With a week before classes start things have hit another snag. In July I made an appointment with my academic advisor to talk about changing my major, which for some reason I can only do with his approval. Unfortunately, he didn't feel like showing up for the meeting. He hasn't responded to my emails in the past, and the school doesn't have a phone system for me to just call in.

This is a problem because my grant money will only cover classes related to my degree. And I don't want my degree. I've also already taken all but one of my general education classes, but need three classes in order to get funding. My two options were take classes for a major that was making me miserable, hence my attempt at changing majors, or take the semester off to get things sorted.

Because funding is granted per year rather than per semester, this means taking the entire year off by extension so I can get the most out of my grant money.

It feels like this entire summer has been doors closing and opportunities turning out to be not as great as they seemed. In May it felt like things were really looking up, but now it's more like the entire foundation has been flattened. Still, Death is my favorite tarot card for a reason so it's time to make the most of it.

in the future

A few years ago I'd been in the midst of starting a zine club when a death in the family meant that plan got put on indefinite hold. I'm not quite sure if I'm going to try to bring it back in full force, but I am exploring returning to zines. Well, I'm saying zines but it's sort of a grey area between zines and chapbooks; a lot of them are more writing-centric than art-based.

Financially, there's a lot of uncertainty ahead. I need some pretty pricey dental work and am under no delusion that I'll immediately start making enough money to cover those costs. But it does feel like I have some clarity and a lot of things are coming together at once.

I haven't mentioned radio stuff too much because I don't want to say anything too identifiable. It's something fun that took up most of my summer, but now summer is coming to my end and so is my time writing for the show. It's a mixture of me being burnt out with the script, needing money and not being legally allowed to profit from the show, and just generally seeing the writing on the wall.

But here's the thing: my last show airs tomorrow. And no one knows it's going to be the last.

In a way I feel bad. Just this Thursday I was telling some people at an event about the show and how they could listen. In the meantime things have progressed from "we need to end the show eventually" to "we're ending it effective immediately". The thing is, when you know you're done... you know. All I can try to do now is end things without wasting anyone else's time.

I don't know how the people in charge are going to take it. 2/3 will probably be pretty understanding. The leader of the org tho... is kind of a dick sometimes honestly? So he could be the kind of guy to throw a huge tantrum at work when you quit, I don't know.

in the meantime

Overall I learned a lot from the radio, even if we only had 7 shows before pulling the plug. Things happened the way they needed to. I learned some new skills with scriptwriting and figured out some things for other stories I was via my work on the radio show. Funnily enough, procrastinating for writing the show also kind of helped me figure out where my priorities are.

I'm looking forward to having a little bit of a break before classes start next month. There are things that need doing around the house, projects that need finishing, and my neocities site needs work. My life is in a kind of flux state with graduation in the spring and reworking my patreon, so it's kind of like there's a new life looming on the horizon.

In a sense things have been kind of deteriorating in the background while I prioritized the show. Which leaves me having to rebuild now. It's a net gain, because the old way wasn't really sustainable. But a lot has been changing since March and I've been too busy to realize it. It's like I opened my eyes and found out the building I was standing in has been demolished.

Once upon a time I remembered to do my Sunday journals. Then everything changed when shit hit the fan.

Of course, as life loves to do, things got complicated at exactly the wrong time. What had been a smooth sailing story development got derailed by my producer having a family emergency. And then, because one emergency is never enough, she also got Covid on top of it. Which meant I would up doing our very first show ever alone and by myself. This was not the fate I had in mind when I agreed to write the show.

The good news is that we made it out of all of this physically unharmed (inconvenience of congestion notwithstanding). The bad news is that my scriptwriting timeline was thoroughly obliterated by having to come up with emergency plans for if she was sick for more than one week. As a result I am writing this instead of working on the script last minute because I'm stressed and need a break.

As much as I enjoy doing this and it's a great opportunity, it's also a volunteer position. Which I am doing for free. Because of the rules of community radio I can't even put stuff up on Patreon to financially benefit from what I'm doing. Overall this is... less than ideal when the amount of time I've spent preparing for our first episode has kept me from actually posting on my Patreon that people are paying me for. Luckily my patrons at this point are mostly friends who care more about supporting me than my consistency. Still, it makes me feel bad that I'm not delivering.

Creatively, I'm drained. And then that's stressful in turn because this is a long term project that I don't really get breaks from any time soon. So what I've I'm doing so much work that it keeps me from making progress elsewhere? I don't know what the answer is. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will like the radio show so much they just give me a million dollars. I think that sounds like a reasonable thing that might happen.

Summer sucks anyways, though. So the way I feel right now is barely relevant because it's not like I ever thrive when it's this hot out. (I guess it isn't technically summer yet but tell that to the thermometer) The goal right now in general is to just make it through to something better.

Should this maybe just be a Monday tradition? Looks like it. Am I going to keep calling it a Sunday journal? Definitely.

It's starting to get warmer. Or at least, warmer more consistently. We've been having days in the 90s since February, a fact which I try not to give too much thought. Now the gulf between days with highs in the 90s is getting smaller. With the house as poorly insulated as it is I can only hope that there are still a few cool days left before summer really starts to kick off.

Classes were supposed to start in June for the summer semester, but after weighing everything I've decided it's probably better to not deal with all that. In general it was probably foolish of me to sign up for a class that was two hours every morning, Monday through Thursday, during a time of the year when the heat makes life in general unbearable. Add on writing a script for the show I'm doing and planning a bathroom remodel and the idea of taking a bunch of intense classes feels like torture.

I'd love to lay some brick paths in the garden before it gets too hot to do any work outside, but we'll see if the budget agrees with my plans. Watching Gardener's World on Tubi has gotten me a little bit obsessed with garden design. Unfortunately summers in this region are becoming more and more miserable. On the plus side it gets hot enough that cooking outside is pretty easy, which at least saves money on electricity.

Just to change things up a bit I've been playing Sims 4 the normal way. Usually I just spend all of my time remodeling buildings and giving preexisting families redesigns, but so much of my life right now is about design and planning that it's nice to do something to just totally unplug my brain. My current household are a brother and sister who live in a duplex above a family; the brother has a villainous valentine aspiration so obviously there will be shenanigans if I get my way.

Pride is next month, which also opens up my eternal quandry: do I want to go to local events? Last year I went to their showing of Rocky Horror and discovered I don't really like those kinds of interactive shows. Everyone thinks they're the cast of Mystery Science Theater but they're not... actually funny. The other issue is that these are usually events with a small turnout and I don't have much of a choice but to go alone. Which makes them boring at best. Even worse, the other people there tend to be people I went to high school with who don't recognize me after a decade. Awkwardness all around.

That's a few weeks away at least, so there's time to ponder. In the meantime I'll be spending the next two weeks trying to write as many scripts as I can for our series before things officially go live. Obviously it would be ideal to have more of a head start, but we only had two weeks' notice of when things would be going live so.... here we are. So far so good, though.

I'm continuing my attempt at journaling on Sundays. And by continuing I mean I did this once and sort of immediately forgot. Maybe it's more of reviving than continuing? Who knows. Semantics.

As part of my radio training we have to provide 5 songs that can be played on the radio without us getting in trouble. Naturally, this has led to me coming up with a lot of great songs that you should not play on the radio under any circumstances. What kind of world do we live in where you can't even play I Wanna be a Homosexual by Screeching Weasel in the middle of the afternoon? This is the land of the free?

Worst case scenario I can drum up a few alt rock songs from the 2000s.

In other news, my flowers are starting to grow! They're just little seedlings right now, but this is better than the first time around that yielded only a single sad shoot. The big danger right now is keeping it alive; between squirrels and a chicken who has decided she's free range, it's a fight too keep things from being eaten or dug up. I wish it was more than just the one bed, but in order to plant seeds you kind of need dirt to grow them in. And I don't want to go gouging holes in the lawn digging up enough dirt to fill multiple flower pots.

I have enough work on my hands trying to plan a bathroom remodel. These kinds of projects make me feel... claustrophobic? It's something that has to be done because it's a shit bathroom, not because I just wish it was prettier. Which means my ideas are numerous and my budget limited. There's something deeply frustrating about having to make concessions that other people with better lives never have to consider.

But let's end on a positive note. In less than 72 hours I will be pretty much done with finals for the semester. There will be less than a month before my summer semester begins, but I'm happy when I get one week off. So three weeks is still pretty great. Plus once summer is over I'll be finished with all of my core classes, leaving only the ones related to my major left to deal with.

I didn't set out to make a dreamwidth account today, but somehow here I am.

A Brief History

In February I stopped using tumblr. A lot of people are stepping away from social media these days, citing some pursuit of self-improvement and pursued mental health. I could lie and say that I was that kind of person, but honestly my account was small and I got tired of posts met with silence. That might happen here too, but at least then I'll have an excuse.

Not using modern social media doesn't mean I'm trying to be offline altogether. I've been working on making a neocities site, but that means first having to improve my currently basic coding skills. So in the meantime I figured a journal is a fun way to fill space while I make a convoluted and unnecessary personal site.
 

About the Journaler

In my not-online time I'm working on getting a degree in journalism. At first I was an English major, but I hate one of the classes I'm taking this semester so much that I threw the entire major in the trash. I'm also currently the writer for a community radio show that even the people who live in my area haven't heard of.

Technically I have an AO3 account that I could link, but there's... nothing there right now. I'm a slow poster and people kept demanding more updates so I kind of just. Deleted the whole fic. Despite swearing off ever posting anything again, there are a few drafts sitting in my note book that I might one day post. Or maybe I won't.

My sort of general goal is to use this page as a project log for whatever I'm knitting/planting/baking, along with the eventual mention of things I've watched or am generally enjoying. I will inevitably mention buffy the vampire slayer, but that's a topic for another time because I'm trying to keep things short. Overall I want to kind of keep things unfocused without caring about numbers, an antidote to my days of having a tumblr with a very strict theme.

To do:

• add a userpic so this account doesn't look as unnervingly anonymous
• tweak page customization to look better
• write a post about what I'm working on with neocities
• a journal title would probably be good