March 3, 2023
First entry of 2023! I really should keep up with this more haha. School has been really busy here lately with papers and the like, but spring break is coming soon so hopefully I'll have the energy to update my site more. I rarely have the motivation to do anything besides homework and taking an afternoon nap these days, unfortunately. My professors have been piling on the papers... wah. I can't say I don't enjoy my classes though, and my professors too. I'm only taking two in-person classes right to try to reduce the days I have to drive in a week since I'm a little ways from campus. I really want to live on campus, but I'm saving my money to study abroad next year (fingers crossed).
I've been trying to make some changes in my life and mindset recently after realizing how being alone most of the time has literally warped my brain. I don't want to disclose anything very personal online, but in short, after graduating during the pandemic and starting college younger than all my peers I felt very isolated and had quite a bit of trouble making friends. Around this same time, I also lost someone extraordinarily important to me and I still haven't been able to cope with that well even today. I felt a lot of guilt over what happened, and didn't even want to try getting close with the friend I managed to make at school. I really closed myself off and it feels like my personality itself has withered at times. I've been shy and kind of self-conscious all my life, but I found myself nearly completely unable to talk to anyone and had debilitating anxiety when leaving my house. It's been over a year now and I've finally decided I just can't keep living like this anymore because I'm making myself miserable over things that are out of my control. Of course, it's not easy to change your way of thinking or break destructive habits, but I'm taking small steps first! I was able to talk a little more in class the other day and even had a nice conversation with the girl who I sat next to. It sounds strange when I think through it and write it out, but I was so happy afterwards. I didn't realize how important the socialization I was missing out on really was, and how much isolating myself was contributing to my mental state. I often get so anxious about people thinking I'm "weird" and being rejected that I end up not being able to speak openly at all, but if you don't show your true self at all, you never really grow beyond friendly acquaintances. I guess that's the hard part, isn't it :p. For the same purpose, I'm trying to "break free" (for lack of a better phrase) of my parents' influence over my life. This is considerably more difficult given how much I want their respect, but after thinking about it for quite sometime now, I've found that the short-term pleasure I get from pleasing them does not out way the lasting joy I get from trying to live my life freely and figuring out who I want to be. Even if it's just little things they dislike, such as wearing clothes that I like or doing things I'm bad just for fun like drawing and writing, it makes me feel more like myself.
On a lighter note, I've been attempting to get more serious about my Japanese studies, since I plan to have a career in that field. I would love to be able to teach English abroad or become a translator some day. I didn't really have much of an idea about what I wanted to do with my life when I started college and chose my degree. But, I'm glad I chose the path I did, even though I didn't know exactly why I chose it besides the fact that I like studying language. I'm making a load of Anki cards everyday and enjoying more media in Japanese. Right now, I'm replaying Persona 4 Golden and Ace Attorney in Japanese, and it has definitely been a challenge to say the least! But, it does get easier the more you play as the majority of the "Legalese" words used are repeated frequently, like "court record" and "cause of death". I feel like I'm at a kind of weird point in my studies where most things intended for native speakers are above my level, but things intended for learners feel too easy, like graded readers and textbooks. I think it's like an intermediate "hump" I have to try to claw my way over haha. It's definitely discouraging when you try to read/listen to something more advanced and you feel like you know pretty much nothing, but when you go back to that same thing later and are able to understand it, it's a truly rewarding experience.
December 16, 2022
IT'S WINTER BREAK!!!!! Finally. School really hit me like a ton of bricks in the past month or so, but I'm finally able to update my site somewhat consistently again! How do you like the new diary page? I got totally sick of the way my site looked before so I decided to re-do everything, and I'm glad I did! No more solid pink and random blinkies everywhere, heh. I have some ideas for new pages too, like for my doll collection and study abroad plans that I'm excited to share. The one I'm most excited for is my Utena shrine(?), which will probably be the page I make next.
Sooo, it's Christmas soon and I've been enjoying the festivities and chilly weather a bunch. I know a lot of people hate winter weather but it's my favorite time of year. I just really hope it snows around Christmas this year! I haven't gotten any of my shopping done at all so I really need to get on that... I'm going to see the Nutcracker tonight with my parents and I'm so excited! I love ballet but hardly ever have the oppurtunity to go see one. Though, I did find out recently that a ballet school a few hours from me (in the "big city", I'm a bumpkin) is doing La Sylphide this coming year, so hopefully I'll get to go see it.
I picked up Persona 5 for the Switch over Black Friday and it's awesome!! I'm on (spoilers for the second palace) Madarame's palace right now. No Persona game will ever beat Persona 4's music though. So far my favorite characters are Mishisma and Yusuke, my weird little guys. Yusuke's metaverse outfit is so goofy and so cute at the same time... I'm almost halfway through Persona 2 now, and it's made me glad that they brought back negotiation during battles. P2's battle system feels a little bit clunky at times (it is an older game though), but I love negotiating with the demons. The thing that makes it difficult though, compared to newer entries in the series, is that you have to balance negotiating and getting EXP. I know this is in P5 too, but in P5 you get the shadow's persona after one negotiation which makes it easier to balance. But in P2, negotiating with demons drops a certain amount of tarot cards corresponding to their arcana, which you then have to take to Igor and have them fused into actual personae. This makes it a little more difficult because you have to negotiate with same demons several times in order to get enough tarot cards for one persona. Having said that, one thing I think every Persona game has is great characters. I've loved pretty much all the characters in every Persona game I've played so far, though I do find the priestess girls a bit bland... (sorry Yukiko)
October 14, 2022
It's been awhile oops. School has really been draining the life out of me recently and I haven't felt like doing anything above the bare minimum ^_^. But, it's getting a little better so I want to start updating my site again. Today is my 18th birthday! I had red velvet cake for breakfast and I'm going to the bookstore later to hunt down a biography that I want. Later today I plan on playing Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice, eating pop-tarts, and watching Doctor Who. I'm a bit of a party animal. I got myself a case of the mulligrubs last night looking back at old pictures of me and my friends hanging out when we were in high school together, I miss being able to do that more than anything. But I have decided to stop moping around about things I can't change and just enjoy myself. I found out about Hunter x Hunter coming back to Shounen Jump this month and I am very excited! I knew about Togashi posting pictures on Twitter, but having a date where it's actually going to be published is something else. I can't wait!
I finally finished Persona 4 this past weekend (round of applause for Sage actually finishing a Media please), and I'm kind of sad that it's over but also glad I finally finished it. It only took me about eight months, no big deal. I finished the main Ace Attorney trilogy about a week ago and was surprised that it actually took me a few more hours to beat than Persona, considering I finished Ace Attorney within the span of about a month or so. I wanted to finish P4G before P5R got released for PC so I decided to just sit down and do it (I only had a couple hours of the game left). One (slightly annoying) thing about this game is that there are a few points that make it seem like you've reached the end, only to get hit with "Surprise! There's another secret dungeon hiding behind the other secret dungeon!". Which is fine of course, I am just lazy. I'm trying to decide if I want to play P5R first or wait until I finish P2:IS, because I know I won't be able to finish P2 before P5R releases. I'm looking forward to the other Persona games that have slightly darker atmospheres, even though I do love P4's "friendship simulator" vibe XD.
I wish I could have done something more interesting after not updating for so long, but I'll have some stuff that I'm working on up soon :).
August 19, 2022
Not much to report here, but I felt like writing something and I haven't written anything here in quite a while.
I've been experiencing a bit of "crochet fever" recently and haven't felt much like coding (* ^ ω ^). My mom taught me the basics when I was in elementary, but I never really got into it because I thought it was too tedious and boring an activity. But I've been it enjoying it very much recently after making a Yoshi amigurumi (pattern) for my friend's birthday. Looking at the finished project and thinking "I made that" seems to have flipped the crochet switch in my brain. I've even added a link for a future crochet page... I started making a carrying case for my 3DS last night as well as several little flower appliques. (If anyone's curious about the case, I didn't use a pattern but just made a chain long enough to wrap around the width of the 3DS, joined the chain into a round, single crocheted around until I had the height of the 3DS, made a closing flap by building up single crochets on one side, then sewed the bottom closed. Later today I plan on going to the craft store for some buttons to make a closure for the flap and sew on some of the appliques I made.) Since then, I have been brainstorming patterns for things I want to make that I can't find patterns for online. After the 3DS case, I think I'll try making more amigurumis because they're just so stinkin' cute♡. Specifically, I want to make amigurumi dolls of my favorite characters that I can't buy merch of, like Garry from Ib and Phoenix and Miles from Ace Attorney. I just finished writing down my makeshift "pattern" for Edgeworth's cravat XD.
In other news, I found out more about my classes this coming semester since the courses have been posted on canvas. I found out that the computational linguistics course I enrolled in is actually just a straight up coding course... oops. The professor seems pretty chill though so I'm not too worried about it. The class is mostly using Python, but looking at the syllabus, there will be a week where we cover HTML ＼(≧▽≦)／. Meaning, I will know what's going on for exactly one week and then be confused for the entire rest of the semester (─‿‿─). Though I do find it somewhat daunting, I am truly excited to take a computational linguistics course and learn about something that's completely new to me yet have been eyeballing for a while. I'm hoping this course will help me figure out what particular branches of linguistics that I can pursue career-wise besides my main linguistic interest, sociolinguistics.
August 2, 2022
First entry whoop whoop! I won't be posting anything that would go in my "real" diary here since I don't want my personal life on the internet o_o. This diary is more of a place to write out some thoughts and share about the things I'm doing and what I like.
I can't wait for classes to start again. I really miss talking with my professors and walking around campus as lame as that sounds (walkable cities my love). I do diddly squat in the summertime, especially now since most of my friends in college live a few hours away. Sometimes I feel that I'm wasting my "teenage years" and skipping most of high school didn't really help... The most exciting thing I did this summer *drumroll* was getting the Shark Week slush at Sonic. But classes start again in a few weeks so I don't have to wait much longer! I've made a bit of a resolution to myself to make sure I attend club meetings and other campus gatherings this semester. I live off campus so I need to make sure that I put in the effort to socialize and make friends. That means I'll be on campus for about 7 hours most days on top of an hour commute each way (T_T).
I've been playing Persona 4 Golden a lot recently, and I'm excited to post about it fully on my (soon to be) games page! My friend recommended me this game because it's his favorite and I've wanted to play some of the Persona games for a while now, so I went ahead and started it way back in March (I think?) and.... about 10 hours in and I was bored as all get out. I didn't play it for a while and thought I would just wait for P5R to get ported to PC (and now that's actually happening (╯✧▽✧)╯). But I'm so glad I kept playing it because I love it so much now. Whenever I saw posts and articles about P4G it was often ranking it as the worst of the series or just recommending that new players start with a different Persona game. And, honestly, I can kind of see why. The "vibe" seems very different from the other Persona games, having a more light-hearted atmosphere (take this with a grain of salt since I've only seen trailers and reviews for P3 and P5 and haven't played them myself, and I started P2 Innocent Sin only yesterday (⌒_⌒;)). A small detail about this game that makes me love it just a little bit more is how it captures the growing up in a small town experience so well. The main crew meeting up at the local supermarket to hangout because there's no where else to go? Very true. Anyway, I don't want to write about it too much here since I'll be writing about it on my games page once I finish it (or maybe earlier, who knows).
