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^MY JOURNAL^

This page contains an informal and (hopefully) continuously updated digital journal for trivial and personal usage! Use the navigation bar on the side to jump between months.

Jun 20, 2024 - busy!!!!

heyyyy long time no see! as the title of this post implies, i have had a lot going on!! this is pretty unusual for me-- my summers over the past few years have been spent almost completely within the confines of my bedroom, so. like. growing up i guess. getting myself out there.

as i mentioned in my last post, a couple of my internet friends came down to visit! i've hung out with them in person a couple times before, and i'm gonna be in their state for college, but it's still always such a treat to see my computer friends in person
fisher/fishstick/fish and yasmin/yas/yam are the two that came to see me for a week and goddd it was so much fun. i think my favorite thing we did was going to the zoo (i hadnt been there since i was very young) and that shit was crazy and awesome. we also watched a bunch of youtube and doctor who episodes which like. idk just hanging out feels so wonderful. i talk to yam online much less than i talk to fish so chilling with her is extra special, but fish is literally my best friend ever, so combined it's needless to say that it was a freaking awesome week. and by GOD i cannot wait until i live within driving distance of those wonderful people

though i will miss my friends that i made here in my home state. i've been dwelling on this a lot-- highschool friends who are either staying here or moving out of state for school as well, just not where i'm going. one of my friends (who i met in middle school and we reconnected sophomore year) is gonna be in the same general area as me for school but still that is Just One Person. and i will miss everyone else so much!!!! it's such a big change in environment. god damn. and i know i will grow into a new life as i come into adulthood, this is something nearly everyone experiences, and part of me feels silly for being young and emotional-- but shrug. whatever. i like my people

as i prep for the coming move in august, i've been procedurally cleaning out my room. and hoooly shit i have so much junk i didn't even realize. i'm kind of a hoarder when it comes to things that could potentially be used for art (cardboard, beads, trinkets, and JESUS the scrap fabrics) along with the fact that i feel guilty throwing shit away so i've just ended up with cubbies and boxes of things i do not need and will not use. but i trick myself into thinking that it's good to keep it around
and to be fair to myself, i do use a lot of scrap fabrics and stuff in my craft projects or patch-making, and it's true that trash pollution is a huge problem and all that shit i'm throwing out is just going to a massive landfill, but also. i need to be real with myself. keeping a halloween treat bag from 2018 in a shoe box with other junk of equivalent value is not going to save the environment. poaching the oil barons is going to do that.

in other college-prep news, i started my summer job! as i mentioned in previous post, i've got an accounting assistant internship for my local public school district and honestly its a great gig. maybe a little boring but i'd take a quiet office over fast food service any day, and. my coworkers are all really nice, and i get to listen to music while i work!
as i'm typing this it's the day after juneteenth and like 5 of my coworkers (who i am an assistant for) are all on vacation so there's not a lot for me to do, but hey! that just means i can work on this journal entry!
i'm generally quite anxious about my financial future away from home. my parents are very supportive and both are paid well so they will be there as a safety net (which i am eternally thankful for in ways i simply am unable to express) but also? what the fuck? i will be independent and responsible for my own money? making a living? in the hellworld? i'm sure i'm likely preemptively stressing about this more than is warranted. yet i know shit is not easy for the youth… and i am one of those

that being said though, as much as i am trying to keep my future self financially stable, i have treated myself to some purchases….
such as: i have begun a CD collection!
i've had a desire to start collecting physical copies of music i like for a few years now, and CDs have seemed much more within-reach than vinyl. they're smaller, tend to be cheaper, more digital, and i personally don't care too much about audio quality as long as it's listenable (example: my day-to-day bluetooth earbuds are the JLab Minis that i bought specifically because they were very small and reasonably priced. they do not have good sound quality but, for my needs, they're perfectly good. honestly my biggest complaint is that the touch controls are really annoying and i want a physical button to push instead of just tapping them).
so i bought myself a Sony Dream Machine (model ICF-CD815) on ebay and i do not regret my purchase the slightest littlest bit.

here it is. my beautiful animal.
i've bought myself several CDs as well as dug through my dad's collection since he doesn't use them and we have similar music tastes. if you're interested and seeing all that i currently own-- i have new page for it here!

and i justified my CD purchases by vending at my first art market :D
a couple weeks ago i went to a (smaller than expected) art market with a couple friends and became inspired to look into other local art markets that i could perhaps take part in.
so, i did some searching-- most weren't something i was interested in, or weren't happening when i was available. except one which i had been to before. this market happened every month, had one date in june and one in july, and their vendor applications were open.
i read through the terms, then decided to email the people running the event to see if they considered applicants who were non-professionals and/or minors (my dumb ass is still 17!). they responded saying that the main thing they consider is diversity of art forms (as in, they're more lenient towards those applying to sell under-represented types of products) and craftsmanship. i emailed back with the things i would likely sell-- linocut prints, patches, buttons-- and they got back to me saying that i would be a great fit!! and i would be put in as an up-and-coming artist so i got to vend at 2 events for FREE!!!!!!!!!!
the market was this past saturday, and honestly turnout was great. i only ended up making 5 sales (two to people i knew, one to my friend's sister, two to strangers) but i'm fully happy with that. others complimented my style, talked and asked questions about my process, and overall it was a great experience.
the week leading up was pretty stressful since i had to get all my stock together on relatively short notice, but overall it was fucking awesome and i'm super lucky and i'm totally doing the one in july as well

speaking of july, i'm planning to participate in artfight this year! i posted about this on my neocities profile, so there's a link to my artfight on there, and auh i'm excited. as you will see if you go to my profile, i haven't participated since literally 2018. because over the past 5 years i have either been busy or had art block or didn't get my oc refs together in time. so i am vowing to myself to take part again FINALLY. especially seeing as how i have been working more on my ocs over the recent months, whom i usually alternate between neglecting and redesigning during sparse bouts of inspiration.
and to that, i've finally begun to use the toyhou.se account that i acquired however long ago in order to organize my oc sketches and brainstormed info. so you can go check that out too if you like! i'll probably link it in the DRAWINGTHINGS navbar :]

to end out this journal, i'll continue what i've been doing and talk some about the media i've been watching/reading/playing lately.

i bought a few books from a secondhand store and the one i'm working through right now is 'The Dead Travel Fast' by Eric Nuzum. its a memoir-ish history of vampires, in the sense that it is a history and analysis of vampires in culture and media framed through the author's exciting research experiences. he details meeting with vampire societies, taking a trip to transylvania, so on and so forth-- all while interspersing facts and stories surrounding vampire films, the origins of vampire myth, Dracula by Bram Stoker, etc.
it's been a great read (i'm about 2/3-3/4 of the way through), the author has a knack for story flow and engaging narration.
my main problems with the book are really just things i don't like about how eric nuzum thinks-- for example, early on he frames it as a big weird shock that one vampire society he visits is made up entirely of african americans, as well as actively misgendering one of the members. these things don't dampen my enjoyment of the book, though-- like i said, it's competently written to the point where my critiques don't really have anything to do with the writing itself.

i also watched the movie 'Bottoms' with Fish last night and it was just so much fun. i'm upset i didn't make myself watch it sooner, seeing as how i've had a desire to see it ever since it came out. just really good absurd comedy.

that's all i've got! my goal is to get at least one journal entry up per month, and i'm doing good on that so far, so let's hope that continues ^_^

May 29, 2024 - life doesn't end after highschool

i graduated on monday, may 20th! woohoo! this journal entry will be a bulleted list just like the last one was, since that's an easy way to organize my thoughts

• graduation recap

graduation went great. my highschool has a focus on the arts (visual, music, dance, theater, literary) and so our graduation ceremony was made much more entertaining by performances from each sector. of course, visual arts is the not only the largest in terms of student population, but also the only one that doesnt involve performing arts, so my teacher kinda left it up to the AP seniors to figure out what we should do. after much hesitancy and deliberation, we decided to do a video montage of pictures of the students and their art. this was very similar to what the seniors did last year but whatever. otherwise we wouldnt have had anything!
i ended up being the one to put the video together while my classmate took the pictures, and as stressful as it was to beg my fellow seniors to PLEASE send me their art for the video, i think it turned out pretty good. my teacher gave me free reign of the background music, so of course i put talking heads in there-- specifically 'once in a lifetime' since it felt very on-theme for a graduation and also is probably their most widely-known song :P i gotta appease people
im really gonna miss some of my teachers. with students i know i'll see them again every so often, but idk when the next time i'll see my teachers will be :[ i made gifts (one collaborative with classmates) for the 2 most impactful teachers ive had but like…. sad. sniffle

• FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!

a couple of my friends from out of state are visiting TOMORROW! THEY WILL BE HERE TOMORROW! my best friend fish will be here irl im so excited. we have awesome activities planned like going to the zoo and doing a treetop ropes course and :] AWESOME!!
i'm going to their state for college so i will see them more and more often in the future but right now its so special to see them in person

• college prep

the main thing i need to do over the summer is clean up my room and decide what stuff i'm taking to college. i am not looking forward to the few days traveling and moving in up there… why do i have so much STUFF…. it will be fine
i also need to get more used to riding public transport bc the system here is very lackluster but it will be my main way of getting around in college. i think i am overcomplicating it a bit in the sense that it will probably be much less pressure than my brain is telling me. but yaknow. thats just what you get with anxiety

• summer job (and related activities)

in my last journal entry i mentioned that i'd applied to 2 jobs and they hadnt gotten back to me yet. well good news i got one of them! its a boring accounting tech assistant job for the school district but im not complaining, im on my computer all day anyway and i'll take any entry-level job where i dont have to stand all day, so it works out
later in july i'll be attending a weekly activism education group that one of my friends told me about, so i'm looking forward to that! i'll also probably be volunteering at my city's pride event, but i haven't looked to much into that yet

• goals

i don't have goals that are too specific, but generally i want to keep reading (or listening to audiobooks), keep making original and traditional art, keep writing, and go on more walks. i'm sure i can make it happen :]

• video game are forever

i bought and started playing pathologic 2 since i have a friend who's into it and it looked interesting! unfortunately i only got about 7 hours in before i impulsively bought myself slime rancher 2 and then i became addicted to that. i love a good farming/tycoon game, i am a weak man
i also previously talked about playing portal 2 co-op with my friend fish, and as an update to that, we've both now finished the co-op and the story modes of both portal 1 and 2. such good games!!! augh!!! fantastic writing, and valve games always have crazy good character design

i think that's all i've got. i've been really enjoying toying around on neocities lately, and i plan to continue that! shit is awesome and fun, website is my house

May 8, 2024 - the final stretch

yknow i keep thinking i have more time than i do. this journal entry is probably going to be really scatterbrained because i'm not sure if i'll have much time to revise it after i spill it out into my docs. i really just have a few sporadic updates on how things have been going for me-- so in the game of organization, let's do it in a bulleted list!

• prom

i went to prom this past weekend. i was very wishy-washy about it for a while, since i went to a non-school prom-ish thing last year and haaaated it. but, at the same time, this is pretty much my last chance to go to a prom, so i eventually talked myself into it.
it was honestly pretty fun. i tend to feel very self conscious in gatherings like that, and the music was way too loud, but i put in earbuds and hung around my little group of friends and mostly just mimicked other people until i felt less like an outlier. i tend to always feel like some sort of nonhuman trying to fit into social society but like. thats just autism and anxiety yeah.
it was more exhausting than fun, but that's not to say i regretted going. i had a better time than i thought i would

• final projects

i'm writing this as a 'break' from working on my final projects. i'm working on 4 different things right now and none of them are done and all of them are due by midnight tomorrow. AGH! christ. i'll be fine. it's just a lot. and it's kind of my own fault since i tend to push things till the last moment, but also? this is a lot of work! i guess its a testament to my improved mental state over the years since i definitely would be having a panic attack right now if i was still in the state i was as a sophmore. i'll get though it. i'll get through it. things will work out.
i also agreed to organize a video for my art class to play at graduation. and maybe that was a mistake but no one else was gonna do it!!!! and i wanted us to have something to show!!! its okay its okay everyone is getting what i need to me fine i just need to like. set aside some time. if i can find any

• summer jobs

i applied to two summer internships literally 3 weeks ago and neither have gotten back to me. HURRY UP!!!!!!!!! YOURE STRESSING ME OUTTTTTTTT

• name change

i'm getting my name legally changed!!!!!! i went to the county court the other day and apparently they only do name change hearings once a month so i think i got pretty lucky with my scheduling. the judge was very nice. i could kind of tell she enjoyed doing name changes-- there are a few other trans people there and a family from egypt and everyone seemed to leave very happy. i would enjoy that job too, if i could just sign a request form and make someone walk away smiling.

• girls to the front

i've been reading (listening to as an audiobook) 'Girls to the Front' by Sara Marcus and i finally finished it yesterday! it was such a great read, an honest and informed telling of the history of the riot grrrl movement, mess and all. it was quite well-written and very compelling. certainly a recommendation from me!

• portal 2

okay i've never actually played portal but i started playing portal 2 co-op with my best friend fish and ohhhh my god i was having so much fun. best shit ever. i love puzzle games and i love doing stuff with fish and by the end we were just kind of vocal stimming at each other but it was so fun and im so glad we did it. a lightness in the sea of all the shit i need to do. i dunno. maybe i'll get through this and i'll be up at college with fish a drive away and things will be alright

Apr 17 2024 - i graduate in may

i don't think i really have senioritis. i keep telling people i don't. maybe i'll look back in a year or two and see how much steam i've lost as we approach graduation, but whatever. i'm getting through.
it gets weird every time a school year ends, time passes quicker as you get older and it feels like i just became a senior a month ago.
i can't decide if i should go to prom. i probably will in all honesty, since a good amount of my friends are going, so the real question is if prom will be worth it. i didn't go last year, but i did go to a similar event at a community center i've done some stuff at and i didn't really like it. i felt so out of place and awkward-- a girl kept asking me if i was high since my undefined neurodivergence was flaring up and my eyes were red from allergies. i ended up getting my dad to pick me up early.
this growing up shit is crazy. i keep having dereality moments where it feels like the real world should not exist, its crazy that i even have a life, shit is fake.

this journal entry started pretty somber but let it be known that i am doing okay! there's a lot of things i'm excited about over the next couple months-- my friends from out of town are coming to visit me, and i'm seeing DEVO in concert!!
but at the same time i've been really low-energy for a while. kind of wanting more for my life but feeling too stuck in my own head to achieve it. i want to go to more events, but i don't drive and its just so much easier to stay at home. i've been mildly overwhelmed with balancing things and i'm worried its going to get out of hand at some point, but i don't quite know what to do about it preemptively. shrug. sigh. i'll get through it

i've been spending a lot of time here on neocities, and honestly its been very enjoyable. i blinked and suddenly i've had this site for like a year and a half-- its changed so much since i started it! i find myself mindlessly scrolling through my own web pages like wow, i made this!
i've discovered that the 'links' page is my favorite part of any neocities site-- i love finding new websites that i wouldn't have known about before!! theres so many useful tools!!!
lately i've been really enjoying shuffling on radiooooo.com, its weirdly fun very to have completely unfamiliar music playing in the background while doing other things :D!

speaking of other things, i'm getting a lot of creative projects finished right now. march was kind of a month of working on multiple things at once, and so now i get to complete some of them. i posted them all-- painting, poem, zine-- the day before this journal entry, so go check them out if you haven't already ;]
oh yeah, i also made my first zine! you can read through it here but I want to kind of expand on my thoughts behind it in my journal. (and when i say my first zine, i mean my first small, personal one. i've been a part of larger fanzines before, but those are different)
starting things is always the hardest part of doing them, and so i'll find myself refining and refining and planning and planning out an idea before i actually put it into action, when in reality i could most likely work out all those fine details much easier while in the 'making' phase, rather than the brainstorming one. cough cough all my failed webseries ideas. so, after a year or so of stressing over how to begin my zine-making journey, i finally had the genius idea to make just a little tiny short one without much thought behind it. god bless Decker, it was the perfect tool for that, though exporting through there was a little unintuitive.
i have a couple ideas for other zines to make, but honestly who knows when i will. i don't make things for you, i make them for me, so i get to decide when i do them!

and speaking of zines, i'm in three (soon to be four?) collaborative fanzine projects and wow i bit off more than i can chew. i've felt kind of allergic to digital art lately so it's been hard to motivate myself into working on my bits of those consistently-- but it's the season of zines in this fanbase apparently, and i didn't wanna miss out :P

the stardew valley grind is still very real. i'm on to year 3 now! here's a spring 3 progress screenshot

i think that's about all i have for this entry! i ended the last one with a reading update, so i will do so here as well:
i am still reading that short story collection i mentioned last time, but i also got through an audiobook version of “Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender” by Kit Heyam. It was a great exploration of trans history and what the idea of trans history even means, uncomfortable details and all. i'm not a big reader (and i'm working on changing this) so i don't have a very broad experience of what necessarily makes a book good, but i did enjoy it and i would recommend!

Mar 31, 2024 - complaining about easter

both my parents are christians. my ass grew up in the church. granted, the church i've always gone to has been great. they're very supportive and accepting and allies and such, and they always encourage people to ask questions and discuss scripture. even so, i'm very solidly agnostic and even leaning atheist. as well as the fact that i'm a little queer freak and (as far as i know) the only trans person who attends.
it's not bad on paper-- like i said they're allies and stuff, but it is hugely uncomfortable to attend for a lot of different reasons. i always feel like the odd one out, like everyone knows me much better than i know them. shrug. i generally dont like being in social situations with people i dont know super well anyway, never have, but its gotten worse over the years.
so anyway i dont go to church regularly. once the pandemic hit it finally gave me an excuse to use my sundays for sleeping in, especially while i was knee-deep in depression and such. but i still go on special occasions because my mom likes me to, and i dont have the heart to get into an argument with her about it.

so whatever. i went to church today. because its easter.
and service was fine. gave me a lot of time to further think about why i dont like going to church, because it was never really something i could define. they're all supportive and they love me very much and even the sermons can be interesting sometimes-- but i've generally come to the conclusion that church just does not make sense to me.
i dont like dressing nice. my mom asked if i could take off my baseball cap in the sanctuary because its a sign of respect. i said no because my hair looks like shit today but also i do not understand why a hat would be a sign of disrespect. its one of those social things i just cant wrap my mind around-- its not like someone would see me with a hat on and automatically think "that guy's being rude right now", and if they did it wouldnt mean anything. a hat doesnt represent my person.
and i dont believe in god and i dont understand communion and i dont have anyone to talk to other than small talk ("what grade are you in?" "i'm a senior now" "you grew so fast!") and social situations drain me so bad that its just not worth it. good segue.

because after church we went over to a church friend's house for easter lunch. which, that's fine, it was great food and i didn't mind going. but by god did it tire me out.
i guess the purpose of this journal entry is to talk about my social fatigue, because i was feeling it BAD today. the surrounding story doesnt really matter.

mostly i blame masking. i'm self-diagnosed neurodivergent (most likely autistic) (because im not gonna pay one gajillion dollars for an official piece of paper that just says what i could already tell you myself) (because my parents never got me screened for autism and probably wouldnt believe that i am if i tried to tell them) and have crazy social anxiety because of it. i also blame social dysphoria. i dont get physical/bodily dysphoria all that bad, especially since starting T, but i have become a squashed bug under the thumb of traditional masculine expectations because by god i am terrified of a teenage cis boy coming to the conclusion that i'm pretending. and yes this adds to the social anxiety.
so as it stands i dread being around people that i dont really know for extended periods of time, because i just know that all this pressure and anxiety building inside of me is very quickly turning me into a decayed lump of a man.
and look i'm really genuinely trying to stop caring so much about what other people think of me. but that fear is deep-seeded and i have no goddamn clue how to dig it out. i like to think i'm getting better, and i've been told i will with time (17 year old moment booooo boooooo tomato tomato tomato) but even still i have to leave social gatherings early with my head hung and calling my parents to pick me up because my godforsaken anxiety made it impossible for me to learn to drive.

sigh. its out of my system. in other news i've picked up reading again. i'm a big fat slacker and a poor literary artist when it comes to reading books, and i've been telling myself to pick it up again. hopefully it will become more consistent with time.
right now i'm reading "The Best Short Stories 2021" which is Edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from the O. Henry Prize winners, and its been really damn good. Two Nurses, Smoking by David Means hit me particularly hard.

Mar 27, 2024 - video games and the life around them

hey hey my first blog post! i'm not proficient at writing these yet. so bear with me on my journaling journey

i guess to start off i can talk about the most prevalent thing in my life right now- the god blessed game of Stardew Valley. according to steam i've played about 50 hours over the past two weeks, and i hit 300 hours total a couple days ago
stardew is one of those games that i fall in and out of playing. after not playing at all for like a year, i started a new co-op farm with my best friend (hi fish) a couple months ago or something (i forgot exactly when) and i was having so much fun with it that i started my own solo farm to play when fish couldn't
i find the early game is pretty tedious to get through, especially doing it on multiple saves around the same time, but once you get the ball rolling its so much fun to progress day by day. i'm playing my solo farm with the Stardew Valley Expanded mod, and that's been so fun to explore since i barely knew anything about it before playing it. its certainly interesting-- and imo works very well with the style and mechanics of the base game, for the most part. there are some things that feel a little too modded, but overall it's been a great experience.
now that the 1.6 update has come out, i've been also been having fun discovering all the new shit i either havent seen pre-update or in the vanilla game. genuinely i've been playing stardew for like 80% of the free time i've had over the past week. i'm hooked!!!! help!!!!! let me out!!!!

^^ Multiplayer farm summer year 2 (left), solo farm spring year 2 (right)

i've been gaming more in general actually. i went through a long period of time last year where i pretty much didn't play any steam games, but for whatever reason i've picked it back up. i think it started with playing Potion Craft while i was out of town visiting family over christmas-new years (i like a casual point and click game during those times), though in october i played Hylics upon the suggestion of a friend (hi ellis). i picked up Turnip Boy Robs a Bank since i liked the first game from that series (Turnip Boy commits tax evasion- both games are pretty fun in their own ways, good experiences for something on the side) and i'll indulge myself in a roguelike once in a while. then i jumped to Hades which i had 25-ish hours in before but never really got a hold of. so i started a new save and made some good progress before being distracted by other things.

and then i played Who's Lila? which is a game i could talk about at length but don't have the words for at the moment of typing this. it's such a great game- so dense and full of thought and interesting concepts. god. i love so much about it.

^^ Who's Lila? fanart from yours truly

enough about videa games! what else is new?

in terms of writing and art, i've been a little slow. i'm currently working on a larger visual piece that's taking a while because the canvas i've chosen keeps eating my paint and therefore i've been having to mess with it quite a bit- but hopefully i'll get it done soonish. i'm excited about it! my art classes at school have been a good catalyst for my creative expressions over the past few years, but i can definitely feel myself waning into 'i just want to do what's in my mind'. well at least i'm graduating soon!
most of the art assignments i've been doing havent been too unbearable (ok, most arent unbearable at all) but i'm meant to do a chalk pastel drawing right now and i can Not find the motivation for it. my poor sensory issues and having residues on my skin! i'm sure it'll work out fine, though

as for writing, it's been a struggle. a lot of my concepts and ideas i'm having right now seem to dead-end before they get off the ground, and it seems like its always a problem of either "i don't know where to go with this loose idea" or "the words i am writing are not good enough to support this idea". idk i'll work through it, but it's been annoying to say the least

i think that's good for an opening post. dont touch that dial! i'll be right back