January 7, 2025

It's 2025 and I want to be better this year.

Not that I wasn't well last year, but I want this year to be one of personal stability and creative growth. This is going to be a big year, I can feel it.

This is the time of year when a blog can become a clipshow episode, and though I'm proud of what I accomplished in 2024 I'll spare everyone the photo montage (for now). Instead, here are some updates from my winter break goals list:

Life

• Finish settling into my new apartment -- this has been going v well! I love my new space a lot & I'm really enjoying living with my partner & friend. Our space now includes a portrait of a crying child and a La-Z-Boy (in decent condition) that we got for $3.74.
• Union administrative work -- this is kinda eternal, but I got done the medium-sized project that I wanted to :)
• Plan & host my 2nd annual NYE party -- this went well, too! I think! We had like 20 people in our apartment, which was loud and boisterous and fun. A trophy was given out. Looking forward to smaller gatherings in the future.
• Finish Disco Elysium, finally? -- In progress :)
• Play through MySims Agents for the Wii AND the MySims Cozy Bundle -- MySims Agents still rules. Very fun. It was nice to revisit MySims Kingdom, a game that I spent a LOT of time playing as a kid, but honestly, even though it's an exactly identical remastering, I think the Wii configuration is just more fun. I'd never played the classic MySims before, and I'll admit that I didn't spend much time on it, since I think it appeals better to kids with little else to do but sit around and wait for something to happen. It's curious to think about how the pacing of children's games and media has probably changed over the century to adapt to shorter and shorter attention spans. Or I was just playing it wrong.

Craft

• Make 4 more collages to finish out a microchap -- still a work in progress. 1 down?
• Finish a website for one of my partner's community events -- I haven't touched this one (sorry Abe)
• Start another website (secret)
• Write more? -- yeah, I've been doing some of that.

Reading List

• Danez Smith's Bluff
• Alexis De Vaux's Yabo (Friend recommendation)
• Rachel Simmons' Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Young Girls (Patron recommendation)
• Sarah Kay's A Little Daylight Left (ARC!)
• Alex Dimitrov's Ecstasy (ARC!)
• Ashley Elizabeth's CHARM(ed)
• cavar's Failure to Comply
• More not on this list, too. Maybe I'll do a wrapup at the end of my winter break.

I'm only about halfway through break, which I have to remind myself is still a good amount of time. And then everything keeps going! wa hooooooo

January 27, 2025

It's only the first day of the semester and I've already found myself crying on the streets I used to frequent when living in a house of people that hated me. What a day. It's only noon.

This morning I was meant to begin a paid internship, but because I'm an absolute fool I didn't complete all of the prerequsite background HR forms and had to turn right around and leave until I'd completed them -- a background check and a drug test. I've never had to do either of those before and, though I know I shouldn't have anything to worry about, I'm choosing to find solace in both tasks being complete and no longer in my hands. If everything goes to plan, I'll instead be starting on Friday. Everyone I've met has been very kind, but I'll admit I'm extremely worried about letting them down!!!

Anyway. Since we last spoke, I've been filling my spare time with a lot of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney (a series I've held off playing for a decade because I wanted to "wait for the right time"), finishing my microchap draft (we'll see how it turns out!), kept reading, and kept writing. I had more union stuff to do, which will never end. My other class for the semester is a generative creative nonfiction course, which will hopefully result in some new pieces.

I'm totally not nervous about this class, either (I am). The only other course I've taken with this professor left me feeling like I was on a ropes course, either swinging between "antisocial freak" and "uncomfortable oversharer" or just straight plummeting. I'd introduce myself with "I'm going to try to be so normal this semester" but I haven't a clue how my prof would interpret that.

It's so many months away, but graduation is a speck in the distance growing bigger. My next conflict will be deciding if I want to walk my graduation, which I didn't do for my undergrad, or go to a wedding with my partner, because that's where he'll be regardless of whether I walk graduation. Sound off in the nonexistent comments on what I should do, because I have no idea.