Hello, readers~ This is what's been going on with me in autumn 2025.
I'll just get the biggest news out of the way now: Unfortunately, on November 24th, our beloved dog Kona passed away at 13 years old. Obviously, this is a Big Fucking Deal, but it's a big enough deal that I want to write a separate blog post. It will be mentioned in this post, because it really has changed so much, but the majority of this was written before there was any trouble with her whatsoever, so I'm getting this together and posting it first. Looking back at my last blog post really stings, because I had mentioned that we just celebrated her birthday and that she was doing great, and that I hoped I would get more years with her... It's remarkable how quickly things can change...
I will say, just so no one is wondering, that she had a very quick and sudden decline. We'll never know with absolutely certainty, but we think it was a stroke. It took us all by surprise. There was no long languishing and suffering on her part. We miss her dearly, and I wish more than anything that we could have had more time with her, but I am relieved that she's okay now, and she will be forever.
General life stuff:
Kona's death has thrown me very off course, but for the better part of these months I settled into a good free time routine of exercising, sleeping as best as I could, making things, reading, journaling, doing any cleaning and organizing that needed to be done, caring for Kona (she was perfectly healthy right up until a few days before her death, but you know, she was a senior dog and still needed lots of attention). Sometimes watching stuff or playing games. I didn't want to be on social media. I still mostly don't. I got to a point where I felt like I didn't have time for it, but it's really more like I lost my desire to give it my time. I'd like to settle back into this routine… It's only natural for some things to fall by the wayside when you experience a profound loss, but life just went better and I felt more vital when staying focused on things that were actually truly important to me and taking good care of myself.
Lots of work needed to be done on our home. There just always comes a time when damn near everything seems to start breaking, and that's what happened here. The biggest thing being a full roof replacement—it was leaking in our dining room. This was up to my parents to arrange, I'm not the owner of the home and I'm also not retired so I'm not as available to get this stuff organized as they are, but I did help out a little with making sure paperwork got to where it needed to go. My poor mother was particularly stressed, and Kona's passing happening right when it seemed we were done with all this stuff hasn't helped… I hope 2026 goes much smoother.
I got my 2026 journal and calendar! For the first time in many years—mostly due to tarriff crap but also because I just don't like this year's Precure season—I'm using a wall calendar for my bedroom that isn't Precure. It's Strawberry Shortcake (of the 80s variety)! And I really like it! The journal isn't themed and is largely blank, it provides a basic structure but leaves it up to you to add dates and such and has no decorations, so there's lots of setting up to do. I'm looking forward to it! It has a nice plain pink cover, but I'm considering crocheting another cover to go over it. I just feel like stickers could fall off too easily.
I decided to keep my old computer after replacing it a couple years ago, just so that I wouldn't be completely screwed if anything happened to the new one. Thankfully it's been fine, and the old one has just been sitting around ever since. I was mulling over getting a device just for writing for a while, until I finally decided that I should just re-purpose the old one so it can be used for writing and updating my website only. And that's exactly what I did! It took quite a while, booting it up and actually getting the wipe to properly complete was a challenge. But it's working like a charm now. I mostly typed this post up on that device!
Health:
In September, I felt like I had scratched my eye from an eyelash falling into it while I was in the shower. The discomfort it caused just wouldn't go away after several days. But my doctor didn't find anything wrong, and the feeling cleared up completely within a couple of weeks. Since then, I've had a few lesser incidents of feeling like things got stuck in my eyes that also just cleared up on their own. As I'm typing this up in late November, I'm fine and can't remember the last time it happened, but I definitely need to visit a good optometrist as soon as I can next year…
Problems with my shoulders have largely cleared up. The thing that helped my shoulders the most was simply switching up the pillow I slept with to something softer and lower profile.
Got yearly vaccines a little late. Time just got away from me, and I struggled to figure out where I wanted them done since last year's injections were the most painful I've ever had and I didn't want to go back to that pharmacy. In the end, I did go back, just because it was the easiest option, and it went very smoothly. Guess it's kind of a crapshoot if you'll get someone who's good at it or not.
I've fallen off of it big time in this week following Kona's death, but I've been doing a pretty good job exercising in these months. Following easy strength training and basic yoga videos on Youtube, for the most part. I have tried practicing some idol song dances like I said I wanted to after my last blog post detailing what I did at the last convention I went to. I'm finding it hard to stick to, though. Dance is such good exercise, but I'm finding myself not wanting to make it my only form of exercise even though I probably would have an easier time staying with it if I did. I've never been someone who enjoys exercise and I still struggle with this constantly, so when I do it, I want to get the most out of it. I want cardio, I want stretching, I want strength training. Dance could provide a lot of that, but I guess I'm not fully convinced yet. So when I tried it, it would be after other exercise, and I did it so infrequently that it would be hard to memorize the dance.
Anyway, all that is to say… I think it might be a good idea to try again to focus only on dance (with warm ups and cool downs included), and maybe just do yoga on days where I'm not feeling well enough for dance. The first dance I tried was Junai Lens, one of Nozomi's solo songs from Love Live, because it looked fairly simple. It is, I think I can pull it off with enough practice, I just need to be consistent with that practice. I'm starting at basically zero experience with learning dances.
Hobbies:
I finished crocheting a Christmas blanket for my mother. I've given it to her and she really likes it! I've seen her with it on her lap multiple times, and sometimes she puts it in the spot where Kona used to sit on our sofa so it doesn't feel so lonely. I'm glad I could give her even a tiny bit of comfort, she's taken Kona's death even harder than I have.
I started and got a lot of work done on crocheting a rainbow striped runner to go on top of a long dresser I have in my bedroom. There's already a runner on it, but I've had it for a very long time and want something that suits my current tastes better.
Some drawing, mostly in my sketchbook, including copying some photos from early 2000s Japanese fashion magazines I have. Been a few weeks since I've done any drawing at all, though… Starting to get a bit antsy about getting back into it, but I need to focus on writing right now.
I completed the draft for the final chapter of a long Sarazanmai fic that I started writing a few years ago. As of right now I don't have a final word count, but it will be somewhere around 100k. Holy shit, I wrote a goddamn novel!! Given everything that's happened at the end of November, I haven't put in the time to edit and make tweaks yet, but I'm relieved that the most difficult part is done, and this fic will finally be complete by the end of this year. It's the first in a series, and I'm quite excited to get to the next fic.
Enjoying the season:
I saw lots of lovely early autumn clouds. I took many photos of them. Sometimes it rained and got gloomy, but this kind of gloom is very welcome in autumn. It makes it even cozier, I think!
Naturally, I watched the trees turn and drop their leaves. They're gone now, but it was really wonderful driving around town and seeing so many vivid colors. Some trees get so many colors on them at once that it looks like a rainbow! Kona really enjoyed the leaf piles in our yard.
They're also gone, but there were lots of lovely yellow and purple wildflowers around town. They always come up in autumn. My favorites are alpine daisies, little purple flowers that grow in clusters and turn to puffballs to spread their seeds, not unlike dandelions. Kona got a lot of alpine daisy seeds stuck to her sides when she went wandering around our yard, I had to brush so many off of her! I'll smile at next year's bloom, knowing that she helped them grow by spreading them around even more.
The temperature has changed so much in these three months. The beginning of September was still pretty warm, but most of these months have been nice and mild. Now, here at the beginning of December, it very much looks and feels like winter. The day I'm posting this was actually a day off of work due to a big snow storm.
Halloween was okay! Not many trick-or-treaters at our home, but I made sure every one of them got candy. While waiting for them to arrive, I watched a World Series baseball game since that's what my mom wanted to watch. I'm not a sports fan, but I honestly don't mind baseball, so I had a good enough time watching this. Seems like this World Series was a pretty exciting one.
I'm not really interested in coming up with Halloween costumes anymore, the planning and tracking things down isn't enjoyable to me, but I put on a cute outfit and some fluffy bear ears on my head. I like Halloween, but I like the cuter version of Halloween—the version that's maybe slightly creepy but is more focused on fun and magic and tasty sweets than on spooky stuff and horror. I'm a very sensitive person and have never liked horror or anything particularly violent. I'm more of a Christmas person for this reason—I can't help but love a holiday that's all about coziness!
Thanksgiving was… Kinda sad, given that Kona died only a few days prior. But we made our usual Thanksgiving dinner anyway, and it was good. My favorite standard US Thanksgiving dish is green bean casserole, I enjoyed the heck out of that. Mom and I made our first apple pie of the season, and I love our apple pie, so I was quite happy to eat it again for the first time this year. It was also my enstars oshi Aira's birthday, so I got some comfort looking at all the new fanart of him.
Fandom and media:
There was a new Kohaku 5 star card in Ensemble Stars and I absolutely love his outfit, it's so suited to my taste! There was a new solo song that came along with this card, and I love this song, too! It's so sweet, I can't help but think he's singing about his relationship with Aira because I love kohaai so much~ I don't like it as much as his first solo, but this just means that he has two awesome solo songs. I genuinely love both of them.
There was also a new special Aira 5 star released for the enstars Chinese server, and it's another super adorable one!! I'm so happy to see such cute new art of my boys! And there was also a matching Kohaku 3 star! And the unbloomed for Aira's card shows him and Kohaku doing oshikatsu crafts, it's SO cute!!
My favorite enstars unit, Special for Princess (esupuri) had a new event, which meant I got to enjoy seeing them in another set of cute outfits and listen to a great new song from them. I didn't know what to think of the song at first, but it's since grown on me and I've been listening to it a lot. I genuinely enjoy all of esupuri's discography so far! There was even a B-side to that new song that I discovered later on that I've been bopping to a lot!
Deresute (Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage) "ended" service (stopped new updates, but it's still online), and I already finished up with it and deleted it from my phone. I honestly don't miss it at all. If there's ever another Cinderella Girls game, I may check it out, but they probably can't keep going with the whole 190 girls gimmick. I feel like it was the game's undoing in the end--they couldn't keep up with changing expectations for content quality with 190 girls on the roster. I still adore Shin, but not enough to keep up with a game that feels bad to play for her sake.
I want to write up a more in-depth review of Kimi to Idol Precure after it's over at the end of January, but um… I have really not been enjoying this season. Despite watching Precure almost continuously since 2007 I'm still very open to what it usually offers, I'm not difficult to please. And an idol theme absolutely should have been a slam dunk for me! But this season is just REALLY poorly written. I like the music, at least. And we now know the title and logo for next year's season--Star Detective Precure. Very curious about this!
I'm a fan of the original Aikatsu idol anime series, but haven't put much time into the follow up seasons—Aikatsu Stars, Friends, Planet, On Parade. I actually have tried Stars and Friends, but didn't get very far into them before I dropped them. I also watch some Aikatsu Academy videos, but they're Vtubers--very different from an anime (I love Taimu, though!). I decided to try Aikatsu Stars again. I'm very slowly getting through it, mostly putting in some episodes when I paint my nails, but I've made it much farther than my first attempt, and I think I'd like to stick with it. I'm not sure I'll enjoy this as much as the original Aikatsu series, but it's pretty interesting.
I've been gradually making my way through Pokemon Legends Z-A. I did not play the first Legends game because honestly, the setting just didn't appeal to me. But a setting that is essentially just a slightly futuristic version of Paris with Pokemon running around in it is definitely up my alley! I do agree somewhat with the commentary that this game's map doesn't have much variety, but honestly, I've found it to have more variety than I expected based on reviews (or poorly thought out complaints). I keep discovering interesting new spots. Dressing up my player character has been really fun, absolutely one of the first things I focused my attention on when I was done with the tutorial. The real time battling system is a little overwhelming for me, I genuinely don't play many games like this, but I'm not struggling so much that I can't get through the story and I'm slowly getting accustomed to it. I'm aware of Jacinthe's existence and I really want to meet her because she's soooo cute and pretty, but I'm taking my time getting there. I have so many hobbies that I can only dedicate so much time to gaming. I think I'm getting close to seeing her, though!
There was a new DLC released for Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I only play this game occasionally, but I decided that getting the DLC was worth it. Cogimyun is the star of this DLC, and she's one of my favorite Sanrio characters! There's also a lot of magical girl content! I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it, despite not playing every day or even every week. This game has been a big comfort in the tough time I'm going through right now.
I bought two other new games for my Switch 2: Power Wash Simulator 2, and Once Upon A Katamari. Enjoying both a lot! I'm not very good at Katamari games, but as long as I can do the basics to clear a level and pick up some cute cousins and accessories along the way, I'm happy. I probably won't be doing much with Katamariball, that's just not a style of play that I enjoy. I love the Power Wash Simulator games as something to keep your hands busy and maintain your focus while you're doing something else that's hands-free, like listening to a podcast. I already like this game more than the first one—better graphics, I like the home base that you get to partially decorate, and I think the environments you get to clean are more fun and colorful. And there's some new tools that are extremely fun to use (floor cleaner my love).
I'm done with buying new games for now… I'll enjoy what I've got for a bit! But I have my sights set on some for next year. Pokopia, Tomodachi Life, Witchbrook… And of course, Animal Crossing New Horizons is releasing another free update, which really shocked me but is very exciting!
I felt a bit down at the beginning of October due to hormones and some health issues with the parents that have since resolved, but I needed to watch and read some things to take my mind off of it while it was happening. BL sounded nice, so I went with Cherry Magic, starting with the anime and then moving onto the manga. It's reeeeeally cute, I like it a lot. It isn't my perfect BL series, it has some things I'm not very into (i.e. jealousy, people trying to meddle with the relationship), but it doesn't spend enough time on these things to really turn me off, and the rest of it is so cute that I can tolerate these aspects. I just don't feel like I have to worry about the main pair (Adachi and Kurosawa) regardless of what's thrown their way. My favorite ships are ones where there isn't an abundance of very serious conflicts within the relationship itself, but conflict they face comes from outside of it. The kind of relationship where you can be certain they love each other even if they face a lot of outside problems, and that's exactly the way Adachi and Kurosawa are. They get married not too far into the manga's run and they're clearly very devoted to each other. I like Adachi a lot, he reminds me of myself a bit… Also, seeing him and Kurosawa doing well at their jobs kinda motivates me to do my best, too. It's funny how quickly the main premise of "guy can read minds because he stayed a virgin until 30" was abandoned, aside from the side pairing, but why draw it out if it isn't necessary?
Speaking of the side pairing, I'm honestly not interested in them. The combination of aesthetics and personalities just isn't my cup of tea, but I don't hate them. They have their nice moments, and there isn't a ton of time spent on them. It's also a little nice to see Adachi and Kurosawa helping out another couple with what they've learned together. But I wouldn't read a manga with them at the center.
The anime had a hilariously rushed ending, I went so quickly from "Wow, they're exchanging rings? That's so cute!!" to "WTF they actually get married!?" that it made me laugh a little. But that just made me want to see it as intended, so I went to the manga and found it to be even more enjoyable! And it's still going, though I think it's ending soon. There was a lot that happened after the point where the anime ended!
I went through a lot of introspection about my life in these months, maybe due to what you could call a mid-life crisis of sorts, but not the kind you see on TV with guys buying stupidly expensive cars and leaving their wives and shit. Little did I know that I would end up losing someone I was so close to--a life event that tends to get people to reflect on their life and how they want to live it, even when that lost someone is a dog.
I've just had the feeling of my past decisions starting to catch up with me in unpleasant ways. I can at least say that one thing I have zero regrets about is the time I spent with Kona. But then there's everything else. I'm not in poor health, but I wonder if I'm on the right track for my age, especially as someone who has such difficulty exercising and is pretty low energy. There's also the amount of time I've spent online instead of doing things that would inarguably be better for me. My decision to continue living with my parents either until they die or until I have the money to comfortably live on my own. My decision to squander my chances at school. My decision to stick with a job for a long time that honestly doesn't pay very much, and knowing I can't really move on because I don't have the skills or confidence to do so.
With all this in my head, killing time online has come to feel really bad to me. It used to be a safe haven, when I was younger. Maybe I knew in the back of my mind that there were other things that I needed to be doing, but at least the pay off for spending time online was pretty good. The things I needed to do also didn't feel as urgent. Well, of course the online environment has changed drastically since I first joined it in the late 90s. But I think I've changed a lot, too. My priorities have changed. I've grown up a lot in the past couple of years, and there's a lot of things I actually want to do now that I didn't used to want to do—and most of it doesn't require that I be online for it. Frustratingly, my behavior hasn't changed in perfect lock step with this emotional upheaval. I've largely kicked the social media habit, but not entirely. I want to be the kind of person who only uses social media to post about things I've made, but I keep posting other things anyway, and then feeling the urge to delete them later on (if you follow me and have witnessed this happen, my apologies, I'm sure it's annoying, but it's definitely not as annoying to you as it is to me). I've also found myself turning to streaming video a little too much. Thankfully that does not mean TikTok. Sometimes I watch TikTok commentary videos, but I'm absolutely never going to dive into it myself. No, it's YouTube that's been the issue. Longer form videos that are really nice to have on while crocheting or doing something else that doesn't require my full attention, but that I can also get too hooked into when I need to go off and do something else.
Basically… I've changed a lot on the inside, but my outside world hasn't caught up to it yet. I don't know how long it will take for that to happen, but I'm doing what I can right now to make it a reality, even though there's been a lot of "two steps forward, one step back" going on. My intention is to stay away from the internet except when I actually need it for something (like typing up this blog post). Make a bigger effort to work on my art skills and also write all the things that keep bouncing around in my head. And just try to take care of myself better.
One thing I'd like to try experimenting with is a seasonal approach to pursuing my hobbies. Writing in the winter, drawing in the spring, writing again in summer, drawing again in the autumn (I can crochet any time, it's a much more low energy activity for me). Even though it was in autumn, I decided to use November to write because I really wanted to finish the final chapter of the fic I mentioned earlier before the end of the year. I wasn't confident I could do it if I only had December, especially since that's a busy month whether you have holiday visitors or not.
Now comes the real test of if I can stick to only writing throughout December, January, and February (I know the start of each season isn't on the first of the month, but I prefer using that to mark the beginning of something new). My biggest issue with this approach is that I'm just not sure if I can hold my attention on only writing or only drawing for an entire three months. My hope is that, if I can stick to it, I'll really get my fill of that one activity during those three months and therefore be willing to put it out of my mind for the following three months so that I can truly double down on whatever I'm doing that season. I may not hold back on putting some things in my sketchbook if I really want to, but until March, I'd like to keep my hands off of my drawing tablet and instead keep them on my keyboard with a word document open. Would be nice to get a good head start on the second in the Sarazanmai fic series I'm writing.
When I get back to drawing, though, I'm not entirely sure what I'll do. I've been feeling like I need to focus my attention on practice lately, thus why I was already filling a bunch of sketchbook pages, and I keep my sketchbooks to myself. I've lost confidence, and I feel like the best way to regain it is to focus on drawing only for myself in private. But holding back on making art to share with others for a long time feels harsh. I like sharing what I've made. I want to show the world what I can do and what I think is beautiful. I also need to think about my motives for doing this, though.
For the first 10-ish years of my life, ubiquitous internet usage was not a thing--technology workers and hobbyists and university students got on board early, but the rest of us just kept living our lives without it, or with it maybe existing in the background of any business we needed to conduct. In those early years without internet, I drew a lot. I drew just because I wanted to and really didn't make a point of showing it to other people. And I enjoyed it a lot. This kept going for a few years even after I started using the internet, because the technology for getting art online wasn't very good yet (plenty of people could do it, but I couldn't), so it didn't even occur to me much that I could get my art online. I took a lot of inspiration from what I was seeing, and improved during this time. I don't think I started sharing things much until I was in my mid-teens, and that was just scans of drawings in pen and marker. They didn't get much of a response, but this is when I started to think "I'm not good enough". I had other people to compare myself to for the first time. I started to draw less—less than I felt like I wanted or needed to—and this is an issue that continues to plague me even today. Eventually I got drawing tablets and my skills once again improved, because I had better tools to help me make it look good. But I also started to feel pressure to make and share things. I wanted to have a presence in the world, and it felt like the only way to make that happen was to draw things.
I'm also realizing how dysfunctional this relationship to art is, though. I do draw what I want to draw, I'm not drawing subject matter just because it's popular, but there is still that little bit of "I have to make the best possible version of this thing I want to draw so that people will be impressed with me" in the back of my mind. I think I've gotten to that "I'm not good enough" point again. I don't know if there's any way around that aside from taking a step back and working on things in private… Not just to build technical skills, but to get another taste of what it was like to be perfectly happy drawing just for myself.
Well, whatever I end up doing, I know I don't want to stop drawing no matter what, because there is something inside of me that wants it very badly. There's just a mismatch between what I'm capable of doing and what I want right now, even when ulterior motives are out of the picture, and I have to spend some time bridging that gap.
