my thunderstorm

Blog Sub-Sections

The following are links to focused journaling projects that I am actively working on or that I have been formally archived.

• Summer Depth Season 2022

Musings 2023

11 May 2023

Hello! So... I went half a year without posting an update to my website. Honestly, that kind of bums me out. I think like with a lot of things in my life, I was really hoping that something in my life would have changed by now: a new job, my own apartment, completion of a major project... anything really. But so much of my life has been in limbo and I have been worrying a lot that I am regressing, adopting bad habits, failiny to live up to my potential. If I am being honest with myself though, I don't really have big career aspiratons right now. I'm exhausted and feel jaded about the field I have been working in up until now. All I want to do is make and share things with people, but I have even been holding myself back from doing that because capitalism tells me that isn't worth pursuing unless it makes me money. So I am trying to resist that negativity and embrace doing things that spark at least a little joy. That might not result in me having a lot updates, but my goal is to be a little more present.

Musings 2022

28 October

I did not plan for this update to be two entire months later.. lol The job search since moving hasn't gone the best and I think it kind of killed my motivation to write. Dedicating time to my website turned into a distraction from my situation, an indulgence, and I had a lot of complicated feelings about it. But you know what? I genuinely miss writing. I waking up and deciding what I was going to work on. While I'm not going to stop submitting applications, but I also want to reconnect with supporting my creative endeavors. NaNoWriMo is just around the corner and that's a perfect opportunity to challenge myself with a little structure. I'm not going to be devastated if I fail a project either lol That's why I've chosen something I'm not entirely emotionally invested in completing. I might post weekly updates about my progress and some of the chapters I write will be posted here at a later date!

27 August

Lately, I haven't been able to summon the energy to write. I had one bad week and then my entire routine fell apart. I'm working on getting back into all of my good habits again, but it is taking conscious effort on my part. There are so many little projects here that I was genuinely excited to work on not long ago and I hope that I can gain that spark again.

16 August

It's been a while since I wrote a little standalone check-in! I've taken a short break from writing new content while focusing on the site layout changes, but now I have a few ideas racking up. For instance, why haven't I made a Puppets shrine?? Or even alluded to my general adoration of puppetry (especially, but not exclusively, all things Henson Studios)? It might be a while before I get that section up and running, but I'm excited to track down some of my favorite clips, gush about my favorite characters, etc.

11 August

Spent the better part of today recoding my website. I'm not happy with the color schemes for every page... but it's getting there! I'll keep tinkering with pages to ensure that they are as readable as possible while still having fun with the character theming.

26 July

Today is the day that we load up our shipping container for the move. It felt like it would never come and even though I am dreading the physical labor (especially in this heat wave) it is going to be such a relief when it is finally behind us. All that's left beyond this is a cleaning spree, packing up the car, and running a few errands.

4 July

I'm in the process of transferring all of my images Neocities itself. At first, I was really nervous about the files taking up too much space, but I'm barely over 1.2% right now after uploaded the bigger images (including all of the photos for my ongoing Tarot Study project) so I think it will be fine. This will give me much more security to know that I won't lose anything down the line.

Aside from that, I did a bunch of packing yesterday including art supplies and tarot decks that I am okay with

2 July

Even though I wrote about it a bit in my Book Nook, I want to gush a little more about Blue Flag. What a touching slice of life manga! Unlike Au Haru Ride which is more on the melodrama side and doesn't necessarily make me feel inclined to read it all over again, I can imagine picking this one back up for a reread... maybe even buying the set one day so that I can convince my wife read it. One of my writing goals is to map out a cute slice of life story, but I think I need to do more character development before I will reach that point. Most of the OCs that I have up my sleeve are still a little half-baked. I tend to put a lot of thought into their backstory and not enough into their motivation in the present.

30 June

Wow, I can't believe the month is over already lol Even though I have a pile of specific things on my to-do list for this site, I decided to write a book review page on a whim. Normally, I hate writing reviews. I avoided them on GoodReads for over a decade and also skipped that feature on StoryGraph. But... since this is my site, I can do whatever I want with them and change them/delete them easily if desired. So I'm testing it out for now and will stop if/when it stops being enjoyable to keep up.

29 June 2022

A tarot blogger reached out to me on Instagram through DM and since I enjoyed reading some of their posts, I thought it would be nice to reply back and strike up a conversation. But I was also on edge because they greeted me as "sweetie" which is a very Boss Babe/Love Bomb kind of thing to do... and it turns out I was right because she immediately pivoted to saying that she wanted to do a private reading for me and had reached out because she has an important message. I declined and I will probably remove her as a mutual and unfollow her later today kfjnsksnh It's really disappointing to me because sometimes I do genuinely want to connect with other people online over hobbies, but so often people are just trying to gain a follower, advertise, hustle. | Update: I realized the next morning that I was targeted by a fake account and just didn't realize because the only visual difference was one underscore. At least this makes me feel a little better that someone whose work I found interesting isn't just another predatory influencer, but it does make me deeply sad that there are so many people like that out there - including people who would resort to identity-theft adjacent tactics to target people.

19 June 2022

To be honest... I'm not much of a regular blogger. I prefer to use a paper journal for that kind of thing. So I haven't been too sure what to use this space for and even considered deleting it.

Since I am about to move in a little over a month... I've been thinking a lot about doing a "depth season." I don't know that I can commit to a whole year, but to spend the entirety of summer focusing on what I want to personally develop sounds like a good way to make it through this transitional phase. The main categories I'm interested in are: (1) writing, (2) tarot, (3) and sketching. Other hobbies that I enjoy such as makeup and playing games, I want to fold under the writing category because I already do these things regularly but I want to practice writing about my engagement with those activities such as finally getting caught up with my makeup instagram posts and maybe writing up a fresh Sims 4 LP.

19 May 2022

Wrapped up my Ship page for the site this morning and then I was kind of mentally checked out for a while. I've been waiting to hear back from a job interview. There's a lot riding on hearing back and I need more distractions to keep myself occupied. On the bright side, I did a little bit of cleaning around the apartment, stayed on top of my skincare, and read a little bit more of The Lost Hero after watching some more ALTTPR. Tomorrow is another day and I am hoping to set clearer goals for myself to get done: work on another page for fun, read until 75% of the book, and start posting my backlog of photos to Instagram. I have several months of makeup looks and tarot spreads on my phone and I just need to get on top of editing and posting them.

18 May 2022

This morning I started a tutorial on basic HTML/CSS so that I can improve some of my coding skills (which are still sorely lacking!) I am working with a new layout template shared by sadgrl and should I have some new pages set up over the next few days. Otherwise, today has been a pretty lazy day! It's beenovercast and incredibly windy so my wife and I stayed indoors watching ALTTPR on twitch. Since I finished Beach Read yesterday, I am looking for a new book to commit myself to, but I can't really decide. Do I want a not-so-cozy mystery or another romance (by the same author no less)? This is usually what gets me into trouble with starting new books: I get indecisive and then juggle too many at once.

17 May 2022

This is my first day trying my hand at developing a neocities page! Otherwise, I washed my makeup brushes (long overdue) and finished reading Beach Read by Emily Henry (new favorite romance writer?) Eventually, I'll make a "bookshelf" page here where I can write mini-reviews of what I have been reading this year, which is quite a bit! Now that I am on summer break, I'm almost on track with my reading goals for the year with several months still ahead of me. I have so many ideas of future pages: a makeup inventory, a "study tarot with me" series going through the major and minor arcana for each of the decks that I own, picrew catalog... maybe a page dedicated to my TTRPG characters (though it's been astonishingly long since we have played a campaign...) Oh! I want to make a shrine for my favorite webcomics, characters I strongly resonate with... generally things that I have a lot of feelings about that I haven't allowed myself to share with others in a meaningful way.