An eulogy

Re-establishing priorities

Reviewing my 2024

On May 7th 2024, my youth officially came to an end.

A cat that gave us more trouble than we'd like. Over two decades of company end with one stretch of her head and a sigh before weakly coiling beside me, eyes closed. The self-centered paranoia that carried over to the one cat of her litter that we kept. Five long years spent taming her wildly stressful nature, five more her daughter, and longer still her grandson.

Beginning fifth grade. Moving over to high school. Finishing college and establishing myself in my line of work. My own life's course feels void of true achievement in comparison to the multi-generational saga she began as a side-character in, becoming the wildly unexpected matriarch at the end of her life. Her much more gifted sisters never given a chance to procreate, she avoided the spay for a while. The expenditure seemed unjustified since she was too afraid to leave the house. A stray with a fur pattern that reminded people of border collie dogs, somehow her lineage ends with a half-siamese daughter who somehow begat a pure white, blue eyed persian and his russian blue brother who has escaped this branch's curse, extroverted and docile such that you'd think him a dog. Go figure.

I'm past my peak, whatever that may have been. Now it's time to make sure the decline is as soft a landing towards my deathbed as possible. Which leads me to one of the purposes of this webpage. Physically, I'm currently at the point I was before diving head-first into work two years ago, with a few extra improvements. It seems further progress is locked behind, among other things, properly managing my diet. I'm satisfied with how I look in my clothes and don't think I look too shaby without them, but there is room for improvement. Plenty.

Piano has been on standby ever since I decided to study music theory-- which has progressed at a snail's pace. Japanese progress continues drifting along ever so slowly. Marginal progress being made in kanji writing. In the time I have taken with this language, I was already a fluent english speaker. If I wanted to be dishonest, I could say the highlight of my year was having things I worked on in both comikets, but that's like the guy who cut the grass on the set of the rohirrim charge at minas tirith claiming credit for the oscars.

I left work around January. It was supposed to be the opportunity I needed to fulfill my objectives for the year. Instead, I played touhou all day, watched anime with french subtitles, lurked multiple imageboards, drowned in pixiv, screwed up my sleep schedule and, in whatever break I managed to get from lazying so hard, I exercised less than half an hour a day, did my anki reps and looked around for music theory resources even though I already have a few, all the while entertaining the idea of learning to draw. The closest thing to responsible behavior I engaged in was assisting the doujin group, that somehow still tolerates my presence, whenever they required my services.

I have returned to work this August in much better conditions and with an airtight schedule. Done with speeches and attempts at mutual understandings, I have learned to say no (in a very roundabout way).

The year of the ultimatum ended with a verdict: perish. But I'm too stuck in my own ways to know how to accept being a wallflower among all the extras. Another slow journey of personal understanding I must strive towards. I continue to see improvement (although ever dwindling) in japanese practice. I can ride strenuously for 80 minutes and still have fight left in me. I can perform one hundred perfectly executed crunches. I can do a full wall bridge. Too little too late?

One of the main reasons (besides a natural aptitude for laziness) why I'm taking things so slowly is because I'm scared of having a nervous breakdown from diving headfirst into too many things at once. Thinking about it properly makes me realize I might be erring on the side of overcaution. Didn't I spend a significant portion of my life learning four or five different subjects, ninety minutes a day each for almost two decades? Surely the same amount for only one a day can't possibly overwhelm me. But going for such structure now, after all these years?

Next year will be the first in a half-decade of goodbyes. I don't know what I'll be parting ways with yet, but I'll let you know all about it same time next year.
Until then...

Here's to hoping 2025 will be full of lazy times
for all of us to enjoy.

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