- any!
Hi! As soon as I made this profile I realize I made the mistake of making my username the purpose of this account because now people would have trouble referring to me without my name upfront. Oops. For now till 4 weeks, simply refer to me as the character in my profile picture, Shijima! I'm 19 years old, and as for my gender, I don't have a clear view for myself, so refer to me as whatever for now.
I've made this account with the goal of simply writing about my life in here, and to write little bits of literature here and there. Drawing isn't my best suite at the moment but I do love writing! ^w^
I like the works of Tsukumizu (Girls' Last Tour and Shimeji Simulation), Yume Nikki and the equally dreamy fangame Yume 2kki, Pokemon, Roblox, and most importantly, reading literature! Especially classic works such as the Sherlock Holmes canon and H.P Lovecraft, etc.
My online activity is sporadic and few so I'm not active a lot of the time, but I'd don't mind a conversation .w.
Heck, I've not been feeling productive for the last couples of weeks. Constant doomscrolling has taken much of my motivation to seek out more media to watch and play, to the point that I'd think that spending lots of time on the computer playing a game for a while feels more productive then rotting myself with constant switch-ups between social medias and such.
So I have to ask myself this, who am I without? What makes a part of an identity is what they do through their habits and hobbies. Someone can be a historian because they value the past and what it says for the present and the future onward. Someone can be a sight-seer because they couldn't forget the time they saw a beautiful panoramic view of a high place or a mountain, and so they travel a lot just to see where Nature gives their greatest works of panorama art. Even as something mundane as someone throwing rocks at things because they like the sensation of witnessing the rock bounce back against their target, knocking against wood.
I can tell people that I am a writer because I loved reading books and writing poems to myself, I can tell people that I'd like to be a game developer because I loved playing games and that I'm getting into coding programs. Those are identities with passion and ambition behind them which upholds it.
Yet, I've not yet gotten back to practicing these skills or engaging in the hobbies that shaped up my dreams, instead, I numb myself with scrolling these platforms for hours and hours. Who is someone who just stays on their phone all day and feel miserable about it?
Its hard to not feel bad and guilty about it because I feel like I am missing out on catching on to my dreams. Getting to a point that whenever I see someone's artwork or some genuinely good writing in here, especially when they uploaded a prolific amount, would make me feel insecure. For the ambitious, procrastination becomes a tantalizing limbo.
It feels like the scene in The Phantom Toolbooth where the main trio, on their way to rescue the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason, encounters a faceless gentleman, who asked them to do this one simple task of placing a tiny thing to the other side. Its been a while since I've read this more-relevant-than-now children's novel, but this scene comes up to my mind a lot of times, and the irony of their situation compared to my dilemma hurts sometimes.
"But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them.
“Think of all the trouble it saves,” the man explained, and his face looked as if he’d be grinning an evil grin—if he could grin at all. “If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren’t for that dreadful magic staff, you’d never know how much time you were wasting.”
Catching up to unfinished projects feels existentially daunting because, to me, how could it have costed this much micro-moments of touching up something and then leaving it for indefinite breaks on end from doomscrolling as opposed to just spending each amount of time everyday consistently finishing up the project? I wonder how it feels to be a prolific artist.
"Okay, I've feel like I've done nothing inasmuch as use up the majority of this day scrolling. Must do something!"
goes back to scrolling
brain shuts off
"...damn it, I should do something!"
Alas, the cycle repeats. I would blame myself, butttt I think that is unproductive and just bad. I'd say, fuck the social media design.
I've gone on a really bad doomscrolling spree 2 days ago, spent on a WHOOPING 8 HOURS of screentime! That is so much hours on a day that I can't take back, holy shit.
Honestly, I don't know if it is actual neurodivergent dysfunction that I am experiencing right now (I've been meaning to get an actual diagnosis if this is true but responses from the psychologists are taking very long...), but perpetuating myself to this harmful inertia time and time again, I know there will be regrets later on purely on how I can't take time back.
My brains feels like it is always everting itself, pulled part by thought to thought to thought that I don't know what to do with the options of going through time. There are books and mangas to be read, Visual Studio to practice coding, movies and anime I want to watch, the instruments in my home waiting to be practiced on, friends for when I want to chat to, the damn story I've been sitting on for weeks... Not to mention having to fit in school work and chores to the roster of things-I-could-do-now.
There is always much to do, that just gets thrown away for TikTok, Facebook, and such.
This is why I wrote about being a snail!
As of this entry, the school schedule is very lenient for its amount of classes and hours on the week. With that, I've been staying up to until 12 AM everyday, playing Roblox. Me and my friend group have been at Dead Rails for a while (hence little activity and, with an admission of guilt, slacking off on writing...), wanting to finish a game but having a run ended through bad luck and ill-considered choices of raiding The Castle without any preparation.
Although it isn't a recommended habit, I love staying up late to the night because it in the hours of sleep where I am left to my own devices in the quiet and restful period of the day. No noise, and no chores to have to do. Just me and this laptop...
But this is part of the reasons why I love the night.
In the case of someone who lives in a greener area, there is the nocturnal stridulation of distant crickets, the chill breeze that rustle the trees, the sight of fireflies gathered under the leaves of trees, and occasionally, the Moon stealing from the sun's light, shining to my room as if to say hello. Then, when the clouds clear up, I can see the stars. I'm grateful to live in a seclusive neighborhood with little light pollution so that I am able to behold the sprinkles of space.
Writing this entry made me have a feeling of longing for staying up to the night just to feel it. I think I could do this right after this, as I feel like the habits of doomscrolling are starting to debilitate my senses and ability to feel, it sometimes just make me feel horrible depending on what information I numbingly received to an already overwhelmed brain. There is always a better time to spend than quick consumption.
Happy March, everyone!
My drive to make is a wavelength. It is at its peak for a week, then it comes crashing down. My mind would flare up while it scrambles for ideas and figure out the right way to write words and sequences to a story, only to come crashing down on the couch and binge The Pokemon Anime (Sun and Moon currently! My favorite character is Lana, her personality matches mine :3) all day.
Sometimes it all feels kind of, bleh. No..., and without outside initiatives, I just don't get the urge to do stuff on my own. I've put off my short story in this state, and it isn't even halfway done...
I think of myself as a snail that takes breaks. Although I wish to be a novelist, my habits don't show that... ,_,
I'd still try to work on what I put off, but maybe I'll just stick to poetry for now. Its easier to construct a fun poem than to construct a world built on raw words. Whenever I feel like this, I go back to my roots, where I'm most comfortable.
My creative process is obscured by many obstacles that hurt my focus, and while I feel bad for not being productive enough to write a lot of literature, the only other thing I take pride in, is that I've at least made something. Its a start!
Nowadays, I've been handling my phone use a little better, scrolling through YT Shorts exhausts a lot of my motivation and desire to do anything. But sometimes I just feel guilty when I could not sit down and just read a book straight! Especially when a book that I've currently set in my mind to read is a more difficult read. I read more manga than novels more because the story is both drawn and written (and sometimes the visual goes SO HARD), but I also want to continue The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. Its my first introduction to the Victorian era of literature-though I didn't know this, just thought the title sounds cool when I had my eyes lain on it in the bookstore-and so far for me it is a plot of a family making means, but I know there is more to that if I truly invest my time on the novel.
I want to be able to be more media literate because I want to enjoy to the fullest the media I really enjoy and to reflect that by making the magnum opus I dream of writing! But due to the predatory methods of companies attempting to fetch in engagement to their social media products, I feel like I'm the Ulysses ogre.
And heck, even I don't know if I fully grasp my favorite mangaka's writing of the manga I indebt my life to, but all I've felt from reading it is existentialism and isolation from how Shijima experienced life; detached, apathetic. Light spoilers for those who didn't read Shijima Simulation, I'll just rant here:
The inability to relate to others to a more personal degree, yet, she still feels fear, gratitude, and eventually, the desire to connect. She never seems to express so much as the lively egg-head Majime, when this girl's desire for connection made her cling to Shijima. And that is how I got attached to the personality of Shijima!
In the age of fast content, time for reading is so much a need when now the people around me, even my family, endlessly scroll through their phones. And I don't deny falling victim to this too, but, I sometimes break through the mold to read and write. There is so much cool things to see out here in spite of where the world is heading, and we, you and I, have the privilege to see AND make cool things! What is the use of that privilege if we amuse ourselves to death?