Night Island

This break seemed to go by really fast. My classes start tomorrow night, and I still have various odds and ends to take care of before then. I'm taking a romanticism course focused on Coleridge's conversation poems and a general Victorian literature course. I don't expect them to be too difficult as long as my mental health doesn't take a nosedive this spring. *crosses fingers* I'm used to taking classes on Zoom, but the ongoing pandemic is still wearing on me. I hope the classes will help take my mind off of it.

I've been much more social on DW and elsewhere this year, which is important because I really miss social interactions when I'm not in class. I hope to keep in touch with people more this year. Still, I am an anxious introvert and all this attention can be exhausting. I may choose to slow things down a bit. I think I have responded to most of my comments on DW and will try to get to the others soon.

I don't think I'll do challenge #9 for snowflake_challenge, but we'll see. It's a little out of my comfort zone (even though I think I did it in a previous year), and if I were to rec some of my writing, it has been so long since I've thought about it that I'm not sure where I'd start.

I also signed up for getyourwordsout. I pledged to write 120 days this year, so I hope that can help to kick my creativity back into gear. I did almost no creative writing last year, and that felt like a mistake for my mental well-being. Somehow, I need to find a balance.

I've been really tired today, and I haven't really done anything all day. I started out by organizing and messing around with my Spotify playlists. There are a lot of good albums that I never listen to, so I have started dumping the albums that I remember liking into playlists separated by decades. Depending on how many albums I can recall, these playlists could end up being massive. This is still better than my old organizational system, which is basically nonexistent. I will probably try to make some genre playlists, but that will have to wait. I'm not sure if I should put Broadway cast recordings in the individual decade playlists or put them into one giant, all-consuming Broadway playlist. I'm leaning toward the latter because of the amount of tracks on albums and the fact that revivals can feature music from decades earlier than when they were recorded.

Organizing music on Spotify is a big thing for me because I own very little music myself. When I was growing up, I bought almost no music aside from anime CDs. I listened to Japanese music almost exclusively until I was about 15, except for when I was listening to the radio in the car. By the time that I started listening to English music more often, I had already discovered the joys of music piracy and downloading. I built up and lost my mp3 collection several times over because I never backed anything up. Eventually, I stopped downloading mp3s and switched to streaming via... Last.fm in 2006, I think? Now that I think of it, I think I started listening to Yahoo's Launchcast personalized radio first... does anyone remember that? I always thought I would re-download my old collection from iTunes, but based on the volume of music that I had listened to over the years as well as my changing tastes, I never did. So, basically, I'm trying to get together all the new and old music that I've ever loved and can still enjoy in one place.

Anyway, I got really tired after that. I blame it on waking up several times during the night and having a dream about turning into an evil witch with my best friend from elementary school. I don't know where exactly that came from, but it felt pretty vivid at the time. I have taken to listening to audio books and podcasts while I'm trying to fall asleep, and I frequently fall asleep with them still playing. I was listening to the Welcome to Night Vale novel last night, so maybe that is to blame.

The only other thing that I can blame for being exhausted today is that I have been active more often than usual in the past two weeks. It all started with Portland. The week before last, I was in Portland for a few days. That involved a lot of walking and getting lost on public transportation. I walked 4+ miles each day, and I was able to eat at a cool British pub called The Raven and the Rose, so I was pretty happy.

On Thursday of last week, I went to Catalina for my grandma's birthday because they offer free boat trips to the island for people celebrating their birthdays as well as one guest. It felt like I spent most of my time riding around on the back of a golf cart and listening to music, but I did end up walking 3.3 miles. I also bought a unicorn necklace because I am clearly an eleven year old girl on the inside. XD; Altogether, it was a good day, and I spent the ride home out on deck to experience the wind and sea spray while staring at the sea and darkening sky. It has been so long since I've been out to sea like that, so I regret nothing.

On Friday, I stayed home for most of the day, but I went to Fullerton in the evening to get coffee at the Night Owl. Then, I found out that my aunt was making tacos, so we went over there for dinner.

On Saturday, I went back to Fullerton to try a pizza place called Fuoco. It was good but way more authentic than I am used to. Then, I went to the Tranquil Tea Lounge where I ordered a white tea and mochi ice cream. It was the first time I had mochi ice cream before, and I loved it. Overall, I walked 1.5 miles that day.

On Sunday, I went to Torrance with my family to visit an old neighbor of theirs. I used it as an excuse to stop by Mitsuwa for the first time. I did not realize that that place was so big! I wish I had more time to spend there, but I did get some snacks as well as a discounted tea set. I want to visit the one in Costa Mesa since it is about the same distance as the one in Torrance. Overall, I walked 1.3 miles that day.

So, it's probably not the walking that has made me tired because I've actually felt better on days that I've walked more. I'm guessing that it is the social interaction and maybe just being out. I think that this is the same thing that makes me feel so exhausted during the semester because I can be out for only a few hours and feel drained. That is why it is so hard to balance my classes with anything else. I don't interact with people a lot, but just being there can make me feel self-conscious and nervous... it is not fun. It is worst at the beginning of the semester, especially if I don't know the professor. Usually, it gets better after a month or so, but I still carry a lot of stress and tension with me which can be very draining.

Last but not least, I did not start my new writing goals because I have felt tired and distracted. I decided that I should get started on a day when I actually feel good, but maybe that's just an excuse. It's so hard to start things and find motivation.

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.