100 days to offload

Week Note #33: Mar 27 to Apr 2

2025-04-02

  • πŸ“š I started reading Three Lives by Gertrude Stein, a book that one of my TAs recommended me. I'm very interested in Stein's poetry, despite being confused over it. My TA said that you could kind of see echoes of her poetry in her novels, so it was worth reading. I do see those echoes, namely the repetition. But, what I like from Stein's poetry isn't really present in her prose. I like the innovative ways Stein looks at objects. When it comes to her interpersonal relationship observations like in this novel... Well, it's a bit dry. I'm almost done reading it, so I'll see how I feel once it's over.
  • πŸ—³οΈ I joined a friend's Retrospring instance and it is very interesting. I never really thought that people could build a community around a social media site that is literally just asking each other questions? Think the "ask" function on Tumblr. It's an interesting phenomenon to witness. I don't really participate much, because it is filled with literal teenagers. But it's a good time waster.
  • πŸ’° Submitted my taxes, and my parents taxes. Also helped my cousin submit his taxes for the first time. I find that taxes aren't that bad. For me, it's just the dread of having to do something hanging over my head.
  • πŸŽ“ I started studying for final exams. I am scared for my poetry course. They're going to throw quotes at us, and ask what poem they're from. Which, yes, sounds obvious, and easy. But memorization is not my strong suit. And there are around 100 poems to memorize. I am scared! But I'm trying my best!
  • πŸ¦₯ This week I have been a sloth. Just not living with any urgency whatsoever, despite my obligations and responsibilities. Is it burnout? Depression? Bad eating habits? Lack of sleep? Apathy towards my day job? General horror at the state of the world? I don't know whatever could be the problem!

πŸŽ™οΈ Podcasts Listened

I've been listening to more podcasts. Mostly when I'm journaling (it takes me 45 minutes up to an hour in the morning to do journal).

  • The Astrology Podcast: April Astrology Forecast 2025
  • Pill Pod: Revolution Rip Tide
  • Pill Pod: BURNOUT SOCIETY by Byung-Chul Han
  • Pill Pod: Luigi's Mansion
  • Pill Pod: America's Religious Death Cult
  • Professing Literature: Prufrock Among the Women | Eliot, β€œThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (Part One)
  • The History of Literature: Gertrude Stein

🎡 Music

  • Ever since I cancelled my Spotify subscription, I'm finding it harder to find time to keep up with new music, or to discover new music. Now I know what people mean by not having time to listen to music. Streaming services just make it so easy. You just find a playlist that sounds like what you're looking for, and then hit play. While I do like listening to my current library, it's kinda starting to feel stale. But I have too many things going on to log into SoulSeek and download stuff.
  • I did, however, manage to listen to Lucy Dacus's and Deafheaven's new albums. I unfortunately do not really have any opinions other than, it was pleasant. I 100% need to re-listen to them. I also have some other albums (minis and EPs alike) in my mental to-listen list (Seulgi's mini comes to mind).

πŸ’Ώ Top Albums

  1. KAI - The 1st Mini Album by KAI: I am hyping myself up for Kai's comeback. Has it happened yet? I'm ready.
  2. NewJeans 2nd EP 'Get Up' by NewJeans
  3. BB/ANG3L by Tinashe
  4. Lonely People With Power by Deafheaven
  5. TANGK by IDLES
  6. Forever is a Feeling by Lucy Dacus
  7. Is This It by The Strokes
  8. Lush by Snail Mail

2025-04-02

100 days to offload

No week note this week

2025-03-26

Caution
General malaise and talking about negative eating habits

I realize this feeling is most likely temporary but I am really not feeling Week Notes right now.

I ate an entire chocolate bar that didn't even taste good.

Ate a whole bag of chips.

Bought a big of those mini chocolate Easter eggs and gorged on a quarter of the bag.

Strange, I never saw myself as a snacker. But these days, I just want to eat.

Anyhow, I took a food coma nap for three hours instead of doing school work. Woke (still very groggy after two hours), got upset at the news, and now I am just in no state to do anything really productive.

Overall, not a fun day.

The week has been going okay until now, I think.

Hopefully tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, I will feel better.

100 days to offload

Week Note #32: Mar 13 to Mar 19

2025-03-19

I haven't done week notes for over a month now as I kinda have ceased to find use for it. Especially since my days are all the same lately. It's just a little bit depressing to say the same things over and over again. I went to school! I learned things! I listened to music! It's the kind of drudgery that makes me not want to do something.

What's odd is that I like to think that I'm a creature of habit that likes to stick to routines. I had a routine going for Week Notes. The reality is that once I cease enjoying something, I will drop it like a hot potato. But then I feel guilt over it. And I try to make it stick the next time (don't talk to me about the 100 Days to Offload challenge, the challenge that I am currently trying to attempt for like the 3rd or 4th time).

So hello again.

The Week

  • πŸŽ‰ My friend's birthday was on Pie Day and we celebrated on Saturday. It was a nice gathering. We ate pizza, Korean fried chicken, palabok, and had some Soju.
  • πŸ§‘β€πŸ« Y'all, I'm a teacher's pet. Er, TA's pet. I attend all the office hours and this week I was the only one who attended, because technically it was spring break (spring break is a joke when you have a paper due and work full time). I like talking to me TA's and professors in office hours. I like asking questions about the content, but also about their lives, hah. Nothing too personal, I'm usually just really interested about why they chose the field they're in, and what their current interests are.
  • πŸŽ“ Session A ended and Session B started. I am free from my American history course!!! It was frankly, a really enlightening but dreary course. The revolution and the civil war just feels so relevant these days. In happier news, in Session B I'm taking a philosophy course. My American literature: 1830 to 1945 and American poetry courses spans an entire regular semester so they're still going on strong.
  • πŸŽ™οΈ I am listening to more podcasts. Well. Yeah, kind of. I picked up Acid Horizons and Pill Pod. I used to follow Pill Pod's companion YouTube channel a lot, and I decided to check out their podcast, too. I listened to their first episode where they talked about Bruno Latour, and then when I started reading my Philosophy textbook, Latour was mentioned (insert the meme of Leonardo sitting on the couch, pointing at the TV). I don't think it will happen more than that (Pill Pod is more critical theory, whereas the philosophy course I'm taking is just critical thinking).
  • 🐎 I picked up Slow Horses again and finished episode 2 and 3! I like to watch TV while on my exercise bike. But lately I've been watching lecture videos instead of TV. Because of spring break, there was a pause in videos, and I decided to watch Slow Horses! Now the videos are back in full force so it might be a while before I can watch episode 4. I really like it so far, but I am so squeamish and I get soooo into it when there's suspense. I have to pause and unpause a lot.

πŸ’Ώ New Music

Lots of new music this week!! This next part is just me summarizing some Fediverse posts so apologies if you've read this already.

  • Ruby by Jennie: I did not like this album. After listening to the album, I have come to the conclusion that I do not really like her voice. There were moments in the album where I thought, "oh this is nice." Then when I looked at the song, it has a feature. It seemed that what I really liked was the non-Jennie parts. Also some of the song writing in this album is... Not my taste. The features had decent lines but compared to the lines Jennie had in the same song, the difference was often stark. I feel bad for not liking it, because a lot of people like it. I want to like a Jennie album! It's okay, at least Mantra was a really good single that I enjoyed.
  • HOT by LE SSERAFIM: This time I feel bad for liking this. I know Hybe is a bad company, but why are my current faves under Hybe right now. It's not fair. Hot is a lot of fun. I like how they're doing spoken word intros now, although I never really know what they're trying to say. Ash is my favourite on here. I like this genre of music the most, even if I don't know what to call this genre. Overall, pretty good!
  • Vaxis III: The Father of Make Believe by Coheed and Cambria: I don't know why but the subtitle of this album makes me think of Green Day's The Father of All Motherfuckers. Anyway. The first half seemed very vanilla rock, strong Springsteen vibes. Not really the prog-rock I expect from Coheed. To be fair, on their last release, it was a lot more poppy. I prefer the pop over vanilla rock. The album kind of edged on the border of boring at times, which is disappointing. I did enjoy the singles from this album. I'll need to listen to it again.
  • Baby, Not Baby by SEULGI: Okay, I haven't listened to the EP, but I listened to the single. I love it. It's very Millennial-core (is that what the kids say these days). It samples Britney Spears, the fashion is very Millennial (the sparkles!!!), and there's references to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. There's probably more that I'm missing. Needless to say, it is a hit. I love it. I'm so glad she's back.

🎡 Most Listened

Top albums:

  1. The Father of Make Believe by Coheed and Cambria
  2. HOT by LE SSERAFIM
  3. TA1300 by Denzel Curry (someone recommended him to me, I think I like him but I need to listen to more!)
  4. Ruby by Jennie
  5. Tierra by L'Arc~en~Ciel
  6. 28 Reasons by SEULGI
  7. MAYHEM by Lady Gaga (I don't remember this album at all save for the singles so I can't say much about it but it was good and easy listening)
  8. In Love and Death by The Used

2025-03-19

100 days to offload

What I learned from one month without social media

2025-03-01

Literally, it makes no difference what I abstain from, I will always find a way to procrastinate. Also, my will is weak. I made a few exceptions throughout the month: I got sick and logged onto Fedi; and I posted on Reddit about my Last.fm account's anniversary.

How did I procrastinate?

  • Music. The great distractor. Do you know how long it takes to craft the perfect queue for a study session? Too long.
  • Obsidian workflow tweaking. I decided to try maintaining an Obsidian vault again, for like the tenth time. I'm still using it. So far so good?
  • Playing around with publishing my Obsidian vault on the web. CSS is the time killer.
  • Spinning up a Gemini server as soon as I heard The Firefox News. Still a WIP.
  • Browsing soooooo many Gem capsules, many of which haven't been updated since 2022.
  • Napping with my cat. My unfortunate after-work ritual is to join my cat on the beanbag and be dead to the world for two hours.
100 days to offload

Week Note #31 - Jan 30 to Feb 05

2025-02-06

Caution
Mentions of U.S. politics (I am taking an American History course right now, after all)
  • πŸ™ˆ This month I've decided to sign out of my Fedi account and pretty much everything else. I'm just tired of being bombarded by everything, and I have a propensity to doom scroll, or, rather, procrastination scroll. Not the best thing to do as I've been trying to keep on top of my school work. So I've decided to cut it out. I've also blocked Reddit (except for my city subreddit because I am paranoid, infer what you will).
  • πŸ§‘β€πŸ« Often times, my English lit prof says stuff, and I understand each word she says, but I have no idea what she's trying to say. Other times, she manages to say something in her meandering way, and it just clicks in my mind, and I go, "yes!!!" I can't think of any example at the moment, but when that does happen, I always nod enthusiastically at my screen.
  • πŸŽ“ Depending on how things go, I think I might transfer out of my university after this semester, to a local Canadian one (I am doing an online degree). Right now, I don't know if I can trust the U.S. with my education. Some of my classmates have been asking our profs or TAs about it. Everyone is really on edge. One of my TAs said, "I know it's easier said than done, but we need a place where we can just not think about it. I think here is a good place for that." Ironic, because that TA is the TA of my American History course, and for the past weeks we've been talking about the Civil War era. That is the course where I think, "Wow, hm, I'm seeing a lot of parallels," or "That really explains a lot about Americans today," the most.
  • πŸŽ₯ I finally finished watching Arcane. The pacing for the second season has been... Not good. I felt like I kept getting tugged in a new direction multiple times per episode. I think about the first season, and how I gushed over the writing. I could not do the same for this season. It's a disappointment, really. But, I will say that the finale was, good. Next, I'll be watching Attack on Titan. I never finished season 2 and my brother has been on my case for literally years about getting caught up. I have procrastinated enough on it!
  • πŸ“š I finished reading The Murder on the Links. Love a good Poirot mystery. I also started collecting literary magazine PDFs, and I've been reading those of late. Stuff from undergrad lit mags, indie lit mags, super prestigious lit mags, everything. This all started because one of my classmates mentioned how they published some poetry in one. I've been obsessed ever since. I did, at the end of last year, subscribe to some Canadian lit mags (physical!!) so, they were on my radar before, but now I'm all in. If anyone has any recommendations, please send them my way!
  • πŸ’’ I haven't read much manga in a hot minute. I started reading and am now caught up with the English translation of Hibiki - Shousetsuka ni Naru Houhou. It's about a literary genius. The mangaka has a very rigid philosophy around talent, which, I'm not so sure about. It also sent me spiraling into an existential crisis. Maybe more about that later. I also started reading manga by Haruno Nanae. Their art style is so pretty. Not timeless, it's very 90s, but it feels classic.
  • πŸ’Ώ Two new albums came out last week. The Weeknd released Hurry Up Tomorrow. I'm actually a big Weeknd fan, but, this one fell flat for me. I have only listened to it twice, but I find it rather boring. There are some songs that I quite like in the first quarter, but the rest is a bit of a slog. L.S. Dunes also came out with a new release, Violet. I'm listening to it right now! Of the two releases, I like this one a lot more. However, the band has released sooo many singles for it already that I feel like I already know half the album? Whatever, it's a good listen.
  • 🎹 Because I've been so locked in with school, I've been listening to a lot of piano music, specifically dark academia playlists. It's definitely reflective in my top albums this week. A little embarrassing, but I can't deny that's what happened this week.

Top albums from the past week:

  • Lush by Snail Mail
  • "Watch Out!" by Alexisonfire
  • Awkward & Depressed by Canadian Softball
  • After Hours by The Weeknd
  • Serenity by Minoire
  • Hurry Up Tomorrow by The Weeknd
  • Dark Academia by Imaginary Poet
  • Aemeralds presents: Library Aesthetics, Vol. 1 by Various Artists

2025-02-06