[010925] growing up, grad school, and marie kondo-ing my life

I'm horrid at writing consistent posts but here's another half-year journal. This time, I have a lot to reflect upon in my life-- I just finished my first semester of grad school (!!!) and I just turned 22 (!!!). 

Turning 22 is kind of weird for me. Naturally I know that 22 is still young and free, but it definitely feels like the age where you've really passed the "kid becoming an adult" birthdays (ex. 16 for a driver's license, 18 to vote, 21 to drink). Maybe a case could be had for being 25 to rent a car without restrictions, but for all intents and purposes, I'm a real adult now. It's a little scary because I've always been childish my entire life; my worst flaw is that I still now want to look the other way and wing it instead of actually budgeting to save money for the future.

For my birthday, I had my favorite girl and my favorite food :)

Of course, I don't think there's anything wrong with being "childish" as general society conceptualizes it. I love my oshikatsu and taking my dolls out anywhere I go, and that's not going to change anytime soon! I don't believe that there's a magical age where we need to let go of things that bring us joy just to become an "adult." In fact, when I first moved to where I'm going to grad school, I joined the local lolita comm and was happy to see that everyone there was older than me but never let go of their excitement for fashion or their other passions as well. 

But, like I mentioned before, I also have a bit of unwillingness to face the fact that if I want to improve myself, or change my life, I had to do it myself. I've gotten complacent in letting life happen to me, which is odd for someone trying to get a PhD, but it's a nasty habit that's carried over from the days where I was really depressed in high school just trying to get by. And as I've started to heal and improve my mental health (good job me), I've started to become more and more aware that I've never tried to just take control of my life and do what I want for myself. In fact, I'm not even sure how to want a life for myself outside of what I think other people want. It definitely sounds stupidly simple, but it's hard!

And that brings us to grad school. Honestly, I think I'm lucky that my math major that I chose for moneymaxxing purposes actually turned out to be my passion. Choosing to pursue a PhD is honestly one of the first choices I've made (despite being so scary!!) to actually choose and pursue a life that I wanted for myself, even if grad school is hard and scary. Every day this semester, I become even more and more sure that it was the right decision.

It's definitely true that I'm lazy and I like to give up and run away from things that are hard. Even a few years ago, past me would have definitely ran away from the prospect of something this difficult with such delayed gratification. But these days, I find myself maybe not embracing, but understanding why I choose to do things that are hard, even if they're not pleasurable right now. I'm learning that it's okay to be okayishly really bad at things (I'm certainly no longer at the top of my class unless there's a stack underflow) as long as I know why I love to do it and that I'm willing to work to get better. Yeah, I got pretty bad grades this semester. Yes, I was really down in the dumps about it for many days. But this time, instead of thinking about jumping ship and finding a different job, I found myself thinking to myself: Okay, we know what we did wrong this time, so we need to do better next semester.

I <3 tensors

The whole idea here for me is that though simple, it's hard for some people to live for themselves (or at least I felt that way). It isn't even that I had to live for someone else, and I was so preoccupied with that and I couldn't think of myself, but for so much of my life, I found it very scary and overwhelming to be planning these things. It's childish, but it's the way I was for such a long time. It's not that I don't want anything, I want so much! And those wants are so complex and difficult and I don't know how to untangle them and put them together in a way where I feel confident about even what I want.

Around the time of my junior year in college, where I was really stressing about this, I started reading up on Marie Kondo's tidying techniques. I bought her book Kurashi at Home at a small bookstore in Cape Cod on spring break and really loved her philosophy. In a way, since people's lives are so connected to their living spaces, philosophy on organizing your ideal space directly translates to philosophies for organizing your ideal life-- in fact, it's written in the subtitle of the book itself. 

Also there are pretty pictures in the book.

What I really liked about it was that her advice, though printed and written the same for every reader of her book, was still so personalized to each person's different wants and experiences. I found the examples of her clients particularly enlightening. Despite obviously having different lives and different wants from them, I empathized a lot when she asked them what they wanted from their spaces. One client said that she wanted a green and beige wardrobe, and knew it sparked joy for her, but at the same time, was scared of being known as the "local Martian" by others around her. Kondo's advice guided her to accept and take control of the fact that the things that bring her joy are a part of her identity to take pride in. Likewise, there are a lot of things I want for myself, but I'm also scared of the reactions of those that I hold near to me. And though maybe I'm too scared to wear it out proudly like Ms. Martian, her advice helped me remember that I should at least hold on to it in my own corner.

Mainly though, something I noticed is that when Kondo's clients threw things away, or decided to keep things, they were also confused, unsure, and lost. And when they finally decided to act upon tidying with her help, they didn't fully get rid of the confusion and uncertainty but rather just acted in what they felt was best given what they had. And later on, many would come back to Kondo, telling her how much their happiness improved as a result of their tidying decisions. It struck me that I could make decisions to work for my ideal life without really knowing what that life might look like. Things might change along the way, I might change along the way, and my plan might change along the way, but taking those steps even though I'm uncertain is the first step to getting to that ideal in the first place.

I'm still scared!!!!! But when I'm scared, I find looking to Kondo's philosophy and advice is helpful in calming me down and realizing I can tackle things slowly and one by one. Maybe because tidying is also a monumental task in my head, but reading her book reminds me to take it at my own pace. My life is mine, so when I begin my tidying festival for it, I should always think about what that ideal looks like and what small concrete steps I can take in that direction.

I should also just tidy my actual room... my closet is fully unloaded on my bed right now because of a water leak... it's so over...

[050524] adventures with cute dresses and hello again

Hi everyone!! I am back from the dead and journaling again online. A well known fact about me is that I love procrastinating, so I'm procrastinating grading my class' homework by writing a blog about my favorite pretty dresses...

I first got into lolita fashion ages ago in middle school. One of the first manga I ever read was Chibi Vampire Karin, which still holds a very dear place in my heart. I especially loved Karin's younger sister Anju— I loved how cool and mature she was, and I wanted to be just like her. And so, I especially fell in love with the way she dressed.

Anju from Chibi Vampire.

Anyways, in my years in college I amassed a few pieces of lolita clothing and built myself a small wardrobe. I loved kuro lolita the most, as kuro and gothic are closer to my original inspirations. I wore a comfy kuro winter coord to Snowport back during Christmas and had a blast!

I love black on black outfits way too much...

One of the most common styles of lolita is sweet lolita, with an emphasis on prints and patterns in lighter colors in contrast to classic lolita (with less prints) and gothic lolita (with mostly darker colors). To be super honest, for years when I was getting into the fashion, I couldn't bring myself to like the sweet style very much. I think it looks less sleek, and I especially didn't like prints (when I browsed for gothic coord inspo, I'd also pass on most prints). But recently, I've started branching more into prints ever since I went to my first in-person lolita event at Anime Boston and saw so many amazing people in all different styles, including people looking absolutely ethereal in sweet.

My circus-inspired coord for Anime Boston, with merch of Bocchi and Pomu.

To be honest, it really opened my eyes to the versatility of the style and also how cool prints can look if styled right. I realized my preference against prints was mostly because I didn't know how to match the energy of an embellished JSK or SK with accessories like headpieces and aprons. Although I still don't go for most traditional sweet styles, I've been really getting into prints recently! 

Ever since I was a little child, I've always loved Alice in Wonderland, and I've read my copies of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass countless times. I also used to watch the Charmmy Kitty in Wonderland movie (maybe not a movie?) on repeat forever in elementary school. By the way, I'm so freaking sad about Charmmy Kitty being discontinued :((( but that's not the point of this blog post, haha. 

Luckily, a lot of brands in this fashion share my interest, and there's a plethora of Alice in Wonderland prints out there! I currently own this Bodyline Trump Alice JSK, and I've been loving it a lot:

Me wearing Trump Alice with my Elira ita bag to hang out with a few friends and talk about anime :)

A better shot of my full coord later that night.

Overall, I really want to try out new styles in this fashion and get better at styling in the future. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be really into sweet lolita! To be honest, I recently fell in love with Chess Chocolate in the ivory colorway by Angelic Pretty, and I've been thirsting after it since. As you might have noticed, I don't have any "Brand with a capital B" pieces yet since I'm not that rich haha, but I'm actually buying my first AATP SK right now, so I'm super excited to show everyone once I get it in hand. 

But overall, I guess I just wanted to say that lolita fashion is so fun and it's so wonderful to be participating in the fashion after lurking in it for so long. It's definitely an expensive hobby, but seeing my adult self dressed up in the way my middle school self dreamed of is just so magical. Yay!!

Until next time!

[073123] sand sculpture and scallop day :)

 Yesterday we went to the beach! I was super excited because it felt like a good idea to destress. The international sand sculpture festival was happening, so we got to see a lot of cool sculptures and have some yummy food while relaxing on the shore. It's a shame we came on the last day, so some of the sculptures had partially collapsed during the heavy rain that happened the day before.

Neat sculptures! The theme is King Kong for some reason. I haven't researched the actual history of the festival so I don't know why.

We relaxed on the beach for a while and made our own sculptures... an elaborate reservoir and river system surrounding a centerpiece mound, guarded by a (dead) crab with a sword and shield. Afterwards we laid the crab to rest in a shell coffin at the bottom of the reservoir. I walked around and found a bunch of pretty shells, especially this mother of pearl bit that I kept. 

Crab defender and my new treasure.

There were little kids who took over our site after we stopped playing with it! It was so cute to see them have fun with our creations. I hope they didn't step on the crab body.

The food at the festival was also really great! I got esquite the moment we arrived, but I was so hungry that I ate it without taking pictures. I also got a wonderful fried scallop roll to eat on the subway back. It was so incredibly good that I want to eat it again and again, but the restaurant the truck was from is all the way in Wellesley, which I can't quite justify taking public transport for an hour just to eat.

Scallop yummies from Captain Marden's Seafoods!

Overall, it was such a great experience to just sit at the beach and absorb vitamin D. Even though the algae blooms in the water were a bit icky, I'll probably come back to Revere more often just because it's so relatively convenient! Our transport home was only 40 minutes because of how perfectly we timed our trains, which made me happy. Functioning T transfers and trains! Yay!

[072923] first post~!

 Welcome to my public diary blog site thing :D

I am going to talk about things I like including the weather and food and things like that of course. This personal diary site is for me to document what's on my mind-- its only intention is to let me have fun recording what interesting things happen every day with some kind of novelty to keep me hooked (like presenting this to a "public" audience, even if not many people will even stumble upon this site...).

I find it hard to write diary entries because I always want to write it at the end of my day so I can summarize everything that happened, which is hard and difficult because I keep waiting until I'm totally tired and fall asleep, so actually I never write anything. So right now it's 4pm and I'm doing laundry so I guess I'll just write whatever σ(^_^;)

My HMart staples

This is what I had today for lunch. I had trouble getting up but I was craving some meat, which I'm pretty bad at cooking for myself. So I ended up getting the strength to go to my local HMart and get curry and an Americano, and that made my day so much better!

Other things that have made my days better include the cute vintage glass pieces I got from the pop up vintage market a couple days back. Well to be honest I don't know if they're truly vintage, but they have the charm of an old woman's cabinet pieces she serves cold iced tea in, so I like it. We used the pieces for a family dinner my roommate cooked that night, and that was great.

We had seafood gumbo, hoecakes, and Brazilian lemonade while it stormed, and then enjoyed the beautiful sunset the rain left behind after we finished.

There are so many great and wonderful things in the domesticity of everyday life (>﹏<) I really enjoy living in a house with some of my bestest friends. Even though I'll be glad to have the convenience of dorms back once the semester starts again, I'll definitely miss the peaceful and comfortable living that this summer has brought me...!

I guess that's all that's on my mind for now. I'll edit this post if I have more thoughts later!