hobiis

Another year gone...

It still feels like only half of 2024 has passed by, and so I'm sitting with this uncomfortable, vague feeling of incompleteness. Maybe it's related to the ways that global warming has impacted my local weather patterns - a short summer that really only lasted 3 weeks; a dry autumn; a warm and snow-free winter - or maybe it's something else, but it just feels surreal that it's January once again.

2025 is already overwhelming between uncertainty about the changes in my job, anticipation about swiftly-upcoming travel plans, anxiety about the deteriorating health of my beloved furry son - but I'm hoping to talk myself into a positive attitude :)

( There are a few things I can look fondly back on from this past year... )


( Notably, there are three things I can very much look forward to: )


On the kpop front, my horizons keep broadening as the YT Music algorithm feeds me more songs it thinks I'll like - and, funnily enough, I do often like it! In 2024, according to my recap, I was in the top 0.05% of listeners of ONEWE and I'm on track to make that a reality in 2025 as well. There's just something about Yonghoon's voice that makes me relax, especially in anxiety-inducing traffic... Can't have road rage when you're crooning along to Parting or Regulus.

Without twitter, I am so behind on fannish content and news, and on kpop updates in particular. I find it hard to connect the same way on other social media platforms, and I miss chatting with you all, my pocket friends!

On a mostly-unrelated note, would anyone like to exchange postcards? I collect postcards, especially from places I will likely never get a chance to visit, and love local art, history, and architecture. I also love cats and plants! The Canada Post strike ended just before Christmas and I'm getting all my belated holiday cards out now, but postcards are a year-round joy. If you're interested in exchanging a postcard with me, please let me know <3

It's finally here... 2023. I'm already exhausted.

I ended 2022 with some excitement - a glass baking dish on the stovetop exploding the minute I touched it - and started 2023 with some negative emotions - someone on the internet was mean to me just after midnight and so I had a long cry about it - but I have high hopes for the rest of the year.

A few months ago, when I decided to start using DW, I set three goals for myself, and I have updates for you about all three!

1. To knock some dramas off my list of 16 started but not finished.

This one was ummm mostly unsuccessful. In the end, I started and finished two new dramas during that time, but only completed one of the 16 on that list - Reply 1988, which happened to be the drama my kdrama club was watching ~weekly for the last 5 months.

2. To finish some of the cnovels I had open so I could finally close the tabs on my phone.

This was unsuccessful, straight up. In fact, I got a new phone so those tabs are no longer a problem, lol.

3. To step outside of my comfort zone and learn a new kpop group.

Honestly, I thought this was going to be me learning ATEEZ. To be fair, I did kind of learn ATEEZ, thanks to my group of 5 local kpop fandom friends who came over to my house and made me watch ATZ content for nearly 20 straight hours (ok, we slept and had brunch during that time, too), but I never really experienced the emotional investment.

However, a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to try reading NCT fic (why, you might ask, since I have been an NCT anti for four years? well... I don't have an answer to that). The result? I have imprinted on Jaehyun. I have been inhaling NCT fic for three weeks. I can pick all of 127 out of a lineup and I know the names of all the Dreamies and WayV even if I don't have their faces down just yet. This is truly a whole new world for me.

If anyone has NCT fic recs, especially those of the Jaehyun variety, please hook me up! I survive off recommendations alone, and the fics I've read so far have been so good that I'm desperate for others. Maybe I might even start listening to their music soon... who knows!

I'm glad we made it through another year, and I look forward to keeping up with friends in 2023 as well. Wishing you many opportunities to make happy memories this year! <3

I live on the west coast, in the most temperate part of Canada. We are in a rain shadow, meaning that we're surrounded by mountain ranges and clouds tend to pass over us and deposit on the mainland, so although we get our fair share of rain in the wet season, it's not nearly as bad as other parts of the PNW. When it comes to winter, we usually see a dusting of snow a couple of times a year, and that's really it.

( Snow and life talk )

The holidays have arrived in my office! As weird as it feels to go all-out for Christmas when we have such a multicultural and multi-faith campus and department, I have to confess that festive decorations improve my mood astronomically. This year I brought in mini light strands and some cute standees from the dollar store and spiced up our transaction tops. I also finally turned my candy dish around so "'Tis The Season" is visible again! 

Starting next week, we (the office admin team) have a busy schedule full of holiday socials and luncheons - a faculty social, a union social, an office admin staff lunch courtesy of one of the profs in our department, a lunch for all support staff in our department courtesy of the department chair, a department potluck. I'm excited for free food! Truly that's the best part of the season.


( Office decor under the cut )




 
I'm also going home for Christmas this year. I haven't been home for a holiday in over 8 years, and I'm weirdly anxious about it. This will be the first holiday trying to juggle time spent with my separated parents, and I also have friends and extended family to see as well. I genuinely cannot believe how expensive flights are! It's costing me $320 one way, for the one-hour flight back to the island. Horrible! But I'm really looking forward to it all the same. 

Any friends with holiday or just plain December plans?

I've been playing around a little bit with Mastodon in the last few days, thanks especially to the Tusky app (I believe it's only available for android devices though). I'm enjoying it a lot, but I migrated instances today for a couple of reasons and I don't know if I'm satisfied. Sadly I now have to wait another thirty days before I can migrate again, although it's still very early days for me so it might be worth deleting my existing account and opening an account on the instance I may actually want to be on instead... I don't know. I'm waffling.

Overall, I'm really liking the interface. I like the CW cut option. I like the 500 character limit. I like that the number of boosts and favourites aren't publicized on first glance. I like that I can browse a feed consisting of people followed by the people I follow. 

The biggest problem I'm facing is that the fannish servers (or instances) actively accepting new accounts don't seem to have any kpop fandom presence at all, and what I want to talk about is kpop. The instance I joined, fandom.community, is interesting and it's still evolving, but while it's moderated it also seems like it might be a little too free for me? There isn't much to browse in the local or federated feeds that aren't about kinks and content I'm not into (like, borderline uncomfortable not into - I abide by ship and let ship for the most part, but there are still some things that are not my cup of tea). I think maybe if more friends migrated to Mastodon and I could expand my following list, it would make a big difference in my browsing experience. In the meantime, it is very slow moving compared to twitter, and I don't know how I feel about that. My brain needs to be kept occupied!

If anyone else is interested in joining Mastodon, at the moment you can find and follow me at hobiis@fandom.community. I'd genuinely love to follow more people and diversify the extremely limited feed i have now.

Wow, it has sure been a minute and a half since I belonged to a journaling site. Just clicking around on DW and finding friends, learning how to subscribe, reading comment threads - all of it puts me right back into that 2005 LJ community feel. It's such a different world to the fast pace of Twitter and I don't know if I'm ready to get used to that.

At this point I don't know what I'll end up saying here! It's not conducive to posting every fleeting thought that comes into my head, and I've never been one to write long posts. Maybe it will just sit empty after this post. But I have some goals to set for myself, and maybe this will be a good place to track those.

Now, here, in the beginning of November, I'm sitting with 16 dramas started but not finished, and 11 dramas that I had to take an extended break from. Honestly my MDL watchlist is a little overwhelming. I hope that by the end of 2022, I can knock some of those off the list!

I also have several cnovels that I have been reading literally for years, and I would like to get some of those finished so I can finally close those tabs on my phone.

Finally, I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone by expressing interest in new kpop groups. I've never really been drawn by music - it's the community feeling that brought me into a music-based fandom in the first place - but for the first time in four years I'm finally starting to learn member names and personalities for groups outside of BTS (and, more recently, Stray Kids). I'm hoping by the end of the year, I can say with confidence that I am invested in other groups too.

I'm gonna start with those three goals and see what happens. Maybe following friends will bring me some of that much-needed motivation.