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feeling: actually sort of awake and even productive listening to: Matenrou Opera - Twilight Parade
Spring was always my least favorite season... but this year, I was actually kind of glad to see it come. It brings rain and stupid temperature fluctuations and muggy heat, naturally, but after the fall and winter of hell that I've had, even the smallest positive changes are making a welcome new season.
I've been through why these past few months sucked, so as for how things changed... I got my repaired computer back much earlier than expected (just a few days instead of the two weeks HP predicted), and it's been a gem so far. Work has been just as crazy, but also as enjoyable as it's ever been as I got to work on some pretty fun shows this season. I also finally got back into the kanji study habit, though since it's been 5+ months since I gave it the necessary attention, I had to review everything from the beginning and am currently back up to the 600th character or so (I was just short of 900 before I stopped). Since the weather warmed up unusually early, I broke out my bike and started riding again for the first time since early October. Still nowhere near the almost-everyday schedule I aim for, and am still hopelessly out of shape, but hopefully I'll manage to do something about that this year. I discovered that I can throw my bike in the trunk and take it to the bike trail that starts in the park in town, too, which is much more pleasant and safe and satisfying than riding around home here... hoping to do that more often from now on.
Been trying to allow some time to listen to music now and then too, which isn't as easy as it was before I got a job that requires video playback... little things like that... and slightly bigger things like flipping my sleep schedule around for the first time in years. Thanks to a few late work nights in the course of a few weeks, it had reached a point where I couldn't fall asleep until 7-8am on a daily basis... and I couldn't get in the habit of sleeping through the afternoon because of work, church, and family stuff. So finally I ended up exhausted and miserable enough to fall asleep at midnight one night, and I've actually succeeded at waking up in the morning ever since. Of course, work still tries to mess me up, and about three times in the past two weeks I've had to go to bed early, get up in the middle of the night to finish a script, and get back to bed right around dawn. But I'm going to try to keep this up. It's almost hard to believe how much better I've felt just being able to wake up naturally for a few mornings in a row, with no alarm clocks, and still get a full night of sleep.
Of course, I'm still light years behind on a lot of stuff, and probably always will be. Still behind on reading people's blogs on Ameba that I used to keep up with every day... have barely been following new music at all, including the activities of the bands and labels I claim to be staff for... haven't translated any lyrics in eons... still tons of dramas I want to watch... and heh, I've all but given up hope of getting my fansub community running again. I probably won't be doing any more fansubbing, but the place is full of dead links and there are still hundreds of new people banging down the doors waiting for their memberships to be approved... but I just can't bring myself to get to it when I think about how long it'll take. Looking at not just days, but probably weeks to get everyone approved... and several weeks more to fix the dead links, because there's not much point in letting in swarms of newbies only to have nothing available for them to download.
...Actually, I lied. I did start one new fansubbing project that I don't even know if I'll ever finish, but I just couldn't resist it any longer. It's one of those things that seriously called to me even before I ever watched the program, just seeing who the lead actors were and that nobody had fansubbed it yet... then after I watched it, it just poked at me more. That was, what, 3 or 4 years ago? I managed to push it down and even forget about it for a couple years, but something, I don't know what, reminded me of it again this past winter... and I just opened up the first episode and started translating. And darn it, this thing has probably been the funnest project I've ever undertaken. I really, really hope I'll be able to finish it and get it out there somehow, just because I'm loving it so much for some reason I can't even really identify. Maybe part of my fixation on this thing is knowing that, whether I finish it or not, it'll probably be my last fansub project... going out with a bang, and all that. But mostly it's just really freaking fun.
But anyway... that's all just the small stuff that has set 2012 moving in a much needed positive direction. After the hell that was fall/winter this past year, and seeing that the trends weren't likely to change if I just kept up my life as I have for the past few years, I needed something a lot bigger to mark my turning point. Every single year, probably ever since I graduated from college, I've kept saying "THIS is the year," but then it just... never was. But I finally decided that THIS really was going to be the year. So at the beginning of March, I finally booked my plane ticket to Japan.
My flight is less than two weeks away - April 11. I talked my dear friend and partner-in-crime Reiko into going with me, and in return she talked me into staying there until April 30. :P We'll be staying with one of the most awesome and generous ladies in the world while in Tokyo, though we're still looking for lodgings in the Kansai area... but we're going to make sure we get to see ALL the faces we've been missing for two or three years in some cases, at least once. Seeing the way things have been going for the past year or so, it finally hit me that I was likely to never see some of them again unless I went over there myself. So while we're at it, we're hoping to arrange some business meetings too, and maybe even take time to hang out and catch up with them if we're lucky... but at the very least we'll be seeing them in their element, on the live stage.
I'm confident that this trip is something I really need, for several reasons, and have for several years. And I have high hopes that it's going to finally turn things around for me, maybe not permanently, but at least it will be a starting point.
And, eh, I should probably get back to work... >_> Trying to get a little bit ahead where possible before I go to Japan, though I will have the laptop and hopefully a steady net connection there... but what's the point in spending 19 days in another country if you're just going to spend it all working? I mean, unless it's a clear-cut business trip or work transfer deal, but this it not, so... *cough* Anyway... yeah, I guess that's it for now. Wish me luck next month making this trip go the way I want it to...
comment! (1)
dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 3/29/2012 09:09:00 PM
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