Work has been a little frustrating because being over in the more isolated building, I feel like my colleagues and I are being forgotten and left out of the loop and then treated as being at fault. It doesn't help that one coworker damn near refuses to put anything in writing. The whole "come find me" visit in the absence of being willing to accommodate that I have about a third again more steps to traverse in a day because of my situation.

But this year we're getting a half day "work from home" as well. Mine is on Wednesday morning starting tomorrow. It's kinda exciting in possibility but I'm too anxious to make full use of the evening. I guess I'll have a better sense of it next week. I'm most excited about it because I won't have to spend as much paid leave on my bi or tri monthly doctor's visits.

First few days back to work are always a slog of meetings mostly in Japanese. They've been doing a better job about projecting real time machine translation in addition to our few brave bilinguals trying to translate in a Google doc.

Today, Saturday, was for some fucking reason scheduled as a mandatory work day for which were getting a comp day next Monday, so even though nothing was scheduled we had to use PTO to take today off. After a little reluctance, I did.

I'll get granted my new bank of PTO days for the year soon.

Monday will also hopefully be just a peaceful admin work day. I hope.

I've still been having weird mood shifts that I can't quite identify the reason for. Transition and change are hard even when their content is neutral.

Haven't had as much luck being creative for the past few weeks. Felt an inkling of drive today but after some voice call socialization with my couple closest friends, I just feel like it's nap time. Tomorrow is Easter, and I would like to go to church. Wish I had a cute outfit but that would be too much effort unless I discover that something I have is cute.

I always get sick around Easter, and these past couple weeks I keep getting a phlegmy cough. Maybe this explains some of my mood issues too: fatigue from minor illness? I don't have official allergies.

Right now I feel pretty okay but wish I felt like making progress on games or creativity. I also just enjoy the quiet and peace to listen to documentaries or nothing at all and wrap up in blankets since I don't get actual human touch.

Written on mobile so not proofread. I can read what I'm writing, but these are letters for ants.

Cross-posted from vampiremonday.

So, I never watched Death Note in 2007. I saw, like, scattered clips with no context, and I wrote it off based on a very incomplete impression and somehow managed to live an entire life with 0 context about it. Like... to the point of big gaps in my understanding of certain cultural cues, both in nerdy US circles and here in Japan. (Example: a few months ago I found a weird Ryuk with an apple charm on the floor at the school where I work and asked, 'Is this anyone's... ugly... little guy?' and asked a Japanese adult coworker when the kids didn't know who said, 'Death Note???')

Anyway, I started watching it at a friend's suggestion and mild insistence.

In a way, I feel like it's good that I didn't watch it when it was new and I was still a teenager. It feels like it strikes a chord in me that is very... aesthetically coherent with who I am as a person in a way that I did not realize at the time that it was popular and new.

It is so resonant with me, here as a 35 year old watching it for the first time, that it is actually making me think about how it might have affected my interests, desires, and choices, had I chosen to watch it when it was making its first rounds in America. I know that sounds silly, but I almost do feel that it would've been a butterfly wing in me making different life choices somehow, even if I have absolutely no idea how it would've panned out.

I'm to a point now where I love the people I still have in my life enough that I wouldn't want to risk not knowing and loving them, even though there are a handful of moments in my mid teens and early 20s that I sometimes wish I could test-run to see how things went if I had done things differently, but it's just a fun and eerie little feeling to experience.

Sure, a lot of my fandoms seem to sort of... click into place like "oh, I am glad I found you," but this one feels... weird. Like a chunk of missing time.

Anyway, I am watching Death Note and really into it and I know I'm 19 years late, but I might write these creatures in some situations later.

2025 was a rough year for me in terms of public fandom participation and output. I usually do something at least several times a year and feel more of a sense of connection to it than I have this year. I've still done a few things, but nothing seems to have "stuck" in the way that I would like it to.

However, toward the end of the year, I started to feel more actively connected to my fandoms. Started to have a little more internal continuity, which I've complained about the lack of throughout the year.

This year has been a lot of adjustment and change, even though most of it has been good for me.

Anyway, I just went through fandomcalendar and picked out any and everything that's current that I even might be interested or equipped to do. There are a few things I skipped either because of parameters, dates, or fandoms I'm not in, but here's what I found:

• Mood Theme in a Year at moodthemeinayear. I'm not as visual as I am interested in writing and sound, but sometimes I take a notion, and this requires less independent creativity from me, so I might give it a shot if I take a notion.
  
  
• Be a Goldfish - A Multifandom Multimedia Microbang at beagoldfish.
  
  
  
  
• Comment Bingo Round 8 at comment_bingo. This round is open until the end of March. Challenging oneself to go around leaving comments on others' works. I could use some guidance with how to go about participating in fandom in the reader direction as well. I comment on almost everything I read, but I get choice paralysis or am bad at searching and don't read as much as I could.
  
  
• candyheartsex - Candy Hearts Exchange - "Candy Hearts is a multifandom gift exchange with a low minimum and a focus on relationships, both platonic and romantic/sexual." - Nominations are still open for a couple of days, which is one thing that draws me to this!
  
  
• Info on how to Sign up for a 'Fannish 50 in 50' loose blogging challenge.
  
  
• Traumatic Experiences Exchange at traumaticexperiences is a 1k minimum exchange focused on characters' traumatic experiences. All fandoms allowed except RPF. Nominations starting on the 30th.

The kids at work had their closing ceremony/Christmas Mass on Saturday, and I had to go to it. It was fine, and I got to leave work at 1:00, which is the usual Saturday quitting time, but I'm not usually a Saturday worker.

Friday, I got my nails done.

This morning, I went to get some hair tinsel in my hair for the first time. I've wanted to do that since I first saw a girl at a middle school get them when I taught her.

Afterward, I went to church. I am glad I went and didn't flake, because the message from the woman pastor was really good, and I'm getting over my internalized weirdness about hearing a female minister.

It's kind of amazing how unfamiliar I find most Christmas traditions that aren't very secular and commercial. My early childhood was in my dad's most iconoclastic days; he'd gone from having grown up with very standard southern Baptist (not necessarily Southern Baptist) ideas and then got more into reformation theology/church history. He still is, but especially when I was little, he was really obsessed with the "regulative principle of worship" (the idea that unless the Bible specifically indicates that you should do it as part of worship that you shouldn't do it as part of worship) to the point that it kind of alienated a lot of people.

In a lot of ways, I am still kind of cynical along the same lines but maybe for different reasons? It's something I'm still working through.

In any case, my dad was Goin Through It about things that may have been originally syncretistic or whatever, so when I was very small, we didn't have Christmas trees and stuff. Later, it softened a little, but when I was like 3-6 or 7, it was a bit of a family drama at times that my parents were "depriving me of being normal" by insisting that I not hear lies about Santa Claus from them and not have a Christmas tree at home.

I was a little rule-follower and kind of superstitious (as many little kids are) in addition to what my parents are telling me, so when my grandmother had a light-up "angel" on top of her Christmas tree, I hid my eyes from it and everyone thought I was a freak because I thought it was a bad "idol". My parents didn't tell me to do this, but it was my toddler brain trying to follow through on what I had been taught to understand.

Anyway, as a result of the particular religious flavor I grew up with, Christmas is a weird time for me. Doubly so because I am working at a Catholic school and just kind of feeling my way through what it is I believe. I still very much identify as a Christian, but I guess I'm about the age my dad was when I was born and going through the process of untangling some of my long-held assumptions as well.

All of this to say that I feel a little dumb and culturally stunted by the fact that I do not know religious Christmas hymns and carols and whatever as well as other people do. Like I know SOME of the words but most of the hymns I grew up singing were like early protestant stuff, which I still like honestly, but as the closing hymn at Tokyo Union today, we sang:



We did so at a somewhat lower tempo and with the organ (or maybe just a deep-voiced piano, I don't know), so there was something about it that was even more moving and kind of Cool in a way I find hard to describe.

I just find that some of the music that I've been exposed to attending this church and, rarely, a PCUSA church back in Chattanooga, talks a lot more about justice and the social obligations of a Christian in the real world and not just spiritually bypassing and looking forward to heaven or the end of time or whatever.

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking forward to eternity in some way, but I am deeply bothered by the whole "well, the world is going to end soon anyway" excuses of the casual American Christian nationalist death cult thing that bleeds through so much of American Christianity. But sometimes I just feel kind of lost and confused by the fact that I deeply hold my religious values and beliefs but also feel like a stranger to broader Christianity? Plus the fact that I am progressive and LGBT affirming. However, I feel like I am slowly experiencing some growth and introspection, which is nice.

Outside of my spiritual thoughts, one of my recent frustrations has been that I struggle with introspection more than I used to. I feel like so much of my mind and time is spent entangled with my professional duties as a teacher that I sort of lost even my continuity-of-self at times in it. I think about how I used to have this very vivid inner world of daydreams, but I lost it for a long time (maybe since I've been back in Japan basically but sometimes before that, too).

In some ways, my current job is a lot better than any job I've had before in terms of giving me time during work hours to do all of my duties, but then sometimes the hours are extended anyway, and while I love and adore functional public infrastructure and transportation, relying on public transportation means that even though I am not actively mentally involved in vehicle obligation that I spend even more time in vehicles than I did back home when I was so frustrated by always being stuck in a car.

That said, I'm very grateful that I am occasionally feeling some kind of improvement in terms of my sense of self-continuity, and I would appreciate if any older adults have ideas for how to keep going with that. I miss myself and my daydreams and my Fanfic Idea Generation, lol.

I'm also very grateful for just how much utterly better my life is than it was this time one year ago.

2 days and I am flying to Canada to see best friend for a little over a week.

I did about 15 minutes of "work" on plotting the most OC/adding stuff type fic I've ever worked on.

Back before COVID hit everyone, I had gotten really passionately into the idea of this fic about my Fallout New Vegas player character and a few of the other characters.

The initial groundwork I did got written at the beginning of 2020 before I was out of a job. It was going well.

Then, everything in the world changed in ways that one couldn't really brace for, even knowing it was coming.

My life on the other side was never really the same, either. My mom died that year but not from COVID.

Anyway, I have occasionally poked with a stick the idea of trying to finish that fic. I recently heard a clip from Jason Pargin that made me realize why I was stuck after writing the four prologue chapters.

However, every time I start to poke it with a stick, I just wonder if I am really ready to be vulnerable enough to actually put in the work.

The last time I did the work to finish a chapter fic I thought was at least decent, it was a pretty heavy flop except with my big bang artist partner and beta. That was back in the spring. And since then, I dunno. It's like I just cannot make myself do the work that is required to really put something out there that I cared a lot about in order for it to get the sting of being completely ignored even when I try to get friends and likeminded fandom people to look at it.

I feel like some people responded to the art that was posted on tumblr as part of the event who never got around to reading the fic.

And I know I'm being a baby because I've only finished like 1 or 2 of the other long fics that came out of that event, but I have been working on at least a few others. I just feel this rejection sensitivity thing.

Not only that, but the same thing happened when I did a SnowBaird Secret Santa thing last year. The person I got assigned to never actually came around and commented because they sort of ghosted the community it was in before the event concluded.

I know that we are all tired and worn down to a lot less than we were, but it makes me want to reassess how I seek connection with likeminded people, and I just don't know how.

I keep wondering if I should write shorter lighter or more encapsulated stuff due to the attention span and overwork problems people have, but I don't really know how to find the motivation for that anymore, either, and it makes me think that the era of fandom being a community and not a competition is kind of dead.

I am the kind of person for whom general strokes spoilers don't bother me at all. In fact, my best friend is pretty correct that strategic, bullet point type spoilers for something make me more inclined to finish it or give it a shot in the first place.

The other day, she finished up the Amphoreus plot in Honkai Star Rail.

She's been playing HSR since launch, but she never tried to get me into it despite my being a slow but interested Genshin player until this plot came around.

I come and go with my ability to focus on even playing video games, but I love it so much.

Participating in a fic big bang earlier this year kind of hurt my confidence in a weird way that most other writing challenges have not. I don't know if it was just timing or what.

I really want my writing juice back. My daydream space seems to be coming back just a little bit, but so far I cannot make it shape anything that I can turn into something I can share. I'm creatively frustrated but maybe not as hopeless as I was. Hope it sticks.

Various updates.

An Up?: As expected in my last long, emotional post on Taylor Swift Album Release Day, my long-time friend reached out as predicted. It has gone better than a part of me thought it would. The contact has remained a bit consistent, even if sometimes she does not get back to me the same day. Sometimes, I still feel like that she decides "tl;dr" about a lot of the things I send her, but I also think it might just be a difference in communication styles.

She gave me a health update and explained that she actually is taking actions to correct a rather severe nutrient deficiency and is feeling better.

I'm really relieved to hear that there might be a reason for her and, subsequently, our connection to get better. I feel like an asshole for being frustrated that she was kind of not available for a year and a half, with rare and variable exceptions, because I know she's had a hard time physically and emotionally, too.

As expressed in a replies to my previous post, there was a period of time back in 2016 when this friend really hurt me in a way that I think was something she kind of "had" to do in order to hit a rock bottom place from which she got into therapy. However, shortly after she got into therapy, I felt like that her conditions for being in relationship with anyone basically meant that she wanted groupies rather than friends. Others needed to support her in her mental health journey, but she had no emotional bandwidth or patience for anyone else's needs.

In the years since, we've talked about how people who are in a bad place who start therapy often kind of take a therapist's guidance and hear what they want to hear. Their first efforts to make adjustments can sound like "actually therapy makes you a terrible person???" but the therapist can then hear from the client and be like, "Ma'am that is not what I said. It's what you interpreted from what I said with a very broad brush."

Anyway, I am hopeful for the friendship, but I just have this broader frustration with the fact that I feel like even in my very close relationships -- close friends, family, etc. -- that I actually put my money and support where my mouth is. I try to genuinely help people instead of just giving them thoughts and prayers. However, it feels like the vast majority of people really do not offer actionable support even when you're supposedly close. People aren't willing to sacrifice anything for each other. And that ends up making me feel like an overdrawn bank account, sometimes, though I don't feel like the answer is to become exclusively self-serving?

Anyway...

A Down: I kind of think the new Taylor Swift album sucks. I've thought about expressing my feelings about it through some kind of open letter to her she'll never read, but I also feel like a better use of my time would be to invest my time into listening to music that I actually like for a while and giving Taylor Swift a time to simmer and see if she can ever learn to onboard valid criticism ever again in her entire life.

It's tricky, because there have been times when she was criticized for simply being a famous white woman, for simply daring to date around and try to fin "the one" even if it's messy, or whatever. However, I think that she has over-inoculated herself against criticism to the point that she hears all criticism as unfair and not understanding of her very unique situation.

Plus, no one can become and remain a billionaire without some damage to their hearts if not their brains.

Her last album, TTPD, contained a lot bitterness including some of it directed at her fanbase. I think she really blames a lot of them for the failure of her relationship with Matty Healy, and I don't think she's forgiven them despite being oh-so-happy with her new man.

There's something so petty and meangirl about this new album, in most places, that it feels like something she should have done in her 20s and not her mid-30s if at all.

Anyway, I was never a hardcore "swiftie" where I was convinced that there was hidden genius and Da Vinci Codes or whatever in every single one of her choices. However, there's a kind of pain associated with finding very clear evidence that a person your age that you ind of viewed as a poetic representation of your generation is being so regressive at this particular moment. But, like I said, billionaires do not have normal functioning human hearts and brains, so there's some hope on my part that she'll be humbled and become someone whose art I like again, but right now there's a sour taste in my mouth.

I don't hate her. I'm just disappointed.

An Up: The other day, a group of people who do global music outreach came to do a three-day workshop with our Year 7 students, and I got to pop in a few times and see performances, including the finale where the workshop cast and then the Year 7s also danced and sang. It reminded me of how powerful live art can be, and I've been filling some of my Taylor-shaped void with revisiting musicals.

I have this tendency to go through months where I only listen to spoken content, so it was nice to have a reminder of how music and dance and things can be like visceral therapy.

A Down: I'm still struggling to find writing consistency and motivation, and it feels like a part of me is missing or atrophied.

A Down: Trying to work stuff out with the OCT and eventual Canadian immigration/work permit options is being a royal pain in the ass. I finally got the fingerprinting company handling my most recent piece of the puzzle to contact me back after emailing them WEEKS ago (they said my email address was generic and sometimes they don't get those? like why provide an email for assistance if you do not notice or answer emails from real-name gmail addresses??? who are you expecting to email you?) and calling two days in a row to leave a message. Initially, they told me they had not received my package at all yet. However...

An Up: The reason they had not received my package at all was because Canada Post went on a strike like two days after the package was mailed from the US. This means it was probably just sitting in the Canada Post's stockpile for days and weeks. However, the guy emailed me back and said they got my package the day after I finally got them to communicate with me.

A Down: I bought a little bookshelf type thing from amazon and thought I could put it together by myself, but I simply do not have the elbow grease to do it manually. I had to order an electric screwdriver, so for now I have pieces of a shelf in a random spot on the floor. One reason it's hard to organize my small space is that I do not have a specific place for everything, so here's hoping I don't get so disgusted that I simply have to pay to have someone cart it away.

I have mentioned probably that specifically since July my creativity has kind of crashed and burned. It sucks a lot, and I had a very bad few days recently with my mental health. I feel a bit better at the moment, but I am still worried about my ability to maintain this outlook.

Currently, I am signed up for the bingo challenge at fandom_empire and have been trying to track things over at communal_creators.

Someone over at the latter suggested this word tracking spreadsheet template. Decided to try using it from today.

I want book recs if anyone has them. I'm about to start the last John Dies at the End audiobook, and I am finding I think maybe listening to audiobooks as much or more than disconnected reddit stories or true crime docs/YouTube videos might be good for my mental health.

As mentioned, I most recently have been on a Jason Pargin kick. I don't know why. I just respect him and think he's a cool guy. Honestly his prose isn't that beautiful but it's easy as hell to follow.

In the past, I was also really into Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I'm usually genuinely interested in whatever I'm reading or teaching as an English teacher.

I'm not looking for high brow or hard to track stuff right now.

I would be most interested in:

funny novels with a dark or ironic twist

horror that isn't primarily about gore

sci-fi that is funny or clever

I've not been super into reading or listening to fantasy as I've tried it and my long term project there is Wheel of Time but I went off it a bit when the TV show got cancelled after season 3. Just dread or whatever. But I would be interested in like a baby's first romantasy

I prefer character driven / shipping possible novels but only feel mildly so about the JDATE novels so I'm flexible. I'm also looking for stuff that'll make me wanna write

Thank you if you have suggestions 🙏