well i'm writing this a little late but i guess it's 2023 now?? i've been meaning to return to this journal but december was hellishly busy for me (well, not actually that busy, but for my standards it was exhausting lmao) and the first week and a half or so of 2023 has been a nightmare of both mental and physical illness... so yeah i just haven't found it in me to sit and write, even though that's kinda what this is here for. idk it's complicated. i'm here now though!
i want to talk about new years resolutions, as well as the stuff i'm planning for this website, but first i may as well discuss the holidays and everything... actually wait i'm making a quick detour before i start talking about my birthday. i have no idea how to fit this into the journal but i need to document this so bad. my favorite singer of all time is a japanese vsinger called kaf (more on that later) and there was this thing going on where you could apply to be sent a custom AR filming app, and then you had to record her in real life christmas-y or winter-y locations, then send the footage back to kamitsubaki studio (her management) and they would compile clips sent in from fans into a little christmas music video. my footage wasn't chosen unfortunately (i think they prioritized japanese footage, plus mine didn't have any cool camera movement) but my mom drove me out to the WHITE HOUSE so i could film kaf in front of the national christmas tree and frankly it was just really cool LMAO and even though my footage wasn't chosen, my username WAS in the credits/acknowledgements so they DID see my clip and that's good enough for me, i'm super happy HSJDFKSFD here's a little bit of it!! my hands were shaking because of the cold...
and here's my username in the credits of the final music video!!
ANYWAYS now that i have that little tangent out of the way... my birthday is notoriously a difficult time for me and i usually hate my birthday but honestly? my birthday that just passed on december 12th last month was pretty alright. my mom surprised me around a week before my birthday and asked if i wanted to go to the beach on that weekend for a small off-season trip... and it turns out it wasn't even for my birthday LMAO at first we were going to go home ON my birthday, and i was like. Mom. i'd rather not be in the car for four hours on my birthday... and she was like WAIT YOU'RE RIGHT! we can go home the day afterwards! and then we were pretty set. drove up there on... friday?? if i'm remembering correctly?? and went home on tuesday the 13th, one day after my birthday. we just stayed at some airbnb that my parents picked out and aside from it having some plumbing issues with the shower, it was otherwise super nice. it was just me, my parents, and my sister, and despite there being four people, there was enough sleeping areas for me to have a room to myself, which was much appreciated because i cannot stand sleeping in the same room as my sister. i love my sister but she makes annoying noises in her sleep LMAO
the beach is one of my favorite places since i've gone there with family often since childhood and it feels like the one place where nothing bad ever happens, so just being there really helped with my wellbeing and mental state during my birthday. of course since it's the middle of winter it was cold and we weren't there to actually swim or do summer beach activities, but there was honestly a surprising amount of activity? of course nothing close to summer activity, it was still very chill, but there were people there who were also hanging out locally. it was just nice to chill out and visit shops and have some good food and everything.
also side note my mom wanted to go into a pet store to get some gifts for my brother who owns dogs and they had these and they were nice and funny to see LMAO like something about this is humorous to me but the beach we went to is a really LGBT-friendly area so there was a lot of stuff like this around
anyways trip was great and all but i actually was holed up in our airbnb for the majority of my actual birthday because i was on a MISSION. in the new pokemon games, scarlet and violet, it is possible to catch pokemon with the destiny mark, only on your registered birthday. i don't know if the people who might read this are going to know what marks are so uhh... a really simple explanation is like. you know how some people just have birthmarks? it's like that except the pokemon doesn't actually look different, but it has a special icon and title on the pokemon's summary screen, and a pokemon with a mark can be sent out into battle with a custom name, like instead of "go! pikachu!" it'd be like "go! pikachu the arrogant!" or whatever. these marks have varying rarities and some are very hard to find. of course you're able to set your switch's clock forward to your birthday and get it that way, but that felt lame to me. i wanted a destiny mark pokemon on my ACTUAL birthday.
so the day before i played online with a friend to grind out some items i would need to shiny hunt for a couple hours (shiny hunting = looking for shiny pokemon, which are differently colored rare variants of a pokemon species) because i wanted not only a destiny mark pokemon, i wanted a SHINY destiny mark pokemon. i started towards my goal at like. 6 am or something while my family was still asleep because i woke up too early and couldn't fall back asleep LMAO. it took fucking AGES. i first spent a few hours just resetting my game over and over looking for an outbreak of eevees (outbreaks = that pokemon appears more frequently) and i just could not find it, luck was failing me until it wasn't. and then after that i caught not one, not two, but SEVEN shiny eevees before the 7th one FINALLY had the destiny mark. when we went out to eat at restaurants i brought my switch with me and was hunting while waiting on my food and when we were back at the airbnb i had my hands on that damn controller. totally paid off though look at my SHINY DESTINY MARK JOLTEON (FROM MY ACTUAL BIRTHDAY)
anyways yeah lots of other little things during my birthday but it feels like too much time has passed for me to reasonably document it all. but it was nice and gives me confidence that maybe this year, even at my own home, maybe my birthday won't suck so much. some stuff happened between my birthday and christmas but i am TIMESKIPPING because i CANNOT be assed to write about it. ahem
christmas was pretty good too! i also used to hate christmas and have a hard time during christmas but i actually overcame that a few years ago, back when i was with my ex (we're still on good terms) and spending christmas with her a couple of times just shined a whole new positive light on the whole thing. it was also a quieter christmas; usually my brother, his wife, my aunt, and my uncle come over on christmas morning to open gifts and eat breakfast, but everyone was busy with their own plans this year, which means it was just me, my parents, and my sister once again. our cat actually chilled out in the room with us for once - usually she runs away and hides all christmas morning because it's too many people and too much commotion for her, but she chilled on the couch while we opened presents pretty much the entire time. really liked having her there. i got a lot of gifts (my family goes crazy on christmas) but right now i feel like showing off all the new plushies i got, which were super nice btw cause my mom used to not be happy with how much i love stuffed animals but now i guess she's embraced it or at least tolerates it SDJFIOKSDF a few of them are "warmies" which are microwavable plushies... they're like a heating pad, but a plushie. i'm actually cuddling one of them under my arm right now as i type this, the unicorn one... her name is snowflake. i didn't name her, one of our child alters did lmao. oh, and a cat picture too! her name is keesa by the way. i forget if i've mentioned that before.
and i guess all of that with one more timeskip brings us to new years. new years eve itself was pretty mundane all things considered, for as crazy as my family goes on christmas, we don't really do anything for new years other than watching the ball drop in NYC at midnight on the TV and then we all go "HAPPY NEW YEARRRR" very loud and then go to bed JASDFK so there isn't a whole lot to say on that end of things. HOWEVER i have a few new years resolutions... yeah i know the new year is practically made up and there isn't much of a difference between december 31st and january 1st that suddenly makes it a proper time to start goals other than societal customs but you know what new years resolutions are cool. i never make them where it's like, so set in stone that i can't change my goals over the year or that i should feel disappointed in myself if i don't manage to make them a reality, but moreso as general guidelines for what i want to work on or achieve and where i want my life to go. at the moment i'm also trying to keep them relatively small/simple because uh. well i'm very chronically ill and when i'm going to get medicated is still up in the air and i don't want to overwhelm myself with stuff that i definitely cannot even start on. sooo here's the list!
hopefully over the span of 2023 i can either achieve these goals or at least say i tried. i'm trying to stay relatively positive during this journal as kind of a pick-me-up but honestly, i am not feeling super optimistic about the year at the moment since the start of it has been so terrible, but i do have at least a little faith in myself that i can make it work, so i have that going for me. not to be super dark out of nowhere but it's strange having such a strong will to live nowadays, sometimes i wish i could turn off time or take a break from living but i don't ever want to die anymore, which is saying something considering how long i wanted to while growing up, and even into my very early adulthood. but now even though 2023 has had a shit start and i'm overwhelmed with stuff going on in my real life, and with what's to come... yeah. i can face being 23 years old. i can survive this! and that feels triumphant and good to say.
last topic i wanted to dive into real quick is my site goals - i don't want to spoil too much, especially because my ideas might change or it might take a long time for updates to come out since i'm ill so often, but the main two things i'd like my side of sentimentality to have at the moment are a pokemon section and a kaf section, two of my three special interests. the pokemon section will be less like a fansite and more like a personal documentation of all of the stuff i do in pokemon games, various challenges and collections... i play a LOOOT of pokemon and so it would be nice to have it as essentially a scrapbook for all of my various shenanigans. that will probably take a while though because i'd like to document a lot of stuff from the past few years and i'll need to dig through old discord messages for images and whatnot... oof. as for the kaf section, i've actually already started it, the WIP is open in another tab from where i'm typing out this journal, and it's going to be styled more like a virtual shrine that you've probably seen on other independent/personal websites like this before, but... really in depth? i want it to be more than just a landing page, it'll have multiple sections where i provide information or make little art projects pertaining to her but it also isn't really going to be a full fansite? idk u guys are just gonna have to wait and see. perhaps a while. i'm sorry i'm juggling multiple hobbies and multiple illnesses LMAO
and that should about do it for now! i just wanted to give an update of where i've been and what i'm going to be doing in the future... document some positive stuff because the past week has been Hell and honestly it really did help to cheer me up a little, i feel less crummy than i did when i started this whole thing. until next time!! hopefully next time i'm not trying to catch up on over a month's worth of events SDJFOSDAF