Life lately
I miss blogging. And no, not the blogging that I do here now, but the online journaling of the early 2000’s–those long posts about our days written in LiveJournals or those self-hosted blogs on Greymatter (who remembers this?). I used to do it in a sort of ~cryptic fashion in my other personal blog before I published my first book, but to be honest, when I read them now, I could see how the blog posts were kind of…performative in some way. I mean, yes, those were the words from my heart and a slice of all my angst and learnings during those years, but also now I could see that I wrote them in a very similar way to the other blogs that I consumed at those times. Like, there should always be a Message to the post, a Realization about something in life, a Learning, a Point. And maybe, maybe, I kind of want some people to read that and maybe realize the things that I couldn’t tell to their faces.
I have no regrets on that phase of my life, but also I remember that I never really set out to that kind of blogger. When I first made a blog back then it was really just to write about my day–where I went, what activities I went to, my classes, and maybe a bit too much about my current crushes. Haha. And I miss that.
Of course, spilling your guts online for the whole world to see and for people to search decades later isn’t the wisest things now and that’s really the purpose of all the blank notebooks here at home, and talking to people about things. Or maybe I just miss this because I miss my friends, I miss having long conversations in person rather than on video calls or chats.
But like I said in my last post, I have kind of come to accept that a big part of this 2021 will probably be the same as last year–until a big chunk of the world gets vaccinated, anyway, but even then, who knows, right? So I’m keeping my expectations low but my hopes up. By this I mean, not to expect that all that I missed last year will come back quickly this year, but still hope that it will come back in some way, shape or form sometime. If within this year, then yay, but if not…well, it is what it is. I mean, Jesus did say, “Do not worry about tomorrow” so maybe that’s what I really need to do this year.
And with that, there is no real point here except that I just want to write something. Get some words out as a warm-up because it’s Monday and people are finally getting back into the groove of work and I actually need to be productive. And also maybe because I feel like rambling a little bit (you’ll see haha), so here we go:
Reading:
Geekerella: A Fangirl Fairytale by Ashley Poston. Reading this mostly for research on a Thing but also I just wanted something light and fun. The last few months of 2020 were crappy for my reading and even now I still have a hard time focusing on any of the books in my Kindle–not even the latest book from one of my favorite authors from last year. 🙁 I am tracking all my 2021 reads in this Twitter thread, and I hope I can keep it updated this time. (Sidenote: I sort of kind of miss reviewing books on a book blog, haha, but my book blogger days are over now.)
Writing:
I have several articles due for work this week, and also a short story that I hope to finish this week for an upcoming thing. Creative writing nowadays feels like pulling teeth. It’s been hard writing things, really, and sometime late last year, I started despairing over it, until friends reminded me that 1) we’re all on survival mode so obviously, our brain puts more of its power into surviving vs. creating, and 2) we’re all still grieving for the things that we lost/were taken way from us in 2020 that it’s just natural to not be able to write or create anything.
It sucks, but things have been looking up lately, so here’s hoping it all works out.
