A few days of relative peace and 'okayness' pass.
Then it's a few days of total sadness and misery.
Back to okay for a few days.
Back to gloom for a few days.
Mentioning an oxygen mask in that previous post seems like a dark joke now.
Would not recommend having contamination-related OCD during a global pandemic. 0/10
Not a good time.
But when you've been a hermit for eight years... quarantine doesn't change much.
Sewing masks some. Binging Netflix some. Spending too much time on Reddit. Despairing about politics. Working on long-running projects.
Finally got around to watching the last Star Wars and Frozen 2 yesterday. Back-to-back. Weirdly felt like I was watching the same movie twice. Didn't think that would happen with those two franchises, but I guess that's the hero's journey for you.
A few days past my 34th ding. Mid-thirties, huh.
Mm.
Monday, May 11, 2020
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Hindsight is 2020...
02022020
Pretty.
Someone sent me a message of encouragement on reddit a few weeks ago along with the advice:
Trying to make that the focus this year.
You have to put the oxygen mask over your own face first before you help others with theirs.
Working on it.
Pretty.
Someone sent me a message of encouragement on reddit a few weeks ago along with the advice:
"Don't set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm."I've been told similar things at other times in my life, by a variety of people. For whatever reason, it never registered as much as it did this time.
Trying to make that the focus this year.
You have to put the oxygen mask over your own face first before you help others with theirs.
Working on it.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
15 months later...
Time passes...
Missed my last ding entirely. Sorry, 32. Here we are at 33.
I considered 2017 a bust.
2018 was not. But it was challenging.
It makes sense that I stopped making time to post in February of last year. It's when I became a mod of the K-Pop subreddit. I had only applied to help with banners and light moderation, but due to a number of circumstances, ended up being one of only a few primary moderators for a full year until we recently got some more in.
Modding a sub like that... holy shit, it's a lot of work. And stressful.
On top of that, the biggest criminal scandal ever in K-Pop, broke this February. We've been covering it with painstaking diligence ever since. And some of the reporting is brutally difficult to read.
I am very much aware that between this stuff and KPOPPY and EssentialKpop, I have basically taken on more than a full day job's worth of work... as a volunteer. It has given me a lot of purpose and satisfaction as I overcome challenges or problems, but I'm definitely still sick and not very functional otherwise. Been a weird year.
The rest of my time is spent with politics, mostly in the socialism/breadtube spheres. It's somehow both depressing and comforting. Depressing how far we are from sanity, especially with establishment Democrats hell-bent on losing forever. Comforting for the reminder that there are people out there who care and haven't been made completely batshit by mainstream media. The stupid, but informed, humor of stuff like ChapTrapHouse is cathartic.
It has to be a progressive in 2020. We need Bernie. Warren or Gabbard are the only other acceptable choices.
Still finding escape in BTS. Doing more and more amazing things all the time. They just performed, and won, at the Billboard Music Awards and started a world stadium tour. Still blowing my mind to have watched them debut as underdog nobodies and get to where they are now. Nuts!
Honestly, not too hard to understand when you see how close they are still. That affection between them stronger than ever, even though some of them have lived together for like 8... 9 years? Good god. Fun dudes. They're like the human embodiment of every team-building exercise.
Anyway, not much substance here. Just affirming my existence.
The Orville is still awesome.
Star Trek Discovery finally started to feel a little like Star Trek at some point in the 2nd season. Probably when Spock showed up. Still kind of a slog.
Goals this year are to make a healthy work/life schedule, update KPOPPY, and paint a little. One finished art project. I've barely done anything for ages, other than for the K-Pop subreddit.
Also want to plant some pentas for the hummingbirds.
Yep.
Missed my last ding entirely. Sorry, 32. Here we are at 33.
I considered 2017 a bust.
2018 was not. But it was challenging.
It makes sense that I stopped making time to post in February of last year. It's when I became a mod of the K-Pop subreddit. I had only applied to help with banners and light moderation, but due to a number of circumstances, ended up being one of only a few primary moderators for a full year until we recently got some more in.
Modding a sub like that... holy shit, it's a lot of work. And stressful.
On top of that, the biggest criminal scandal ever in K-Pop, broke this February. We've been covering it with painstaking diligence ever since. And some of the reporting is brutally difficult to read.
I am very much aware that between this stuff and KPOPPY and EssentialKpop, I have basically taken on more than a full day job's worth of work... as a volunteer. It has given me a lot of purpose and satisfaction as I overcome challenges or problems, but I'm definitely still sick and not very functional otherwise. Been a weird year.
The rest of my time is spent with politics, mostly in the socialism/breadtube spheres. It's somehow both depressing and comforting. Depressing how far we are from sanity, especially with establishment Democrats hell-bent on losing forever. Comforting for the reminder that there are people out there who care and haven't been made completely batshit by mainstream media. The stupid, but informed, humor of stuff like ChapTrapHouse is cathartic.
It has to be a progressive in 2020. We need Bernie. Warren or Gabbard are the only other acceptable choices.
Still finding escape in BTS. Doing more and more amazing things all the time. They just performed, and won, at the Billboard Music Awards and started a world stadium tour. Still blowing my mind to have watched them debut as underdog nobodies and get to where they are now. Nuts!
Honestly, not too hard to understand when you see how close they are still. That affection between them stronger than ever, even though some of them have lived together for like 8... 9 years? Good god. Fun dudes. They're like the human embodiment of every team-building exercise.
Anyway, not much substance here. Just affirming my existence.
The Orville is still awesome.
Star Trek Discovery finally started to feel a little like Star Trek at some point in the 2nd season. Probably when Spock showed up. Still kind of a slog.
Goals this year are to make a healthy work/life schedule, update KPOPPY, and paint a little. One finished art project. I've barely done anything for ages, other than for the K-Pop subreddit.
Also want to plant some pentas for the hummingbirds.
Yep.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Still paddling the old knew...
I still exist.
Sometimes a competitive high school dance team serving pure 80s gives you the will to live.
Tomioka Dance Club, ladies and gentlemen.
Almost never listen to Western music anymore, but I'm pretty well obsessed with this MV and song. Super super super gorgeous video.
I basically decided to forfeit 2017. It was a despondent blight of fire and tears.
Trying to get things moving forward now. Or just... moving.
Following the solid week of crying grief over Jonghyun I rubbed my eyes lightly, exhausted, awake too long. Got a crazy after-image burst in my left eye that stayed with me for almost two weeks. Accompanied by a continuous headache. Probably a mild posterior vitreous detachment according to the internet. Could've been a stroke or aneurysm finally coming for me... wouldn't know. Still can't think about being out in the world enough to deal with seeing a doctor. I fully appreciate the depth of this foolishness.
Illness makes a fool of me on the regular.
I did some reading. Ready Player One was a miserable shock. I had heard so many good things about it. I was genuinely startled to experience how poor it was. It's just... yeah... it's just not good.
Got through John Green's Turtles All The Way Down with difficulty. Had to take breaks for a few days at a time because I was crying through so much of it. Then Jonghyun happened in the midst of that and I didn't come back to it for a while. It's very good. But extremely challenging to get through for someone who has OCD and mental illness on-par or worse than the protagonist. It was so damn real to my own experience that it could only be a painfully anxious ride. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to have OCD, read Turtles All The Way Down.
Saved The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage for the last of my reading stint. Figured it would be the most fun. I was right. Pretty harrowing tale. Pullman is such a beautiful writer. Effortlessly vibrant. His Dark Materials is a very important book series for me so I'm thrilled to have more stories within that universe. Eagerly awaiting the next installments.
Mostly I've been escaping into BTS. Bangtan Sonyeondan. Which is also foolish. I thought my Kpop group fangirling days were behind me. I'd never again follow a group as closely as I followed DBSK.
But BTS... is an irresistible force of nature.
They had impressed me early on with the steady pace and quality of their promotional periods. There was a clear difference between the dozens of other groups I see debut and disappear yearly. Their WINGS era at the end of 2016 really reached a critical mass of attention. Finally recognized with big awards. Then their unprecedented grassroots worldwide fanbase voted them into a Billboard award and all of the press, hype, and collaborations that came out of that launched them into the stratosphere. Completely wild to witness that happening in real-time.
The sheer mass of their content online is simply insane and it's the easiest thing in the world to fall into and luxuriate. Foolish because investing emotionally in such a thing has gotten me into trouble before. Grief-stricken, physically ill, trouble... when things have gone tragic or criminal. Namely DBSK. As I said, I thought I'd never let myself be sucked in again.
But here we are.
I've never seen an entire group be as tightly bonded as these seven are. A lot of circumstances around the creation and development of the group are unique in the industry, so it makes sense. The culture of affection runs deep.
They have a large body of socially/politically conscious material. Much of it written by them. Hard to not appreciate that considering the environment they're in. They have a category of material I refer to as their 'Hey, try not to kill yourself' songs. Lost, So Far Away, Not Today, 2! 3!, YNWA, etc.
My favorite of which is 'Tomorrow'.
I find them to be helpful, personally.
Comforting.
Anywhoozle, just popping in.
2018, have mercy on us.
Sometimes a competitive high school dance team serving pure 80s gives you the will to live.
Tomioka Dance Club, ladies and gentlemen.
Almost never listen to Western music anymore, but I'm pretty well obsessed with this MV and song. Super super super gorgeous video.
I basically decided to forfeit 2017. It was a despondent blight of fire and tears.
Trying to get things moving forward now. Or just... moving.
Following the solid week of crying grief over Jonghyun I rubbed my eyes lightly, exhausted, awake too long. Got a crazy after-image burst in my left eye that stayed with me for almost two weeks. Accompanied by a continuous headache. Probably a mild posterior vitreous detachment according to the internet. Could've been a stroke or aneurysm finally coming for me... wouldn't know. Still can't think about being out in the world enough to deal with seeing a doctor. I fully appreciate the depth of this foolishness.
Illness makes a fool of me on the regular.
I did some reading. Ready Player One was a miserable shock. I had heard so many good things about it. I was genuinely startled to experience how poor it was. It's just... yeah... it's just not good.
Got through John Green's Turtles All The Way Down with difficulty. Had to take breaks for a few days at a time because I was crying through so much of it. Then Jonghyun happened in the midst of that and I didn't come back to it for a while. It's very good. But extremely challenging to get through for someone who has OCD and mental illness on-par or worse than the protagonist. It was so damn real to my own experience that it could only be a painfully anxious ride. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to have OCD, read Turtles All The Way Down.
Saved The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage for the last of my reading stint. Figured it would be the most fun. I was right. Pretty harrowing tale. Pullman is such a beautiful writer. Effortlessly vibrant. His Dark Materials is a very important book series for me so I'm thrilled to have more stories within that universe. Eagerly awaiting the next installments.
Mostly I've been escaping into BTS. Bangtan Sonyeondan. Which is also foolish. I thought my Kpop group fangirling days were behind me. I'd never again follow a group as closely as I followed DBSK.
But BTS... is an irresistible force of nature.
They had impressed me early on with the steady pace and quality of their promotional periods. There was a clear difference between the dozens of other groups I see debut and disappear yearly. Their WINGS era at the end of 2016 really reached a critical mass of attention. Finally recognized with big awards. Then their unprecedented grassroots worldwide fanbase voted them into a Billboard award and all of the press, hype, and collaborations that came out of that launched them into the stratosphere. Completely wild to witness that happening in real-time.
The sheer mass of their content online is simply insane and it's the easiest thing in the world to fall into and luxuriate. Foolish because investing emotionally in such a thing has gotten me into trouble before. Grief-stricken, physically ill, trouble... when things have gone tragic or criminal. Namely DBSK. As I said, I thought I'd never let myself be sucked in again.
But here we are.
I've never seen an entire group be as tightly bonded as these seven are. A lot of circumstances around the creation and development of the group are unique in the industry, so it makes sense. The culture of affection runs deep.
They have a large body of socially/politically conscious material. Much of it written by them. Hard to not appreciate that considering the environment they're in. They have a category of material I refer to as their 'Hey, try not to kill yourself' songs. Lost, So Far Away, Not Today, 2! 3!, YNWA, etc.
My favorite of which is 'Tomorrow'.
I find them to be helpful, personally.
Comforting.
Anywhoozle, just popping in.
2018, have mercy on us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)