and for the first time in a while, i post a life update.

tags:  current life music

my desire to draw has been debilitated for a bit, and in general, i haven’t been doing so well for nine months. but things have been marginally better lately.

i’ve been really enjoying the leisurely coding work on my toyhouse page and this website that i’ve done in the past week. there’s something meditative about solving front-end issues, like coding out the navbar and dropdown features, and cleaning up and factoring my code to have a substantial framework for the site generator. they’re like math problems, problems where i don’t have to focus on my situation, and problems that give me the opportunity to get stuck for a couple of hours and experience some healthy frustration. though, when working on my site, i ended up focusing less on putting actual content on these pages, even though i do like to keep things compartmentalized into neat boxes. (still have some work to do for my toyhouse character pages…)

something else fun (and anxiety-inducing!) came up at the end of last week, when i was wrapping up the implementation of all the features that i wanted for this site. a discord server i’m in introduced me to buyee, a proxy service that sells goods from several online marketplaces in japan. after i looked into it, i ended up snagging a lot of goodies that, quite frankly, have made me the most elated that i’ve been in a while. i promise i’ll share them once they finally arrive (if they do, that is). but to spoil a little bit, some of these goodies are incredibly valued garage kits that i could have never imagined i got my hands on. the whole story of how i found these kits is something i’ll get to later once i get the goodies, but for now, i’ll celebrate my bag!

i’ve never assembled a garage kit before, so i’ve been spending my hours watching videos of people prepping, painting, and putting together these kits. the whole process did put me off at first, because of:

  • the numerous amount of supplies i ought to get started with (which overall requires a minimum budget of around $100, hey i did the arithmetic) if i want to actually build the garage kits, and
  • the skills it takes to assemble the kits. i may be somewhat familiar with painting with acrylics, but there’s also applying putty, sanding down mold lines, pinning the kits together for the sake of fitting before painting, and so on and so forth…

on one hand, i may as well just never open the boxes when i get those kits, or just do the bare minimum of just pinning them together upright, because the likelihood of me screwing up the assembly is pretty high. on the other hand, i’d love to present my own spin on how these kits get painted and give them my full love and attention in maintaining them, as opposed to having a (possibly shoddily assembled) figurine served to me on a dinner platter. maybe if i ever decide on assembling the kits (or do some partial assembly), i’ll document on the process later… but i’ll just wait and see, when i get to inspect those kits.

on another note, i’ve been getting into the album like clockwork… by queens of the stone age. before, i’ve only listened to one song (“kalopsia” from like clockwork…), but after revisited that song, i ended up falling in love with the entire album. the heavy mood and despondency and resignation imbued in like clockwork… encapsulates what i was feeling (and still feeling) for a while, with the last song being my own analgesic with its bittersweet reassurance. also, “smooth sailing” is such a sexy song (sorry).

that’s all i have, for now!