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Entry tags:
Life: Swimming, Summertime, Storytelling, and Stress
I tried to write an entry last week but a power outage ruined that plan. I got halfway through writing before it wiped out what I was doing and I didn't end up with an autobackup, thanks for nothing, pepco. So I guess we're actually gonna do a rundown in concise form because I cannot be fucked to write a whole big thing again.
Driving: Went to the MVA for the Maryland licensing exam on 5/3 and got my license, barely. Drove by myself to and from the grocery store, in addition to driving dad and sis to and from dinner and sis to and from the metro when we went into DC. I'm gradually feeling better about driving by myself but I'm still sort of paranoid about it. Practice will help.
Also dad and I are hopefully buying a used car by the end of the week so in the near future I may be able to get a lot more of it!
Socializing: Been trying to see more of my family. I saw my sister for April and May community days and again last weekend when we went swimming at dad's Friday, then into downtown Frederick on Saturday to do lapras raids, visit the art gallery, library, tea shop, and candy shop, and head to the park after dinner to play even more pokemon.
I've also seen Maggie a good bit; she visited me on 5/4 (I believe) and I saw her in the morning and at the park in the evening when I was visiting sis on 5/25. And LAST week Monday (5/20), Ciry and I got pupusas and went to see Detective Pikachu, which was really fun.
I'd had plans to do Colossalcon, which got canceled, then rearranged my plans to do Wiscon, before sadly canceling on account of finances and personal logistics, and I'm just... Sad to not see friends in that sort of atmosphere like I planned but on the other hand, I'm glad I've kept pretty busy. I've actually seen my parents each of the past four weekends, alternating dad-mom-dad-mom. It's been nice.
Exercise: It rained a bunch toward the start of the month so for a while I COULDN'T bike, and then when it was nice again I couldn't motivate myself to bike. I rode my bike nine times in April but only twice in May and I'm kinda bummed about it. I'm hoping I can kick my ass to do better again in June.
On the other hand, the pool is open now! I went swimming with my sister on opening day (5/18) and this past Friday (5/24) and I'm hoping to swim a good bit this summer. If I have a car I could maybe even drive myself to the Greenbelt aquatic fitness center after work some days?? Sis and I really just splashed around when we went but I hope I can get myself to start doing laps again, that would be cool.
Games: Mostly this is rhythm games, because this is where I live. I got bored of Show by Rock so I'm not really playing that any more. I picked Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage back up again and went kinda hard for one event and then got bored of that fairly immediately. Part of me is really longing for a daily game I can get invested in and play consistently and slowly develop my account for a day at a time. The rest of me is like... Maybe you've finally broken this awful compulsive habit, just accept that you don't want to obsessively play a game every day!!!
Except I really really love rhythm games so not having one of those to play makes me sad.
I also realized I hadn't played jubeat in a while -- I expected to be at colossal this month and for their arcade to have the machines but that didn't happen -- so I took myself to the arcade in Virginia the Friday before last (5/17). I played for like three hours, it was wonderful. I'm also hoping I might go to Marley Station Mall a week from Monday (6/10), which would be nice.
Television: I've been watching a decent amount of TV in the past month. I watched Tuca and Bertie with Maggie at the start of May, then the first episode of Bojack Horseman, then I watched the next three and a half seasons of it even without Maggie. I watched that netflix original series Bonding and part of Special, part of the new season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and part of the new season of Riverdale. I also started watching the original Idolmaster anime because sometimes you want soft, heartwarming moeshit.
I feel like I've been bouncing around a lot with my TV consumption but that, given another month, I'll actually finish all the seasons of different things that I'm currently in the middle of. I'm enjoying everything I'm watching, I've just been in this very mercurial mood for a while now where what I'm interested in from day to day fluctuates a lot.
Literature: I subscribed to some lit magazines! Specifically, I subscribed to Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Uncanny Magazine. I want to read more short fiction and get a better idea of what sells and I've been really enjoying it. There's been so much LGBTQ rep in the recent issues of these magazines and reading them is just reminding me of why I love science fiction so much. The themes it explores are so fascinating and relevant to me and I've gotten really emotional about a lot of the stories I've read.
In the category of novels, I finished reading Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, read part of A Darker Shade of Magic but wasn't super in the mood for it, read a bunch of short stories, then started rereading Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, which will never stop emotionally destroying me until I am literally dead. So far I've finished So You Want to be A Wizard and am about three-quarters of the way through Deep Wizardry and it's been... Almost ten days. So I'm going at a pretty healthy clip! I'll probably alternate between the YW books and short stories from lit mags for a while.
Pokemon: This time this is a catch-all for pokego and for the main series games. I've just been so excited about pokemon!! I've kind of chilled out about pokego; I don't play for my entire commute both ways any more and I haven't managed to bike as much. But I've still gotten my 50 coins like... Every single day since starting to play again minus about three days and I play on the bus JUST while we're going through the college because I can wring ten gifts out of the pokestops there and send them to friends. I've gotten more REASONABLE but no less enthusiastic.
And I still went really hard for torchic community day; my sister was flagging toward the end of the three hours but I bullied her into continuing and then dragged her to the gelato place to recuperate. We caught sooooo many good fire chickens, I didn't realize quite how happy that would make me. Blaziken is one of my favorite pokemon and having SEVERAL good ones to use fighting gyms has been really delightful for me. And my sister is stupidly excited for stupid slakoth community day. I am... Less so, because god damn that awful sloth, but slaking is a good gym defender so we're gonna kick each other's asses into catching a million pokemon, again.
Also I'm really excited for sword and shield. I tried to pregame by actually playing ultra sun but I wasn't feeling it, and then somehow this weekend I got it into my head to pull out my PSP, aka my gameboy advance emulator, in order to play some old pokemon romhacks. I started playing Pokemon: Dark Rising, a romhack of firered, and it's been a lot of fun! It has its own region and storyline and the game has been modified to include gen four (and possibly some gen five?) pokemon and EVERYTHING from gen one through four is in the game, if I understand correctly. It's always really fun to see what people's ideal fantasy pokemon game looks like, and so it's been a lot of fun playing, even if some things are buggy as shit. (I received my pokedex no less than seven times because they didn't code that script to STOP triggering, but on the other hand: 35+ free pokeballs.)
Writing: I am finally writing again! I signed up for nonconathon (you can see my horrifically overkill dear author letter in another post, if you want to read about 9k words of reprehensible noncon scenarios and opinions) and began working on my fic for the exchange IMMEDIATELY upon receiving my assignment. I've never? Done that before?? Usually I'm incredibly methodical and insist on painstakingly outlining any story longer than a single scene but for this I just kind of... Jotted down a document's worth of reference notes and went for it. It's 5.7k words already and probably not even halfway done. My giftee is going to receive a MONSTER.
I've mostly been talking about this on my NSFW because of the subject matter but I just... Haven't felt like writing anything "nice" for a long time now. The way USA politics and society are heading is really, really frightening to me and somehow that's led to me fixating INCREDIBLY HARD on noncon/"bad end" type scenarios. I really wish I felt like writing anything more optimistic but generally... I don't. And yet I feel guilty writing awful torture porn I can shove all my fears into, so I'm really happy nonconathon time has rolled around. It's nice to have "permission" to write awful stories, because someone else has overtly requested to read them! I slowed down writing my actual assignment so maybe I'll have less time for treats after all, but I saved three prompts from three other participants and I'd really like to write treats for all of them.
It's nice to be writing again. Maybe I'll keep it up even after the exchange. I'm vaguely curious whether venting all my feelings into nonconathon will exorcise the evil and I'll feel like writing other things again, or if I'm just... Too entrenched and the tide isn't gonna shift that fast. Even if I don't want to write "nice" things again, I hope I continue to feel like writing.
And that's gonna be it for this entry! It ended up being a TL;DR after all but honestly what does anyone expect from me. I wrote a 9k word exchange letter. I'm a menace.
Driving: Went to the MVA for the Maryland licensing exam on 5/3 and got my license, barely. Drove by myself to and from the grocery store, in addition to driving dad and sis to and from dinner and sis to and from the metro when we went into DC. I'm gradually feeling better about driving by myself but I'm still sort of paranoid about it. Practice will help.
Also dad and I are hopefully buying a used car by the end of the week so in the near future I may be able to get a lot more of it!
Socializing: Been trying to see more of my family. I saw my sister for April and May community days and again last weekend when we went swimming at dad's Friday, then into downtown Frederick on Saturday to do lapras raids, visit the art gallery, library, tea shop, and candy shop, and head to the park after dinner to play even more pokemon.
I've also seen Maggie a good bit; she visited me on 5/4 (I believe) and I saw her in the morning and at the park in the evening when I was visiting sis on 5/25. And LAST week Monday (5/20), Ciry and I got pupusas and went to see Detective Pikachu, which was really fun.
I'd had plans to do Colossalcon, which got canceled, then rearranged my plans to do Wiscon, before sadly canceling on account of finances and personal logistics, and I'm just... Sad to not see friends in that sort of atmosphere like I planned but on the other hand, I'm glad I've kept pretty busy. I've actually seen my parents each of the past four weekends, alternating dad-mom-dad-mom. It's been nice.
Exercise: It rained a bunch toward the start of the month so for a while I COULDN'T bike, and then when it was nice again I couldn't motivate myself to bike. I rode my bike nine times in April but only twice in May and I'm kinda bummed about it. I'm hoping I can kick my ass to do better again in June.
On the other hand, the pool is open now! I went swimming with my sister on opening day (5/18) and this past Friday (5/24) and I'm hoping to swim a good bit this summer. If I have a car I could maybe even drive myself to the Greenbelt aquatic fitness center after work some days?? Sis and I really just splashed around when we went but I hope I can get myself to start doing laps again, that would be cool.
Games: Mostly this is rhythm games, because this is where I live. I got bored of Show by Rock so I'm not really playing that any more. I picked Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage back up again and went kinda hard for one event and then got bored of that fairly immediately. Part of me is really longing for a daily game I can get invested in and play consistently and slowly develop my account for a day at a time. The rest of me is like... Maybe you've finally broken this awful compulsive habit, just accept that you don't want to obsessively play a game every day!!!
Except I really really love rhythm games so not having one of those to play makes me sad.
I also realized I hadn't played jubeat in a while -- I expected to be at colossal this month and for their arcade to have the machines but that didn't happen -- so I took myself to the arcade in Virginia the Friday before last (5/17). I played for like three hours, it was wonderful. I'm also hoping I might go to Marley Station Mall a week from Monday (6/10), which would be nice.
Television: I've been watching a decent amount of TV in the past month. I watched Tuca and Bertie with Maggie at the start of May, then the first episode of Bojack Horseman, then I watched the next three and a half seasons of it even without Maggie. I watched that netflix original series Bonding and part of Special, part of the new season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and part of the new season of Riverdale. I also started watching the original Idolmaster anime because sometimes you want soft, heartwarming moeshit.
I feel like I've been bouncing around a lot with my TV consumption but that, given another month, I'll actually finish all the seasons of different things that I'm currently in the middle of. I'm enjoying everything I'm watching, I've just been in this very mercurial mood for a while now where what I'm interested in from day to day fluctuates a lot.
Literature: I subscribed to some lit magazines! Specifically, I subscribed to Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Uncanny Magazine. I want to read more short fiction and get a better idea of what sells and I've been really enjoying it. There's been so much LGBTQ rep in the recent issues of these magazines and reading them is just reminding me of why I love science fiction so much. The themes it explores are so fascinating and relevant to me and I've gotten really emotional about a lot of the stories I've read.
In the category of novels, I finished reading Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, read part of A Darker Shade of Magic but wasn't super in the mood for it, read a bunch of short stories, then started rereading Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, which will never stop emotionally destroying me until I am literally dead. So far I've finished So You Want to be A Wizard and am about three-quarters of the way through Deep Wizardry and it's been... Almost ten days. So I'm going at a pretty healthy clip! I'll probably alternate between the YW books and short stories from lit mags for a while.
Pokemon: This time this is a catch-all for pokego and for the main series games. I've just been so excited about pokemon!! I've kind of chilled out about pokego; I don't play for my entire commute both ways any more and I haven't managed to bike as much. But I've still gotten my 50 coins like... Every single day since starting to play again minus about three days and I play on the bus JUST while we're going through the college because I can wring ten gifts out of the pokestops there and send them to friends. I've gotten more REASONABLE but no less enthusiastic.
And I still went really hard for torchic community day; my sister was flagging toward the end of the three hours but I bullied her into continuing and then dragged her to the gelato place to recuperate. We caught sooooo many good fire chickens, I didn't realize quite how happy that would make me. Blaziken is one of my favorite pokemon and having SEVERAL good ones to use fighting gyms has been really delightful for me. And my sister is stupidly excited for stupid slakoth community day. I am... Less so, because god damn that awful sloth, but slaking is a good gym defender so we're gonna kick each other's asses into catching a million pokemon, again.
Also I'm really excited for sword and shield. I tried to pregame by actually playing ultra sun but I wasn't feeling it, and then somehow this weekend I got it into my head to pull out my PSP, aka my gameboy advance emulator, in order to play some old pokemon romhacks. I started playing Pokemon: Dark Rising, a romhack of firered, and it's been a lot of fun! It has its own region and storyline and the game has been modified to include gen four (and possibly some gen five?) pokemon and EVERYTHING from gen one through four is in the game, if I understand correctly. It's always really fun to see what people's ideal fantasy pokemon game looks like, and so it's been a lot of fun playing, even if some things are buggy as shit. (I received my pokedex no less than seven times because they didn't code that script to STOP triggering, but on the other hand: 35+ free pokeballs.)
Writing: I am finally writing again! I signed up for nonconathon (you can see my horrifically overkill dear author letter in another post, if you want to read about 9k words of reprehensible noncon scenarios and opinions) and began working on my fic for the exchange IMMEDIATELY upon receiving my assignment. I've never? Done that before?? Usually I'm incredibly methodical and insist on painstakingly outlining any story longer than a single scene but for this I just kind of... Jotted down a document's worth of reference notes and went for it. It's 5.7k words already and probably not even halfway done. My giftee is going to receive a MONSTER.
I've mostly been talking about this on my NSFW because of the subject matter but I just... Haven't felt like writing anything "nice" for a long time now. The way USA politics and society are heading is really, really frightening to me and somehow that's led to me fixating INCREDIBLY HARD on noncon/"bad end" type scenarios. I really wish I felt like writing anything more optimistic but generally... I don't. And yet I feel guilty writing awful torture porn I can shove all my fears into, so I'm really happy nonconathon time has rolled around. It's nice to have "permission" to write awful stories, because someone else has overtly requested to read them! I slowed down writing my actual assignment so maybe I'll have less time for treats after all, but I saved three prompts from three other participants and I'd really like to write treats for all of them.
It's nice to be writing again. Maybe I'll keep it up even after the exchange. I'm vaguely curious whether venting all my feelings into nonconathon will exorcise the evil and I'll feel like writing other things again, or if I'm just... Too entrenched and the tide isn't gonna shift that fast. Even if I don't want to write "nice" things again, I hope I continue to feel like writing.
And that's gonna be it for this entry! It ended up being a TL;DR after all but honestly what does anyone expect from me. I wrote a 9k word exchange letter. I'm a menace.
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Re: TV -- I also just finished Tuca and Bertie! Did you like it? I found it almost painfully relatable in places but overall it really worked for me.
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