komadori: (Nya!)
I just realized that I've had this journal for ten years now. The official anniversary was on July 22nd, but today is close enough. Let's hope that I continue posting even more in the next ten years!

The heat has been really getting to me. It's pretty hard to concentrate, and I just feel scattered overall. It feels like time is going by really fast, and I'm not able to accomplish as much as I would like. We don't have AC, and it really sucks! Earlier in the summer, I was house-sitting for my aunt who does have AC, but since then, I've been trying to cope without it.

One of the things I have accomplished is finishing my assignment for [community profile] seasonsofdrabbles. I am pretty pleased with it, and more than that, I am happy to be writing again. I love writing drabbles for their minuteness and the need to make every word count. In that way, they remind me of poetry. I hope to write some treats as well if I can get my mind to cooperate. I am really excited! :D

Also, I still need to finish Good Omens.

I'm alive!

Jun. 19th, 2023 05:06 pm
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
I realize now how seemingly ominous it is to post about getting Covid and then stop posting for a year. Even if my last post was about getting better, anything could have happened. The good news is that we all survived Covid, but...

CW for death, Covid, and mental health )

I'm much better now, but it was a real struggle getting through last year. I stopped doing a lot of things (like visiting DW), but that wasn't good for me in the long run. I'm back because I missed this place and am unhappy about what is going on with Twitter and Reddit these days. At any rate, I am glad to be back and will have a happier post soon because some good things did actually happen to me since my last post, but I want to save them for their own entry.

What did I miss?
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
....it was not fun. My birthday was yesterday, and I spent it in quarantine. 0/5 stars--would not recommend! I started to feel sick on Tuesday and did not feel like doing much of anything for about a week. I mostly slept and tried to listen to audio books or stream TV, but I had a hard time just focusing on those things because I felt so out of it. I'm mostly feeling better--which is quite a relief--but I'm still not 100% back to normal. It was really frustrating because we were all vacced and everything, but I hadn't gotten the chance to get my booster shot. I'm going to get it as soon as possible now. Even though my mom was boosted, she *still* got sick. I guess that's just how it is now with Omicron (which is probably what we had based on the sore throats), and I feel like it was bound to happen one of these days since my mom works with young children who are not old enough to get vaccinated. Still, it's frustrating because we try to be safe and had avoided it for almost two years.

Since I didn't feel like doing much, I have some comments and posts to catch up on here on DW. I missed most everything since the 11th. I need to catch up with [community profile] snowflake_challenge as well. I was thinking of doing the latest challenge tonight, but I'm not sure since I have to get up tomorrow for online training at a reasonable hour for the job I started last fall but have never mentioned here.

Well...

Jan. 10th, 2022 12:11 pm
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
My mom has Covid. She's a few days shy of 65, but she is vaccinated and boosted. She will probably be okay, but my grandma and I have also been exposed now. My birthday is on Monday next week; this is the worst birthday gift I've ever received!

In other news, I did sign up for [community profile] getyourwordsout. Anyone else? Wish me luck!

I realize there is a bit of mood whiplash between these two announcements, but I wasn't sure how else to put it and wanted to end on a lighter note.

I'm back!

Mar. 28th, 2020 06:57 pm
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
I'm just popping in to say that I'm still here, and I've managed to avoid Covid-19 thus far. I'm really glad that I did not enroll in in-person classes this semester, but I am doing some independent work that definitely has a deadline. I'm struggling to work from home and stay focused. Fortunately, I am making progress today even if it isn't as much as I had hoped. I'm not as far along as I would like because I was sick for most of February and my mental health has been crappy. Overall, I'm doing much better than last year, but I know 2020 is a harder year for the world, and I am not immune to the weight of collective anxiety.

I was doing pretty good at first, but the situation really hit me sometime last week. I have been taking this threat seriously since Disneyland announced they would close after Friday the 13th, but the severity of how our world has changed took a while to sink in. There is so much suffering and fear going around. Everything I wanted to do to distract myself from my normal existential dread has been canceled or postponed--which is a small price to pay to keep everyone safe but still disappointing. So, I have turned to the Internet to stay connected, and that's why I'm here again.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
I just had the beginning of this entry saved from another day, but of course, I lost it because I accidentally clicked out of the dialogue box before restoring it. :(

At any rate, it has been far too long since my last update! I did not mean to go so long without posting, but my internet activities purposely fell by the wayside at the end of last year because I got really stressed about school and the rest of my life. Everything turned out fine, but it was just so easy to make my world smaller by cutting out my fannish activities when they were adding to my stress. That's my current strategy for dealing with anxiety: ignoring the less immediate parts of my life. It's probably not a very good or healthy strategy, so I should probably do something about it.

I start what should be my last semester as an undergraduate on Monday.
I start what should be my last semester as an undergraduate on Monday. Last semester, I dropped half of my classes because I felt overwhelmed, so I’m back to full-time this semester. I’ve had two of the professors before, so I know what to expect from them more or less. I’m most concerned about my creative writing classes because I have had serious second thoughts about my second major in creative writing. I like it, of course, but I’m unsure how beneficial it was to add on to my English literature major. *shrugs* My first creative writing class before I transferred was a good experience, but the non-fiction class I took last year was really hard on me, and I’m not sure if I feel adequately equipped for the upper-division short story and poetry workshops that I have signed up for this semester. I can’t say that I much like the workshop experience at all, but I’m sure that it has been beneficial.

I have mostly frittered away my summer. I haven’t done as much reading as I would have liked, and I’ve done almost no writing. There’s hope for the future, I suppose.

I want to start another entry about my reading this year, so I’ll end it here.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
Today was better than yesterday, but I'm still staying up too late and sleeping in too late. I woke up around 10 this morning, and I was feeling pretty good until the afternoon. I did what I wasn't supposed to do, which is take a nap around 3 o'clock. I woke up around 10 or 15 minutes before 5. Then, I started to have some stomach pain for no discernible reason.

I decided to go ahead with my daily writing goals, but I'm doing something controversial in counting what I write in my journal entries toward my goals. Sure, it's not fanfic, original fic, or poetry, but journaling is often a recommended tool for writers. It's a way to keep the ball rolling, and I hope to write more fiction/poetry as time goes on. Besides, I will be taking a creative non-fiction class this semester, so this can be practice for that. I feel that just putting any kind of words on the screen is beneficial, and I believe that keeping a journal has helped me find my voice over the years. Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, blogging: it's all one to me.

I finished my [community profile] stageoffools letter tonight. It still needs tweaking in order to be easy to read, but it's essentially done. This was accompanied by watching the 2016 Russell T. Davies version of A Midsummer Night's Dream because I wanted to refresh myself on the details. That was probably not the best idea as this version had some obvious changes. The most obvious was that Spoilers ) This was more of a reinterpretation, but I enjoyed the changes and they made me look at the play in a slightly different way.

Dreaming

Jun. 21st, 2016 09:55 pm
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
Thankfully, the heat has decided to take a vacation for a while. Apparently, it was over 100 yesterday, but it was no hotter than the low 80s today. I've been enjoying some cool breezes from my window, but the heat kept me from sleeping last night. I don't think I was able to get to sleep until nearly 3 AM. When I did sleep, I had a haunted house-related dream/nightmare. I don't remember anything particularly creepy except for a general feeling of foreboding and the unease of finding myself alone in a dark, old house that was allegedly haunted. I blame this on reading The Haunting of Hill House—which was my first real ghost story ever—and starting Neil Gaiman’s American Gods where Spoilers ). I don’t feel particularly tired as I was able to sleep in quite a bit, but I do feel a bit listless and uninspired which is a common side effect of not sleeping enough in my life.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
How may I fail? Let me count the ways...

Well, because of my persistent lack of time management skills, some setbacks have come on the heels of my other successes. I had to default on all of the exchanges that I signed up for. I think this is a matter of biting off more than I could chew and not taking into account that my assignments would be due not long after finals' week. Plus, I'm still not a very disciplined writer. I had quite a bit of anxiety to deal with regarding both school and fandom as well. I feel like I'm getting past that now, and I'm hoping that I will be able to be more productive this summer.

In the future, I think I will focus on writing treats for exchanges. That way, I can simply focus on the writing aspect without any consequences. I really have loved the gifts that I have received from the few exchanges that I've done, but my purest joy comes from writing itself. I don't need something in return to be happy.

In other annoyances, something is very wrong with the Internet here. The speed is really slow for some reason. I'm convinced that it's down to dial-up speeds, but I don't remember what that was like except that it was horrible. I remember that it took ~30 minutes to download a 4 MB song, and anything larger was out of the question.

In spite of everything, I was able to finish some writing, so I'll post that shortly.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
Since I've been varying levels of sick this week, my spring break has evaporated away like melted snow. I planned on updating my journal all week, but I'm just getting to it now after two other failed attempts. I hope this writing will do me some good.

Once again, I signed up for a fanwork exchange against my better judgment, but hey, it's writing. Just in the nick of time, too! I totally forgot about [community profile] space_swap with the full intention of doing a leisurely and well-thought out sign up earlier this week, but I didn't realize that sign ups were closing today until last night. I got my sign up in, but I was unable to take the time to put prompts or do not wants, so I'm bracing for anything. I just hope that I get something other than smut, but if I don't, it's my own fault for not planning ahead. Fortunately, I do not have many hard-and-fast triggers, but I would prefer that my fics don't get any darker or more adult than the original source material that I requested. Just in case my spacer is reading this, I am not down with incest or underage.

I also signed up for [community profile] myoldfandom, but I have plenty of time to fiddle with the sign up for that and write a proper letter with prompts and everything. At least, I have until the 25th.

Anyway, I want to write more about my fannish activities, but this is just a brief recap of the little that I've done this week. I also need to post my fics from [community profile] chocolateboxcomm now that they've been revealed for over a month now.

TIFU

Jan. 28th, 2016 10:42 pm
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
I was going to finish up the [community profile] snowflake_challenge in this post, but it will have to wait because I feel like crap! The morning was mostly fine, but I woke up today not wanting to get out of bed even though I probably had the proper amount of sleep. I realized during class that I had fallen behind in the reading. Fortunately, I will be able to catch up, and there were no consequences this time. After I came home, I crawled into bed and proceeded to sleep for over an hour. I reluctantly got out of bed around two o'clock in the afternoon to eat lunch even though I felt like I could sleep more and did not feel like going to class at all. When I did go to class, I was horrified to learn that we had homework due that I didn't know about, so I spent most of the class period worrying about that instead of remaining fully present for the lesson. The professor won't let me make it up, which is fair enough, but I felt stupid for screwing that up. I felt like I should be too experienced by now to make that kind of mistake. Honestly, I feel really out of step this week and a lot like I'm just going through the motions.

As soon as I got home tonight, I took the the Philosophical Crap Test again because taking dumb quizzes like that is oddly soothing to me. I thought that it would make more sense to me this time since I'm taking a second philosophy class right now. It does a little bit. It may be a bit old-fashioned to post results to these kinds of quizzes, but I'm linking to my results for posterity's sake.

I wish this week was over already, but I have to get up in the morning to go to a presentation about studying abroad. I already RSVPed, so I don't think it would be right to bail. I just hope that tomorrow will be a little better than today at least.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
Crap, it's Halloween tomorrow. I haven't even enjoyed October properly yet. :( Not to mention that I've let my journal updating slide.... I'm not even totally sure what I want to do with this journal anymore. When I created it, I hoped it would be my introduction back into fandom and Internet culture. I hoped that Dreamwidth would be a recreation of LJ in its heyday, but neither site is as vibrant as I would like. Of course, it doesn't help when I check out for these long absences, but I can't shake the feeling that I should move on to another platform.

This semester is definitely not my favorite, but I'm trying to stay open-minded until the end. Philosophy is a killer. I oscillate between liking and disliking Spanish in equal measure. The first half of world literature hasn't captured my heart like I expected it would. Despite the fact that I love mythology, I'm not so enchanted with ancient literature. I think the Iliad will grow on me. I also liked Oedipus Rex, but it made me very uncomfortable at the same time. I want to read the Aeneid in full someday, though. Other than that, my classes have passed in a blur.

A lot else has happened, but I'd rather get into that later.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
I don't know why, but I've been almost entirely unproductive today. I don't really feel like myself. Still, I have homework looming over my head. The only thing that I have done today is read. It's good to be lost in a fantasy world for a time... *sighs* Anyway, writing this entry has perked me up a little bit! :) I'm trying to write more frequently, but my entries may be lacking in substance at the present... oh well, at least I'm writing!
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
I feel sooo tired and sick right now, but I'm sure why. *sighs* I'll post about my birthday tomorrow... I hope I'll feel better then.
komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Haru (akiji))
Have you ever taken a look at stuff you wrote ages ago and found that it annoys you to no end? Yeah... that's how I'm feeling right now. >_<

I really wish I could be at CN Anime, or Anime Vegas this weekend.... *sighs* What's annoying is that if I'd thought ahead I might've been able to make it to one of those cons...

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komadori: Kisa from Fruits Basket with the caption "I'll turn my courage into wings." (Default)
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