I talk to the wind

This week, I've managed to stay offline for the most part. Even when posting here, I've mainly wrote on Obsidian first and copy pasted, so my time on the website have been minimal. I've responded to most people's comments, but I haven't been as present to read and comment on their own posts. Which I'm learning isn't such a bad thing either. Sometimes, being in a community means knowing others exist in the same neighbourhood even when we don't actively seek out each other. It's something I have to remind myself often. Community takes time to build, and that's okay. Community won't disappear if I don't read and comment on every single posts for a week or so. I will not develop fomo over missing some people's posts. Missing posts is not the end of the world. If I'm okay with other people not reading and commenting on every one of my posts, then they are most likely okay with me doing the same. Because when they do, I am just happy to say hello back and exchange with them then, so surely they feel the same way. And if they don't, maybe we are just not a good fit for each other, and that is okay too.

Community takes time. I do not have to be chronically online to maintain it. I can be present just once in a while, write and respond when I can, and it's okay. It's easy to fall back into familiar patterns, familiar pressure to exist in online spaces daily or else. An "or else" that implies erasure, disappearance of the self, a fallen tree no one can hear. But the tree is still there. The tree still stands. The tree exists even if no one perceives it.

(I will not disappoint the tree for not seeing it. The tree still exists. The tree does not need me. The tree is okay. Why is my brain like that?)

Spring cleaning? No. Quarterly rearranging of a room! Now that I live in a house with my spouse (and we both get the neurospicy genes that makes the brain go brr seeing rooms in a new layout), I got more than just my bedroom to play with! This time around? The living room. It's easily the least manageable of all the rooms we have (because of weird wall placements + how small it is). On top of that, we got those two, massive rococo style couches that makes for a more difficult arrangement (I say rococo because that's more the style we're intending this room to be, but it can fit any kind of opulent vintage style really. It's rococo going on baroque, it's whimsygoth meets studio ghibli, it's cottagecore meets dark academia. It's Alphonse Mucha. It's Bridgerton. You see the vision?).

One thing that this whole moving around does help with is that, since I'm doing all this, might as well do all the cleaning at the same time, you know? So it does become a bit of a spring cleaning regardless. It's just spring cleaning with a goal that is not just getting the cleaning done, and I think that makes up for the hours of sweeping and vacuuming and dusting and moping and throwing away the trash. All that not fun stuff to make way for the actual fun stuff afterwards.

I might draw a before and after of the layout when I'm done (and when I bother to get my drawing tablet from upstairs). But here's a picture of what the two sofas look like (it's the sofa and the loveseat in the middle and on the right, we don't have the single person chair and the table):

I used to be the person who tried to solve everything for everyone. The bigger someone's problems, the better. When meeting someone new, I would value their potential friendship by how much struggles they had that I could help them find solutions to. At that time, I had to feel needed to feel worthy of anybody's attention. I couldn't just be me, be a person who just happens to like the things somebody else likes too, I had to be useful. Friendships, romantic entanglements, it was all the same: if I couldn't be useful, I couldn't be worthy, and being someone's savior was the peak of usefulness. It meant I was indispensable, irreplaceable. And for those that didn't need saving? I would give gifts, sweets, pay for food, show how better their lives would be if I remain there. I remember so acutely the time when, during a therapy session, the full realization of what I was doing hit me: "I am love bombing my friends." Saying it out loud like that, both horrified and somewhat relieved that I could put words to how wrong it was, is what kickstarted the road to healing.

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"He said... He said to take two grown ups" (pouts)



The scream I screamed when I saw baby Axel on the screen! And baby Kairi! And baby Riku and Sora!!!

( Spoilers ahead )

Just finished watching the cut scenes for KH 358/2 (the game is only available in cut scene on the PS4).

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Next is going to be watching the cut scenes for Birth By Sleep instead of playing because, since the game was first created for the PS Vita I believe, the motions are real bad for my motion sickness, even when I'm controlling the game, so cut scenes it is (also I'm not super fond of the game play either, so I'm not devastated by that). I'm honestly super hyped for KH 3 really! And possibly replaying KH 1 and 2 soonish because they are really fun to just play and travel through the worlds and all. Gotta love having a good time ❤️

I'm giving Obsidian another go. It's going to be my third try, but if Dreamwidth is anything to go by, seems like the minimum amounts of tries I need to give something I'm interested in before it sticks, especially if it has a learning curve to it (I am not the most patient of people but I'm learning to be). I first was a Google Docs girlie, but, well, I've become somewhat of a hater of Google for the past years or so (the only places I still use it is for two of my emails and my Youtube account, the latter of which I put the most blocking of unnecessary ads and sponsorships I could find). Since then, I've used Ellipsus, which I really love, Proton Mail (I'm not really convinced about that one honestly, hence the keeping of my gmails for now), and, unrelated to that, but I've also installed Linux on my old tower PC that couldn't stand the bloatware of Windows (at least the fan doesn't whirl loudly 2 minutes in, in doesn't whirl loudly at all actually! Although the PC is still pretty slow so I have to figure that out). I still use Windows on my laptop (that I got as replacement for the tower PC before I figured out I could change to Linux -- I do love my laptop though), and I plan to keep it that way for now (I disabled most of the things I hated about Windows so far anyway, at least as much as I could get away with without bricking my laptop).

But back to writing processors. I've been wanting to have something that is just in my own computer/that can be used completely offline. I've got LibreOffice for all kinds of documents that need to open on the Microsoft Office suite, but that's not my favourite to write with. I tried Scrivener when I got it 50% off after a Nanowrimo, and it was fun for a while but it feels like a waste of time for the most part, at least for how I write. I tried Quoll Writer, which is pretty much the same thing as Scrivener but for free and it works well on Linux. I still use it sometimes, but again, not my favourite kind of writing software. Editing software, sure, let's go! But writing, no. Doesn't mesh well with my brain.

I have on and off phases with typewriters as well. I own two, one that I tinkered with to bring it back to life, the other that I got in an amazing condition right off the bat. I like the one I tinkered with better though, if I'm honest. It's missing a non essential part that makes it so the bell doesn't ring at the end of the line, but the keys are much smoother to hit so I can write for longer on it. They both bring me joy in their own ways though. I should probably name them actually. And eventually, display them (for now I keep them safe in their boxes and only pull them out as needed).

I also got an AlphaSmart 3000 from ebay. That one is really fun but the keys are all so sticky, I just need to gather the courage to solder in the new mechanical keyboard I got for it and it'll be fine. But ya, soldering. That thing scares me a bit because I know the fumes can get bad and I don't really have a space to properly do it at. I do want to do it sometimes before summer though cause I'll be moving somewhere in June/July and I would love to have it perfectly working before then.

So ya, back to Obsidian. It's not a complicated processor, or at least not too complicated. At first, the lack of choice of font bothered me, but I discovered that I can just change the theme for it. I went with the typewriter theme (pretty on brand for me XD), and could from there change the font the one I've been writing the most in lately: a coding mono font. I can't remember the exact name of it though, but if you post here and write in the HTML formatting rather than the rich text, that's the font. I knew some writers like to use a different font than typical Arial or Times New Roman when they write (something about loosening the need to be perfect from the get go), and I knew some of them use fonts like Comic Sans or even Wingding to trick themselves into writing, but hey, this coding font seems to work for me and I'm here for it. I think since joining here it's the first time I wrote that often (practically daily) in a LONG time. Even in my paper diary, I've been writing every day too (might have to do with the new gel pens I got too, seems like I'm winning with the choice of tools this year).

Moral of the story: it might take a while to find the good tools, but once they are found, they stick. And also, it pays to give tools another try and learn to be patient with them rather than dismiss them right away because they're not immediately understood.

I've been updating the last few months worth of movies I watched on Letterboxd. I don't always leave reviews (I don't leave reviews most of the time), but I enjoy seeing how much I've watched in my life, at least all I can remember watching. I'm sure I'm still missing a few from way back when, but c'est la vie.

If you wanna follow me on letterboxd, here's the link.

I'll update my Storygraph soon and share the link here too.