Yeah, happy new year and all that. As usual, I'm posting the month end and month start stuff solidly into the first week. I guess it beats being even more late than that. You've read this blog, you know how it goes... many call it laziness, a lack of punctuality, procrastination. It has many names. I like to think of it as going back in time and reminiscing.
Goals
1. Complete the Digital Advent Calendar 2025
Boom, total success! That's right all 24 posts sit, complete, on the project blog.
2. Finish the COTY 2026 Calendar
Close enough. I finished the first 6 months and published them on my project blog.
3. Get gifts for everyone who's getting gifts
Got, got, got! 'Twas not the best of my gift-giving this year so I'm gonna try to save up better for next year.
4. Update CDwORLD
About half-way, which is more than no way.
5. Update media logs
Ran out of time. Good luck, future me.
6. Go ask about the night shift job
Didn't but I resolved the issue with this dumb meeting I was supposed to have before going to France Travail again. One step closer.
7. Do Petrapixel's Digital Declutter Advent Calendar
Did it. The PCs a mess again though...
8. Order MP3 player
I did. And it arrived! It kicks ass. Stay tuned for more news on that front.
Wow, officially the last week of the year... there's only 52 of 'em and even though December runs out half-way through what will be week 1 of 2026, this one's coming to a close now. So strange. It's not my first new year on the blog but it still feels so fresh.
Will I still be here 10 years on? Will it feel like a while after that? Who knows! This is not my actual end-of-the-year post, that will come sometime in 2026. It's just another week, though it sure doesn't feel like it.
Week 52.
Monday... Guess who stopped being a pussy? Me! I went to the CMS (where the social workers reign) center and finally asked for a meeting face-to-face as they've kind of been promising to call me back but never did. The lady took my number and I was feeling hopeful for once. I went to the outlet store to find some extra wrapping paper and a Christmas card for Tom. I tried to drop by the dentist's too but she was gone until early January. Again, if I went sooner I'd atleast have the appointment sooner...
Tuesday I officially finished Jade Empire. Killed the evil guys, upped my Leaping Tiger style to the max, made out with Sky, restored peace to the land. Man, this game was great... felt a little short but I'll definitely come back to it. I even visited the archives of the Bioware forums but sadly so many topics were not preserved by IA and I couldn't read them. I would love to find a more active gaming forum so if anyone knows of any, please drop me a link.
I also got a call back from CMS and got a meeting on the same day. This is new ground, never been done before. It went really well, she finally sent of the needed documents to France Travail and even hooked me up with a possible side job as a translator.
Tom also called us in a panic because his dumb ass somehow managed to get the most aggressive virus on his computer that broke into his Discord and started spamming us with Mr. Beast crypto. He was downloading shit from suspicious forums instead of the nice and approved illegal websites like a good sailor. Dummy. We had to talk him down from totally freaking out and all ended well but it was pretty funny.
Wednesday was Christmas Eve. I got a wine for Monique who picked us up at about 7PM. Before we left I gave my cats the fancy wetfood (it even has a shrimp in it!). They deserve it, though they weren't exactly well-behaved at all their vet visits this year but they were there at least. Sometimes that's all you can ask of them. At Monique's we had some champagne while we chatted about all sorts of stuff. Then we had dinner which was amazing. First we had a lot of foie gras with some bread, followed by a chicken and mushroom pie, and then dessert on top of that. Everyone was a little tipsy, including my brother who never drinks. He was even more talkative than usual. It's almost impossible to measure how much more because he's allergic to shutting the fuck up. Then we hung out til midnight with some news on in the back until Monique dropped us off at home. I was in pain from so much delicious food. I had a food nightmare even...
Fireplace!
I'm literally drooling...
When I try to be mysterious but can't STFU.
Warming the leg.
On Thursday we mostly lazed about, we started Halo 3, until 5PM after which we went to Tom's. We had a light dinner and just yapped about whatever the fuck for a couple of hours. I also convinced him to buy Left 4 Dead 2 so we could all play it
together. I'm literally so excited to be re-playing this more than a
decade old game for the 60th time, you guys have no idea. Everyone was still sleepy as hell so after we got home we did nearly nothing.
On Friday I was setting up my sister's iPod nano that came in a few days before. It's kind of a weird gift maybe but I love music players so it's more than alright by me and she's not allowed a phone during school time but sometimes she wants to listen to music, so it makes sense. Anyway I'd rather she ask for this than all that crazy shit I've seen other 14 year olds ask for in the video essays I've been binging as of late. Do feel real sorry that kids just don't have... kid stuff anymore. Why the fuck does a 13 year old want skin care, or plain yet outrageously expensive leggings, or a Gucci bag? And why are the parents buying all that? It's crazy...
Anyway, with Rockbox on it the thing doesn't need iTunes anymore and it fucking runs Doom. Yeah, it runs Doom, man! Does it run it real bad? Actually, no, the frame rate is pretty great but the controls... yeah, the controls suck big time. Because it's an iPod, not a Gameboy. If only...
It has themes!
We have a lot of cleaning up to do before the 31st. My mum and sister are coming back on the weirdest of days, on new year's eve. We started the cleaning on Saturday and it bled into Sunday. Vacuuming, mopping, doing a lotta laundry, cat litter, wiping everything down; all the good stuff. The worst is of course the bi-monthly fridge defrosting. Our old ass fridge grows a layer of ice like it's the ice age on the back wall and in order for our food to not be consumed by this monstrosity we have to de-freeze the whole thing on occasion. We get a 10kg ice block from it. Nothing can be down with it but it looks kind of cool.
The End...?
This Week I'm Excited For...
New Year's! Every year I'm excited for New Year's and every year I'm sort of let down but I actually keep being excited anyway. The benefits of a terrible memory. It's my favourite (or maybe second favourite, second only to Halloween) holiday of the year. I like when the numbers change.
Song Of The Week...
Instead of picking an actual song of this week, I'm picking a song that has been kind of my overarching song of the year. I'm actually surprised that with all the Deftones I've had all year, this one wasn't my song of the week yet. It's a pretty overlooked one, but one I'm always drawn to regardless of time and place. Without any more, hear it for yourself, maybe you'll feel the same ache and ethereal call that I always do: What Happened To You.
Yet another late entry. But we're crawling closer to the finish line!It's gonna be hard recollecting what exactly went down with the amount of time between present-time me and that week so long ago. I had a pretty hectic end to the year. In general, it was a pretty bad week.
I was feeling very sad most of the time, can't put a finger on it. It's probably the combination of everything coming to a stall both from my own anxiety that lead to me being paralyzed and not doing what I should and the overarching bureaucracy that follows me everywhere. It got better later.
Week 51.
On Monday I finished the layout for April for my COTY calendar. I also tried out the Xbox on my little TV in my bedroom and it didn't work until I realized I just needed to really jam the HDMI in there. The beauty of old tech. I was playing Jade Empire as usual and some Blur. I've also been late to the digital declutter advent calendar but I did manage to fix up my MOBI/EPUB collection. I figured out how to change fonts and backgrounds on Calibre so now the whole thing looks pretty cool if I do say so myself.
I've read like only 5 of these books... what a poser.
Nothing much happened on Tuesday and on Wednesday my period started so I was even more down than usual, but cramps always mean movie time. I watched August (2008), at some point I started this Josh Hartnett marathon and I ain't about to leave a task unfinished (hah! true only for movie-watching). Anyway, it was kind of a dumb and sad movie but it had a pretty great atmosphere what with all the exaggerated filters and the late 2000s furniture. It hit the spot. On Thursday I was making a video game quiz for my site.
On Friday my sister and my mum left to Georgia to go see my dad. That's Georgia that's got Tbilisi
and Kutaisi in it, not Atlanta-Savannah-Athens Georgia. I was still recovering from my period and getting closer to the middle of Jade Empire, I already made it to the Imperial City. I really wanted to romance either Sky or Silk Fox, and I was leaning towards Silk Fox, but she rebuked my advances... I'll have to do a second playthrough.
On Saturday we and Mo decided to have a mini-party by buying some McDonalds and putting all the food in fancy plates. It's the juxtaposition. We put the sauces in the silver-y platter for butter. Coke in the champagne glasses. Oh yeah. Anyway we did all that for fun but also to make a dumb video for the family chat. I was informed this is a Jerma bit. What isn't?
We finished Halo 2. It rocked. Then we also watched Die Hard. For the first time. Fun. Our annual The Division playthrough with Mo's bestie Rost was also due. I surprised myself by staying up and playing Jade Empire until 3AM, I haven't done that since high school.
There he is in all his glory...
Warm.
Following Petra's advent calendar I took some time on Sunday to unsub from a bunch of channels, even those I like, if they felt like they were too time-consuming. I still left a bunch of stuff I like but cut a lot of it out. It's one of my new year resolutions, to get rid of as much YouTube as I can.
Terrible evening photography.
Not really ready for the year to end. But also good riddance, 2025. It's been ups and downs and the downs have been real brutal, real nasty. Wish that there was some kind of time-magic that when the seasons changed and the year lapsed, everything would be new and different. Every year I'm sure we're all disappointed.
The end.
This Week I'm Excited For...
I guess I'm excited for Christmas since we'll be spending it with Monique. She'll be alone for this one so I'm glad we'll be there with her. Plus it don't hurt that she's an excellent cook. When her husband was still alive, she was actually running their restaurant while he was the chef. According to her, she's not really a good cook (not true) and he was... I fear what even a spoonful of her late husband's cooking would do then. I'd probably die of deliciousness.
Song Of The Week...
I often do not listen to Eight Gates as it's the only album from Molina that's been released after his death that's not a live or a covers album. Like Autumn Bird Songs, it also was recorded years before it was actually released. Though while the time between recording and release for the latter was more like 5 to 4 years, it was more than a decade for Eight Gates. All the tracks were recorded in January of 2009 and the album was released in 2020, it was the only album of Jason's that I witnessed the release of. When he died in 2013, I didn't even know he existed in the first place. It was only during 2018 that I first heard Farewell Transmission (which I thought was kind of long and boring as it was playing in the background, then one day it came up again and I was frozen in place mid-task, it's beauty had my total attention, can you believe it was the same song?). A lot of people say this album reads more like a demo, unfinished song sketches, than an actual album. But I guess if you're this deep into Molina's work, it's not that any scraps will do but that you're aware a lot of what he did sounds between worlds: on the way to the end and never getting there. I have a love for it, the early, grainy, liminal stuff. Apparently there's loads more still in the Secretly Canadian archives, a lot of which I'm sure will never see the light of day and that does eat me up. Anyway... Be Told The Truth by Jason Molina.
This is gonna be a hard one. I can barely even remember what was when... I'm almost three weeks late to this post. It's a new low, indeed. December has not been easy. Honestly, I'm like, what the fuck? This is the jolly, easy month, what in the fresh hell is happening here? But yeah, as usual we rolled with the punches. It's truly cold, we have to keep the heating on often. I remember when I was in uni I'd stay at my friend V's apartment and we'd turn the heating off after a real short while and jump under the blanket where we'd do class work, watch anime, and whatever else. It's not that bad here yet but it's a neat money-saving trick!
Week 50!
Monday! I did not brave going to the seasonal work office thing. It's getting annoying even to me, but somehow the anxiety always comes first. Something needs to happen soon and by that I mean that I've got to stop hoping and walk my feet to the place and open my mouth and talk. Easier thought up than done. I did finish my Bad Batch fanlisting and sent it over to the network before they pack up for the holidays.
Hanging out.
Recently I've also been back into old CG. Specifically the 1999-2005 era, everything beyond that looks a little too good. It really needs to be very uncanny, sort of ethereal, extra sci-fi. Ten million points if there's lots of water and the sky is two colours bleeding into each other. I think it's all that Halo. Or the old Microsoft Game Studios logo which is the shit!
Stuff like this.
Tuesday was pretty great. I got a mail in the mailbox! It was from Alice! Hurrah! It came with a mixtape that was the bomb. Otherwise I just did stuff around my room until the afternoon when I went to get Tom a Christmas card (I'll just be giving him a Steam gift card but I need somewhere to put it). My sister joined me in my cinema-corner and we half-watched Ultraviolet which is a very dumb movie.
Wednesday was more of the same, I did a little work on my site that was totally unnecessary: the 2008 game quiz. However I stayed up til like 2AM to watch the Game Awards. Royal waste of time. I don't have anything for or against Clair Obscur but it was so boring to watch them win basically every category (especially for music, which they really did not deserve). Most of the reveals were also so mediocre with the exception of the new Tomb Raiders, Coven Of The Chicken Foot, some more about Out Of Words, and most importantly, Fate Of The Old Republic! Also it was nice that No Man's Sky won for best ongoing game and Hades won for best aciton, they really earned that.
However... Highguard... Guys, you may or may not know but I'm a Titanfall diehard, I still play Titanfall 2 a few times a week. And I was there for Apex on launch, I really like the original version of the game but don't care for it now. Highguard sucks. It looks like it sucks so much. Really? Another hero-shooter bullshit game? It feels like whatever creative force existed behind Titanfall is totally squandered. The new Divinity is also going to be plagued with AI, goodbye Larian. The whole Street Fighter segment was downright embarrassing with that right-wing podcast moron, never been happier to be a Mortal Kombat girl. At least Leon's gonna be in the new Resident Evil, I guess.
On Friday I took the Xbox into my room to my little cinema corner and spent hours playing Jade Empire and Blur. It was a lot of fun. Saturday was kind of the same but I tried keeping up with the advent posts on my project blog. To sate my need for early 2000s CG I watched Alien Planet. A bizzaro hypothetical documentary about potential alien life with real scientists and George Lucas. It was freaking awesome!
Arm... stretched!
On Sunday the owners of a nearby convenience store came for lunch and we had hot pot. They are an older Portuguese couple and I don't think they really enjoyed the hot pot but they were curious to try it so worthwhile anyway. More for us too! I also started Heated Rivalry. The writing is pretty bad but it's so nice the way it feels like a communal watch, seems like everyone's keeping up with it and I think that's great.
The end.
This Week I'm Excited For...
Not really for myself but my mum and sister will travel to Tbilisi to see my dad next week, so I'm excited on their behalf. My sister hasn't been on a vacation in years so it's about time and it will be good if she spends some time with that deadbeat.
Song Of The Week...
I've been back to the sort of easy-listening/electro stuff since I've been really into Trifonic. Made my way back to Susumu Yokota's more dance-y albums somehow and have been stuck on Sound Of Sky again, an often underrated part of his work. My second fave track is Crash Marble. So, so groovy. Please enjoy.
When the month starts on a Monday? Absolute perfection! I don't particularly believe in the Christmas spirit but if there's one thing I love about December it's that everyone really mellows out. Even if it's a little.
Almost like people don't really have the urge to get mad, annoyed, frustrated with you like they would on a regular day. This isn't true for everyone, but I like it when I see it. Otherwise, we've also got to decorating this week and the tree looks amazing! Please observe our skills and result later in the post.
Week 49!
Now, before we get down to the weekly shenanigans, I have to warn you, the top part of this post is very clogged. Clogged with a rant, a tangent, a real monologue on something that has been churning in my brain throughout what I want to say is this week, but in reality, is probably more like the last five years.
Irony! What is it? I used to throw it around incorrectly all the time. I would say everything was ironic because some Homestuck character in 2012 said it a lot or something and somehow that became part of my thing too. I will also confess that I unironically (I know what the word means now, thanks) also sent messages to friends formatted with Sollux's typing quirk, the double 'i's all over the place were deeply pleasing to me. And at some point in time, I didn't actually just learn what the word meant, it's more like I saw it happen in real time.
Irony poisoning. A hyper online term itself that I'm also apparently using wrong. Originally, it meant a very specific thing: edgy people making offensive, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted jokes ironically so often, they started to treat them more as the truth. Scary. However, when I say irony poisoning, it's something perhaps less severe but much more prevalent. Because it's the death of sincerity.
I think if you've been online at any point in the 2020s (likely this discourse is even older than that) I'm sure you already know what's up. It is wrong... no! Even worse, it is cringe, to have genuine feelings about things that lead to you expressing said honest feelings in the public sphere. It's a very weird dichotomy to exist in: cringe is dead but also everything is cringe if you do it wrong. No, really. Take anime. In my day, being a weeb in an capacity was a crime punishable by death if you're lucky and intricate social humiliation if people really hated you. Now, anime is a mainstream hobby (though maybe it is too now on a downswing). Even when we progress, accepting an interest as normal, the criticism for people partaking in the interest knows no bounds. You can't cosplay, that's cringe. You can't be too loud, too excited, too earnest. That's cringe. You can't analyze and critique the media as if it's Shakespeare, it's not that deep. That is cringe!
Not to mention that certain people calling some 'weird' behaviors red flags, cringe, or stupid are just being hateful to people who are neurodivergent. How many behaviors that are just a part of neurodivergent life or are related to how some neurodivergent people express themselves are automatically labeled cringe and looked down upon for no real reason? The list is endless.
You can make your craft or your art or your fiction but if you are passionate about it you are cringe. If you're confident, you're cringe. If you're shy and weird, you're cringe. If you started a hobby too young, you're cringe. If you started it too old, you're even more cringe. If you care deeply about things... well, you know. Okay, I'll mix it up: you're a try-hard.
I'm a frequent offender. I remember seeing a screenshot of a post where an artist posted some work of theirs with a caption that read 'wait, I kind of ate tho...' and that shit made me mad. Something about Gen Z slang plus confidence made my brain glitch. I know. Why? Why the fuck would I get mad? That's so childish. But it's the way a lot of people react to seeing someone else be assured of their craft, even if, especially if, they are not perfectly proficient in it. I sit here on my little fucking high chair of bullshit and hypocrisy, brewing a speech about how all art is good art (except AI art, that is one fucking high horse you will not be knocking me off of) and then I turn around and seethe at someone who dares show genuine pride. It makes me kind of sick to think about it now.
After all, it's my own choice to be miserable and hate my work and have no confidence in it. Being that way makes my experience of my art worse. It's not all I feel for my art but sometimes I do. And people who chose to be eager about their own work, well, they skip all that. So, who's really winning? It's not me.
But it's not just hobbies. It's down to our core. Do you really care about things? Is your personality eccentric, strange, annoying, or something? Do you cry easily? I have bad news for whoever that is. It's me.
I feel a lot of shame for how easily I cry. This is a story I tell a lot but sometime in 2017 I went to the cinema by myself for a really early screening of the Last Jedi. I kinda hated Force Awakens but I also used to go to the cinema every week, sometimes multiple times a week. God bless Budapest student pricing. Anyway, it was me and one other guy, this is weeks after the premiere. I knew it wouldn't be good but since I was too young to go see the OG trilogy or the prequels in cinema, I'm damn sure gonna make it to all the Star Wars films in theaters now. I sit, I kind of feel off in general. Ads are playing... and suddenly a Toyota ad zooms by me, high definition, surround sound. It's not even that really emotional ad where a dad gets his daughter a car and shit. Just the very banal landscape, car go fast, and the such. But something inside me started that would not end until I was in that red-padded, excruciatingly lit exit hall that lead me back to the cinema's ticket booths.
I just started crying. And then Leia died and then Luke died. And I was just crying the whole time. I still hate the Last Jedi, I think it's a total mess tonally and the character arcs don't exist. But you know what? I wasn't sitting there watching it like a shitpost, laughing at the stupidly written scenes of terrible tragedy, thinking what kind of witty review or summary I could whip up for my friends on Monday. As bad as it was, I was taking it very seriously. I was really mourning my version of Star Wars.
I know what you're thinking. Touch grass, talk to a girl, take a shower, you fucking cringe-lord! I'm willing to be this vulnerable for a second but even this stupid joke is a layer of irony that I'm having a hard time shrugging off. No one wants to be disliked but no one wants to be ridiculed even more.
In the constant escape from cringe, even the passive kind where you say 'haha, yeah, I'm cringe!' as a defense, you begin to lose not only joy but actual parts of your personality. When everything you like is acceptable, when the way you behave is expected and approved, you're not really a person. Or, you're definitely not yourself.
Let me get overly complicated and convoluted. This is a very strange process I saw in myself and many others both online and in real life, I'm sure it has a real cool name in psychology that I don't know. In moments of solitude, you begin the analysis of yourself. There are no active external forces telling you anything about your personality or behavior as you are totally alone in this moment. And within this process, there is almost a division of yourself. You the analyst and You the analyzed. You the analyst is reason and convention, you can distinguish cringe and therefore cannot be caught doing something cringey. You the analyzed, often from a position of the past whereby you are incapable of change, are kind of like a jester. You didn't know better, you did cringey things, you liked cringey things. Because You the analyst is now wiser you can look down upon You the analyzed. The You that dishes out judgement is the superior and true You.
However, as the one doing the judging, you're actually performing as the outside perspective. You literally take on the role of the people who bully others, who accuse people of cringe, who hate and fear sincerity. You don't perceive things as inherently cringe until it is taught to you. Much like Margaret Atwood said, you are your own voyeur, just not in regard to gender this time.
Which one is the real you? The one that is informed by the societal do's and dont's or the one that engaged in some form of sincerity, be it cringe or not? Being the first is more comforting, it's the acceptable choice, it's the choice for which you would be praised. Your irony would be popular. On the other hand, the second, is the truth. You can twist it, you can re-mold it, you can't kill it.
So I say death to irony. I've been plagued by it for way too long. Do you know how any creative project happens with me around? I have a grand idea, or a small but tempting idea, I am totally enamored by it. Privately of course, I never share that I think I came up with a good idea with others for fear of being perceived as an arrogant idiot. I begin developing characters, worlds, plot points, art styles, motifs, foreshadowing, and more. This is the most technical time, when I try something and throw it out in 9 cases out of 10 until I finally come to something I like. At some point, I meet with the biggest mountain that I almost never even dare climb: the heart of the thing. The message. The most important, most saturated, most direct core of why this specific comic, game, art piece matters. I need to answer that question sincerely.
And I can't. I start overthinking it, I start thinking what other people will think of what I'm thinking. This thing is too shallow, this is too derivative, it's way too obvious, it's boring, it's corny, it's nonsense, it's too goofy, it's too serious, it's too radical, it's too ineffectual, it's too fake, it's too honest.
In the end we'll never know. Because now I'm too afraid to find an answer. The project gets stale and I work on it indecisively. I let it sit on the back burner, sometimes coming back to it, often actually, but never making any significant progress. So who's really winning?
It's pretty awesome to love something wholeheartedly. Even when a lot
of people have endless commentary. I have a YouTube video essay
playing in the background when I work, the quality varies, and often I
hear YouTubers say something that sounds conclusive and certain based only on the vague general public opinion. Such as how bad a movie is that they never
saw themselves. Literally this phrase: "It's very bad but I don't know, I
haven't seen it". I'm literally so guilty of this too but it's the
worst! How can you have an opinion if you haven't seen it? I don't mean
boycotting a movie for very good reasons, I mean saying a movie is bad as a fact when you haven't even seen it. I will not be watching Wuthering Heights with Margot Robbie. Do I think it will suck? Yes. Does that mean it certainly, without a doubt sucks? No!
When Verity, based on a Colleen Hoover book that I know I won't like so I won't read, comes out, I will go see it. I will go see it because I love Josh Hartnett but I won't be cringing. I'm going to watch it the way it was made to be watched, as a very genre-specific thriller romance. Even if I don't like it, I'm not gonna let irony ruin it for me. My distaste will be brutal and a hundred percent organic.
I guess if there's anything practical to take away from this is that you shouldn't be afraid to be genuine. It will be hard but you should try. I can promise that at least I won't judge you. It's one thing I started getting better at ever since I quit social media years and years ago. I almost never left negative comments on people's posts anyway, but now I tend to think them less too. You can't actually kill cringe, you'll cringe at others and yourself a lot. But I guess before you start saying ironic things about how bad you are at something or how trash your taste is, just think about what you really feel. And if you feel confident, or proud, or happy, or eager, don't lose that.
Alright, essay over. Onto my regular blogging.
Monday, Monday, Monday. A funny thing happened where both my sister's internship at the Thai restaurant (they have a thing here where middle schoolers go and 'work' somewhere for a week) and my mum's job training at the hotel fell on the same week. This resulted in hectic schedules for everyone and some funny situations.
I mostly did cooking and some updates to my site throughout the week. I started my tea advent and was disappointed to learn that it was not 24 unique flavours but actually 24 bags with only 6 flavours. Ah well, at least it's still tea.
The first flavour was Spicy Apple Orange which was not bad but a little weak, I was hoping for a bit more richness. I had it with a brownie.
Let the sampling begin!
On the way to the grocery store I saw the coolest looking clouds: a vivid red streaked though the clouds! Like a gash! Probably a bad omen or something.
Wizard shit.
Otherwise, I was looking at a bunch of digital advent calendars and
writing my own. I've been really loving petrapixel's advent about
digital decluttering. Day 1 was all about clearing the desktop, I even
swapped out my wallpaper and taskbar. Ever since we played Halo CE and Halo 2, I've been so into early 2000s CG. It's the perfect amount of surreal.
So serene to me...
On Tuesday I tried the Almond Cherry tea which was actually very nice but a little too much on the almond and not enough cherry. I had it with this cookie-muffin hybrid that was so good. I only had half not because I didn't want more but it was so filling I couldn't do that to myself...
Tea time!
The declutter task for Day 2 was unsubscribing from YouTube channels I don't watch. Since I don't have the recommendations, autoplay, or the home page enabled, I only watch stuff linked to me or from my subscriptions. I unfollowed a bunch of channels I didn't go to often and kept those I still like but I still have something like 40 channels that I subscribe to which feels like a lot but I'm not sure.
Wednesday was my sister's day off from her internship but my mum was working through the whole week. A high school kid is also doing job training at the hotel, so the two trainees they have are a woman in her 50s and a 16-year old which is funny to me. She's not loving the place as of now so she may call it quits after the training week.
I'm also really loving the candle.
Today I had just a black tea, it was very nice and I had it with a milk bread. Just simple and pleasant. Day 3 of the digital declutter was a browser declutter. I got rid of all the useless extensions and changed my starting page background and Firefox theme. However, I only got through and organized like half of my bookmarks (I have 400 more that are not organized). It was just so much work...
Ta-da!
Thursday was more of the usual. Since we started PLUR1BUS I've tried to manage what TV shows I have and haven't seen but I forgot a bunch of stuff I've watched. Today I had Lavender Bergamot tea and it's probably my favourite one so far, I had it with a milk bread and a beignet.
What ails you, my little freeloaders?
My sister was given a real uniform at the Thai place and they really have her slaving away there. She's actually supposed to just shadow employees during this thing but they straight up have her cutting vegetables, washing dishes, serving food, etc. Eh, good life skills! Plus the first time I had a service job was also when I was about 14. And she even gets free lunch!
Child labour... look at this absolute cruelty!
After everyone got back from their training/internship we finally decorated the tree! We at last got a plastic one, we've been so sick of the live ones because we can't keep them alive properly and they still end up being expensive. My sister banned all the blue ornaments so we only did warm colours and some whites this year.
From our Chicago cousins.
From our dad.
She's gorgeous!!
Day 4 of the digital declutter was one I was dreading: the inbox organization! Guys... I have five emails. Why? I don't know either. But yeah: I have two Gmail accounts and three Proton ones. The Proton ones are for my site, my pixel clique, and my fanlistings. One Gmail one is 'professional' and the other one just is. So, it was a lot of work. First the inboxes at the start:
Hooray!
The first is my main and site email. I use it to join FLs and make some accounts and chat with other web masters. Free Proton accounts only let you have three tags and three folders. Annoying! But I made it work.
Victory!
The CDwORLD one was actually overwhelmed despite appearances because of a form I had for submissions. I've removed the form now so I'll probably start getting more individual emails from here on out.
Woohoo!
Last of the Proton mail's was my fanlisting email, I use that to apply for fanlistings and for when anyone wants to contact me for affiliations or just if there's any issues. This one doesn't get too much action.
That was kind of easy! Oh, shit, it's my Gmail emails...
The horror!
The sad thing was that almost 100% of this clog was ads or promos. I deleted everything and unsubscribed from all that shit I never subscribed to in the first place. Added some tags and a cute background and it was done!
Voila!
Looks much better. It was a pretty busy day.
On Friday we watched the most recent episode of PLUR1BUS, it's so fun to keep up with the show as it's airing. Haven't done that it ages! I did some art, trying to finish the COTY 2026 calendar in time... not sure if I can do it but I'll sure as hell try.
For Day 5 I uninstalled some useless programs, I didn't have many I tend
to keep the software stuff sparse. But I did uninstall a bunch of games
I didn't think I'd be playing soon like Battlefront and some dumb shit
from Epic my brother made me install.
I forgot to make myself tea again this week but I'll sample the last two flavours next week and finish the whole box steadily throughout the month.
A gift that keeps on giving.
On Saturday it was the last day of my sister's internship. They got her dressed up in two incredibly beautiful national Thai outfits and all the old ladies wanted to take pics with her. She could make a job out of this...! Feels like a scam though, she's not even Thai!
No old lady can resist!
For Day 6 I did not install the recommended StayFree app just because I don't think it would really help me. I tried a sort of time tracker before and I always forgot to check in with it. And for blocking access I much prefer LeechBlock, especially on phone where I blocked Tumblr and Reddit because I was wasting so much time there!
I was really feeling the winter vibe ever since we decorated the tree and put fairy lights on our entrance window AND balcony. We are single-handedly lighting up our street.
Very cozy.
On Sunday I wasn't feeling the best so I mostly stayed in my room. I decided to use that time to set up the small TV I got under my bed and see if it's USB port even worked. It did and it plays movies awesome! I still want a DVD player but I've already set up a room cinema for myself and watched two movies. It was so awesome.
Weirdly pretty burger I made.
Absolute cinema.
He's gotta show up immediately.
Day 7 of the declutter advent was called 'Anti-Stalker' and was about googling your full legal name and seeing what comes up and possibly getting rid of it. I have a sort of rare name so what came up first was stuff actually about me but it was an article from my university about my graduation film, so something I'm okay with leaving up. Otherwise, I'm mostly safe.
Week 49.
This Week I'm Excited For...
Probably for all the gifts to arrive so I can pack 'em up and put 'em under the tree. You may ask... ordering gifts in DECEMBER? That late? Yes, I had no money all month, okay?! Most of them should arrive on time... I hope.
Song Of The Week...
I found the most incredible album this month: Emergence by Trifonic, a total no-skips masterpiece. There's also so little information about the album or the band online. It's trip-hop electro goodness, mostly instrumental but with four songs with vocals that are just amazing. If you listen to the whole thing and prefer instrumental tracks you have to listen to Emergence, Infiltration, and Vacuum Tree. The tracks with vocals are so beautiful, with two done by Amelia June, Sooner or Later by Cristina Courtin, and Good Enough by David Forest. All are gorgeous and haunting. It was so hard to pick just one song but I had to go with Lies this time. It's something about the reverberating vocals in the chorus as Amelia June sings 'you and I...'.
