So another year's gone
And just like usual, I didn't actually feel the hype until I saw everyone posting resolutions and wishing others a Happy New Year. So here's another end-of-year entry for you.
For starters, let's begin with the "First sentence on every month in the last year" meme!
January: "Happy New Year everyone XD"
February: "B-But .... I don't have one favorite pairing, I have several ;A;" (As answer to the question: What's your favorite yaoi pairing)
March: "Woo, pimping this up here:" ("this" being the OTP20in20 community)
April: "Pfft, I now finally have understood the appeal of Twitter/Tumblr"
May: "'Coz I've just realized twitter is a bitch and it's not a good tool for archiving my thoughts :|"
June: "I'm having a very, very painful whitlow on my left index finger right now, and it hurts like a bitch."
July: "Just finished reading "The Progress of Sherlock Holmes", and just realized that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I learn and do my best to be fluent at the English language, I'll never be able to produce such a masterpiece like that."
August: "Right, just a little rant to get this off my chest."
September: "Because thinking about what I'm going to do is much better than about the dull assignment sitting in front of me"
October: "Right, since I've decided that indulging 70% of my waking hours in fan fictions is going to ruin me sooner or later, and I desperately need to be productive (both in this semester break and in my life), I've been going through fic abstinence - in which I stop actively seeking for them and only read reasonably interesting short one-shots (under 10,000 words) when they pops up as recommendations on Tumblr."
November: "Just for my whims because my love for this show grows and grows with each day ;_;"
December: "Because, you know, the point of a journal is to look back on it in the future with (possible) fondness, right?"
Woo. I'm actually a bit surprised because despite this year's introduction of me to Tumblr (which results in me almost moving entirely over there), I still managed to get at least one entry every month. That's good, isn't it? Because for the love of God without this journal it would have been entirely impossible for me to remember how I was a year ago. I tend to forget things like that.
A recap of 2011: I made a big fandom move from anime/manga to Western entertainment, starting from Star Trek: TOS and of course Kirk/Spock, then onto more contemporary stuff like BBC Sherlock, which then ignited my fascination with British television (which then led to some life-altering decisions, but more on that later). This move also motivated me to get caught up with the rest of the world on modern pop culture (because for most of my life I was almost entirely concentrated on Japanese culture only). I started to watch more films than I've ever had in my life, and it's evident in the rate my 500GB hard drive is being eaten up (lol). I claim to be no better educated than I was a year ago, because there are still a ton of things I'm very much blissfully unaware of, but at least I'm not grasping at straws when you mention Western entertainment to me. And yes, of course, there's also the introduction of real life people fangirling, which I have to admit had baffled me before.
I think 2011 is definitely also a year where I grow a lot, personality-wise. My new fandoms introduced me to worlds and people who enabled me to be more outwardly spoken, more confident in my beliefs and opinions, more courage to get over my social anxiety, and well more maturely-phrased less emoticon-ridden Internet speech, I guess. I can't not mention chimera_ally here, because she was the first fandom friend I've made in a very, very long time (Most of my fandom friends were back when I first got into this fandom business, and when I was an extrovert, more or less.)
So a little note to her here: If sometimes I seem to take a long time to reply to your emails or seem very awkward and reluctant in my answers, understand that I frequently had to fight the urge to run away and stop writing because of my anxiety or my fear that I sound like an utter imbecile, or worse, say something wrong. I guess it just takes me an awfully lot of time to settle in and open myself up to someone. But yes, because I don't allow myself to do it (I don't want to make you feel bad, because no matter how much I berate other people, I simply can't bring myself to be cruel), I slowly got more comfortable talking about myself, my own opinions, and in replying to other people in general. You have no idea how much I freaked out at first when you approached me at the beginning, haha :D. It took me hours, probably a whole day, to think of something clever to say. I know, in theory, it's all fine and everyone's opinions are equal, and all that, but I've always been very harsh on myself and anxiety has never been very rational, hasn't it? But yeah, all this tl;dr basically comes down to a big Thank You, I guess!
So, what was I saying about personality? Ah yes, I definitely matured a lot, if not in thinking then in expressing myself. Part of that was thanks to the above chimera_ally here, and part of that was thanks to Tumblr. I got introduced to it around April-May because of some interesting Star Trek blogs over there, although I've had an account for ages. I got even more associated with Tumblr when I got into the Sherlock fandom, merely because the fandom is just so awesome and wonderful and so much cracky over there. But yeah, the easy way Tumblr made reblogging people fits with my lurker nature like a glove, and I devour posts like a hungry animal (joking lol). And for some reason constantly reading people talk and reblog and joke about themselves and with each other and about fandom and life somehow assure myself that my opinions are just as valuable as any's. It's different from LJ in that I'm only interested in fandom-focused blogs, and the nature of the posts are generally very sombre and serious, which makes it hard for me to settle in - if anything it makes me more scared to voice my own thoughts except for the solitude of my own blog. Tumblr is much more easygoing, more instantaneous which appeals to my lazy nature, and- I don't know, but I gradually feel more comfortable replying to posts and approaching people. Of course, I still freak out (actually I am now, to be exact), but it was definitely better than how it used to be.
(Also, a small toast to Twitter because it has been a most efficient tool to rant my thoughts when neither LJ nor Tumblr were sufficient.)
As for that life-altering decision I mentioned. Well...as I wrote all those texts I sort of chickened out and my attention span's a bit diverted somewhere else too, so I won't say much on it except that for the first time in my life I have some sort of definitive life goal insight. Of course, it's still very blurry and quite vague, and I'm not even sure if this is just a result of me being overenthusiastic and hasty and just foolishly young, but right now I do know what I want and I'll be damned if I don't do my best to get it.
So yeah. It's been a pretty good year in general. Although of course there are some rather disappointing downsides such as 1. I get a part-time job which I hate with all of my being and 2. I get the most boring ever semester I've ever had in my life, but I guess it did give me a chance to think about other things I want to do so it's not that bad in the end after all.
Good lord is it cold or I'm having cold sweat here? Why do I always have cold sweat when I'm talking about myself? That's something to redeem next year, definitely. Which leads us to...2012 resolutions!
- Get better in a variety of technical skills including designing and writing
- Get better in being confident in myself
- Get better in thinking critically
- Get more involved in fandom
- Um, be a better person in general?
- ...
Gosh I really am bad at these things aren't I. Right. Let's try making a more practical list:
- Finish the movies I downloaded but haven't watched
- Finish the books I downloaded/bought but haven't read
- Get a Kindle
- Get a part-time job that doesn't drive me up the wall
- Try making money by designing stuff
- Take a drawing class
- (Maybe) Get a new computer. (Because this one is getting increasingly slow for the things I am doing and plan to do)
Welp I think that's pretty it.
Right, so now it's 3 hours to midnight, better go listen to Sherlock's season 1 commentary then. Oh me and my priorities.
Happy New Year everyone!!!
P.S: This is probably a good time to say that I've moved to Dreamwidth. I was pretty pissed with LJ's latest update, and DW has a lot of features that are just begging me to take them. But I'll still be keeping two blogs, still be constantly checking LJ, it's just that instead of posting in LJ I'll be crossposting from over DW. So nothing's exactly changed actually, but yeah, just thought you might be interested.
(Originally posted at Dreamwidth)
For starters, let's begin with the "First sentence on every month in the last year" meme!
January: "Happy New Year everyone XD"
February: "B-But .... I don't have one favorite pairing, I have several ;A;" (As answer to the question: What's your favorite yaoi pairing)
March: "Woo, pimping this up here:" ("this" being the OTP20in20 community)
April: "Pfft, I now finally have understood the appeal of Twitter/Tumblr"
May: "'Coz I've just realized twitter is a bitch and it's not a good tool for archiving my thoughts :|"
June: "I'm having a very, very painful whitlow on my left index finger right now, and it hurts like a bitch."
July: "Just finished reading "The Progress of Sherlock Holmes", and just realized that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I learn and do my best to be fluent at the English language, I'll never be able to produce such a masterpiece like that."
August: "Right, just a little rant to get this off my chest."
September: "Because thinking about what I'm going to do is much better than about the dull assignment sitting in front of me"
October: "Right, since I've decided that indulging 70% of my waking hours in fan fictions is going to ruin me sooner or later, and I desperately need to be productive (both in this semester break and in my life), I've been going through fic abstinence - in which I stop actively seeking for them and only read reasonably interesting short one-shots (under 10,000 words) when they pops up as recommendations on Tumblr."
November: "Just for my whims because my love for this show grows and grows with each day ;_;"
December: "Because, you know, the point of a journal is to look back on it in the future with (possible) fondness, right?"
Woo. I'm actually a bit surprised because despite this year's introduction of me to Tumblr (which results in me almost moving entirely over there), I still managed to get at least one entry every month. That's good, isn't it? Because for the love of God without this journal it would have been entirely impossible for me to remember how I was a year ago. I tend to forget things like that.
A recap of 2011: I made a big fandom move from anime/manga to Western entertainment, starting from Star Trek: TOS and of course Kirk/Spock, then onto more contemporary stuff like BBC Sherlock, which then ignited my fascination with British television (which then led to some life-altering decisions, but more on that later). This move also motivated me to get caught up with the rest of the world on modern pop culture (because for most of my life I was almost entirely concentrated on Japanese culture only). I started to watch more films than I've ever had in my life, and it's evident in the rate my 500GB hard drive is being eaten up (lol). I claim to be no better educated than I was a year ago, because there are still a ton of things I'm very much blissfully unaware of, but at least I'm not grasping at straws when you mention Western entertainment to me. And yes, of course, there's also the introduction of real life people fangirling, which I have to admit had baffled me before.
I think 2011 is definitely also a year where I grow a lot, personality-wise. My new fandoms introduced me to worlds and people who enabled me to be more outwardly spoken, more confident in my beliefs and opinions, more courage to get over my social anxiety, and well more maturely-phrased less emoticon-ridden Internet speech, I guess. I can't not mention chimera_ally here, because she was the first fandom friend I've made in a very, very long time (Most of my fandom friends were back when I first got into this fandom business, and when I was an extrovert, more or less.)
So a little note to her here: If sometimes I seem to take a long time to reply to your emails or seem very awkward and reluctant in my answers, understand that I frequently had to fight the urge to run away and stop writing because of my anxiety or my fear that I sound like an utter imbecile, or worse, say something wrong. I guess it just takes me an awfully lot of time to settle in and open myself up to someone. But yes, because I don't allow myself to do it (I don't want to make you feel bad, because no matter how much I berate other people, I simply can't bring myself to be cruel), I slowly got more comfortable talking about myself, my own opinions, and in replying to other people in general. You have no idea how much I freaked out at first when you approached me at the beginning, haha :D. It took me hours, probably a whole day, to think of something clever to say. I know, in theory, it's all fine and everyone's opinions are equal, and all that, but I've always been very harsh on myself and anxiety has never been very rational, hasn't it? But yeah, all this tl;dr basically comes down to a big Thank You, I guess!
So, what was I saying about personality? Ah yes, I definitely matured a lot, if not in thinking then in expressing myself. Part of that was thanks to the above chimera_ally here, and part of that was thanks to Tumblr. I got introduced to it around April-May because of some interesting Star Trek blogs over there, although I've had an account for ages. I got even more associated with Tumblr when I got into the Sherlock fandom, merely because the fandom is just so awesome and wonderful and so much cracky over there. But yeah, the easy way Tumblr made reblogging people fits with my lurker nature like a glove, and I devour posts like a hungry animal (joking lol). And for some reason constantly reading people talk and reblog and joke about themselves and with each other and about fandom and life somehow assure myself that my opinions are just as valuable as any's. It's different from LJ in that I'm only interested in fandom-focused blogs, and the nature of the posts are generally very sombre and serious, which makes it hard for me to settle in - if anything it makes me more scared to voice my own thoughts except for the solitude of my own blog. Tumblr is much more easygoing, more instantaneous which appeals to my lazy nature, and- I don't know, but I gradually feel more comfortable replying to posts and approaching people. Of course, I still freak out (actually I am now, to be exact), but it was definitely better than how it used to be.
(Also, a small toast to Twitter because it has been a most efficient tool to rant my thoughts when neither LJ nor Tumblr were sufficient.)
As for that life-altering decision I mentioned. Well...as I wrote all those texts I sort of chickened out and my attention span's a bit diverted somewhere else too, so I won't say much on it except that for the first time in my life I have some sort of definitive life goal insight. Of course, it's still very blurry and quite vague, and I'm not even sure if this is just a result of me being overenthusiastic and hasty and just foolishly young, but right now I do know what I want and I'll be damned if I don't do my best to get it.
So yeah. It's been a pretty good year in general. Although of course there are some rather disappointing downsides such as 1. I get a part-time job which I hate with all of my being and 2. I get the most boring ever semester I've ever had in my life, but I guess it did give me a chance to think about other things I want to do so it's not that bad in the end after all.
Good lord is it cold or I'm having cold sweat here? Why do I always have cold sweat when I'm talking about myself? That's something to redeem next year, definitely. Which leads us to...2012 resolutions!
- Get better in a variety of technical skills including designing and writing
- Get better in being confident in myself
- Get better in thinking critically
- Get more involved in fandom
- Um, be a better person in general?
- ...
Gosh I really am bad at these things aren't I. Right. Let's try making a more practical list:
- Finish the movies I downloaded but haven't watched
- Finish the books I downloaded/bought but haven't read
- Get a Kindle
- Get a part-time job that doesn't drive me up the wall
- Try making money by designing stuff
- Take a drawing class
- (Maybe) Get a new computer. (Because this one is getting increasingly slow for the things I am doing and plan to do)
Welp I think that's pretty it.
Right, so now it's 3 hours to midnight, better go listen to Sherlock's season 1 commentary then. Oh me and my priorities.
Happy New Year everyone!!!
P.S: This is probably a good time to say that I've moved to Dreamwidth. I was pretty pissed with LJ's latest update, and DW has a lot of features that are just begging me to take them. But I'll still be keeping two blogs, still be constantly checking LJ, it's just that instead of posting in LJ I'll be crossposting from over DW. So nothing's exactly changed actually, but yeah, just thought you might be interested.
(Originally posted at Dreamwidth)