remiya

I believe most of you watch for the Nuzlocke, so first: although some people have recently been cancelling their Nuzlockes, I have every intention of continuing, and hopefully one day completing, Serren's Nuzlocke, so stick with me. Although..I've actually been thinking a bit about turning it into a standalone comic divorced from Pokemon, simply because I feel like most of the ideas I have around it are more based on characters and big themes, rather than specifics about the Pokemon world. Do you guys have any thoughts on that?

If all goes well, I'll also be illustrating the cover for a school magazine's next issue, which I'm excited about. In the next week or so I need to buckle down and get the web design/development done for a startup I promised to help. Also, the web server's been a bit iffy, but here's a link to a hackathon project that I did the front-end for: yhack.alexreinking.com - make sure to read the about page! There's more to it than randomness.

Yesterday afternoon I formulated a high-level research plan as part of the application to the undergraduate major in cognitive science at my university. For now, I'm focusing on matters of human-computer interaction, hoping to look at both large-scale/high-level trends in social behavior, and also to examine lower-level mechanisms like information processing, emotion regulation etc. in relation to computers.

There are so many other questions I want to find the answers to, though. I just want to know everything, gah. I haven't entirely regained my verve for getting things done, and have been more prone to existential crises ('so what if I do well in school? so what if I get a "good" internship?' types of thoughts) as of late, so it was really nice to have a concrete list of research questions and to be able to visualize an academic direction for myself to start exploring.

I finished (well, 'finished' - gave up, more like; I hadn't made much progress in 4 hours, and it was 6.30am; I just want to pass this class...) my last assignment this morning, so now that I'm done with school, I can spend today and tomorrow catching up on the life things that I've been setting aside during finals period. I haven't been doing that well academically this semester, because I took on a bit more than I should have, and also because I still haven't exactly gotten my act together yet (which I'm kinda embarrassed about). Turns out I got a lot more sensitive to stress and hormonal changes this year, and so I was a mess for a lot of the semester. In my classes, I underestimated how mentally exhausting proof-based math and programming are, and forgot to take into account to my own academic strengths and weaknesses instead of trying to fit the stereotype of a computer science major (to prove that I belong, or something).

Around March next year I will be in Florida and Cuba for a week, on a concert tour. More details then - but if I have any watchers from there, it'd be awesome to meet up!

This half-year has been interesting for me. As mentioned above, it's still been stressful, but I'm very happy to report that I feel like I've made great progress in...happiness, or maturity, or something, if I compare myself now with myself at the same time last year. I still don't really know what it was that I was dragged down by for a year. I suffered from some disordered thinking that it took a long time to break free of, but I don't think it was just that. Perhaps it was just something set off by a combination of several highly stressful factors (poor relationship management, breaking up, making a very significant life/career decision that had other psychological repercussions, coming to terms with being queer/having emotions/not being the rational being I used to think of myself as). I'm planning to write a series of blog entries about mental well-being, and also what I've learned from the experience, so if you're interested in reading those when they come out, send me a note (I don't want to give the URL out in public).

In late August, right before I came back to the US for school, I finally met in real life with one of my most beloved friends - longtime watchers know who this is. We had a really wonderful time together (well except for a boring bit in the middle), and I look back on it with great fondness. Unfortunately, around a month ago, this friend also decided that we should stop talking entirely, and I've been feeling bursts of intense grief (and other strong emotions) about it, for I loved them fiercely.

In a few days I leave for China, where I'll be for the next month. I have internet access there, although I may not be online as often as I like. I haven't packed yet, which I should probably do. Also I ought to go eat dinner now.

I currently have a backlog of a few hundred notification in my message centre - most of them are from favorites and watches, which I'll just clear out (with gratitude!), but comments and notes will be replied to eventually.