am currently working on my driver’s license. background on this is that i got my learner’s permit in 2016 but my anxiety surrounding driving made me not eager to practice and my parents didn’t push me much. but it expires on my birthday this year and i realized that driving is something i need to do, because i plan on moving in with my partner next year and one of us needs to be able to drive. so learning to drive was one of my goals this summer.

we put it off for a bit, partially due to high gas prices and partially due to my abysmal sleep schedule in June, but when my summer class started my mom and i established a routine: practice driving after she picks me up from the bus station, before going home. and it’s worked great! i feel confident driving, and i never really felt confident on prior attempts to learn.

because this is texas, i’ve been driving for a full month and today was my first time ever driving in rain (there was a very brief shower while driving my dad to the apple store.) i’m definitely concerned about how the hell i’m gonna learn to drive in snow (my partner lives in the upper midwest, lol.)

overall though, i’m feeling pretty good about my progress. my summer class, Philosophy of Law, has also been pretty enjoyable and i appreciate the structure it’s given my days. also the easy A doesn’t hurt either lol.

hope y’all’s summer is going well!

It's been a while, huh. I've been having a... perhaps not "bad" semester, but "mixed-success" semester. And part of that is that I've been kind of... well, you know that tumblr post that's like "filling up all of your time with books, fanfic, youtube, social media, podcasts, music, to prevent the chance of a single thought occurring in your head"? Yeah, that's kinda been me. Which makes it remarkable that I have managed to do some stuff! But I've just overall been very averse to... spending any significant time thinking. And thus my journalling habits (both here and in my private journals) have fallen by the wayside.

So, I'm trying to fix that.

My academics are... ahem... [insert "*chuckles* I'm in danger" meme]. Well, two of my classes are basically fine. The third class is the one I'm in danger of failing due to missed work. The professor is very lenient and will let me turn in most of my assignments absurdly late; I just have to scrape myself together enough to actually do that. Which will be my next goal after I finish writing this. This class is unfortunately vital to my degree; I need to make a C in order to take the next and final course in the sequence in the fall. Which I am also excited to take, because one of my favorite professors is teaching it and a friend from last semester is taking it as well! I really don't want to lose that opportunity... or delay my graduation till Spring 23 T_T.

I've also managed to connect with some classmates of mine, at least in a "sit together in class, walk to next class, and (in one case) eat lunch together" way, which is nice. I've also joined a student organization for the first time since freshman year; a few of the aforementioned classmates are officers there, so I knew some people in the org already. It's nice.

I mentioned last year that I've been greatly enjoying wearing long skirts. This has continued and I am very happy with them (and keep buying more, oops); I feel cute and fashionable for color-coordinating a t-shirt with a skirt, and people compliment my outfits too, which is nice. On top of that, I've started painting my nails. It's turned out to be the only thing that has ever stopped me from biting/picking at my nails, and they're also colorful & shiny & smooth; overall, quite satisfying.

Finally, last month I knuckled down and made an appointment to be prescribed HRT, which happened last week; then today I picked up my prescription and was instructed on how to self-inject T. It was easier than I thought it would be; well, the preparation stuff is kind of fiddly and I'm nervous I'll fuck it up in the future, but the actual injection part was fine.

I think that covers most of it, so I suppose now I'll return to overdue homework. Hope y'all are doing well!

in 6th grade, my world cultures teacher really wanted to be a world geography teacher instead. there were a lot of maps in that class. one day, she gave us all clementines and markers, and had us draw an approximation of the Earth's continents on the clementine, like it was a globe. then she had us try to peel the clementines such that the removed peel was still all in one piece, to demonstrate the difficulty of mapping the globe onto a flat map.

ever since then i've tried to peel clementines/mandarins/etc all in one piece. i've been having clementines at lunch every day for the last few weeks, and that lesson in 6th grade comes to mind from time to time.

school's been going... okay, i think. i'm holding on in my Japanese language class; the way the class is structured is different from what i'm used to, but i think i'm figuring it out. (though i did have a crisis the other week and started morosely wondering if i would have to become an English major instead. this would be unideal because, while i am currently an English minor, being an English major requires quite a few more classes. so, no, i'm sticking with Japanese.)

my other classes are better; lots of discussion, which is good because if i'm confident in a subject (so, not Japanese) then i will not fucking shut up. love earning those sweet participation points.

all my classes moved to in-person about two weeks ago, and that's been fine, mostly. almost everyone in my classes masks during class (i say "almost" because last wednesday i did see someone not masking in my English class :/), but i do see a lot of people not masking in libraries, study areas, and other public indoor areas that aren't classrooms. so that's :/ and i wish my uni would implement a mask mandate (it's texas, and the uni is more spineless than dozens of public school districts, so :/)

the university does offer and encourage free testing, so i've been getting tested once a week, which helps give me peace of mind.

writing-wise, i ended up picking up a late pinch hit for my own Big Bang, which has become my longest work ever by a long shot. it'll be... around 27k when it's finished. void willing i will finish it in the next day or two because i need it to be done. (it was technically supposed to be finished over a week ago, by the rules of my own event, but my co-mod gave me leniency due to it being a late pinch hit. still. i'm a little >.> at myself :p.) i need it off my plate so i can work on my Fic In A Box assignments, which (because i got an extension) are due in a week.

at least the Big Bang fic will actually completely make up my GYWO deficit. (GYWO is getyourwordsout, a year-long writing challenge; i signed up to write 75k this year and was like, 25k behind where i should be before i got started on the BB fic. so between the BB, ficinabox, and highadrenalineexchange, i think i will actually complete my GYWO pledge this year, for the first time since i joined GYWO in 2018. assuming, of course, that i do complete Fic in a Box and Heart Attack.

modding a Big Bang (the Rigel Black Big Bang) this summer was interesting. it was my first time modding a bang, and i'm grateful my co-mod Rime was there to help; i don't think i would ever want to mod one alone, lol. it's like, one part spreadsheets, one part forms, one part emails, and one part hunting people down to make them fill out forms and talk to their partners.

the spreadsheets and forms were my co-mod's job, we shared the emails, and then i was the primary person badgering people about forms. which was a tad... uh... [pterodactyl screeching], at times. but overall it was pretty rewarding, seeing all the fic and art that was made for it! and even me taking that late pinch hit (which basically ended up being a Reverse Big Bang, where you write a fic to match the art — in this case it was an animatic (!!)) has been very rewarding, i just gotta finish it!

ok, dad has requested to play a board game (Azul Summer Pavilion), so i'm gonna go do that, and then after i have three things left to do today:

-study for my Japanese test tomorrow
-creative assignment for my Japanese Literature class
-write

hope y'all are doing well!

so! today was the first day of the fall semester. now, my university initially planned for a full return to in-person classes this semester. however, texas' covid situation right now is a shitshow. it's surging right now and our fucking idiot governor is doing everything he can to make it worse, including banning mask mandates in governmental entities and public schools (and today i also heard he's banning vaccine mandates for governmental entities, even if the vaccines do have FDA approval.) now, a number of K-12 public school districts across the state are defying the governor and requiring masks in schools, which is great. but my university apparently doesn't have the guts to do that, so masks are recommended but optional.

(in my class of around 20 people today, everyone was wearing masks except one girl. so, not terribly impressed with her, but at least everyone else was wearing them despite them being optional? outside the classroom, i still saw most people masking indoors.)

vaccines are also in the "recommended but optional" category. what was mandatory was everyone getting tested for covid in the first week of class (ideally in the 3 days before classes started, but it's pretty hard to schedule a test in this area right now, so they extended it a bit). i got tested today (nasal swab, but it was pretty painless - i gather they're not swabbing as deep in the naval cavity as they used to), and i am negative, as expected.

so my university won't mandate vaccines or masks, and will mandate testing (at least this once). other than that, its reaction to the ongoing covid surge has been "uhhhh... we'll let individual professors decide whether to go online/hybrid/in-person for the first 4 weeks of class!" and with my luck, i got one of each. i was originally slated to have 3 in-person classes on M/W/F. my first class, english, has moved entirely online. my second class, japanese, is hybrid -- it's online M/W, in-person on F. and then my third class, japanese literature, is in-person both days (M/W). which means i'm still going to campus 3 days a week, it's just for only one class a day, and it's more troublesome

i still live at home with my parents, which is like a 30-40 minute drive to campus. (used to take the bus; i might test out the bus for return trips, and see how crowded it is; however, the route i took to commute down to campus had its southbound hours cut, so no matter what one of my parents is going to have to drive me to class, at least.) my second class of the day on M/W is online from 13:00-13:50. my third class of the day is in-person at 14:30. so i gotta finish my second class and then immediately be driven to campus to get to my third class. i explained to the prof and she's understanding of my lateness, but... it is inconvenient.

(can't zoom on campus because my laptop, which was never very good for zoom in the first place, broke, and i haven't yet taken it in to see if it can be salvaged.)

so! that was a lot of words to explain a bunch of inconveniences and grievances with my university. despite that, it was nice, if very strange, to have an in-person class. two of my classmates were classmates i recognized from prior japanese culture classes i'd taken in the last year, and i actually ran into one of them when i went to buy a course reading packet from the print shop. it was cool getting to actually talk to her in person. (also she was tall! it's funny realizing that you've gone a year not knowing how tall your classmates are.)

it's also gonna be nice to have class only 3 days a week, even if there are inconveniences on those 3 days.

uh... i think i had more words on how odd it was to be an in person classroom for the first time in nearly a year and a half, but i think that's about it. It Feels Weird!

(ps. one of the Quality Skirts With Pockets vendors i was talking about in my last personal post, Maya Kern, has opened a new round of preorders! i bought two more skirts, which will bring my total skirt count up to 5. i think i've spent more on my wardrobe this year than in the last 5 years combined, and most of this year's spending is attributable to skirts. but they make me happy so i'm good with it.)

just gonna ramble about some general life updates and thoughts

the spring semester was kind of a shitshow; ended up dropping one class (which i'll retake in the second summer session, which starts mid-july) but thankfully making As in the others. (maybe i'll actually have dragged myself out of academic probation?)

it sucked but it also feels far away now, since it's been 3 weeks since i turned in my last assignment. a lot of my last 3 weeks have been writing a lot of exchange fics (like... 6?? 2 were drabbles but still, 4 fics in the 1k-3k wordcount range is a lot more than i usually do in a month (i wrote nothing in April, lol.)

also i may try to do the June Something posting meme (kind of like Snowflake Challenge, which i historically have completely failed at, but who knows.)

hmm... media.

after watching Star Wars: Clone Wars last year, my parents and i moved on to Star Wars Rebels, which we finished pretty much in time for The Bad Batch to start airing. i liked Rebels, though i didn't like the ending that much. Bad Batch is cute i guess tho i'm not particularly invested.

my parents and my sister and i are watching Shadow & Bone, one episode a week. i read the first grishaverse book back when it was new and remember very little about it; i am enjoying the show tho, especially the Six of Crows characters, so after we finish the show i may read the books.

i'm watching Legend of Korra with my brother, at his request. we're partway into season 3 and it's fun! i watched season 1 when it first came out but didn't watch anything beyond that, so the rest is new to me. brother has seen it before, we're just continuing our tradition of "making the other one experience media we like by experiencing it with them." i wonder if we'll ever decide to consume a media together that neither of us has experienced yet? ...somehow i don't think so.

i've been reading The King's Avatar off and on since like. fucking february. i'm like 2/3rds of the way through. this is SO FUCKING LONG. i do enjoy it but jesus fucking christ. it's like 2.5 to 3 million words. for comparison, ASOIAF is currently 1.75m and The Expanse is 1.33m. but i swear i could read The Expanse two or three times in like a month, while it's taken me three to get through two thirds of TKA. and i would want to do those rereads! whereas i don't think i'll ever reread TKA, not in full. i do still enjoy it but knowing that i still have like a million words left is kind of dragging on my motivation to keep going.

i've gotten into Hollow Knight again and it's pleasing to see how much i've improved! i have gotten all but one achievement, which requires beating the intimidating Pantheon of Hallownest.

other than that... thinking about taking steps to get on testosterone. don't really have the energy to unpack it rn. just feels like i've been thinking about it for like 8+ months and i don't know whether i can achieve the certainty i want in my decision before actually making the decision. based on my past history of trans decisions, i only truly achieve certainty and rid myself of doubt after doing the thing. mmh. a subject for when i'm less tired.

in 2 weeks my cousins will be visiting! first time i've seen them in person since christmas 2019. and then end of june my best friend will also be coming to visit! v excited for both of these

ok, it's nearly 4am so i should sleep. o/

today's mood is: desperately wanting to be masculine and gay*, but feeling alienated by a (objectively quite nice) photoset showcasing the intimacy of queer cis men

like, i want that, i want to be that, i can't imagine being that. i want to be masc but i can't imagine it. there's this canyon between me and the masculinity i crave and i don't know how to cross it; and at the end of the day i don't even want to be a cis guy myself. i crave masculinity but i don't want to be like, A Traditionally Masculine Dude. like god imagine a stranger looking at me and thinking i'm straight. no thanks dude.

*i'm pan but with a preference for dudes and sometimes when i'm having Gender Feelings that preference is amped up to 11

anyways i've been thinking about potentially taking steps to go on T. been thinking about it for months. i think the effect i'm most on the fence about is facial hair; sometimes i think i might like it but i'm not sure. most other effects i feel positively about (or am willing to put up with, like increased oiliness and acne bc second puberty). so... idk. am thinking about it!

but i should probably shelve those thoughts for now and do my assigned readings for class tomorrow :p

started writing a post last week and then i got sidetracked because i got really moody and realized it was because i was hungry so then i went to eat and didn't come back to the post.

went all of april and may + nearly half of june without posting, huh. there was... a lot. but then the last month has been not so much. so i both feel like i've accumulated too much to talk about but can't figure out how to unpack it now.

uh. school went ok in the end. due to professors being very gracious and understanding about late work.

watched the witcher with my parents like a month or so back. that was fun. my grandma watched & read the witcher before we did and gave us her copies of the books. i read book 1 a while back but haven't opened book 2 yet.

been playing lots of animal crossing. not much else. some crypt of the necrodancer recently, cause my brother's gotten back into it.

i procrastinated on registering for fall 2020 classes; i only today bit the bullet and scheduled myself an advising appointment (over zoom) for monday. which will. i suppose. kind of determine whether i commit to changing my major to japanese. currently it's undeclared. i realized i had better pick something, even if i change it again later. and i like japanese (took 4 semesters at community college); i like learning languages in general, and i'm good at it. i'll need to self-study over the summer tho to refresh my memory, since my last japanese class was spring 2019.

mostly i just need to get my classes sorted so that i'll be registered for fall. by then i'm sure i'll be craving routine/structure. (here's the secret: "craving structure" is why i came back to school in the first place, first to community college and now back to university. when i'm feeling good, i'm also enthusiastic about learning shit. other times... i'm here because i need to do something. this does not make committing to a major easier.)

honestly i already need routine/structure but. mm. the best i'm really doing is going to sleep between 1 and 3 am, as opposed to the summer schedule i often do of sleeping at like 5 or 6 or 7 am. and i have two weekly tabletop RPGs, one on sunday morning (10 am ;-;. wish it wasn't so early) and one on friday afternoon. and there's animal crossing.

frustrated. now i'm moody again. great. i'll have to come back to the idea of trying to impose some sort of routine on myself later.

well... i intended to use dw more in january... and do the snowflake challenge... got 1.5 posts in (i did a lot of challenge 2 but never unlocked it cause i didn't finish) before Life Happened and then alongside that i felt guilty for not going on dw like i wanted to and then i avoided it more out of guilt (note: 'avoid the thing more to avoid the guilt, which itself causes guilt' is my least favorite habit of mine)

anyways... uh i've now been back at university for 3 weeks. uh. going... ok so far. sort of keeping up with readings, only missed one hw assignment so far (because i forgot about it.)

i've had sinus issues for the last few days, graduated to coughing today. feels plain unfair as my last sinus problem was only in november. but i don't get sick much so whatever, it's really just an annoyance

it's sunday. another day where i mostly fail to do things, except unlike saturday i feel bad about it.

there are just. a number of things i could be doing to improve my life but i just subsist on the bare minimum and spin my wheels. i mean. overall i think i'm doing better than what this post sounds like but at this exact moment i'm like "i dunno man. i just don't know."

i do at least have a cat on my lap, so there's that.

about a week ago, my hollow knight obsession met the obstacle of a boss fight i'm stuck on (Traitor Lord), but! my brother finally came back to playing zero escape, so most of my game time has been watching him play. a few highlights:

"have any of y’all uncultured fucks played zero escape?” — my brother to his friends

the rest are spoilery: ( virtue's last reward spoilers )

he finished Virtue's Last Reward yesterday and has played like, the very first scene of Zero Time Dilemma, haha.

did last minute christmas shopping yesterday; found stuff for all the family members who will actually be here on christmas itself (several more will be arriving on the 28th, and i don't have their stuff yet but i'll either order it or go shopping again on thursday.)

speaking of extended family members, i'm gonna come out as trans to my grandma tomorrow and the others when they arrive later this week. because now that i'm out to my immediate family and they call me the right name most of the time, i no longer want to be closeted in my own house. so that'll be a little awkward/stressful, but it had to happen eventually. might as well be now.

also. seeing presents addressed to my new name has made me unbelievably happy. the euphoria makes up for any stress. (fingers crossed lmao)