52 posts, 1 year and A Quick Look Moving Forward

52 posts, 1 year: 

        I did it! I wrote a post for each and every week this year as 'twas my goal:) Doing so these last couple months have been kind of difficult, I'm not going to lie -- twice, maybe thrice, I laid down in bed Saturday night and as I was drifting off to sleep I realized I hadn't scheduled a post yet -- I bolted awake, and pulled something together. Can't tell how much of that is burn out versus working a full time job for the first time.

        I am very happy with the things I've been able to record. A vast majority of my posts this year are things I'm really glad to have in existence. 

Whether they've been:

        hilarious memories (ex. Thomas duping me or this 11-year callback), 

        deep analyses about random topics (ex. Yahtzee, The Giver movie/book comparison),

        spiritual thoughts (ex. this mission memory and a talk I gave), 

        many tier list/ranking updates (MCU, TØP, Half Alive, Anime), 

        updates on what I've been up to (ex. this misc. one or this and this watching reports),

        Lorcana-related (this and this are probably the best examples),

        or recommendations (my staple party game and staple anime recommendations)

        amongst many other posts I'm glad to have written.

I'm just very grateful to have all these things recorded in my wonderful journal.

A Quick Look Moving Forward:

        I'm not sure what things will look like. I know blog posts are going to slow down; near the end of the year sometimes I felt like I needed to conjure something random up that I didn't necessarily want to write about/didn't necessarily feel valuable to write about, but did so anyway to keep to my goal (here and here being the prime examples). 

        I'm considering perhaps reallocating this blogpost writing time into making videos or something like that. Taking a month's worth of blog post time to create a single video or something like that. I'm not sure, though. I'm going back to writing when I want, creating however pleases me. So I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens:)

Report on 2024 Goals

Reaching Out to People/Staying Connected to People:

        In my drafts for this goal, I had a much more structured version lined out. Although I didn't follow that exact path, I definitely feel I hit the idea behind my goal, which I'm happy about. Definitely felt like I did a good job of reaching out to old friends, keeping connected etc.

Bread and Butter Work-out Goal:

        Did not fulfill this goal. The goal was to just do a few minutes of push-ups/sit-ups before showering each day. I felt like overall I stayed active enough (lots of walking to class/work), but besides that, really no exercise besides a good stint of Beat Saber and a couple other stints that lasted a couple-few weeks each.

        This is definitely something I want to improve upon after reading chunks of Spark for my family's book club. It's generally difficult for me to motivate myself to exercise as the physical benefits currently don't hold much appeal to me. But the other benefits outlined in Spark very much do, so I just need to consistently remind myself of those in order to build up a habit.

Reevaluation Goal:

        I didn't do a particularly great job at this goal. I think I did better at the general concept compared to other years, though, so I do think I'm improving in this aspect. It just wasn't as consistent or concrete as my original planned outlined it to be. But overall give myself a passing grade in this department.

2024 Campaign Related Goals:

        The 2024 Campaign will be concluded tomorrow! 8 sessions (including session 0) of wonderful fun. Of course, some sessions went smoother, had better moments, more interesting combat, more impactful sequences etc. than others, but regardless of the individual quality of each session, I'm just grateful for the time I got to spend with my family and the memories we all got to create together.

Reading:

        I read a lot! And it was great. I got around to all the major books I had plotted out for myself, I believe. There were many several small books that I never got around to, but that's okay. The Conglomeration exists, but I suppose I'll write what I read here as well:

        Most of Skyward Novellas + Last Book, Books 2-5 of the Stormlight Archive + Novellas, Book Club books (Boundaries, Ella Minnow Pea, Spark, Moby Dick, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Endurance (some more thoroughly than others)), Giver 1 and 2, The Hobbit, Alcatraz 1-6, Warbreaker.

        I have much more reading to do in the future! Which is wonderful.

Spiritual Goals:

        I never posted any of these on my blog in any form, but I thought I'd report that these have been going well. My scripture study specifically has improved a lot this year compared to the year prior.

Blogging:

        Decided to dedicate most of next week's post talking about this alongside stuff moving forward, so feel free to check out that next week:)

Thoughts After Watching the First 6 Star Wars Episodes For the First Time

How I managed to make it this far in life without seeing the Star Wars films, who knows. Especially considering how much I love fantasy/sci-fi as a genre on the whole. Not only that, but there were actually several key spoilers that I managed to somehow miss until I watched the movies.

Pretty Important Spoiler Things That I Didn't Know Until I Watched the Films with my Roommate:

1. The clones are actually clones?? 

        Okay, yes, I feel kind of silly for this one. It makes sense that they're actually clones. I just thought they were called that because they all wore identical armor and such, haha.

2. Related to #1: What Code 66 is. 

        Did not know about the whole 'activate brain chip thing in the clones, kill all the peeps, take over the universe' thing.

3. Darth Vader is Luke's Father

        Jk, jk, I definitely knew this, haha. Just thought it'd be funny.

4. Darth Vader gets a mini-redemption at the end

        Didn't know this until watching Episode 4 or 5 when I sad something related to me being so sad about how far Anakin has fallen and I said, "Darth Vader redemption arc when?" And then my roommate and Ben said something like, "I mean, he gets his 5 second redemption at the end of Episode 6." 🙃 Really wish I didn't know that when I watched episode 6, can't believe I got spoiled right before it, haha. It's okay though, it was still sweet.

Some other general thoughts:

It was really good! I do plan on watching episodes 7, 8, and 9 at some point. We'll see how far into the Star Wars universe I get into after that. Wouldn't surprise me if I end up watching the Clone Wars because 1. It's been highly highly recommended to me by two individuals and 2. It apparently builds up extremely well into Episode III, which is my favorite episode.

I love Episode III. It's so tragic, and it hit me in the feels. Also the lightsaber scenes were phenomenal. I love Anakin as a character, so Episode III was so sad:(:( Anakin appear as a force ghost at the end of Episode VI made me so happy. 

I think my rankings of the episodes would go something like this: 3, 6, 1, 5, 2, 4. Lots of hot takes in there, but that's how I feel right now without thinking about it all too much. I don't know why I'm such an episode 4 hater either.

Twenty One Pilots Tier List (The Line Update)

Happy Birthday (yesterday) Mom!

Previous Tier List can be found here.

I didn't do any huge revamp since my most recent update was only six months ago. I made some minor adjustments to other songs, and knew I could make some bigger adjustments, but didn't want to go super crazy with it. The biggest changes were to all the songs on Clancy.

Next Semester (goated song) appearing in the top 10! Vignette overtaking Level of Concern to make top 3. Snapback climbing up. Navigating lowering. At the Risk of Feeling Dumb lowering. Those were the biggest shifts I believe.

Oh, yeah, and The Line being added, of course. With a debut in S- tier. Fantastic song.

Half Alive Tier List (Persona Update)

Happy Birthday Hannah!!

Link to my previous tier list here.

This rendition doesn't feel very final in any way. For some reason, it was really hard to pin things down. But, alas, here it is. At the very least, I feel fairly decent about the tiers themselves. But within the tiers: chaos. I don't know, there are a few songs though that might be in a weird tier because sometimes I listen to them I just feel like it's an easy S tier. Other times, I'm just not vibing. It's weird.