What Am I Doing Now?

I always find myself kind of struggling with pages like this. Mostly because I tend to think a lot of what I do really isn't all that interesting and I have to kind of force myself to talk about it. Admittedly, I think if I hadn't propped myself up quite a bit and tried to seem more full of myself, this website would probably be a lot more empty and what not. I guess I'm just decent at rambling though. Enough of that. I know it's supposed to be over the last year, but some of my old friends I haven't talked to in some time. I suppose highlights of the last 5 years might be more appropriate.

As of late, I've been trying to get back on a diet. I lost around 60 pounds a while back, when I was in a really bad mental place, all from going on Keto. It's amazing what a diet can do for you if you really stick to it. But now I gotta get back on it and make it well, stick. I want to lose another 50 to 60 pounds. I told my doctor my goal was 150, but in reality, it's 120. I'm 30 away from the 150 though, so that feels generally pretty good. But I've gotta keep at it. I need to be more active, mostly. It'll be hard, but even 20 minute walks can help. It's just a habit I need to form again.

I stopped smoking a lot of weed. Well, it wasn't like, a lot a lot, but it was more than enough. I told myself that while it was calming, it really wasn't doing anything for me outside of cramp and stress relief. And most of the stress was related to menial things. A lot of it was things like performance in video games (FF14 Raiding). I just told myself that wasn't worth it. The woman next door asked me why I stopped smoking, and I told her why, and then she suggested a brand of cigarettes. I dunno if I could do cigarettes, considering how I saw the struggle it takes to quit and how easily you can get hooked on them, but I admittedly like the scent. I know they're appetite suppressors, but I'm unsure if I want to lose weight that way.

Both Oscar and Felix passed away recently. Oscar was the tail end of 2024, so my brain is still grouping it as 2025 in a way. Felix was this May. It feels weird to not have dogs anymore. I miss them a lot and I think of them constantly. I kind of want another dog, but I'm unsure if I'm mentally ready or even prepared for that task. Dogs can be expensive...

Last year, I met up with my main FF14 friend group. Almost all of us had a falling out later in the year. Only 1 person and I still talk. Funny how that happens. I still think about them, I still care, but I don't think they'd probably care that I'm gone. They're probably all glad, so I tell myself I'm better off without them. If this was a year prior, I'd have probably fallen apart.

I finally managed to quit Maplestory. Or at least, the official North American servers (aka "Global" Maplestory). It's weird to finally be gone from there. I can't say I really miss it in most aspects, but I definitely do miss it's general presence. There was something about that game that I was just stuck on since 2004 and the Open Beta or something like that. I can't believe 2023 is when I finally let go. I suppose at some point I may finally work up the courage to let go of Final Fantasy 14 proper. I'm in the process of that. I wanted to do a new game+. I'm kinda in the middle of it. Last thing I did was up to the Stone Vigil. I'm playing at the rate of slow, but it's important to savor the experience in my mind. Mabinogi however, I don't think I'll let go of. My relationship with the game is pretty casual as is, so I'm okay with sticking around Erinn.

Oh, on the topic of FF14, I cleared 3 ultimates finally. Only the 1st 3. I'd like to do more, but like, I don't think I'll do much other than DSR and maybe FRU if I unlock it. I'm undecided on TOP, and I don't think I have it in me to catch up and do UMAD. But the fight looks cool. The desire to raid in any given MMO might just be my strongest vice. It beckons to me, constantly, even when I don't have the mental fortitude to deal with it. But also hype moments and absolute aura. I will always care the most about the Epic of Alexander and the feelings I had clearing that fight. It is the pinnacle of FF14 for me. Having returned to this game during Heavensward and making my current character, I think defeating this fight is the one thing that allowed me to make peace with the idea that you can't stay on MMOs forever and that letting go is okay.

I generally stopped using most social media. I got rid of my facebook, my instagram, and I deleted quite a few twitter accounts (though truth be told, whenever things got too rough, I'd just nuke them anyways.) At some point on an account I used for retweeting art reference material and not interacting, I got suspended for whatever reason. And they never fixed that. So I can't even like, lurk twitter I guess. IDK, I hate that you have to be there to have some sort of presence. I mean, I have a Bluesky, but that place really doesn't see much of any action. Status.Cafe I use from time to time, and I recently joined up to PikiDiary. I heard it had an art section. So I dunno, maybe it'll be my new fix. There was another one I remember joining that was kinda indie social media, but I already forgot what it was. I suppose it wasn't too important.

I finally watched YuGiOh in full over the last few years. It's one of the few pieces of media I've consumed that I could consider "Life Changing." I'd say the others are Pokemon & Umineko. But I liked it enough to be up there with those two. And maybe Halo. I dunno what it was about Yugioh as a series, but it just really touched my heart. I'd like to thank Takahashi-sensei for his work, but he unfortunately passed. Very sad. I hope that somewhere out there in the great beyond, if it really does exist, that those feelings of grattitude could reach him.

Speaking of media: Since deciding to quit FF14 over time and finish up there, I made it my goal to start going through my massive backlog. Games, Anime, Shows, Movies, Manga, Albums, Books, Plays... There's so many other things I want to spend my time on. On the topic of that: I did mostly catch up with JJBA. I am still a bit behind on that, but I am ever closer to being caught up with the manga. The anime I'm completely caught up on, as we finally got Steel Ball Run being adapted. More in September. I also managed to watch the entirety of Ash's Journey when it comes to Pokemon. I'm kinda proud of watching all that and really giving it my all with Pokemon media. That was fun. And then I also did One Piece. It's really good. I'm caught up on the anime, but I'm working through the manga as well.

I also started collecting again. I remember after I had to sell, I swore it off for a long time, but then ended up getitng into IDOLiSH7 (which I am not really into these days. I still like it though.) I told myself I had to lock in and that my entire collection should be i7 related and then ended up in some sort of mental doom spiral of sorts. It didn't help that I had lost my job around that time (Well, I am still technically out of a job, but working with taking care of old people and doing the things they need is practically a full time job so it's not like I'm not doing anything), so it coincided with a lot of things. Weight gain, extreme depression, really negative thoughts and what not, and just generally not moving around a lot. I feel a lot better once I let go of it. But I do have a collection again. I got back quite a few things that were important to me, and then also started a new character shrine. I won't let it rule my entire room though, so that's that. But I did buy 2 dedicated bookshelves for said character. So it's kinda fun. But I still want to collect other things, so I'm allowing myself to do that and not fret about stuff as much. I did also opt to sell some things I collected that either didn't fit or I wasn't as passionate about anymore. So, there's that. You can see pictures of my collection around my site.

I suppose on the topic of collecting, I started being more upfront about being a Yumejoshi. It's a rare use of feminine pronouns/identification from me I suppose, but like... Over the years due to how people treated me about being a Raven (from Tales of Vesperia) roleplayer and selfshipper/yume/general fangirl, and how even to this day, there seems to be drama around said character (Definitely flared up due to the Definitive edition) I was always really afraid of doing Yume stuff and taking it seriously. And it didn't help that at some point during our 1P watchthrough and generally having been through a lot of shit that was still really ongoing at the time, I had fallen into more Yume feelings, I was just like "Oh god this can't be happening to me again." And well, it happened. Over the last year I've been really just trying to be more generally okay with it. I've gotten weird amounts of shit for it from people I know. I've been called a fake lesbian, I've been judged over my choice of F/O, I've just generally been mocked relentlessly by a certain person I know about it, and of course said F/O is great at getting slandered because yeah of course I picked the same type of character as Raven. Honestly I hate like 95% of the takes on Sanji as a character that come out of people's mouths and I honestly sincerely want a lot of people to shut the fuck up about him (Which like, same feeling I had with Raven and any discourse surrounding him) but in general I'm decently happy. It's really kinda weird, almost a bit dumb to say that I feel not only loved, but a bit more at ease with a lot of personal trauma that happened over the years and a bit more accepting of my own birth gender. I don't think I'm not non-binary, but I feel like because of all this, I was able to kind of let go of some of that pain and actually accept my own femininity and realize that having it doesn't mean its by default at odds with my own masculinity and that they can both exist within me and that I didn't have to like... void them out somehow.

The last thing to speak about would honestly be here. This website. It's funny, I made this on a whim because I saw it as a way to express myself when I was struggling with how I didn't feel heard around certain friends. And now it's kind of blossomed into it's own thing. It's weird how that happens, but I'm glad to have this little home on the internet. It's almost 2 years old now, and I hope that it'll keep growing.

For now, that's all I have to say. Who knows what I'll say in the next few years.