I hear my ears ringing, and I feel at peace. More than I have for a while. I only just came back from bartending at my local easter live show that my friends organize annually, and that I always love helping them with. It was a ton of fun, and I wish I got to do something like this more often without making it feel overbearing.
I have a lot more to tell, but I'll keep it short for today because tomorrow morning I'll have to go somewhere for easter breakfast with family. I just really felt the need to talk about the show now, with the feelings fresh and the ears still ringing. I don't do this that often. I don't know if it would lose it's magic if I did, or if it would pose a real health risk to my ears, but maybe I should start seeking out venues where I actually live nowadays. That might be some grass I wanna touch on.
I was coasting. I had the wind in my sail this month, and I've been smoothly cruising through the weeks. I went to work, went to uni, went to do my Pokémon TCG shenanigans... I finally actually booked my Japan trip! Played a ton of Xenoblade X, had movie night with maybe the best pizza I've ever made... simply put, nothing went wrong for surprisingly long.
Usually these periods end through the hand of some external force that forces me to do things that ruin my groove, but this time it's literally all my fault. I've messed up my schedule and thought I had a free day today, but as it turned out, I actually had work scheduled today, to which I didn't show until 2 hours too late. I was just vibing, having breakfast, until my HR-guy called me and was like "Hey soooo here it says you have shift today where are you?" and from that second I've been feeling nothing but stress and shame. The stress went back pretty fast, the shame not so much. So uh... now I gotta hope I can just forget about it without overthinking it to the point where it ruins my life. That's this weeks objective now!
Like no one ever was. To pull them is my real quest, to sell them is my cause. Pokémon cards.
I went to another tcg local cup yesterday. It was far, and also it started early, but I really wanted to cook some more with Miraidon. I added Chrispin into my deck, since I'm playing with an attacking Pikachu, and it worked beautifully. It's off-meta, so people don't really expect it, but I really don't feel like it's a lot worse than running with Raichu V, both are really decent ways to blow your stack and deal huge damage one time. Unless you got like, Magneton or something, but that's more luck than game plan I feel.
But anyway, I played that day yesterday, and went 3-1-1 with it. Which meant for the first time I made it into top-cut of a Pokemon TCG cup! I then lost my first match there in top-cut, but it was close, and just might have been the most tense match both of us ever played, so I don't find any shame in that. Especially since I still won two boosters with my placement, and one of them happened to have the alt-art version of Raging Bolt ex, which is currently worth about 70 bucks. So in a way, I won more than anyone else that evening: I won at the gacha.
So today I met with my therapist and philosophized about what to do with this obscenely overpriced piece of paper. I am kind of interested in playing a Raging Bolt deck after Miraidon gets put down for rotation, but I cannot play a card that's worth 70€ to some people in good conscience. But I also don't like Raging Bolt as a Pokémon enough to make it a permanent part of my collection, so I will probably sell it. It's just too much money, this single card can pay my entry fees for a month! I could get a damn Journey Together ETB for that money! Which would be cool because some N or Iono cards would strike my fancy a lot more than this Raging Bolt. Either way, I'm not making any money, the Pokémon company got me in their hands, I'll just reinvest all the money I could ever make from cards into this wretched hobby. But it's fun! That's what counts!
If I had a nickel for every time I missed this blogs anniversary...
Yesterday! Yesterday two years ago I blogged my first blog post, which makes yesterday my 2nd bloggiversary! This is huge, and this came fast. So fast in fact that I didn't get my promised thing ready, which luckily none of you remember so it's fine. I'll come when it's ready.
But still, despite all the things I wanted to do with this place that I never ended up doing, I'm immensely proud of it. I stuck with it for two years, that's enough time to even convince me that it's not one of these hobbies I drop at the next best opportunity. So naturally, I wanna take it to the next level, no matter how long it takes. I'm gonna be a blogger! A person who writes blogs! One might even be able to one day call me... a writer. This is why I want to add more thoughtfully written blog posts into the mix. I like just putting my thoughts into an HTML file the way I do know. It gives me something to look back on. But sometimes I'm rereading my old blog posts and I'm like... "Damn, this sucks. Look at all these short sentences, this weird textflow." so I really want to start writing more thoughtfully. I want to write stuff that I actually proofread before posting it online. This is the big goal for year three. Have a good one.
Exactly one week ago, Sunday the 23.02.2025, Germany had it's major elections. One day later, on Monday, I talked to my therapist about it. Tragically he couldn't help, because he couldn't single-handedly stop the rise of fascism. Bummer.
So instead I did what I usually do: Find some fluff to get lost in while my life gradually derails. I started reading Ototsuku more or less obsessively and made sure I wouldn't do anything productive other than one work-shift I reluctantly attended. Unlike usually I did leave the house to have have fun though (reluctantly), which is why I went to my local TCG shop on Pokémon day to throw some money at booster packs, get some promo cards and meet some friends. I also had a doctors appointment and had a blood sample taken. I didn't look, I never do, but it hurt a lot more than usually. The syringe was bubbling and I still have a bruise. No idea if this was the nurses fault or if I was just horrible dehydrated, probably both though.
Anyway, card rotation is coming up in the Pokémon TCG, which means a lot of good cards will become illegal and shake up the meta. Before that happens I wanted to get some more use out of my current Miraidon-deck, which is why I went to a slightly further away cup on Saturday to spend more money on Pokémon cards. It went well, and I felt well, but I had to win the last round of Swiss to make top cut, got nervous and fumbled. (This happens a lot)
Anyway, not making top cut meant a friend of mine could leave early, and I proposed to do some shopping, since my attire for spring and fall could be best described as "winter clothes but I'm sweating" and "summer clothes but I'm freezing". I then impulsively bought a coat for 130€. Which is a fuck-ton of money, but also pretty much all jackets or coats cost that much, and I really needed some new rain jacket-adjacent thing. Also it's a very cute coat.
Anyway. I think I am now ready to temporarily leave gremlin-mode again and get some shit done. Tomorrow I'll go to another 勉強会(study meet), and I'll try to get some shit done.
I'm still coughing! But I don't wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about how I took up Riichi Mahjong last weekend and I just might be addicted. I basically played no other games this week, only Mahjong. Every free minute I spend either climbing the ranks, or playing with a bunch of friends, which might also be the reason why todays media log entries are from stuff I already finished watching last weekend. Right now I'm only updating the blog because I'm actually on a study meet and I'm procrastinating on my essay. But uh... maybe that's a reason to keep this one short and get back to work.
I'm feeling a lot better by now, to the point where I would not consider myself sick anymore. I do however have this horrible lingering cough that was getting better, but then I decided to attend a Pokémon TCG local, which was lots of fun. There is just one problem: I kinda talked a lot there. And that wasn't good. I feel like my cough got a lot worse again and now I probably get to experience it's effects for another week or so. But I had fun! It could have gone better, but I'm used to performing like this, so I do not particuarly mind.
You know, in a month this blog will have it's two year anniversary, a fact that I am trying to keep in mind this time. I would like to commemorate this occasion by starting to post themed blog posts. As of now I don't really know how that's gonna look like, but would like to have a dedicated place for posting my thoughts on certain topics, themes or ideas that are going through my head. When this blog started, I thought I would just do that here, but especially ever since I took all the talk on media over to the media log, this blog here has pretty much just been a diary. Which I like! It's nice to just have a space where I can reflect on my life and write just for the sake of writing. But like any diary, despite this one being public, the text here are mostly written for me, and the people curious enough about my recent endeavours to consentually peep into my diary.
I don't want to leave my writing at that though. I want to put out pieces that can stand on their own, because they are offering my perspective on a topic that people who don't know me can relate to on one way or another. I want to write text that will be meaningful in a year as more than just a time capsule into where my brain was at at the time of writing, and I do not want to lump them into this blog, because they will be swept away inbetween the time-sensitive stuff. Like, even if you aren't me and are still reading this blog, it is usually not worth scrolling down far, right? You read the most current entry to know where Kurisu is at right now, and then your interest is stilled. So I'm thinking about how I want to present this different type of blog post to everyone. It will probably look just like this here and just have a different name, but I'm not sure yet. Stay tuned though, it might just end up being kinda cool!
So, I had a few plans for last week. Tandem, Pokémon cards, DnD, work... the usual. But I did none of that, for I have been entirely occupied with being sick as can be. Monday last week everything was still fine, except that I went to bed with a headache. Tuesday morning I got up and called in sick at work for Wednesday. I was freezing, sweating, coughing, everything hurt. Only now it is slowly getting better. Which is good, because I can't take off another day at work. But hey, with ibuprofen, the heater on full blast and four layers of clothing I could at least sit in front of the computer for a few hours a day. So I got a lot of anime and gaming done. Making great progress on Terranigma, Blue Reflection and Pokémon Horizons. So that was nice. Worst part was always sleeping. I had so many nightmares, woke up so often, everything was always painful because I was dehydrated like hell despite drinking like a maniac. I still tried to sleep more though, in hope that it may accelerate my recovery. No idea if it did, but it did fuck with my Pokémon Sleep ratings.
Now I'm mostly just coughing, with runny nose, so the worst is behind me. I hope this week I'll be able to go to a Pokémon card local!
The time has finally come: The time for me to write my first blog entry on my brand new old laptop!
I've been taking it to uni for the first time today, where I usually meet up for a 勉強会 (study meet) with a friend at the library. Today however I didn't actually do anything for uni, which kinda sucks, but it doesn't mean I haven't been productive. I have spent two hours doing paperwork that will hopefully get me a bit more money down the line. Now we got the study room for 30 more minutes, and I'm not about to start working on my essay for that. But it's a pretty reasonable time frame to write a blog entry in! And because I brought my laptop, I can literally just do it. Just like that, here and now, as convenient as it is to do it at home. It might sound like I'm overselling it a bit, and I might be, but I'm also just really psyched to have a reasonably sized mobile work station that just works. I hope this will translate into my university work too, once I actually go to these study meetings to study.
Other than that the start of the new year has been pretty slow, and to be honest I wouldn't really have it any other way. I've mostly just been working, but also making some plans for this year that seem more achievable the less overwhelmed I am, so I'll try to make the most out of that. I really wanna go to Japan this year. Probably in the summer, not because of the summer itself, but because that's when most of my friends will be able to make time, which I'm really looking forward to. But for now I gotta go and actually deliver all that paperwork, because today is the deadline so I can't have it sent by mail anymore!
