I'm incredibly lucky that I've only got two lectures this semester, but because of that I've gotten lax.

Now, approaching halfway through the first semester, I realise, I need to lock in. HARD. All I've been doing in lectures is playing balatro and guessing the countries of the world on sporcle (my high score is 184 btw). The only real reason I come in for lectures are friends, but to be honest I don't even talk to them during the lecture. During lectures, I can't focus for some reason, I try to pay attention but within a few minutes of speaking, I get easily bored or distracted so I do something else like surf wikipedia or play games. I do try to pay attention but it just doesn't work. I've got my onenote open though, just so that I can add a few notes from whatever passing sentence I hear when my brain will let me. Typically I wait until I have a big exam coming up and I just watch all the lecture recordings at x1.5 speed and write my notes at home. It usually takes a whole day just to get through 1 lecture, I'm way too easily distracted.

As it goes, only one more year until the end of uni, after then, who knows?

Late at night, hunched over the toilet, I suddenly remembered about my last blog post.

I cannot tell you what demons I fought to keep that post up, but even now our forces are still engaged in great warfare. Luckily, I have won, for now.

I've been playing WEBFISHING recently. Great game, gives me a lot of nostalgia for those 2020 animal crossing days where it seemed like the brightest light in darkest times until all of a sudden they stopped updating it for what ever reason. Even now I cannot comprehend it, such wasted potential, I can only sigh and shake my head disappointedly. Envision me doing that as I write this.

Already 4 weeks into university, time sure passes by fast, less than two weeks from Halloween, 2 months until Christmas, time seems to be slipping away all too quickly.

I've probably written seven starts of different blog posts since I wrote my last one rambling about different things before deleting it and starting anew.

Turns out its actually kinda hard to find time and energy to write. Since university started, motivation for blog posts has been rare. I say time, but who am I kidding? I have lots of free time!

I have lots of thoughts, but not enough in me to write them out. Between blog posts, journal entries, school work, an actual physical journal and writing in general, I'm kinda overwhelmed by all the things I have and want to write. I still havent forgotten about the trip post that I was supposed to do last month, but we'll get to it when we get to it I suppose.

It feels odd. All of it feels odd, I don't know how to explain it, like the life I'm living just isn't serious? I suppose? It sort of feels not real. Like I just wake up and exist but nothing more. Even when I'm doing things, having fun with friends, I get taken out of it and can't help but think that something's wrong. Something is wrong.

With my graduation this summer and my future career plans virtually in the wind, I can't but help but feel like life is at a filler point.

I had said previously before that I had no idea what I want to do after my graduation, but I was lying then, or maybe I didn't realise I was lying because I know what I want to do. Only I don't know if its what I'm going to do. Its only a dream, but I want to become a writer. No one knows this dream because even I struggle to accept this dream as something I truly believe in even when I do.

In my mind I make up a lot about my future, scenarios play out late at night, while I pace across the living room floor, where I'm a doctor, an athlete, an astronaut, all these fantasies that exist vividly in my imagination. I can't help but shake that this dream is a fantasy too, that its just my imagination running wild and not what I really want to do. Yet, I can't imagine wanting to do anything else.

I've committed over a decade of education into science and now I want to do something creative? But, when I think about being into research, or working in a lab or a field, or even an office, there is no joy when these jobs come to mind. I don't mind working, I'll toil enough for sure, but when I write I'm happy. I want to be happy.

Here's to the end of my first week back in university. Finally got some time to myself, I've been socialising all week, met a lot of new people, said hi to some old ones, and now I'm all out of juice.

It was somewhat kinda funny meeting all these new people, you cycle through all the same questions, what year, what course, where are you from and the like. The big one for me was

"So, what are you going to do after this?"

On my first year and my second year I had a very different answer to what I have now. Whenever I was asked, all I could say was:

"I don't know."

It's funny, it feels more real than whatever fake lines I dredged up on the spot before, no I don't want to work in the same industry of my degree, no I don't want to do monotonous work, no money doesn't motivate me. Yes I do want money and yes, if need be I will work a job I hate. Don't get it twisted though, if I don't inevitably end up prioritising my happiness, I may not be long for this world.

In other news however, lately I've been listening to Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay alot as of late.

I first stumbled upon the album from a random recommendation on spotify's homepage, I had never heard anything about them before and I figured why not? At first I didn't really like it, I had just finished a run and by the very first song, I couldn't get a handle on the sound. Later, out of the evils of the algorithm, I started seeing videos and tweets about how good this Magdalena Bay album was and figured I should give it another try and listen to the whole thing.

On my next listen, I really enjoyed a few songs off of there, but still the album itself I wasn't quite as keen on. One of the songs I really took to was 'Image' and for a couple of days that was all I played on repeat as I am often to do.

When my first day of lectures came around, at a 7 am wake up on 5 hours of sleep, the hour long commute was going to be a rough one after what was around a 5 month break. Usually I just play my playlist but, with a runtime of 53 minutes, it was perfect for what I needed.

I am glad I did not give up. I could have just easily blown it off upon first listen, but instead I felt like something was there, although I could not at first see the light, the rays that pierced through the cracks shone bright enough for me to stay.

There's been a dip in quality of these posts even before I left for South Africa. I recently looked at some of my first posts and I was hit with the original joy I used to feel when I first started these. At some point, I don't know when, writing these just felt like putting a couple of words so that this page wouldn't look so empty. I haven't even put any pictures here lately, which was the whole entire point of buying my camera.

Well, I'm feeling a great need for a reset, I've finally started working on my website again and now I feel like putting some effort into here.

A couple days ago, while looking for new chapters of REAL on amazon, I stumbled across two art books of Inoue Takehiko's Slam Dunk on sale and I just had to buy it. My maintenance loan money came in and I figured why not.

They're a lot bigger than I though, originally I was going to put them together with my Dragon Ball and Shaun Tan artbooks but they don't even fit the shelf.

I've been really getting into fountain pens, while on the trip, for the first time I met someone else who also likes fountain pens! Recently I got both the 40 degree and the 55 degree Sailor Fude de Mannen pens and I've been enjoying them a lot.

While working on this website, I've been looking at old blog posts and even old journal entries. Within the span of a few months I feel like how I write has drastically changed. Things I struggled with, I struggle less on now. As it turns out, practice really does help. Not only how I write, but my website code in itself has improved. My new journal page isn't QUITE as cobbled together as say my main page.

It's been a very quiet September since I've come back from my trip. For some reason I don't feel like doing anything at all, just waiting and relaxing until university rolls around in two weeks. Yet at the same time, when I'm not doing anything, I start feeling like I'm just wasting my time and that I should be doing something. If only I could relax, or if only I could work, but I want the other while I'm doing one thing and the opposite when I'm doing the next. What a conundrum! The problem is my brain, but I can't do anything about that... or maybe I can, but not today and not tomorrow.

There is a lot I want to get done, book reviews for the book page that I redid, the trip journal (btw I'm probably going to put it here instead of journal) and just writing in general. Not to mention that I haven't touched a book page since I got back.

So much to do, too much time to do it and not enough motivation to get it done.

I'm back.

This'll be a short post because I'm planning to make a big one later. All I'll say is, I brought 6 books and only read one. I will be fair to myself though, I've read like 700 pages in total which is like the size of three median sized books so I think I deserve points for that.

It'll probably be around a few days to a week until I finish the big post, I want to redo my journal page and then the write up itself should be a few days too.

I'm very tired, I want to sleep but its still daytime as I write this.

I think my trip didn't overstay its welcome at all, ended just as the fatigue was setting in. Perhaps one more day of just relaxing would've been nice, though, I guess with two weeks until university starts again, I'm sure I'll find time to relax at some point.