If you have been reading my blog posts for honestly, since this last year, thank you, but also you may have noticed I have been trying to push myself to be more open both in real life and online. And this is part of the reason why I drew a little self portrait for my about page. That and that I'm getting better at drawing but also because I feel like there needed to be an image next to all that text and I couldn't find any good images of Krillin (i like him because he is bald. and funny).

Through a drawing, I could still maintain some anonymity but attach a face to the website, so I thought, here are some 5~ish minute pen sketch of me.

Since then, posting has felt incredible uncomfortable. The idea that even as an avatar, a drawing, that I am seen terrifies me.

Frankly, I am scared of you. I've obscured myself so much that being seen as myself as myself is completely alien to me. The eyes, I'm telling you, the eyes. Even through a screen thousands of miles away, I feel them. I both want them and I hate them, and I hate that I want them and I hate that I hate them.

I pictured in my mind how it would go if I deleted my website, upon that final click, the eyes would finally leave and once again I have not existed. I would still be the same me to all the people who know me, but a source of happiness would disappear with it and I would go back to my old ways and the only smile that would creep onto my face is the fake one that I've practiced in the mirror.

I think ultimately what stopped me is that recently I went out for coffee with a friend. In the day before and the hours leading up, I dreaded going, leaving my house, going on the train, all inconsequential things that don't matter, but that I complain about to myself anyways. I'm truly glad I went. We talked for an hour and a half and we could've talked for longer if she didn't have to catch a train, and I enjoyed it, time flew by like it was nothing. We talked about jobs, about family, about Vietnam, about uni, about graduation, about life, about the future, what more though, was that I was myself. And I felt happy being myself around someone else. I then went home that day, and I thought maybe its not over for me.

No matter how much those drawings make me feel uncomfortable, I won't delete them, for that would be admitting defeat, in fact I will be doing more.

On the contrary, I deleted my writing for a different reason.

Is it bad that it felt cathartic deleting that writing? This blog has infected how I write and I felt like too much of my writing was centred around myself and far too direct and so it is gone. It felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

Posting will never not be daunting, but at some point I have to get over it, because of this however, I post things I'm not sure if I like and it eventually gestates in my mind and I grow to hate it. Yet in my stubbornness I feel I have to keep it, otherwise it feels like I'm running, but truth be told, I just don't think its that good. If I want to write something, I at least want myself to like it. As such, what is left, is what I like.

The passing of time reveals itself in strange but small ways. The red string pendant that dangled beneath my father's rear view mirror inside his car is no longer red. Bleached by the sun, its crimson has faded to a sickly orange, stripped of its colour, worn down through time. I haven't been inside my father's car in a while, funny because he used to drive me to school almost everyday as a child.

Anyways, I've been playing Kenshi recently, lots of fun, but also, I've started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizon again after a year and a half and this really brings back memories to March 2020, how fitting to play this again when I now have just as much free time as I did back then.

While I love New Horizon, it is a game that infuriates me endlessly. I remember just how flabbergasted I was that they did happy home paradise, an update and then... nothing. That was it. It could have been so much more, so much. Alas, what we got is what we have, I still have fun though.

I also got a free subscription to BFI Player to watch Akira Kurosawa's High and Low and before it runs out in 2 days I want to watch at the very least one or two movies. I'm thinking Memories of Murder, there seems to be a lot of translated movies here.

I was going to write some more stuff but my brain is fried and its 2 am yet again so this is enough for today.

I feel more in control of my mind than I have ever felt before and its also been part of the reason why I haven't written anything in a few weeks. I want this time for it to be real. Not just something I say only then to revert back to misery. I wanted to know that really and truly this positivity in my mind could exist for more than a day, more than a week. 2 weeks is nothing, but there is a clarity in my thoughts that has sustained, I feel like I've overcome a barrier, in what way, and how big? I don't know, but I know I'm past it that's for sure.

Nothing has changed in the things I do or the things that happen to me, only the way I look at things has changed. The reason why I have been pushing myself to do more, pushing myself to be better, so quick and in so little time, is not out of a desire for real change but instead to avoid confronting the real change happening inside me. I haven't achieved absolute peace or anything, but what felt like a vicious effervescence in my brain has started to settle. Finally, just as summer is over, I have begun to appreciate life.

As to my real life, some things have changed, I recently cut my hair. Too much. I had been losing a lot of hair in the shower and I noticed a lot of split ends and tangles forming when I comb in the morning which is usually an indicator to me, that I should cut my hair. I haven't gone to a barber in over 5 years, before COVID I already hated going to the barber, but after I started growing my hair, I began cutting it on my own. You'd think, after 4 or so years of cutting it myself, I'd get better at it. I believe I've gotten worse.

The first snip, so nonchalant, so lackadaisical, when that strand fell to the floor my eyes widened and I verbally gasped. I spent the next two days attempting to tweak my hair before I shower, only to just give up and accept the damage. To be honest, cutting your own hair isn't that difficult, only the conditions that I'm working with make it ever the more harder. If you approach cutting hair like something that can be solved, it becomes much easier. Identify what wrong and once found, take the necessary steps needed to fix it. Only now, I have no idea how to fix it, and in doing so I find myself creating an entirely new problem and I don't want to spend another 30 minutes in the bathroom before I shower, and I'm definitely not going to dampen my hair mid-day just to cut it so I'm left fighting my own hair for the little time I have over these past few days- WOW! I AM UNEMPLOYED.

In other changes, in my attempts to reduce computer screen time I've started allocating an hours time from when I do my morning routine of coffee, my bedsheets, my bodily functions and hygiene. I then sit at my desk and I journal and then when I feel I've written enough, I read.

I've been reading The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco and its honestly been really enjoyable as a mystery novel but its length is definitely felt for a guy like me. I've amortised some reading time by reading on the train on the few occasions I do leave the house. I want to get it over and done with by the end of September so I can finally start reading some new books, I always try and get at least one big book a year and I think this will be my one. Next year it'll either be War and Peace or Don Quixote, who knows maybe two, I am (hopefully) travelling so I'd like to get a lot of reading done in 2026. Anyways the next book I'm thinking has got to be a shorter one, maybe 200 pages or less. After that, non fiction for sure because I want to get smarter and know more, but I don't want it to be too long either. Jakarta Method?

Every time I finish a book, I feel my writing getting better. Even if I'm not actively writing, tacitly the words are written into my mind, remembered by my soul.

(APPENDAGE - As of midnight I have finished the book, great book, even if half of it related to historical contexts I didn't get and a deep knowledge of Christian theology I didn't have, or latin for that matter, nonetheless, it was a really great novel. Though, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I know. I feel like my brain is just the right amount of broken to appreciate this book for what it is even with my limited knowledge whereas other people probably would have trouble unless they liked to research before they read.)

In the weeks since I last wrote, I also watched two movies after not watching any for a few months: Blue Giant (the movie adaptation of the Blue Giant manga), and Akira Kurosawa's High and Low.

Both two great movies, Blue Giant has a fantastic soundtrack, particularly if you like jazz and its composed by Hiromi, the contemporary Japanese jazz GOAT so you know its good. The story is adapted from the manga, and the manga is one of my favourites. The animation, though? When its good its GOOD, but I heard the studio faced some financial and temporal restraints of some sorts and you can tell. Not horribly bad though.

High and Low was amazing. I don't watch as many movies as I should and I know very little about cinematography, blocking and framing, and composition, but this movie is surely the pinnacle of all those. The tension it builds throughout the movie, the first half, the second half, the end, man what a damn movie. I feel like I'm spoiling myself watching so many good movies all at once, I really should watch some slop to balance it out.

The only update about the J-O-B word is that the search is still ongoing. If it ever comes to fruition i.e. money in my pocket, I will say. That is it.

I've started writing proper again. More than blogs, and more than just things, but fiction, stories, I still suck at continuing, but at least I'm starting them. I like to write. I think that's something I've forgotten recently, but I really do like to write.

With the start of the new month, I've been very relaxed recently and I'm letting the August in my mind go.

I think I'll stop trying to meet new people and instead focus on the people who I actually know instead of strangers, just to arbitrarily improve conversational skills that will come as I live life. That and also that I am in severe aura debt from all awkward interactions I've had.

I'm not liking the vibe of the blog posts from last month and I blame it mostly on having just far too much free-time. All I do all day is think and my thoughts are melting into one thoughtless blob that churns out thoughts as excess. I’ve never been here before. No school to anchor myself on, not even an arbitrary education goal. I can't even make the most out of this free time by relaxing, everyday that passes and I’m not working or frantically looking for a job drags on me. When I finished my final exam, I thought I would enter vacation mode and spend my time relaxing maybe even too much, instead I'm on unemployed mode, and I'm woefully unequipped and now I'm trying too hard to make up for it.

Another thing for the new month is that I've been articulating too much of my thoughts to compensate for years of having no online presence and its making me uncomfortable, especially because I feel like its feeding into the negativity. I won’t delete any posts because I do think its worthwhile to have them exist and the good thing with posting so much is that the all the tiny grains of sand get lost in the desert.

It isn't even that I'm talking about my feelings or how I feel, its that all I ever talk about nowadays are my problems, what ails me, what makes me feel bad, its all just venting and I'm getting sick of it. I'm sick of constantly repeating things, regurgitating woes I've written about before, I haven't talked about the things I enjoy in a long time and I miss that.

There was a user here on neocities by the name of labyrinth-limbo whose page I used to admire for just how open and honest their blog could be, but I think I just don't have the stones for it. I post at night because that means I can go to sleep and wake up in anxious anticipation, both hoping that somebody has read it and that nobody has read it. Maybe one day I'll be more comfortable though.