Fashonably LATE New Years related entry!

Another year has flown by once again, Chat, and it was just as satisfying as the last. I traveled out of state, went to a convention, began hitting the gym, and reignited my passion for music-making again.

One of the many plans I had for 2020 was to attend Sakura Con, but, covid stunk up that whole year, and for the next couple of years I was struggling with mostly personal crap surrounding my family and living situations. Now that I’m a lil’ bit more stable financially and mentally, I planned my first convention in over 10 years with my local friends. I'd be lying out my ass if I said I didn’t overspend, but that was part of the fun, weirdly enough lol. I only attended one panel, and it was a fan presentation of Gainax’s history, it was very well-put together! 

Most of my time throughout the convention was spent at the arcade booth playing Darkstalkers 3, MvC2, and Tetris Grand Master, but I DID hit up a nightclub shortly after. I went into it with a shitty mood and hesitance, but it wound up being more fun than I thought. It was cut pretty short though; I don’t recall eating anything that day and two shots of vodka was enough to upset my tummy, but BOY did I go ham on the rave dancing (whitest thing you’d ever see)! Only thing I didn’t like was walking in Seattle, even in the daytime. Keeping it brief, but the homelessness just keeps getting worse day-by-day and the city is the most dangerous it’s ever been; it’s a shame.

One thing I didn’t expect happening this year was visiting the east coast for the first time to see some close friends! Roanoke, Virginia came with the whole east coast food chain experience (had my first waffle house meal!), but at its core, it is a beautifully mountain-riched city with a bumbling community. There’s a lot to do in the downtown area alone, so, not a dull moment to be had. My buddies did an excellent job touring me around the city, but more importantly, I got some pretty sick pictures of me at the Roanoke Star c:<. Eventually, I would like to move out of Washington to somewhere more affordable, and I’m thinking Virginia might be the place.

I dipped from my Walmart job not long after coming back. Currently, I’m with the Kroger company working at meat/seafood clerk. The workload sure keeps me busy; I feel like I have more responsibility than at Walmart somehow, and some of the meat cutters are assholes, but everything else is great as far as a retail job goes. The pay is good, my seafood boss and the only other seafood associate I work with are rad, and I’m protected by the union! Kroger will serve as fine temporary work for now.

Throughout my life, I’ve dabbled into music composition, mostly through apps like Mario Paint Composer and tracker software. While I was stuck in hiring hell, I used the free time I had to learn Protracker and a little bit of OctoMED, old music trackers from the 90s. Seems a little archaic, yeah, I just do not have efficient hardware for stuff like Ableton or FL Studio right now, but in a way it's kinda fun working with limitations y'know?  I'm currently working on a DnB/jungle-esc track, and this time I'm actually going to release a song to the public. It isn't going to sound great but I absolutely NEED to put myself out there and invite mass-criticism; I've wasted enough time listening to the voices of fear and keeping my art strictly to myself. It's time I changed that. Seriously.

I started going to the gym with my roommates and it was one of the best life choices I have made, silly as that sounds. Planet Fitness opened in my town in September but I didn’t start regularly going until November. Before that, I hadn’t gone to the gym in almost a decade, which admittedly put me off for a while, but I can’t imagine any drastic changes one could make to a fitness center in that amount of time lol. I can’t bench for shit, but my self esteem and general mood has improved (along with my posture hehe), I’m less anxious, and overall fucking glad to be committing my time to something with a rewarding payoff.

The plan this year won't be much different from the last; build my PC, stay hobby invested, yadda yadda. Maybe I'll attend a local fighting game tourney this year. It's been a fat minute since I attended one, but who knows? One thing that's been on my mind though, is how fast my twenties have flown by so far, and I really don't have much to show for it. My family had high expectations for me but I don't feel like I have done anything to contribute to that. College didn't go according to plan and I probably should have used all of the time I spent dicking around on campus to network. Though, I think if I had opted out of college, things would more-or-less have turned out the same with the environment I was in. I chose a pretty crummy time to get into IT with all of the layoffs and wage drops happening in the tech industry right now. AI eventually having a threshold on entertainment and art causes me anguish, but I try not to let it demotivate me or devalue the time I've sunk to my practices. I'm twenty seven and DEFINITELY not getting any younger. I don't want to be under the mercy of any retail employer anymore. I have to get my ass into gear with the knowledge I have now and put them to use.

Right... I should get around to mounting some floating shelves for my room soon. Thinking of playing SoTN or Persona 3 afterwards hehe. If you managed to read through this great wall of jargon, major kudos to you lol. I hope we all succeed in our goals this year despite all of the madness in the world. Follow your heart and surround yourselves with those that treat you with the utmost kindness and respect.

Happy (belated) New Year to you all!