty bitty plushies i just found today thanks to a reverse image search. if i get this alien plush, i could cosplay tome and carry him around. have i mentioned i fucking love tome kurata?



earlier today i had a moment of sudden awareness. i'm not bound to a romantic relationship, and i don't feel the need or the want for one. i have a fulfilling job that makes me feel accomplished and helpful. i feel like the owner of my own time, so simple yet so freeing. earlier today i considered deleting instagram again, simply because i would like to entertain the idea of getting by with 0 social media. kind of like a social experiment... on myself, but i guess once i account for the reactions of others, then it fits the bill much better. i'm thinking about characters i hadn't thought about in over a year, but things are drastically unlike back then. i feel optimistic about what lies ahead and confident in my ability to face it and jesus christ this sounds really cheesy so i'm reeling it back a little. ON FRIDAY, i'm going to have to wake up at 5 AM so tomorrow i'm sleeping as early as i possibly can, a most challenging task for my insomniac self. but hey, worst case scenario i'll leave my ringer on and be woken up by a phone call if my alarms don't do the trick. i have to do the laundry tomorrow... prepare a backpack... orzzzzzzzzzzz but FUCK IT, WE BALL! today, my mom told me about the death of sinéad o'connor and considering the lack of a given cause of death, and how just nine days ago she was mourning the loss of her teenage son one year ago (to suicide, no less), then i think i have an idea of what might have happened and it's really heartbreaking to think about. i wish i had listened to her discography before the news of her death. i always feel really bad about finally getting into a well-known musician when their passing makes it to the front page. i don't know how to properly transition from this topic, but since this is my private little online journal, i'm going to leap directly into the next thing. i decided i'd update the playlist on this website after all. when you think about it, eighteen songs is far too little for an infinite loop, and it'd be fun to make more picks based on the computer-y retro vibes i'm going for here. also, i was told about the whole gleep narp situation in the US and honestly, i can't believe twitter is (my guess) collectively losing their minds over a guy going "yep, it's true but i can't tell you" because isn't that just fucking insane and unthinkable to you guys? i choose to be a stubborn skeptic until proven wrong. i wish i knew more unbiased sources of information, i'm getting really tired of this awareness that all media is controlled by a few greedy motherfuckers who stick their fingers in every jar because they're never satisfied with just one. and then they smear that all over everyone else and their mothers and fathers. tonight i will shower and then enjoy my quiet hours past midnight until i inevitably have to go to sleep and begin the next day... but i'm one day closer to friday...

11:16 pm: I FORGOT TO FUCKING MENTION CAMP CAMP GOT A NEW EPISODE? AFTER SO LONG IT'S STILL KICKING? i was insane about that show in early high school, i can't believe it still exists... i'm seeing a lot of people in the comment section complaining about some VA changes... honestly? i only really cared about david. as long as they didn't change his VA, i literally couldn't care less. i don't care about the show anymore, but i can't deny the influence david had on me all those years ago. i want to pluck his character right out of the source material and claim him as my own. cheerful, upbeat mentor figure who is shouldering a burden much heavier than it appears? a sweet sunshine who cracks in the absence of the sun? god. GOOOOOOOOOOOOD. his VA is also extremely talented and expressive, he really did breathe life into the character. i'm gonna watch the episode because i'm too damn curious. i'll report back on that.

11:36 pm: i checked my phone messages and i felt my heart drop to my stomach ohhhh my god. i almost forgot about one of the most shocking parts of today, which is that the mom of the family whose kids i babysat (for almost three years) reached out to me with a ten-second video of the kids playing around, and the caption "This is how we're doing" and god, they've grown up so much in these two months, it's crazy how quickly toddlers will do that! what the hell? it feels really odd to talk with her after so long, because it's been long enough now that i fell completely out of the routine of my work for them and it feels like i've moved on from it almost completely. granted, i do miss it. it was my main job for the better part of two years, and it drove me insane at times, but i had so much fun and i felt in some odd sense like part of that family, as their nanny. you get to learn so much about people when you're present for hours at a time on a daily basis, getting to observe their routines, learning where they put the batteries, how they store their food, at what time they tuck their kids into bed, the visiting schedules for their grandparents... and i'm an outsider to it all, but i'm also the girl the little kid calls for at the door when it's sunday and i'm off the clock. so there's a strange sense of intimacy in this caretaker-family relationship that i can't compare to any other job i've had so far. sometimes i would try to imagine how i'd detach myself from that job, on the days i really, really wanted to leave, and what kept me from it, other than the need for income and the security and convenience of it, was thinking about the kids. they'd miss me, and it'd be hard to explain why they can't see me anymore. i'd probably remember their full names far into the future, even when our lives have diverged as far from each other as possible in contrast to how closely interwoven they were. "oh, i'll make up a children's book about how fun it was to babysit them and how i'll always remember our time together and i'll illustrate, print and gift it to them," i'd catch myself thinking on more than one occasion, and it sounds stupidly cheesy but so many people are okay with this kind of cheesiness that frankly i can't be bothered to grill myself. i'd worry that their parents would think it narcissistic of me to do that. me, the transitory babysitter, an employee, a stupid young adult, thinking myself so important that i'd deserve a book tribute, as if they'd remember me past the age of 9. who knows? maybe they would. i still think about my babysitters from when i was five or six or seven, though they were not nearly as involved or juvenile as i am. i remember walking the fields with one of them, thinking that the lands were vast and endless, trailing the dirt paths and looking at the grown fruits hanging from the plants. watching a pickup truck go by. eating cheese balls with a fork off the container, and trying to mix strawberry nesquik powder into my cereal bowl's milk only to fail miserably at my genius idea for a concoction. the truth is that people come and go, and i've never been good at letting go. i cling to people before they so much as reach back, and then i feel foolish when they don't. why aren't you grasping at the memory of me? at the potential of our bond? aren't i worth keeping around for more than a day? won't we stay in touch and laugh at stories of our past? i don't know. it used to make me really emotional, to think of leaving this family when i saw them through the scariest of times, the most chaotic of times, the silliest of times, the vulnerable months and the careless ones. but i haven't been there since may, and now that i'm tutoring full-time, i can't see myself going back. i can't even begin to describe how much i learned from that miraculous gig alone. i saw the wonders of self-employment first-hand. i mourned the low-paid labor of young people trying to stay afloat in this harsh economy. i wished there was something better out there. i hoped i'd never have to leave. i left without realizing it. "how have you been? did you get a new job?" it's 11:51 pm, and i won't be replying until tomorrow, but i'll say: "i've been fine! about to finish my bachelor's degree this next semester. i've been tutoring full-time. it's been going well. my afternoons are full." and maybe i'll be available a saturday or two, some sunday or a particularly empty afternoon, and i'll get to see them again, and they'll lose their minds over my ephemerous presence, and i'll remember how small they were when i first walked into their house, the one i feel i know like the back of my hand. like one knows a grandmother's house after enough visits for the christmas season. i guess the whole thing reminds me of those visits as a kid, when extended family was just a different house with unlimited snacks, with cool toys and a new atmosphere, and not the home of people who know nothing about your day, who remember your name conditionally, who tack on false descriptors in family reunions you no longer participate from. this is just the way life goes; i know that. goodbyes are often not anticipated. you don't know that sweaty tuesday afternoon is the last of its kind. one second, june seems just around the corner and the next, your august is promised to new families, to new people you won't know so closely, who will obtain knowledge from you just as ephemerally and phase out of your life someday. i don't think it's the end of things. we still live five minutes away from each other. i hope the bond we've forged will have you pull up my contact in ten years next time you need someone you can trust. i'm so bad at letting go that i'm willing to forgive so much. it's okay if you got mad at me that one time for being ten minutes late. it's okay if you called me up last minute. i hope next time you call me i can answer in time.