May Highlights: My beautiful nephew. A random baby chick showed up in our backyard. Thankfully we were able to find her family and return her! A letter & drawing from Mima (my heart was so happy to receive these in the mail!) And some treats from one of the baby showers I went to.
Oops, I totally meant to write sooner but I always lose track of time...There are times when I'm super busy, and then times where I lay around like a potato, but either way I lose track of my days. I don't think I've been up to anything too crazy since the end of April, mostly working (as usual) though I've been more social IRL than normal. I've been going to events and get-togethers and it's honestly wiped me out! I've been to 3 baby showers in the past 3 weeks the price to pay for hanging out with "normies" :o) and while I have no interest in children or pregnancy, it was fulfilling to be a part of! I surprisingly had a lot of fun at the parties and picking out gifts for the babies-to-be. Makes me pretty excited to step into the official role of Aunt when my sister has a child one day! But to be honest, I would be perfectly okay with not attending another baby shower for at least a year loool.
Besides the baby showers, I've been going to graduation dinners, lunch dates, and hanging out with my parents. My coworker, W, who I've been pretty friendly with invited me to go to an upcoming Pride event with her and her wife. I guess the coffee break chitchats paid off! It does make me happy and makes me feel like a Real Human Being™ when I get invited out LOL. I've never been to anything Pride related before.
As far as work, things have been going pretty well. I thought I would have a much harder time without my old boss C here, but my coworker and I have been working together closely. Knowing that she was just as nervous as I was with C leaving gave me a little ease LOL. We can suffer and learn together. ♥ The CFO (who is my boss now I guess!) has made sure to stop by my office at least once a week to check on me. She's a really lovely middle-aged woman who shelters dogs, so I think I was destined to like her anyways haha.
Creative projects I have been working on lately: nothing really! I've been trying to draw daily. Also I've been working on some new sozai and website assets, and it's making me want to go back and refresh my first sozai set because I've improved quite a bit at pixel art! Though I think I would have an easier time in Aesprite, I'm not willing to move from Procreate yet. Anyways, once I get over my current obsession with pixel art I'm going to work on some OC stuff, hopefully.
I want to set monthly goals so I am actively working on myself instead of rotting.
SO, June's Goal: HOME COOKED MEALS! In May I fell back into the bad habit of ordering food for dinner most days of the week because I am lazy and/or tired. I don't even bother to entertain the thought of cooking when I'm home alone so I have been eating out a lot...
I want to try and cook meals at home at least 3 days a week. Poopy can take the other 2/3 days, and then Saturday will be some kind of (healthy-ish) takeout. Sundays are reserved for family meal time at my parent's house.
I feel like I make the same goals all the time (gotta draw more! gotta cook more! gotta exercise more!) but I often struggle with being lazy. Someone free me from lazy girl jail OTL
I started writing this entry last week, but was unsatisfied with it so here I am attempting to write again. I've updated my diary layout (obviously) because while I liked the old one, it simply wasn't vibing with me anymore and it was also a pain to update. I hope that this much simpler layout will encourage me to write. Lately, I've been thinking about further condensing some pages, updating some layouts (like /myroom), and working on Lovesick v5 (or 6? I can't keep track) but I've had zero creative energy. When I look at my most recent work on my iPad, it's just littered with doodles, sketches, and fics half-written and half-formed. I'm pretty unsatisfied with how little I've been able to work on my creative hobbies for the past several weeks.
I'm not quite depressed over it, but I definitely feel off and incomplete. It's a little silly how much fufillment I get from drawing and writing my OCs. Especially since no one cares about them but me! But I don't know, I don't quite feel like myself when my head is full of numbers and legal jargon instead of filled with thoughts and daydreams of my favorite characters. The more I think about it, the sadder it makes me honestly.... A fool's errand, I suppose, trying to cram my hobbies in when I only have time and energy for so much.
But! To help with my dissatisfaction, I'm thinking about doing a penpal thing. I'm seriously considering it because right now I'm working on putting together a gift package for a friend and I'm having fun, so I figured why not do some other snail mail stuff. I used to be really big into penpals years ago when I was super active on Tumblr and Reddit and "met" a lot of interesting people. But I'm not sure if I want to try Reddit again or maybe reach out to some friends and acquaintances on NC.
To be honest, I've been quite lonely lately and I don't know why. I mostly have myself to blame, I can never find it in myself to keep constant communication with people, even those I consider dear friends. It's exhausting to talk to people, yet I want to be involved. I want to be close to others. I hate the immature jealousy I feel when I see others connecting in meaningful ways.
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I wrote a few paragraphs that were sad and very negative but I'm deleting them and going to try and stay focused on the positive and the good. I'm going to work on my habit of spiraling...
random pics because why not. an apple purse charm to rep my gege, some spring deco, koya being QT as usual, and my P plushie.
This past weekend we celebrated Dad's birthday. We had a nice lunch, fun conversation, a lovely afternoon. My parents leave this week to go to Mom's home country for a month. I'm on plant-watering duty while they are gone! Fingers crossed I don't accidentally kill anything heh.
Happy new year friends! I hope everyone's holiday season was full of light and love! My holiday season was so incredibly stressful and busy. I had every intention to sit down and blog or update my site with fun stuff throughout Oct to Dec but I've just been too busy! I wanted to draw more too. But of course, my job takes priority and I've just been working and studying like I'm back in school lol. When I'm not working or studying, I was sleeping or just lazing about on my couch.
Before I get into '25 resolutions, I wanted to share my favorite gifts I got for Christmas! I feel so incredibly blessed and lucky that I have such loving people in my life:
I cannot believe that Poopy got me the Santa Lilio Sangre - Ayami Kojima artbook. Absolutely insane. I've been lusting after it since it's release in 2010 but I never wanted to spend the money on it. Every year the price would climb and climb...Anyways, each page is gorgeous! I'm so happy to have this artbook by one of my most favorite illustrators ever. I also got the Lies of P artbook and the Bloodborne artbook (not pictured.) The holy trinity of aesthetics I adore. I'm going to use them along with my Trinity Blood & Angel Sanctuary artbooks to study and practice my art! I loooove drawing my kawaii garbo but I also want to draw more serious or ~gothic~ art (honestly to do my Mea Culpa OCs justice because the way I see them in my head, I cannot put it down on paper >_<)
Also! Check out the custom platform Converse. Aren't they cute!? Poopy said that he chose the colors because of Milky. I think it's so sweet that he knows all of my ocs :3c
Anyways! NY Resolutions!?
I have some hope that I can do more self indulgent things in 2025, whether it's art, website tinkering, or traveling. My volunteer work really fell to the wayside the last quarter of the year, too. I hope to pick it back up again by springtime. The Women's Fair is coming up in a few months so I want to be able to make stickers and keychains for it like I did a couple years ago. I would also like to start fostering senior dogs this year too. (Koya could use the company!) There's also work and donating I'd love to do for a local child advocacy center!! So many plans, so little time and energy, but something is better than nothing. I mentioned in an old blog post that I absolutely cannot stand slacktivists, and throwing a 88x31 button on your site or digitally screaming at others does literally nothing, so I always try to do something, even if it's just donating.
My resolutions:
- As stated above, more local philanthropy!!
- Level up my art! Also do some traditional pieces.
- Curb my spending. The last couple months of 2024 was bad. I was doing a LOT of online stress shopping via apps..Of course, I'm still going to thrift ^_^
- SAVE MONEY!!!! I want my savings account to be nice and fat. This will probably be the hardest resolution for me to reach, not gonna lie.
- Online stuff. Seems silly I guess but I would like to keep in touch more with my digital friends and peers. Get back into actively running my webrings and listings, and also participate more in art community events. Just...do more to help foster an online community I want to be around.
- Site plans: Finally finish my Yuna shrine lol, a little BL section of ships I love(d) for my pure indulgence. More adopts! Finally finish /artemisian. So so so much I want to do.
- Read more. I did not read enough literature, manga, or really any kind of writing beyond fanfiction...I'm not really embarassed by it like some people are, but I think it would be nice to join the unofficial book club at my work and chat books with people.
- Cook more! Bake bread! Try to grow herbs again!
Things I'm leaving behind in 2024:
- I had already started this process during 2024, but I'm going to finish curating the few online spaces I haunt. I started last year by pruning my following list on neocities. I deleted my account on sheezyart, and deactivated in a few other places. I'm still trying to finish moving my OCs and stuff from toyhouse but the process will probably take the entire year because I'm crazy and want each character/world to have a unique layout.
- Being too hard on myself. I'm doing just fine. Cheesy saying but I gotta stop measuring myself by someone else's ruler. LOL
- Soda. My crack. My dark temptress...I drink entirely too much coke zero and not enough water so I gotta stop. 😭 (While I'm writing this I'm sipping on one...)
Anyways none of my goals are anything crazy, in fact I know I make the same ones every year lol but at least I'm consistent? I want to blog more in 2025 but I think I will have to overhaul my diary layout, as the current layout kind of keeps me from doing so regularly (I'm lazy sue me!) I think I will cook up something more simple soon!