This is my entry for the New Years '25 event organized by 32-bit cafe.
My 2024 was full of short-lived highs and extended lows, though both ends were not very extreme. I took a lot of walks. I started a good number of songs on my guitar. Spent a lot of time at the park. I started reading books again. Learned about the amazing things possible on the (small/personal/etc) web and enjoyed being online again because of it.
But mostly I tried to avoid having too many thoughts. Maybe this year I'll trying having a few nice ones.
Started working on this website. Official one-year anniversary is on the 20th. After a couple of attempts before and getting too ambitious relative to my actual ability, I decided to maintain this site in a different way. I wanted to enjoy my time working on things little by little — learning what I can along the way without overloading myself and burning out.
I also started regularly viewing BaeSungJae's TEN. It's talk radio1 broadcast nationwide, but they interestingly also have a secondary livestream and chat for the real shitters and VOD frogs (me).
Uploaded my about page. At first, I purposely did not create an about page. I only ended up making one to take part in a collaborative art piece. Guess I applied too late because they never got back to me. Despite that, I like how it turned out and have kept it up. By the time you're reading this I may or may not have updated it to its third version.
Other happenings: Found a quality Japanese restaurant. Did some beer tastings. Got back into some language studies.
Uploaded lead sheets page for the first time. Even though this site is first and foremost a place for myself, I always wanted to offer visitors something interactive or useful. Thought I could do that with javascript, but I didn't get very far. After thinking about what I skills I might have that others may find useful, I realized I could transcribe some of my favorite songs.
I decided on creating lead sheets so that later on I could compile them into my own personal jazz band style fake book2. However, the melodies of the songs I were choosing weren't very easy to notate in a way I was satisfied with. My more recent transcriptions tend to be guitar tabs so I thought about updating the name of this page to a more all-encompassing "JohnDavid's Sheet Music", but I like how "lead sheets" looks.
After maintaining my music log for about four months, I comment on making a separate kpop page. I enjoy Korean music, and that includes the pop side of things, but it's typical for the albums of groups to be not amazing so I usually give them one star ratings. Having a separate page to talk about them would allow me to talk about all the aspects I actually like. Maybe this year I'll actually get on that.
Outside of the internet: I got a new guitar strap — the blue one as seen on my acoustic on the recent JD page. I caught some feelings watching Opus. I spent a lot of time at the park.
Early access for Hades II came out and I've wasted so much time since then. I also drew a lot of doodles.
I thought about joining a taiko group, but had to go out of town and then I hurt back on some exercise equipment and by the time I could actually go to a rehearsal I lost the motivation.
I visited my grandparents after a long while. It was the first time I really saw some of the town instead of only hanging around in the house of a relative. Craziest thing I saw there? The CD + DVD FFX-2 Rikku Vocal Collection — which I immediately bought, but then never listened to.
Back at home, I tried cooking Thai food for a change, and thrifted an old mirror I still haven't put up anywhere.
I watched a lot of movies, but I also touched some grass. Went to my first concert of the year, watched a friend in a pro wrestling event, and participated in HTML Day.
I made some pasta and went out to the countryside. Saw some weird things, but it was uneventful for the most part. After coming back I didn't feel so good for a while.
I made a major site update by creating a new music landing page. Except for the issues with different screen sizes, I'm happy with how it turned out.
I also took a trip that began my long hiatus, during which I bought an old camera for cheap. Its battery compartment ended up needing to taped closed. I don't even know where it is at the moment so I don't know any digicam photos will be shared here3. Much better purchase I made was a Pentel Hi-Tec-C maica pen with brown ink, which became my favorite pen and ink color. Incredibly annoyed because I only recently found out the maica line was discontinued years ago. Wish so bad I could go back to the store I bought it from because they still had so many.
Spent a lot of time with my brother and did some volunteering. Not as productive as it sounds. Attempted to participate in a month-long webpage making event and didn't do that much, but like this site in general I wasn't trying to stress about doing every single day so I was satisfied with what I did.
Also played too much Rivals of Aether 2. Started out on Fleet, but I moved on to Loxodont and now Wrastor. My poor old computer can barely handle it.
Did a lot of music stuff and other small things while wondering to myself when I'd come back to my website.
Felt good to return, but the backlog of album comments I'm working on is no joke. I would also like to update the template for 2025 both visually and content-wise, but I haven't thought of anything. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in my guestbook.
After two years of using a hobonichi I realized I'm not much of a planner. I would take long breaks from journaling, making me feel guilty for wasting a lot of paper. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I need to get me writing more and in a way that could help me achieve things. I might make a separate page for this topic, but in short I decided on an undated notebook for journaling, something smaller for collecting quotes, and a worry-eliminating binder that I can rearrange whenever I want.
⋰˚.☘︎ ݁˖⍤͙。
