Cerulean Mornings

Yay, start of a new series on this blog! I've been trying to think of ways to use this blog more and well, let's just put things on here that I have opinions about haha. Before I used to list all the songs/album I've been listening to for the month and I stopped doing that because I haven't really been listening to full albums as much. I've just been putting on background music mixes from Youtube or just do without any music at all. Now for some reason I want to revisit albums - Spotify is still a thing I'm paying for and enjoying - so I figure, why not continue what I was doing before? But not the exact same! There are changes!

I've always been one of those people who only listen through full albums. I find new music from random places, but a lot I just click on the artists who've collaborated with an artist I already like (super easy to do on Spotify, really) and listen to them to see if I like them too. I like T.I. and through his albums I started listening to Yo Gotti and Keven Gates. I listen to some trip-hop mixes and like certain tracks by some artists I've never heard of and then start to become their fan from there (like DJ Krush, and Phontaine, and Kruder & Dorfmeister.) I never use the suggestion feature so people who gripe about AI ruining everything, well, I have wholly escaped that problem. So I'm going to put short blurbs on here of 100% my opinion on some albums I'm going through now. Might be fun. 

New year, new goal, yeah! Well, technically we're still in old year but my mindset has gone on to 2026 already. 2025 has dragged on so long that I'm mentally way into the next year already. I'm hoping 2026 will be "my" year. None of that "toxic positivity" stuff. I'm just saying what I'm sincerely hoping.

I have officially joined 2026 getyourwordsout and now have a banner for it. Woohoo!





GetYourWordsOut: Year Eighteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

I have pledged for "The Excursionist" habit pledge, which is to work on writing 180 days out of the year. Yes, it's kind of ambitious that I couldn't even do the Backpacker last year (120 days) and now I'm pledging for a higher day count. Well, I'm thinking that the count was too low last year might be one of the reasons I kept putting it off. Like, I was always thinking "it's only 3 months, you've got time!" and before I knew it, time had flown by and wham, it was September! So I'm thinking if I make the goal a bit harder, I'll be less complacent and I will start early. Also, I actually do want to seriously attempt the challenge this time, and not let life completely suck my motivation out. Push myself a little, you know? So 15 days a month working (not writing words only, but working on fics, including planning, brainstorming, anything as long as it's my fiction related!) on my writing should be the bare minimum I want to set for myself. I want to try to make this an actual career-like thing and not a hobby, so I definitely need to treat it like one. We'll see how this fares for me next year. I do feel like starting over, kind of, at 41 when it comes to career is, uh, a choice. But hey, better late than never?

Hi all. It has been a couple of months, and I have written 0 words and have done 0 brainstorming for my writing projects, and other projects in general. Why? Well, let's just say that I have finally, officially been diagnosed as someone who is not neurotypical. Pretty severe forms of it from the look of things, and I have been prescribed new medication to try to tackle my symptoms. It made my life in the past few months complicated, to say the least. So many side effects and revelations about myself! But, but but but! I also think, for the first time in my life, I'm approaching what "normal" people feel everyday. I stopped freaking out and spiraling over every little (and big) thing, for one. And hidden within the depth of my neuro-atypical brain, there is now a tiny glimmer of motivation that had not been there before. At least not for the past decade or so. So there is progress, just coming very, very, very slowly.

So yeah, I didn't have the capacity to get up from my bed on some days, never mind working on a fic. I've diligently checked in with the GYWO monthly checker but I put a big fat 0 for progress. Will still be a 0 for this month too, but maybe next month something will have changed. I am hopeful. Until then, I guess. When I finally began any brainstorming I will update here. It'll be an important milestone even though it's probably a miniscule amount of progress. I still would like to celebrate it as an achievement for myself.

Hi! Yes yes, I disappeared again for a while. That seems to be the trend, eh? Disappearing for a few months at a time but never actually abandoning this journal. I consider this a win ahaha. Used to be if it gets consistently like this I'd just delete the whole thing and start over fresh. But for some reason, I always come back here after a while, no matter what. It's been 6 years and this journal is still here, active and paid for, so yeah, let's keep this one around, eh?

I do have some excuse for the past month to not be back, because I had my in-laws staying with me this entire time, and they were very stressful! Since this journal is mostly about me writing in fandom, well, obviously I did not get any writing done with that much stress. I didn't even get any fandom reading done, let alone anything else. So that's my excuse for being absent in the month of September. However, the months from May to August I had no excuse. I think I was trying to write ChengXian but then I got stuck plotting, and then life happened so I never got to the actual writing part. It's 100% my fault, and now, when it's almost October, I want to rectify that for realz. But! But but but. Not with ChengXian.

Why? Well, first of all I haven't read in fandom for a while, and I've never actually wrote in MDZS, so I am a little bit trepidatious about the whole thing. Second, I am trying to restart this whole "writing" bit, in general, and so I think trying to write characters accurately is stressing me out haha. I think it's better if I have a blanker slate, so yes, I could do my own characters and work at my actual novel, but that is even more scary as I haven't written in that for a long time either. *sigh* Anyway, the point is, I'm going to try to write in a fandom where it's more, forgiving, shall we say? In that it's a dead, small fandom and nobody cares if the people I write becomes a bit OOC. (Or at least I hope not 😅). Yeah...... Remember a while ago I talked about Saint Seiya? No? Good! Because I want to start off there! (It's in my tags if you actually want to bother finding out.) I actually brainstormed a crapload of plot - even got a pretty good Notion board out of it, but like with my ChengXian plot, I never put any words down. I think I've been paralyzed with not writing so long I've forgotten how to do it. Well then! That won't do! No time like the present to try to get back. It's a skill, right? Practice makes better (never expect perfect, that's just counter-productive thinking).

So hopefully I will talk about writing and fandom more here. I had started a writing side blog hoping to track my progress, but I think it just ended up being way too much. So I'm going to delete that blog and talk about writing here. I'm not sure what to do with my gaming side blog, either. I do use it but not nearly enough to warrant a whole blog for it, you know? I have a habit of starting many things and never finishing them, which is terrible, so I'm going to try to break that. The first step is to pare things down so I don't have too many obligations haunting me. They're very counter-productive in my case.

One last thing, I really want to join getyourwordsout this year. I missed the sign up by like a day or something last year. Will set myself a reminder for December. 

Hi. It's been a while. I have a good excuse, though, and that is that my medical issues did not get better. In fact, it got pretty bad for a stint there, which also contributed to my depression, and so I pretty much took all of April off from, well, everything. I stopped blogging; I stopped journaling/planning; I stopped writing/working. The only things I managed to do were some essential household chores like dishes and laundry. And, yeah, that was why I disappeared for the past month.

However, I have recovered! At least physically. Mentally it's another issue, but I'm taking steps to get it addressed, so not the most pressing right now. I am getting back to my regular routine, so hopefully soon I will be able to go back to writing. I am tackling coding today, though. There are just so many other things I have to do now that I took a month off. Most are large chores like vacuuming the entire house, dusting the entire house, organize all the stuff I haven't been able to get to, cook, plus I have life chores like make more doctor appointments, go to the DMV, you know, annoying bureaucracy things. Sometimes, seriously, I wonder how anyone get anything done in the short daytime hours. Just a few things could take up so much of your time that you felt like you've accomplished nothing even though at the same time you felt like already tackled a mountain. Oy.

Sidenote: I am considering restarting posting monthly playlists again. I did that before, listing out all the music I've got in the background in the course of a month. Nowadays I listen to white or brown noise more often than not (because I've got this annoying tinnitus!), but I have been delving into full albums (the new Taylor Swift and Beyoncé ones, at least) again, so perhaps I should post them for myself, for fun, again?