2025-12-31 december in review

long time no see. i haven't written largely because i was busy and/or unmotivated, and it didn't make sense to force myself to do something that's supposed to be for fun. i also did a lot of thinking about how i want to use the spaces that i have, and many of my online spaces fell by the wayside when i got into using a hobonichi planner for daily journaling.

that said, i think it might be fun to do a kind of monthly review to catalogue things i've been into and changes i'm trying to make to improve my life. this is very much suited to my hobonichi, but i don't have the physical space to write this much on the new month page, and i'd like to include pics and links and such. thus, my website may see something of a revival, assuming i can keep up with this (i predict missing some months, and that's ok. some just won't have much worth sharing).

this month, and particularly the last few days at the time of writing, has seen movement in the goal of Not Spending So Much Time On Pointless Shortform Media (Primarily On Social Media Platforms). ideally that amount will become zero, and i have been aiming for that for the past several years at this point, but progress is not linear as they say....

as someone with Predisposition For Entrapment By Pointless Shortform Media Disease (adhd), this is an uphill battle. it's not just about resisting the twitter scroll or the youtube shorts binge, but finding something to replace it with, and then actually sticking with that replacement. reading, for example-- i was recently reminded that "reading is a muscle", which has been proven frustratingly true time and time again as i struggle to finish any of the large quantity of used books i acquired with hope and greed in my heart over the past couple years.

i've realized that one of the best things i can do for a mind like mine is not repeatedly try to reroute myself by force of will, but instead changing my "tools" so that the correct route is my first choice. in the case of reading, this principle was applied in a roundabout way by joining a book club. the accountability and deadline factors are forever one of the best means of taming distractability, and i made it even easier on myself because the club i joined is for light novels and manga. 150% more natural motivation when there are pretty pictures of anime boys involved.

my first month was admittedly a little scuffed-- i bought an unrelated novel while i was picking up the assigned light novel, and ended up getting absorbed in the former for a little too long before realizing i would end up needing to binge the latter in the two days before we were to meet about it. i did not quite manage to finish the last 5 pages by streetlight while walking to the meeting place, and i was 15 minutes late on top of that due to a cancelled bus, so i arrived in the middle of discussion and never found a moment to add my incomplete thoughts.... BUT. i did finish those last few pages a couple days later. so i finished A Book!!! and that's more than i can say for most months.

the next "tool" was finally getting a dedicated music player. this was something i'd been thinking about for a long time, but was greatly delayed by my first serious delve into choosing one resulting like many other shopping attempts: i spend hours researching and deciding on the features and budget i want to aim for, i narrow it down to a couple choices, one of which may not be immediately available or i think i might wait for a sale, and then the whole pursuit fizzles out without conclusive action and i forget all of my research, if i was even smart enough to save any product links (i didn't). then one day recently i saw a collab model sony walkman for my favorite music mobage at a great secondhand price, and i went "what the hell. sure." so now i have an nw a105 with a cool logo on the back and a preinstalled anime man wallpaper.

using a dap (digital audio player, as they are called when you get fancy) did more than i expected. not engaging with my phone for music immediately cut a lot of potential distraction. there is an odd serenity to having audio on a separate device. it comes with some small but impactful perks too, like being able to listen to other things on the walkman while playing a mobage on my phone that doesn't allow media to be played simultaneously (i love you feh but i don't need to listen to the fweeee of specials proccing 27 times per turn). i'm also the type that gets overly nervous that my music is somehow playing out loud, but that's now an impossible concern because the walkman simply doesn't have speakers.

one of the chief reasons i wanted a dap was to be able to locally store media, as my phone is an icky newer model that lacks microsd card expandable storage, and i was starting to reach the internal storage limit with my mobages and the small amount of music i had on there. i also don't like streaming while i'm out for various reasons-- one of many being that i can't stand ads and refuse to pay to be rid of them, not to mention i can't find everything i want on a single service anyway and i would never pay for more than one. easier, all told, to manage my own locally stored collection.

one of my greatest problems in my current work-home life is my terrible commute: it's an hour long one way (on a good day) and i have to transfer buses in the middle of it. i used to have it all in one bus-- still an hour, but i would feel comfortable settling down with a book or sometimes my nintendo switch. the added transfer right in the middle has completely disrupted any sense of being able to relax and take things out of my bag. i don't particularly like listening to music on the bus due to all the noise, and it feels "wasteful" of my time since there must be something with a semblance of productivity i could do for such a long ride.... with the walkman in my hands, i realized it was time to make my 3894578934th attempt to get into podcasts.

i started at home, at first; i pulled up fall of civilizations, as i'm a casual medieval researcher for the sake of the stories i make, and i'd seen this one highly recommended in search of history podcasts. i found myself struggling to focus on the contents while doing any tasks at all, even simple chores (not helped by the writing style of fall of civ-- it's extremely efficient in wording, so missing one place name leaves you out of the loop for the next 5 sentences as he tends not to repeat it for a while). enter.... the part of my life where all i can do is stare out the window for 60 minutes!! i'd still call it a 96% perfect match since the bus sometimes makes a loud noise and then i miss a key word anyway. but it's pretty good so far.

the third "tool" was a whimful switch of my mobile browser. my friend wondered aloud about a curious topic, so i went to google it, and i resented that i instinctively relied on the ai summary for an answer. so then i googled (...) for ways to gut the search results of ai, but turns out it's easier to just switch search engines altogether. i saw startpage recommended, along with a random mention that waterfox (a fork of firefox) has it integrated, so i thought "ok sure let's try that too".

browsers, by default, always have a bunch of junk on the homepage/new tab page that i'm keen to turn off. my now-former mobile browser, chrome, had everything turned off except the line of most visited pages, which i began to hate recently because of how often i'd open them up just because they were there. so on waterfox, i turned everything off. it's entirely blank save for a wintery wallpaper i slapped on for the joy of it.

the effect was immediate-- my habit of going to my phone and Opening and Checking every site was met with no buttons to tap. i was left sitting on my phone's home screen, staring at apps i knew i had no real point in opening, thinking "i don't need to be on my phone at all right now". when i built my pc this past spring, i decided not to transfer any of my bookmarks in order to start from scratch, and i intentionally never bookmarked sites like twitter to add extra friction to accessing it-- i should've followed suit on my phone much sooner.

another great result of this was learning, while inspecting the waterfox menu options, that i can have extensions on mobile. meaning ublock origin On My Phone. was this always the case for mobile firefox and i'm just stupid???? i swear i googled (...) this a thousand times and people were like "well i have a home server that i run network adblock on" as the only solution for mobile adblock if you felt like suddenly getting into a new heap of knowledge. anyway i now have an ad blocker on my mobile browser and it really was that simple. i will not be using this for music streaming because Have you ever tried to use spotify mobile web player. it's bad.

this also means i can escape one of my other entrapments: i use asmr to sleep, but opening youtube means walking through a minefield of recommended shorts that look interesting before i get to the latest from my asmr channel subscriptions. sometimes it is nice to kinda unwind and put some fun things in my brain at the end of the day, but it's a slippery slope and i don't want to be staring at a screen any longer than necessary right before going to sleep. with adblock, i am now incentivized to use my browser to access youtube instead, where i haven't logged in and don't intend to ever log in, meaning i just search for the asmr channel i want to listen to directly. i may allow these as bookmarks on my browser homepage to skip even more steps-- not like i'd open them for distraction during the day (unless...?)

as it has been for the past years, my new "tools" are still only attempts, and progress is not linear.... so we'll see in the coming months how well these work for me.

and now for a of round-up of what i've been into this past month.

creative

• lesvn (a temporary project name; "les" is the central character, "vn" for visual novel) - in late november i decided to get serious about a visual novel idea that's been brewing in my head for literally 5 years, and the Real Work has continued this month. i can award myself for outlining the plot from beginning to end, whipping up initial character designs and placeholder sprites for the three main cast members, and building a Real Working Prototype of a short scene in renpy.

books

• an academy for liars / alexis hendersen - the book i got absorbed in instead of my book club book. i actually didn't like it much at first, but i was reeling from the price of a new book and forced myself to persevere. i got pretty into it when the action picked up, but after benching it for my book club speedrun, it has unceremoniously remained where i left it. while i love dark academia, its use as a setting here feels incredibly contrived and indulgent; it feels like this story could be anywhere else.
• the apothecary diaries / hyuuganatsu - the assigned reading for book club, and my first light novel. it certainly felt like what i imagined a light novel to be, with all the usual things i've come to expect from japanese works, such as constant repetition of phrases that would be annoying to me were i not already used to it. that said, i enjoyed it a lot and didn't find it a chore to read despite my deadline circumstances. maomao was not at all the protagonist i expected and it made the perspective of the story very refreshing.
• captive prince / c.s. pacat - my friend recommended this to me and i asked no questions after seeing the yaoiful cover art. even better, apparently the trilogy was of enough interest to japanese audiences to warrant a translation and fresh cover art by KURAHANA CHINATSU. wow. it's a breezy fun read so far-- i'm just over halfway through at the time of writing. nothing dna changing but definitely a great meal for antagonistic slowburn yaoi enjoyers.

games

• the hundred line - it has received praise and recommendations in my circles so i figured i'd give it a go for ostensible Visual Novel Research and because the tiled turn-based gameplay intrigued my fire emblem brain. i regret purchasing the game outright instead of trying the demo that i didn't learn existed until said regret set in. there are way too many ugly and unappealing characters. i'll stick it through for the gameplay and to see if the overarching plot is any good, but my god there is so much ugliness in both appearances and personalities. i'm sure it's par for the course for people who came from danganronpa, but not me.... i like my characters with a baseline minimum palatability....
• fire emblem heroes - this will probably get mentioned every month on account of i've been playing it for 9 years straight. this month we can say i "lost" at feh because i used orb savings i was setting aside for bridal embla's return next year AND spent real money. what can i say.... i like edelgard and i like having a second action with no precondition.... i also lost hard because the book 6 tt+ story concluded with no elm whatsoever. ok. have to make all my own fucking food around here
• genshin impact - 5 years but not straight but i am becoming straight because i am convinced dottore will be playable so i am back to doing dailies and saving every primo i have for him. the profile signature function is quite useful for keeping saving goals since i see it every time i open the menu; i track both my primo count and the percent progress towards securing hard pity guarantee.

shows

• the x-files - started on a whim to fill my "need something to watch while eating a large dinner" timeslot. i grew up watching a lot of crime procedurals, so it's surprising i haven't watched the x-files sooner. its datedness is charming until the horror genre makes itself known in the archaic pronunciation of random words. de-MONS-tratively.... the 90s were harrowing times.... i have learned this is a current and valid pronunciation even today. i live in harrowing times....

podcasts

• fall of civilizations - aforementioned. really lovely so far; i adore that it's less a lecture and more storytelling, and well written at that. one hurdle of podcasts for me is i sometimes just hate how a guy sounds and cannot stomach even the most interesting contents as a result, but mr paul cooper is easy and pleasant to listen to. looking forward to the >3 hour episode on the byzantine empire since that's my time and place of inspiration for lesvn.

music

• hrvrd - finally started checking out this band since it receives many shoutouts in recommendation threads for my preferred genre space. big fan of the earth. i think the album is the type that'll grow on me over time.

and since it's new year's eve, i may as well share my obligatory Hashtag 2026 New Year's Resolutions:

• read 12 books. setting the bar nice and low at one per month, though book club doesn't count
• overhaul this site. i'm aiming to move hosts, get a custom domain name, and utilize php (as i'm learning it) in the rebuild. i don't know yet what form it will take.... figuring out my current wants and needs will be part of the process
• become one year closer to releasing lesvn. abstract on purpose, mostly because i don't know what the milestones are for story or vn development, since.... i've never finished either of those before...... i'll know if i feel "one year closer" by the end of it
• spend less time on social media. hoping the described "tools" and pursual of the the three previous goals will be the ticket

i feel like i want a fifth goal just for the roundness of it, but i shan't overcomplicate.... these are sufficient and achievable.... i had not made any resolutions last year, as my future was a bit uncertain at the time, so i didn't want to overburden myself with too high of a bar to clear. i feel like i have the stability i need to work on my passions now.

i've never kept up with journaling before this past year either, but thankfully my pricey investment into a hobonichi was not in vain (or perhaps part of the motivation? lol). because of that, i feel like i should be able to keep up with this monthly wrap-up thing, and it'll be really fun to look back at the most zoomed out periodic reflection in my arsenal next new year's eve.

until next time.