BLOG

life updates

4/18/24

Today I did an interview for a second job. I'm hoping that between the two jobs I'll basically have full time hours and be able to save up enough to get my bf moved over here. I'm nervous about working full time because I get tired very quickly so I have no idea if I'll be able to accomodate that while also having an actual life. But hopefully it won't take too much of my energy.

The puppies are growing up really fast, but they're huge troublemakers unlike my other dog, so I'm hesitant to let them roam in the backyard. I feel like they will just escape and run away. But having to potty train them to go indoors in a certain area also kinda sucks. I guess there's pros and cons to everything like that.

In my free time I've been mostly just playing Pokefarm, but I'm also trying to do some sewing when I can. I'm gonna try to make plushies of Pokemon items or relevant things like that. There's a lot of character plushies out there, but I feel like item plushies are less common (except for Pokeballs). The other day I made a potion, topography is kinda weird but somehow I managed to get the general shape okay.

boof things come in twos

2/26/2024

Boy do I have some news! So first off, my boyfriend came over, and we had a great time. We went out basically every day, I wish we had more time to do stuff like watching things together or video games and stuff, but that's okay. It was really great to spend time with him and I hope we can do that again soon. He's gone back home now and I miss him a lot. I know I'll see him again though, so it's okay.

While he was still here though, my dad got a phone call from his ex-coworker's wife. We had previously been offered a puppy from some people they knew, but the previous owners decided not to give up the puppy. So she had been looking for another puppy for us and found some people who had a recent litter. We picked one out over the phone and paid for it. The only issue is that they're all the way in the next state over. So we decided to go pick him up over the weekend. My boyfriend would already be home by then so he was sad about that, but there wasn't really any other time we could. Anyway, when we got there, we were offered an extra puppy for free. And before anyone else could say anything, my dad said sure! Which is crazy because he's very serious and responsible and stuff. So that came outta nowhere. Anyway now we had two puppies; the boy we picked out, and a girl. They're very cute, but the girl is the troublemaker of all time, and the boy just follows along with everything she does. I kinda see why they were so eager to get rid of them.

We went to get them their first deworming meds today so they can start getting their shots in a couple weeks. I've been crate training them so they can sleep inside a crate and we don't have any surprises in the morning. They're very smart, I think they will be pretty easy to train. Our other dog Loki is mostly keeping a distance (he's kind of a grumpy/unsocial guy so I didn't expect him to wanna play with them) but thats fine especially since the puppies young and don't have their shots yet. I'm almost grateful he doesn't wanna hang out with them. I think it'll keep any possible issues to a minimum.

good things come in stars

2/6/2024

Well, January was... Interesting. Lot of work and all that. I thought we were finally gonna get a new manager at work, but she lasted 3.5 days and then quit. So I'm back to the leadership position after spending those three days training her. Sucks. But oh well, gotta get money somehow.

In other news, I started playing a game called In Stars and Time. It's a timeloop game which is basically my favorite theme ever. Time travel in general is something I've always been interested in, before this I was replaying Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. Anyway ISAT has really good dialogue and I love all the characters. The main character is just like me forreal, and very fun to draw. I'm honestly obsessed with this game and it's all I want to play, but I started playing with my friend so I have to wait for them to be around to keep playing. It's probably for the best though because I think otherwise I would just not sleep because of this game. It's actually been getting me to go to sleep early and wake up early so I have time to play (I've woken up at 5am the past two days to play).

In other other news, my boyfriend is coming over next week! I'm making a gift for him that he knows I'm making, but doesn't know what it is. I think I will talk about it here because even though this is a public website, I highly doubt he's checking my blog every day. And if he finds out from this then, I'll be proud of him for putting in the detective work. Anyway I made a set of animal ears for him to wear as a headband, but they're Noibat ears because his Pokesona is a Noibat (after I started making them I think he decided to make it a shiny Noibat but well.... I already started making it). Theyre basically finished, but they have a balance issue because I made them too big. I don't think this will make him enjoy them any less though.

the liminal year

12/31/2023

I was gonna wait to do this till the new year but I want to get my thoughts for this down already before I forget. The past year has been pretty good to me. Not great but not bad. I graduated college (though I still don't have my degree because the school is not great at organizing things), I made a lot of new friends at my job, and I started my transition. I think this year felt very liminal, and that's not just a pun on starting my transition. It literally does feel like I'm in between parts of my life. Not in a bad way. Honestly it felt a bit like a break. Especially after I finished college. Maybe I'll have more thoughts on the year later, but for now I think that's all I can really say. Things were busy, but not particularly eventful I feel (at least compared to past years).

Anyway, for the future. I hope to quit my current job and find something else (hopefully something better). I want to eventually be a teacher, so I will have to get a teaching credential at some point, but I think I will take my time with that. My home situation is very stable, and I want to take advantage of this time to save as much money as possible for when I eventually move out. I also want to be able to see my online friends this year. I've been putting off visits for a bit because I wanted to focus on finishing school and saving money, but I miss them, and I want to make sure I can see them. As for other goals, I've decided I need to do more art this year, especially music. I've been feeling very inspired to do music, but I just haven't made the time to do it, and I think it would make me happy to do that.

Happy new year to everyone, I hope 2024 brings a lot of good things to you all.

sour surprises

11/26/2023

So on my birthday (the 22nd) I woke up and neither my bro nor my dad were home (they went to work), and my mom acknowledged that it was my birthday but asked if we could celebrate some other day. Which is fine, it was Wednesday and I didn't mind that, but she didn't even give me a bday hug or anything. Most of my irl friends didn't say happy bday, I don't really fault them, almost all my friends have ADHD/busy lives so it kinda is that way, but it did hurt to only get like three happy bdays in total and all from internet friends. Anyway, I went to work really sad because at that point I really thought no one even cared, and I didn't mention my bday at work because I didn't want to deal with the attention there on top of having to manage the whole place. So it was just a long day of feeling lonely. Of course until I got home. And the lights were off. Which they never are. Which is when I realized what was going on.

So it turns out, my family had planned a surprise bday party. And while I admit I did enjoy the party, I wish it wasn't a thing to just ignore a person the whole day if you're gonna do a surprise party. I had an awful day thinking everyone either forgot or didn't care, and a surprise party was supposed to just magically make up for that? I know I probably should've suspected something was up earlier instead of just taking everything at face value like I was in some cartoon episode, but I'm not really good at reading between the lines, and I have bad self-esteem. In my opinion it just kinda soured the whole thing in the end. I'm not a huge fan of surprises in general, but I'll accept some since I know people like to give surprise gifts and stuff. But yeah I just don't see how ignoring someone their whole birthday is necessary for a surprise party. The day after that I told my mom to at least say happy birthday even if she's going to surprise me later, so hopefully that won't happen again.

For anyone who actually reads my blogs, what do you think about the whole trope of ignoring someone before their surprise party? Is there any actual use for it or do you think it's just weird/harmful? I wanna know if I'm just weird about surprises or if this was genuinely not a good way to handle things (you can respond on the update post on my neocities profile or in the chat on my guestbook).

Anyway, to end this on a positive note, I've been watching Supernatural finally. That show is one of those things I wasn't able to watch before due to the specific way my traumas/mental illnesses manifested, but now that I'm better it's a really enjoyable show. It's nice to get into something new, and it's been really useful to help me unwind after work, since I'm now in a manager position that I don't really want to be in which is stressful to say the least. I got my mom and grandma into it as well, and during my bday party I found out my aunt and uncle have been watching it since it started, which is kinda crazy to think about. Never thought I'd bond over Supernatural with my extended family, but hey, crazier things happen.

all the time all the time pt. 2

11/13/2023

It's been a bit since the last blog. I've been working on other things on the site, but here's a bit of a life update. So I'm still doing the social service, it's been very slow because it took forever to find artists for the project (I'm a programmer, even if I can do art, I don't really want to, at least not for that project). But it will get done eventually.

I haven't applied for a new job yet and I don't think I'll do so for a bit. I did get my raise, and my hours have been pretty stable. Unfortunately the manager and the lead instructor are both quitting at the same time, which means I'm going to be the one with the highest seniority at my job aside from the business owner. So uh... Uh oh. I guess I'm getting a promotion but with no raise! Cool. I don't really like doing any of the administrative stuff (scheduling/management) so I hope I don't have to help out with that for very long while my boss hires a new manager... I really gotta get out of here. Honestly my plan is to just stick it out till the new manager is trained enough and then dip.

Anyway I've definitely included this in the site updates but I made some little pixel icons for fun to sorta unwind during last week (since I'm being trained to do admin stuff at work and its Very Tiring). Here's a few of them:

They link to an itch.io page where you can download them for free. Other than that uhh... I've been fighting with the healthcare people because I gotta find my own insurance now that I'm turning 26 soon, and I wanna try and stay with my provider (yknow, so I don't miss any T shots) but they're making it difficult. Also it's probably gonna cost me a ton. But I'm pretty sure my parents will help me with it (honestly feel super lucky that they're always willing to help with money stuff, idk how I could live here without that). All in all, kind of a lot right now. But well, for now at least I still managed to find some time for art and this site... So that's nice.

all the time all the time

8/10/2023

Life's been so busy. I finally finished my classes for college, so I'm on a countdown till my graduation. I still have to do the social service hours but I'm getting thru them bit by bit. My time's still been taken up by work and getting my shit together. I wanna start applying for a new job, because guess what! I still haven't gotten a raise and it's been almost a year that I've been working there (I've been there the second longest out of all the instructors). At least I am getting hours now instead of nothing. Honestly if I get a raise at the year I might stay longer but I will also be looking at a second job anyway. I do love my job but I need money. I hope I can get time to work on my own projects soon (like this site). Finally finishing college has felt like both a final stretch and a sudden new beginning. I have both more time to do things and more things to do. So it kinda balances out into me just being. So busy.

Outside of that, I finally started the process for my gender transition. On July 10th I talked about it with my GP, then I had my psych eval on July 27th, and yesterday August 9th I was able to talk to the endocrinologist. He has to talk to my hematologist to see if it's better for me to go on the T gel instead of doing the shot (I have low blood platelets so I have to be careful with stuff that could cause bleeding), but after that I will be able to start. I'm really excited. I know the changes will be slow but I've been looking forward to this for so long I don't even mind the time it'll take to see changes.

push and pull

4/22/2023

It's been a bit since I've been able to do some stuff for the site, but I may be having more time soon. Unfortunately it's not for a great reason. I recently asked for a raise at my job, since I've been there over six months at the starting wage (which is a little more than minimum wage). But my boss responded by basically saying no, and also hasn't given me any hours since that response. It kinda feels like I'm being punished for asking for a raise, which is not great. I've been pretty stressed about it honestly, but what can I do I guess. Hopefully I do get more hours soon, but if not then I guess I'll come back to working on the site instead.

In other, better news, a longtime tumblr mutual of mine released a webcomic today. It's called Laika's Comet, and it's a post-apocalyptic story about a dog-girl mechanic. It's very cute so far and so I figured I'd advertise it a little here. You can read it on webtoon and tumblr.

wizard time

3/19/2023

My classmates occasionally make a minecraft server for all us to play in, and we usually have a modpack in there to make it more interesting, this time around I tried to mess with a magic mod called Ars Nouveau. It's actually pretty fun, but it made me wanna play with my boyfriend. So since I have set up a vanilla minecraft server before I figured I might as well try and add mods this time around, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. So now I guess this is what I'm gonna be obsessed with. I just need to remember to take my motion sickness meds before I get on the server.

final stretch, etc

2/9/2023

I just finished my second to last semester of college, gonna have a break till March. Very exciting to finally be so close to graduating, the final semester does look like it's gonna be tough, so I'm nervous about that, but I'm confident that I can do it. Work's been busy though, which has left me more tired than I've expected considering I only have that and my internship right now. But I'm hanging in there.

In other news, I've been on a sort of nostalgia kick lately, got my bf and our friend to watch Sgt. Frog with me, and I started rereading a book series I read when I was a kid, it's comforting to go back and revisit media from your past. I had to find pdfs of the book series because my cousin currently has the books in Culiacan. I hope she actually is reading them, I miss those books, maybe I'll buy them again in hardcover to keep for myself and let her keep my old ones.

Last thing I wanna talk about today is that I found out my favorite youtuber/twitch streamer, AbsolBlogsPokemon, has a website here on neocities. He's a full odds shiny hunter, and makes really cool videos about his hunts and other challenges he does. I always find out some really interesting things about Pokemon from him, stuff that most other people wouldn't really pay attention to. He's an inspiration to me because I can tell he really does love Pokemon, I feel like lately it's hard to find people who are as genuine about their interests as he is. If you've never seen his videos you should definitely go check him out! A recent video from him that I really like is his Shiny Groudon Costume hunt in Battle Revolution.

welcome 2023

1/2/2023

Happy new year! This past year has been honestly pretty good to me. There's been some downs, but mostly I feel like I'm finally making progress in my life. I'm close to being done with college, I have a part time job and an internship, and I have a wonderful boyfriend who I can't wait to spend my life with. I'm grateful for the way my life has gone this past year, and I hope this next year will be even better.

I don't really do a lot of like, new years resolution stuff, whenever I wanna do something I just do it in the moment, but I do want to try and work a little more on this site this year. I think it'll just be a matter of making use of my (limited) free time differently. I think I also want to try and clear out my youtube watch later, kind of a weird goal to have I think, but I want to be a bit more purposeful about the videos/media I watch in my life. Anyway, I hope anyone reading this is having a good new year so far, and I hope that times get better for everyone.

its my birthday!

11/22/2022

I've been away from this site for a while, life just got really busy honestly. I have school still and my job, and now an internship. Plus Pokemon Scarlet and Violet just released so basically all my free time is spent doing that (though I really should do more for school/the internship). But I figured I'd do a quick update here since today is my birthday and I wanna sort of record my thoughts.

The past six or seven years have been really rough for me, I always feel like life has to throw something at me at every corner, it's been tough getting through alive honestly. But I'm glad I've made it another year. Honestly, despite the downs, I think right now I'm at a high point of my life, but it doesn't feel like the highest point yet. I just have a lot to be grateful for right now. Even though I'm busier than I would like, I'm right where I want to be. I'm almost done with school, I have a job, I have a boyfriend who I love very much, I'm having fun playing the latest Pokemon game, and I'm in a situation where I can save up money for my future. Honestly I never thought I'd have it this good. Even though the future looks tough, I think I can make it work.

Edit: I will be adding my Pokemon team to my teams page later, I've just been busy enjoying the game so far honestly

doing better

10/17/2022

I am doing much better than with my last update. Once I fought off covid, I was able to get back to work and that helped my mood a lot. I started a sewing project for my boyfriend, his favorite Pokemon is Archen so I decided to make him an Archen plushie. I used a weighted bead filling in the body and limbs and normal stuffing in the head to give it a better weight, and I think it turned out pretty well.

I also made some apple fritters yesterday, I never really got into cooking or baking and I kinda regret that now since I'm still learning everything. But I think the apple fritters turned out okay, my parents were pretty excited about them. Next update will probably be about the solar system creator, cause I've made some decent progress with that.

a day at time

10/5/2022

[Warning for illness and pet death] So, I got covid from my mom. And I haven't been able to work because of it (since I work with children so I don't want to infect them). But despite this I haven't had a lot of free time with school exams happening, being sick sucks. I was struggling to breathe for a while but since I'm young my doctors didn't wanna give me any treatment and just told me to wait it out. It did eventually get better, I think part of it was that we're redoing the hallway bathroom so there's a lot of dust/irritants in the air right now. I lost my sense of taste for a while and I used that as an opportunity to try foods I don't normally like the taste of. It also gave me a lot of appreciation for the textures of food, honestly food is so good even without a sense of taste or smell. Unfortunately my sense of taste is back now, but wrong. Almost everything tastes like decomposing matter, and the things that don't taste like that just taste sickly sweet or like nothing at all. And to make things worse, one of my dogs died this monday. He was 18 years old, but he still had time left. Unfortunately on sunday night, my mom let him out to pee, only for him to be attacked by coyotes. We took him to the vet but there wasn't anything they could do, and we said goodbye. He had been part of my family since I was 9 years old. I had hoped he could have a peaceful death of old age, but I'm glad I could at least be with him when he passed. I'll miss him a lot. Currently I'm just trying to get through my illness, and once I can get back to work I'm sure I'll feel better.

the grind

9/16/2022

It's been a while since I made any updates to this site! As of today I've had a job for 3 weeks, and it's my first time working as an employee of a company rather than like, running my own business or doing art commissions. It's definitely interesting, a lot easier than running my own business for sure, much less to worry about. It does take up a lot of my time though, and the dress code means I can't just wear what I normally wear. But honestly, I'm really happy, I like the job, and so far I haven't had any issues with coworkers, clients, or the managers. School is a bit more difficult. I decided to ask if I can do my solar system generator as one of my projects for a class, so I have to have the prototype finished by Monday, hopefully I can do that, but it's gonna be hard, I only work two hours today and I have the weekends off tho so I can probably get a good amount done.

In other news, Splatoon 3 came out last week! It's my first time actually buying a Splatoon game and I'm having fun! I wanna try and move toward using the motion controls but unfortunately that really gets my motion sickness. I'll try and see what I can do about that but it sucks that I can't fully use the motion controls cause of that. Either way I'm still having a lot of fun, even if I'm not super great at shooters. Working on getting my level up slowly but surely.

solar system generator

8/21/2022

This is a sort of devlog for a thing I'm making to -hopefully- make the starling story a bit easier to plan. Since the story takes place across a ton of different galaxies and solar systems, I figured making a generator for solar systems would help me create unique settings or explain them better. I'm not really working too hard on it since it's just for fun, but so far I have a form that spawns a bunch of colored circles wherever you want. Each circle has the information you need to distinguish it as a planet/sun and like, some general info. But I think I wanna add more specific information and the colorcode based on that instead of just letting me choose the colors, so I think that's what I'll do next. In the end I want it to look sort of like this diagram I made in Clip Studio, but preferably better and with more customization, maybe I can even add custom sprites for the planets or something instead of just circles.

look at these waterguns

8/13/2022

Title says it all, I was out today for Pokemon GO community day and I came across the cutest dinosaur waterguns ever at Miniso, so I got one for me and one for my crush. I love them so much.

talkative today

7/29/2022

I have a lot of thoughts today I just wanna type out.

So the first thought is about my name, like, my online name. I use the name Oaaky online because I used to use the username GreenOaak, like as in Green Oak the rival character from Pokemon. The normal spelling was taken so I just added an A cause people would read it the same anyway. Of course once I moved on to use it in my art stuff under the name OaakArt, it sort of lost that context, and I'm not sure how people pronounced it. Especially since theres a similar thing called OOAK Art which stands for "One Of A Kind Art" that in my defense, I didn't know about when I started using that name. Oaaky ended up happening cause I didn't feel like using my real name online anymore and started making like a persona around my Art Brand TM. Not that I really take art super seriously like in a commercial/professional way, it's mostly for fun.

Thought number two is about Minecraft. Which, if you've seen my other posts, has been on my mind a lot lately. Back in like 2018 (I think) I tried to supplement my Minecraft deficiency (for more info see like, two posts down) with minecraft youtubers, I temporarily got into Hermitcraft for a bit, mainly following Grian into it, but it didn't last super long since even Minecraft videos got me motion sick. Anyway this time I've gone all in, and I'm having a good time. I started watching Grian's Life SMP series, which got me really inspired to make Minecraft OCs again, so I might put some stuff here about them too.

On a semi-related note, the Life SMP series has a lot of really good fan animations and AMV style videos. I'm not much of an animator, I really only do simple stuff for video games and it's usually sprite based tweening animation type things, but I've been kinda wanting to try it myself. Probably not for mcyt stuff, but my crush (should I keep calling him that now that it's a mutual thing?) had a really good idea for an animatic with our Starling OCs using Linkin Park's song The Catalyst. It inspired me so much I started doing like, actual work toward getting character references down, so maybe something will come out of that? I think as a start I'll probably only do a portion of it, since a full song would probably be too much for my first animation.

Today I was at a friend's house and I sort of just doodled a bit, I redesigned Nepristi but I'm not entirely convinced I like it yet, so I might do a few more takes of that. I did draw Darift in a way I liked though, but I haven't yet asked my crush if he has any ideas for her color palette, so I can't finish the drawing fully. I also think I really need to start looking at references for clothing ideas, cause I haven't been putting any thought into outfits for them really, and I think that's important to consider. Character design is hard...

Anyway I think that's all the thoughts for now, hope whoever's reading this enjoyed my weird train of thought blog post. Kind of long but it's my blog so I get to do what I want.

fanfic idiot plot

7/26/2022

Those who've read most of my website have probably seen a few mentions of my crush around. I've had a crush on him for a while at this point, but he's always told me he isn't ready to examine any romantic feelings or anything like that. Obviously I respect that, and I am perfectly happy being his friend. I actually went through two breakups during 2020 and 2021 (yes I had a crush on him during this and yes I also loved my partners, and everyone was aware of my crushes), so I also wasn't super ready for a relationship like that anyway. I've always been happy being his friend and openly having a crush on him, he's always been aware of this, and I've made sure he's comfortable with anything I do that's close to flirting or whatever. This sort of led to us fake flirting a lot. Mostly me at him, but recently he started reciprocating. I brushed it off as just, friendly flirting, as one does. So for months, we've just been like this; flirting, planning our lives together, talking about how much we miss each other and want to cuddle and nap together...

I got into the habit of flirting and then saying something like "hope that you're okay with me flirting, I know you don't like me back and I'm not trying to pressure you to or anything I'm just doing it cause it's fun" just to make sure I'm not overstepping (it is fun btw if you've never flirted with your friend for fun you should give it a shot). Anyway, one time I did that, he got really quiet, for a long time. I once again, brushed it off. After all, I didn't expect nor did I want to expect him returning my feelings. I felt like if I let myself have hope that he would then I would start accidentally pressuring him or something, and that was the last thing I wanted. I value him too much to risk making him uncomfortable like that. That was my thought process. There's definitely another part of me that felt a little unloveable (breakups do that to you), but it wasn't a particularly big issue compared to me just wanting him to be comfortable, my self esteem is actually pretty good.

A little over a week ago he confessed he's had feelings for me for around two years. Immediately, mmories of every single moment that I flirted with him and followed it with "no homo" flooded my mind. I felt stupid, not in a bad way, but, I still can't believe it. I guess it makes sense though. I think I may be the biggest idiot gay ever. Anyway, we don't really want to fully label what we are, we're best friends, we love each other, we want to live together, we want to be in each others lives. I think he's very attractive, I've pictured myself kissing his hand, I don't know if he returns those feelings but I don't need him to. We're soulmates, we don't know what the future will bring, but we hope it brings us closer together, and we're willing to work toward that future. We're everything, we're just us, and I'm really happy he likes me too.

One last thing since I know he's gonna read this. Hi, I love you.

blocks and blocks

7/12/2022

So I haven't really been updating this website super often lately. One of the exam months really took its toll on me, but that's not really the only thing. For many years, I haven't been able to play one of my favorite games ever, Minecraft, because I suddenly developed severe motion sickness from first-person games back in late 2016. No change of settings nor medication would help me, and so I was forced to quit playing or watching videos about it. It's very sad. But recently, I tried again, and medication started working. It was like a miracle. And honestly I haven't been able to stop playing ever since. Needless to say, I've been a bit distracted.

I also feel like I've hit a block with this website. It's gotten a bit big, and I think I'm going to try to find a way to use an external editor so that I can streamline the process of updating the site a bit more, but I... really don't know where to start with that. So I think I'm gonna wait until I'm on break to do a large update with a new layout and everything, hopefully it will look good, but who knows!

useful find

5/11/2022

Back when I was taking pictures of all my Pokemon plushies, I needed to resize all my images to a smaller size so that they wouldn't take up too much space or take ages to load on my website, and I was a little frustrated that you couldn't just resize a bunch of pictures at once on your computer at once. So obviously I went to look for a program or plugin that Could do that. And I found Microsoft PowerToys. First off, I wanna say, it's insane that they could call this a toy. This is a set of tools that have helped me in so many ways as someone who does school and work mostly through my computer. It has stuff for resizing and renaming lots of images at once, a function to pin a window to the top of all other windows, a color picker, it lets you add custom keyboard shortcuts, and many other functions. I use them all regularly now, and it's made my experience on my computer much better. I really hope in the future these tools get implemented as base functions for all operating systems.

game day with my mom

5/8/2022

Today I took my mom to see the Padres game for mothers day. She is a big fan of baseball and has been ever since she was little. She became a fan of the Padres when I started playing baseball at age 9 and has been following them ever since. It was a very tense game, the Padres were losing basically the whole time until literally the bottom of the 9th inning where they scored a triple home run and won the game. It was insane, my mom yelled so much that she lost her voice almost immediately. I think she had a lot of fun, I did too. Happy mothers day to those who celebrate today. I still got one more to go since Mexican mothers day is on tuesday. My mom is so lucky she gets two mothers days.

up since midnight

5/2/2022

Not a super interesting blog entry, just need to complain. I wish I knew why I'm unable to sleep through the night when I go to bed early, when I go to bed later than 12 I could sleep for 10 hours no problem, but if I fall asleep at 8 or 9 I always wake up within 3 or 4 hours. It sucks cause no matter what I only end up getting maximum 6 hours of sleep since I have school in the morning. It's not even like I wake up rested either, I just wake up and I'm still tired but I can't fall asleep again. It's frustrating. Sleep should either be easier or optional honestly.

working up the courage

4/26/2022

I really want to finish putting together my collection catalogue, but I am honestly a little afraid to start with the other sections. I have a lot of stuff and I would need to take it all out and take pictures of it and put it back, which I really do need to do so I can clean up a bit but I also am afraid I'll leave it halfway through if it gets to be too much. I know I really should just start it, I am definitely not gonna leave it halfway cause I really wanna do this, but it's still a fear. I think if I have time tonight I will try and start on it, hopefully I can find a place with good lighting in my house to take pics since I won't have sunlight. I think that's another thing that's keeping me from starting, I'm busy literally all day because of school and work :(
But I'm gonna do it anyway, I don't have a lot of homework right now so it's a good opportunity to get through some of it.

i've turned to the dark side (long ramble)

4/10/2022

[Warning for weight/dieting talk] Saw a tweet screenshot the other day that said "it's very sick how exercise really does help your mental health i really wanted y'all to be lying sooooo bad" and it really resonated with me. I spent a lot of time hating the concept of exercise, it felt like a mountain to high to climb for me (someone with chronic pain). It wasn't even like I didn't try to exercise before, I just always lost the motivation too quickly to see any effects. In fact I honestly think that I never would've started doing it if I hadn't already recovered from most of my mental problems. But regardless, it's a funny tweet, and I relate somewhat.

[Little more serious] I wanted to talk a bit about my decision to start exercising. As of now, I've been walking (mostly) every day for over two months. It didn't start with that though. My motivation to start doing this began with something else. The past few years have been hard on me, and I won't specify why (everyone should know at least some of why anyway), but I will specify what I was doing to cope: drinking a lot of Dr Pepper.

It's definitely not the worst thing I could've been doing, but it was ruining my life all the same. I was drinking upwards of four cans of Dr Pepper a day. For reference: a 12 pack of Dr Pepper costs around $6 here (on a good day), in one month (30 days) I was drinking $60 of Dr Pepper, $720 a year, just for Dr Pepper. Money aside, Dr Pepper has three things that were negatively impacting my life in a big way: Sugar, Caffeine, Carbonation.

Sugar is obvious, I am fat, I'm clinically obese, I don't look like I am, people are always surprised, but I am unhealthily overweight, it makes daily life painful because it hurts to put weight on my feet. Caffeine added to this issue, as I was never getting enough sleep, and I kept needing more to stay awake. Finally, carbonation was another issue, this combined with my lack of sleep and my obesity led to the worst case of chronic acid reflux I have ever experienced in my life. This happened all through the holidays, January, and finals week (around when I made my last blog entry) and it was Ruining me. I was spending days awake because it Hurt to lie down, I had an awful cough which is embarrassing to have during a pandemic even if you know you don't have the virus, and everything I ate or drank tasted like stomach acid. Except of course, Dr Pepper. Which led back to the problem.

During final's week of hell, I finally decided, once my exams were over, I'd stop drinking Dr Pepper. Not just that, I'd stop drinking all soda, I'd stop drinking anything with carbonation, I'd stop drinking caffeine, and I'd limit the amount of sugary drinks I had. And on January 29th, I did exactly that.

It. wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I had migraines every day and I couldn't stay awake very well. But the motivation was strong. I didn't give in. I think I partially have Pokemon to thank for it, because I got to have fun playing that. But also I did time it perfectly, I was on break from school, so I didn't have to deal with as many responsibilities, I had told my family that I would be doing this, so they were understanding for the most part when I was cranky. And on top of that, I got my mom to agree to go on a walk with me every day. It's actually insane how counterintuitive the whole exercise thing is, once you do it every day for about a week, it starts Giving you energy instead of using it. Who would've thought? I made it part of my daily routine, and I try not to break it for any reason. Even when I get lazy, my mom and I keep each other accountable.

After a couple weeks of this, my acid reflux stopped completely. I was finally able to drink water again (couldn't before because it tasted like my stomach acid), and I am now a full blown water drinker and I love water. I won't say numbers cause honestly I haven't checked (and don't care to) but I've definitely lost weight, I've thinned out a bit and started gaining muscle in my legs (the area around my house is all hills which also wasn't great for Starting exercise but it sure is good for building leg muscle), and I also started lifting weights to gain muscle in my upper body (I'm So strong now, it's awesome).

I'm honestly really proud of myself, and I hope I can keep up this routine for the rest of my life. It took a lot of work, and honestly a lot of luck and manipulation of factors to ensure that the time was right for me to do this. But it was worth it, I genuinely haven't felt better in years.

starting the year [Late]

1/30/2022

It's been some time since I updated this blog! The holidays were busy and so was January, my school is weird so I had finals this month, but that's finally done! Also Pokemon Legends Arceus came out! It's honestly the best Pokemon game I've played in a while. I always have fun playing Pokemon, but even I can admit that I've needed something different for a while now, and this is perfect. That said, I haven't played much since it came out, I had gotten a pirated copy a week before and I didnt finish it but it definitely convinced me that I was making a good decision in buying it. Since the day it came out was my last day of school though, I've had to catch up on some cleaning I had been putting off. My brother built a computer for himself and got a monitor from his friend for his birthday, so I got to have his old monitor as my second monitor, my previous monitor was an old TV that I just hooked up to my laptop, so I'm grateful that I have an actual monitor now. But it did mean I had to move a lot of stuff around since the new monitor is Very Big. I'm hoping I can get the cleaning done in the next couple of days so I can go back to focusing on PLA.

30 of them

11/21/2021

Today I went to the zoo to catch Pokemon for Shinx community day. My dad works there so I got a free ticket. The zoo opens before 11 so I had some time to walk and take pictures of Pokemon with the animals. It was really nice, in the end I got 29 shiny Shinx, one which had high enough stats for me to evolve into a Luxray in Pokemon GO. And at the very end, as I was leaving the park, I hatched a shiny Skarmory. Very good day overall.

love this animal, the bogeyman

11/19/2021

Today is the release date of Pokemon BDSP, I had ordered the double pack online from costco and it got here almost at noon. Been playing ever since. I started the game at the same time as my crush, and he usually has a naming theme for his Pokemon (his theme is bird species), so I'm naming my Pokemon based on the meme that the title of this entry is based on. So far I'm at Valley Windworks and my team is Squit the Prinplup, Shimp the Luxio, and Shart the Budew.

biohazard video games

11/8/2021

I'm getting to the end of midterm week(s) and I finally started on my project for mobile video game programming. The game has to use a joystick and needs to be in 3D, the professor is probably expecting a first person shooter type game. Unfortunately I get nauseated played FPS games so I will not be doing that.
In the game you are an alien piloting a UFO in a training simulation for an alien invasion. You need to make sure you don't starve while destroying as many humans as possible. You have three actions: Eat cow, Kill Human, Turn thing into slime. Eating keeps you from starving, killing gets you a kill point and also you can eat the human flesh, and turning things into slime makes a slime that can trap humans or cows and keep them from moving too much.
I know it's weird. I think that's gonna be my brand, biohazardous games.

birds and candles

10/31/2021

My abuelita (dad's mom) died last year on my birthday, soon after that a bird started frequently visiting my house and trying to get in through the window. We all know it's her. She left for a while but has been coming back recently again. My cousin (mom's cousin's daughter) who recently had a sister die, is on the phone with my mom telling her to look for angel numbers, because the bird being back could mean she's trying to tell us something. I will be looking out for the message, and I'll also light a candle to let her know we're doing alright. It is Dia de Los Muertos right now so this is the right time to do this.

the pikachu project

10/29/2021

I saw a post on Tumblr advertising a search engine that prioritizes websites that don't use modern web design. So I opened it up and searched "Pikachu." A few entries down I found a fanfic styled as a blair witch project x pokeani crossover (found footage horror type thing) and gave it a read, honestly it was pretty funny. My favorite part was this:

I really love silly fanfics like this, hopefully I'll find more like it in the future.