12.18.23 —

strange how time passes & every entry i put on here feels just a little bit disjointed from the previous one. time for reflection has been difficult to sit in a quiet room with. today, i am sick & drinking pure citrus extracts to remedy my persistent cough & cold. the major part of november & first parts of december have been hectic, to say the least. especially since a lot of my waking life is dedicated to working, i can say that i have been tired of it. the other, quieter part, the one outside of work, the one aspect that i'm trying to nurture — writing — has been very fruitful.

november unleashed something in me that i didn't think existed before. i wrote around 16,700+ words for my first draft. however, december so far isn't as productive. i've lost a lot of momentum because, again, of work. however, i'm not about to lose hope, since there's still a lot of days to fill with creativity & whimsy. the only thing i miss is reading. i can't seem to fully get absorbed in any story since i started writing my novel's first draft. maybe my brain is still adjusting to the shift in focus. this is something i need to work on, because it would be a shame to set aside something that brings me joy with something similar; why can't i have both?

lately, i keep coming back to an article titled, "What the caves are trying to tell us" where the author wrote:

"But we can’t know if the caves were themselves particularly sacred spaces. It’s possible that Paleolithic rock art was concentrated entirely in caves, but it might also be true that caves, sheltered from the outside world, are simply where these images survived. It could be that the people of the Pleistocene made their entire world into a gallery, that animals charged across every rock-face, that wherever the tremendous herds of Ice Age beasts roamed, they were surrounded on all sides by echoes and images of themselves, in a world where image and object had not yet torn themselves apart."

i suppose this helps me internalize what it is i'm trying to achieve with my writing, what it is i'm trying to say & put forth into the world.

⋆  ☄.  ⋆.* .  ⋆. ⋆   *.

11.09.23 —

tumblr might die again. i don't know if this will mean spending a bit more time Doing Stuff on this silly little webbed site but i suppose, after so manytimes it has """died""" (at least in the public consciousness), tumblr continues to be the superior social media for me. i've spent more than a decade of my online life there so i know i'll grieve the self that i've cultivated through it for quite a while. maybe it means i'll get to live a little bit more that i'm less interested in whatever social media would be left. who knows! for now, i continue to lose time in that wretched space.

⋆  ☄.  ⋆.* .  ⋆. ⋆   *.

10.30.23 —

an abundance of good things! october has brought me huge bouts of creativity. keeping a notebook has encouraged me to romanticize my life a little bit more again, as i once did. there's also a resurgence of interest & energy for a story idea that i had earlier this year. i'm taking my writing more seriously now. i've even downloaded Scrivener and everything! nanowrimo is coming up in a couple days, but i'm not sure if i can keep up just yet. i'll try to participate in periphery, not really solidifying a goal so i won't be disappointed if i don't accomplish the 50K words in 30 days. much less chance to lose interest in whatever this story is. my only goal is to at least do 25K words. which, i suppose, is reasonable for a girl with a sometimes mentally taxing job. i've also been thinking of documenting my writing journey online, but this is futile. i think being more 'visible' in the 'public' eye when you're doing something so private as completing a first draft of a novel will only hurt the sanctity of the ritual. it's just a little bit of a bummer that the western publishing industry is now so adamant in upholding authors with a large following, helping them get published more than those who would rather be outside of the algorithmic mess. whatever. i think that i'm writing this particular story because i need to know if i'm worth my salt. the story needs to be told & therefore, i have to honor it.

on books, i've since read Perfume by Patrick Suskind & a couple of other books. my most recent read was Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield & though the writing is often beautiful, my high expectations were not met. i only really got into the story at around 120 pages in & i wasn't particularly interested in Miri's brand of silence. i loved Leah, the marine biologist wife who came back wrong. those kinds of characters always become so beloved to me (like the biologist in Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation; Ghost Bird will forever live in my mind!!). on storygraph, i logged my 2023 reading goal at 15 books & i currently only have 1 book left to meet the goal! this is so satisfying; thank you to my past self who knew me enough that she didn't put in something upwards of 20 or something.

anyway, when i get back to this site again, i can only hope i've more or less written the first draft of my novel. peace and love on planet earth !!

⋆  ☄.  ⋆.* .  ⋆. ⋆   *.

09.28.23 —

I NEED TO BE A KEEPER OF NOTEBOOKS AGAIN! i think this neocities site will expire from either my own incapability to keep things going or to the continuous death of old digital spaces in favor of shiny new ones. but notebooks. notebooks will live forever. when i was little i always get my mom to buy me various diaries with locks or those early 2000's shiny notebooks with like embossed graphics or whatever. some of them i've kept. whenever i clean out my shelf, i pick up one of them, reactivating the kind of grief that only comes with the specific brand of love & nostalgia for your younger self. i used to carry one everywhere, careless with my secrets written in them. getting older feels like shutting down that confessional part of myself, & it's so lonely.

often, i think about this Joan Didion excerpt from "On Keeping a Notebook":

“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

i realize now that i need to be that grimy little creature that keeps notebooks again. who doesn't care that she's scribbling away in public, careless about staying between the lines. one who isn't so stingy with her words. but also idk. i'm more scared now of vulnerability existing on a page. because it means i'll have to reconcile with the ugly parts of myself that i wasn't able to shed while growing up. that i might write something Cancellable™ or that i will have to perform for an invisible audience, making my efforts to become a Keeper Of Notebooks futile. because, of course, one of its pillars is being genuine. there's a really good excerpt from an essay by Rayne Fisher-Quann titled "standing on the shoulders of complex female characters" that encompasses this exact feeling:

"we consume so much, now, that perhaps we don’t know what it means to exist as something unsellable. i had to give up journalling because i couldn’t stop writing for the people who would read it after i was dead."

anyway. i've recently acquired a small 3.5 x 5.5 notebook. as long as there is desire & curiosity, i'm determined for this little thing to survive.

⋆  ☄.  ⋆.* .  ⋆. ⋆   *.

09.26.23 —

opening neocities & typing out this entry as a way to "steal time" from a corporation that can barely provide the salary to make a living off of. how rebellious! anyway, the real reason why i opened this is to make some notes about what to add to this site. i love listing things & hoarding Images™ on my phone & consuming media & paying attention to media in a more critical, non-consumptive way & i love graphic design, etc. etc. so i think there should be pages for those & whatever else. maybe a blinkies/stamps/buttons shelf, too.

today, i am decaying. yet, i'm in love with life.

⋆  ☄.  ⋆.* .  ⋆. ⋆   *.

09.24.23 —

creating & undoing HTML/CSS codes is an exhausting process. i think i've done it like 5x over the past 4 months. stupidly, while i was revamping the pages, i forgot to save the updates box & so now i have no record of the previous stuff i wrote on there. but they're mostly just like "wrestling with flexbox 5 dead 39 injured" or something. anyway. i wanted to practice writing (/oversharing) more, in the way old bloggers have. i also used to have a substack account but quickly got disinterested due to the pressure of needing to "publish" something more sensible & cohesive & focused.

on good days, i am an erratic person. there are too many things to start, hobbies to get my hands dirty with, thoughts to dwell on, etc. etc. i guess neocities feels more secluded & personal. let's see how long i can keep up with it.

i would also like to share this small to do list i made at the start of September:

▸ be smart again
▸ finish one ongoing Something
▸ maybe two or three Somethings, even
▸ turn off bluetooth at least once
▸ sudoku

⋆  ☄.  ⋆.* .  ⋆. ⋆   *.