An update on my lung collapse/hospital situation which you can read more about on my last post~ TL;DR version: They found more blisters in my lungs so I had a minor surgical procedure done on Monday to prevent them from inevitably popping later—it's been a painful recovery process, but now I've been discharged and will be finishing recovering at home!
The "nobody asked for it to be this long" version:
A quick warning that compared to my last post, I'll be documenting a lot more detail and negative experiences in this one so no need to read if you're not comfortable!!! It's all in the past so no worries. ^^
Holy shit, I thought things were wild before... My expectations have been grandly upstaged!
A summary of how I'd been doing lately: honestly not too great but been trying to hang in there. Even on the couple days I reserved for myself to just relax, I still had a load of anxiety and continued to feel overwhelmingly stressed. Actually I had a very gratifying annual review at work this week and was given a raise that puts me at double (!) what I earned when I started here 3.5 years ago, and that's HUGE—yet I simply didn't have it in me to feel happy about it. And it's been busy wrapping everything up so that I could leave for my week-long intense business trip to DC...
This morning, I was supposed to board a plane to Washington DC. I...I'm in the hospital.
Yesterday was my day off that I planned to spend doing nothing but chilling and packing. I stayed in bed til the afternoon just watching Marvel and DC analysis videos, and when I finally hopped out of bed, I suddenly had a bit of trouble breathing? I just went on with my day of lounging around (and rewatched Civil War SUCH A GOOD MOVIE) and hoped that the discomfort would go away like other discomforts that I just leave alone. Because I'd also been belching nonstop, Chiisa looked up my symptoms and found that my acid reflux could have caused shortness of breath if stomach acid leaked into my lungs, so I took the maximum allowed dose of acid reducer and hoped that would do it.... But when it became 10 PM and I was only feeling worse, I realized that this might not go away in the morning. @_@ How would my body react to being on a plane if I was struggling just to breathe at ground level..? How disgusting would I have been if I belched constantly on a plane? What would I have done if I got worse on this trip, the majority of which was to be spent alone editing in my hotel room?
My dad was hesitant at first but I persuaded him to take me to the emergency room to get checked out just in case. I was thinking maybe they could prescribe me something better for my acid reflux or something. And worst case scenario, I could try to delay my flight by a day or two since I could have tried to play catch-up and start editing after a couple days of footage for the video to be shown on the final day of the week.
After taking an x-ray, it turned out...that my right lung had collapsed....... I must've sounded so stupid, not entirely registering the situation and being like, "So... I'm not getting on that plane tomorrow, huh? Oh, I shouldn't go on this trip at all?" o<-< I've never really had a surgery or been hospitalized before, so this was all new and unexpected to me... They told me that I absolutely should not have gotten on a plane in this state so I'm feeling fortunate. Within an hour or two, I was in surgery, which I was impressed by haha. They installed a tube that drains excess air so that my lung can re-expand and boy do I look awful LOL! Thankfully I can breathe fairly normally now, but there's pain and everything is difficult to do haha. I'm here for a few days until they determine it's fine to remove all this stuff—including what I've been personally referring to as my arc reactor—from my body.
As for the cause, apparently it isn't uncommon for tall and slender folks to have a spontaneous lung collapse for no good reason because of the way our body types are built. So it probably happened because of the way I hopped out of bed?
It was also babbie's first time being sedated and bruh that was trippy as hell. I kept wishing that I had been knocked out further because I'm pretty sure I was still hearing a lot of what was happening and those words would morph into part of a twisted, nonsensical song that my mind concocted while being convinced that I was on some sort of violent spinning ride. I came to consciousness before the procedure was over and while I couldn't feel any pain or fully open my eyes, I hated that I knew what was going on and kept worrying that it wasn't going well. ;n;
But now I'm doing fine!!! I had quite a bit of anxiety and high blood pressure before this but I've been able to completely chill out and I'm not really worried. ;v; I also had a lot of guilt over having to pull out literally hours before the flight and putting tons of pressure on my boss to find another editor who'd agree to this crazy week-long task last minute and re-figure out details with them. Luckily they got a good replacement and everyone from work has been wonderfully supportive—they even sent me balloons QAQ! It feels like life finally grabbed itself out of my hands and gave me a loud and clear sign to put a good halt to my stressed, anxious workaholic state. I'm holding up great!
Helloo, here I am, trying to make good on that goal to blog at least once a week...
The newest of the new is that I just finished watching the anime Revue Starlight, like, 15 minutes ago. WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS ANIME....WHAT.. It's got a uniquely cool concept, was pretty entertaining, definitely kept me guessing, amazing visuals, but...... major storytelling issues. I'd recommend checking out at least an episode or two for the surprises if you're unfamiliar with the show, but not sure I'd endorse the whole series tbh.
One motif that this show slams in your face repeatedly is "losing your shine" and somehow it's something I relate to right now? In the show's context, it's about musical theatre girls losing sight of why they perform, no longer able to enjoy it, no longer able to mount the stage with admirable, passionate brilliance. The more they discussed it, the more I was reminded of my burnout right now ;;.... After my last post, I took it easy a lot more—I got deep into watching Marvel analysis videos and rewatching the movies now equipped with more knowledge of what's going on THE MCU IS SO MAGNIFICENTLY RICH—and then I started getting very busy. I thought I was recovering from the burnout, but I was wrong. I'm tired and it's only going to get busier for me soon, what with an upcoming 10 PM shoot (it's a volunteer project so I still have work that day orz) and one of those crazy edit-all-day-all-night business trips. It tires me out just thinking about what the next two weeks will be like ;;; I'm all doom and gloom and no shine.
I am very fortunate that I was able to forge a career path out of the few interests that I had. There's nothing that I regret about turning my hobby into my job and I definitely don't want to take that for granted! But the flip side of that coin is that when I overdo it with the hobbies, they don't feel like hobbies anymore.... There's definitely lots that I love about video production, but right now I temporarily don't have the energy to feel that spark. ;n; One of my favorite things that I've done is when I yolo drove to the beach an hour away after class one day in 2015, filmed myself lipsyncing Lovelyz' "For You" for my cover, and filmed some bottles in the sand against the sunset. I can pick out lots of issues now with the camerawork and editing—but that is such a beautifully cherished memory and project. I LOVE that I actually did that! ;u; And that's not to say that I don't love the projects I've been working on, but it's rather that having to spend hours upon hours upon hours in Adobe Premiere makes me not really look forward to spending more hours in it. Which I have to for my job, at which I've been really low energy and I'm just doing my best to keep up good work despite that. Currently I can't fantasize about doing cool projects in the future. I wouldn't have that same drive to execute a passion project the way I did for "For You." It's actually pretty cool the projects that I've been able to work on and there are lots of great opportunities and causes; I just need a little time to recuperate so that I can leave this cycle of spending my days tired out from my nights and my nights tired out from my days.
Man, last week, my thoughts hit me like a truck. I've always said that I'm not good at having fun, but I suddenly tripped and fell down a deep well of sadness when I finally put into words that I'm perhaps a workaholic and haven't lived many experiences despite being at my prime. Which escalated into, "What do I even do for fun...? Recently, nothing??? How often do I even relax..? What do I even enjoy....?" and I realized that this ties a lot into the emotional fragility and stress I've been living lately that I didn't know how to shed until now. It's sure tough to try to be an independent and collected gal when you no longer have things to spend your own time doing that you enjoy. ^^;; I personally don't think I'd be able to live without productive hobbies—there's still a lot more desire and fulfillment to explore in creating content and doing singing projects...but..I have to admit I guess it burned me out to spend tiring hours at my job working on videos, then coming home and working on more videos for hours. And I haven't had many outlets to break up the tension. ;; The "unproductive" hobby I've held onto is watching youtube videos and variety shows, but at times it even felt like a chore to look for something to watch because there's nothing I've been invested in since Produce48 ended. I don't play any games right now, and I'm honestly discouraged by my lack at skill in games and the time commitment. And I hadn't necessarily felt a shortage of socializing with friends because there had been lots of events for the end of summer, and I took advantage of my extra time at home to get things done—but it's also sadly true that I hadn't..done anything spontaneous with any friends or anything chill or just for fun or just to be in each other's company outside of events for a while.
So now I am on a journey to find more things to enjoy and to do more things for me~ For starters, I finally started Of Fire and Stars, which was the book I mentioned before was "hard to make time" for, and I'm loving that I'm able to spend time reading again. ^^ This book is about magic and two princesses that fall in love so I enjoy that, and up next I'll probably read To All The Boys I've Loved Before since the movie was delightful. After a long time of thinking it could be nice to put up fairy lights in my room, I finally last minute threw some into my Amazon cart and THEY'RE AMAZING. Since I was a kid I always wanted to feel like I had sort of a fort or my own space made for fantasizing and escaping from the world. *^* Now that I have a suuper comfortable mattress (I got a Purple half a year ago and it's the best ever!!) and some adorable lights to accompany my Lovelyz wall, it feels like I have a nice space to just relax and feel safe. Be under the blankets and read a book. Listen to ASMR. Just sit and be calmed by the certainty and rhythm of how the lights slowly glow brighter...and slowly dim.
I think it'll also be very helpful that I'm blogging more often again! Honestly, I've been meaning to write this post for a couple days and was looking forward to spending the time to do it. (Something came up so workaholicism came back and rendered no time to blog..... I just want to get this one more thing done soon and then I'll take a good break from video editing outside of work to recuperate for a bit. ^^;;) Anddd when Maplestory 2 launches in a couple weeks, I'm gonna plan on trying it to see if I can play casually. I should get back to finishing my Gundam too. I'm getting quite into AKB48 and its sister groups (mostly HKT but NMB is catching my eye now) so that might become a great endless source of entertainment! :D Also going to combat my "make no detours on the way home so I can get back and work on stuff/because I'm tired" mentality by giving in to more cravings and little indulgences. Shake things up with little nudges at the very least.
What else I can do as relaxing/fun hobbies is still in the process of being figured out, but from this past week I already feel so much lighter, so much more free and more secure, much less susceptible to feeling lonely or empty, because I'm trying to focus more on myself and appreciate the small things that I do enjoy.
YASS!!!!! IT'S DONE!!! It'S FINALLY OUT IN THE WORLD!! And it's gotten such an explosive response so far omggg thank youuuu QAQ
It's been a wild ride executing the Youtaite React AX (Anime Expo) special, from filming outside for 3 hours in 108 F / 42 C weather, to the crazy complicated edit that it became and how many things kept popping up that needed to be done before it was ready to go. It really took me over 50 hours of working on this after the shoot to get it done and ready for upload..... Under the cut, I'mma discuss the post-production process in more detail!
For this episode, we put up a clipboard during the youtaite meetup for anyone to sign up, with only the info that they'd be doing a challenge and not to spoil the answers. We then had participants watch entries from a selection of the chorus battles with the most participating entries/were the most iconic for their time, and they racked up points by guessing the song, group, and CB.
We got some hilarious struggling as well as folks expressing their love for entries/groups/their friends—so I think it's pretty entertaining and full of heart. ^^ Everyone did great! I'm also in it kind of as a host.... I swear I tried to cut my intro out but it didn't make enough sense without someone spelling out the setting and what was happening... I don't even know how I let Fome talk me into that ending. That's not me.
Anyway! I also asked them questions after the challenge and got lots of wholesome answers, so that's what the next episode is going to be composed of. Someday. When I....make time....to edit it.
It's been a fluctuating thing but today I'm actually kind of on a high! Just from today, I feel like I've made steps forward and was productive in rewarding ways, yay. Fome was kind enough to let me use his band's studio to record a dance video—and I honestly sucked ass, but I'm really proud that I went and did it? Rather than thinking, "Oh I'll never be good enough to record a video so I should never do it," I just thought I'd give it a try now while I'm slowly but surely feeling a bit more comfortable with how my body and movements look! Plus there were several times I thought I was too tired/sweaty/sniffly to keep filming and should call it quits, watched my previous take, and willed myself to keep going ;v;)9!! No idea if those videos will actually become anything but I still feel like I overcame something today.
And then when my plans afterwards got called off, I took the chance to run errands which I'm horrendously bad at doing for some reason. Finally got a few things I'd run out of, some hairspray (PLEASE improve my bangs situation ! ! ), and some medical tape. Last week I shadowed an audio person during a shoot for the first time—something I'd been wanting to do for a while bc my location audio skills have plateaued—and learned that he uses this medical tape to attach lavalier mics on people. I struggle a lot with positioning lav mics and avoiding scratchy sounds from people's clothes so I really hope this improves my work >A<
Also. Hairspray test! I think I've referred to myself as a catfish every single time I post pics of my bangs down because I SWEAR it only looks this way for a few minutes and then goes to shit. Already my bangs don't look at all like this photo, but so far it's not....as shitty as usual..I think.
Then while driving home, I practiced singing!! I think I actually improved at a certain song that I practice once in a while and I was really happy about that! (Until I remember the last time I thought I'd improved at singing and fell short really fucking hard when I tried to record orz..) I even thought that....maybe....maybe I can try to sing this at karaoke.....idk. I feel like I've never once successfully sung anything well at karaoke before. Stage fright is another obstacle too.
I think Produce48 truly woke up a dormant beast within me that I'd been somewhat denying for years and I'm thankful for that. I still love idols and it makes me happy to sort of.. pretend to be one in a way? It was one of the biggest reasons I was brave enough to change my bangs (and embrace a cuter style) for the first time in almost a decade. Learning girl group dances with some new friends every weekend and sometimes practicing on my own has helped me grow a lot, feel healthier, and love myself more!! It makes me wonder if I can overcome my stage fright. It makes me want to become better at singing! And it brought new energy to my drive to create content and share things with the world. There are so many things I want to do.
Then there are times like last night when I felt like I was progressing too slowly and tiring out too quickly. I was frustrated that even with my limited time and energy to work on things, I seemed to take forever to get anything done. Namely last night I was working on a thumbnail for the upcoming YTReact upload (I KEEP SAYING IT'S SO CLOSE....IT'S SO CLOSE) which took a whopping fucking 3 hours to get to a presentable state because I'm that helpless when it comes to graphic design or visual creativity. Cries. I really want this video done and out there for everyone to enjoy but it feels like the finish line keeps moving further away. >< A few weeks ago I was strongly considering organizing/mixing a new exciting kpop collab but with how slowly my current projects were progressing, I decided that I probably wouldn't be able to handle it after all. But perhaps that's just for the greater good, right? Step by step, Eva, before your greed spins out of control. I did good today~!
(And then I posted a blog wow so productive!!!! And now I'm going to go back to working on the final YTReact touches until bedtime.)
Since the Produce48 finale on Friday, my life has been consumed by Produce48 and its debut girl group IZ*ONE. @@ I've decided that for IZ*ONE's two year run, I'm going to try to dedicate myself as much as I can to them, which I've failed to do for most groups born from the many idol competition shows I've loved. The results didn't entirely go the way I think they should have, but I've come to accept and embrace it all. I really do love the lineup and I think they'll be an amazing group! If the music from the show (which has been on endless repeat for me) or AKB songs are any indication of their upcoming sound, then I look forward to their music 'cause I'll probably genuinely love it to bits! These girls have worked way too hard to face failure just because people are salty about their faves or angry about systematic things unrelated to these girls' skills and charms, so I'm going to support the fuck out of them. I'm so ready for this adorable Japanese-Korean idol group of my dreams!!!
During the finale, the top 20 girls performed a song called "As We Dream" together—a lovely, sentimental final sendoff for the show's end about dreams and friendship AND IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL IT GAVE ME GOOSEBUMPS. T__T After Nekkoya, there were no other mixed language songs so it delighted me that for the finale, they finally sang another song in both Korean and Japanese.
The Japanese version of the song has made me cry twice now. ;___________;
It honestly probably has a little to do with the fact that the Korean girls sound much less uncomfortable singing in Japanese, while the Japanese girls have a bigger challenge pronouncing Korean, so I'm able to immerse myself in the emotions a bit more with this version.
But mostly, I love the meaning of the Japanese lyrics and feel them much deeper. Compared to the Korean version, these lyrics are more about "I found myself," "I'm alive" rather than "I follow you," "It's because of you." Somehow it also feels more melancholic to me too. ;; It's truly a bittersweet song.
Probably my favorite thing though is Shiroma Miru's line at 1:08 where she sings, "Let's make every second meaningful," because in the Korean version, she literally just sings "lalalalala~" to the same melody. But here, she actually does make her part meaningful! (I'm very confused by why they didn't write Korean lyrics there but oh well.)
Hello hello! Let me start by declaring that it will now be a goal for me to write a post here at least once a week!!!! Do I think I'll be able to keep up with it? No, I'm entirely pessimistic! BUT LET'S TRY, EH?
The short explanation for this new goal of mine is this: my life skills are nonfunctional and I really need to fucking fix them.
I've gone through a bit of humiliation recently because of my failing ability to coherently communicate with other human beings. And in a work setting, that's kind of a big deal. Whenever people talk to me, I blank out and can't come up with an answer, which makes me really fucking painful to interact with. Even as I'm racking my brain through the awkward silence I've caused, I can barely come up with words or comprehensive sentences. I've taken many pauses—even checked google to see if I was using a phrase correctly AND looked to thesaurus.com to replace a word I was overusing—just writing this simple paragraph. It's so sad.
My solution has been to start talking to myself while I'm driving haha. I'll start rambling about my day in full sentences, with the hope that I'll get used to just throwing words out of my mouth without thinking too hard about it. It's really good practice since I don't interact with people out loud very much on a daily basis, which is likely the reason my communication skills have deteriorated this dramatically.... Sadly I always forget to do this and it hurts my throat, so it's not my favorite solution. >< Another thing I'd benefit a lot from is reading! Since losing interest in the current k-dramasphere and no longer reading recaps, I basically....never....read...... Recently I bought Audrey Coulthurst's Of Fire and Stars but with the 92153468468464 things I need to do and lack of attention span, it's hard to make time for it. ;;
So today (after having a mini breakdown from being overwhelmed by how much of myself I desperately need to improve lol) I remembered how I used to blog every. single. day. Which I really can't imagine doing anymore??? I'd come home from middle/high school everyday and write a long post full of trivial things about all of my classes. The potential consequences of revealing too much about work make it difficult to do this again, but I think it'll be a helpful exercise for me to write often again. Force myself to come up with words and phrases that I don't commonly use. Challenge myself to think and create, not just sitting idly and consuming all the time.
AND since I'd been hoping to blog more often again for years now, I won't get Productivity Guilt from making time to blog, right? Plus it's always nice to have chronicles to look back on, to give perspective and also because I'm forgetful as fuck. It's a win-win-win-win-win. ^^ ONWARDS TO BECOMING A SLIGHTLY MORE FUNCTIONAL HUMAN BEING.....
Also an update re: my mental health, I'm doing better lately I believe! I get super frustrated and overwhelmed, but I'm not irrationally miserable or stagnant. I'm proud of my recent achievements and I want to put in effort to improve. I don't want to stay what I am. Recently I've been thinking healthy thoughts like, "I would love to do this one day!" "This inspires me and I care about it!" "What can I do to become better/happier?"
Once again I'm terrible at keeping this blog updated with all the projects I've been taking part in, so here's stuff from March til now!!
First of all, two more episodes of Youtaite React came out! I'm not in them, but I produced and edited again. :> For these two episodes, our youtaite friends are cringing over their first covers.
This one I haven't really shared but it's a cool thing I got to be a part of ;o;!! Pash, who was one of Gemini's artists during ACB, asked me to sing for her Songwriting for Film final project—a sweet song befitting for a romcom!
This was my final in a songwriting for film class! We had to write and produce an original song to use as a "feature" for this early 2000s romcom film. Special thanks to @Diburrito for providing me with bass/guitar and @waterpixieva for singing the vocals! pic.twitter.com/DPm7tdWR6H
Listen here to "Spring Buds" if the tweet embed breaks ;v;
I'm frankly not super sure I'm proud of my vocals in this but please enjoy—Pash is a wonderfully talented budding songwriter~
~
For Sophie/kuroko's birthday, I got to sing in a chorus of Orangestar's "Your Night Sky Patrol" with a bunch of cool people ;v;)b Huge props to Kusa and Para for making this happen!
【HBD Sophie ❤】 キミノヨゾラ哨戒班 / Your Night Sky Patrol 【8人合唱】
Having the privilege of seeing Davichi perform their legendary song "8282" at KCON inspired me to record a short cover of it the night I got back from LA ahaha. They were simply breathtaking *___*
Chiisa and I were actually going to record ourselves singing this song for an online singing show audition in 2010, so I wrote these rap lyrics back then...... shudders
"Yeah, just like a fool, I hope that you’ll find your way to me once again This heart needs fixing, needs some loving, needs for you to mend This calls for stitches, got some glitches, and I cannot forget Pick up the phone and call me before we both end up in regret"
~
In this time, I also uploaded a vlog from my trip to Japan and Korea! ^^ I need to get around to posting some of the photos we took...
What's in the pipeline now?
I'm working on two things that should theoretically be coming in the near future! One being a solo cover—my first one since Whistle in 2016 aaaa—which I've been working on since March. I mixed, animated, and also drew some doodley things, so it's going to be my very first attempt at the Holy Trifecta, heh..... The other project being the special edition of Youtaite React that we shot during the official youtaite meetup at Anime Expo~ That was...probably the craziest fucking shoot I've ever done LOL. More details here in my AX post. It's very, very close to being done! So close!
It's been a long [trivial] journey of being tempted to get front bangs, then determining that I would definitely not suit it or be able to maintain them, then lowkey considering it again, pondering over it a lot and being certain that it's too high maintenance for my lifestyle and people would think it's weird on me—and what did it all amount to? Me at 1 AM last Wednesday looking in the mirror before brushing my teeth, thinking about how aged my skin is and how my face will probably be soon to follow OH GOD I'M GONNA LOOK SO OLD SOON what if I become really old-looking without ever having a chance to try front bangs because I keep being scared that I look too old and too out-of-character for them and I'll regret the rest of my life-- ABORT THE TEETH BRUSHING EVA GRAB YOUR SCISSORS WE'RE DOING THIS RIGHT NOW WHILE WE'RE STILL FEELING IT OKAY YOLO snip snip snip OH MY GOD IT LOOKS AS SHITTY AS I KNEW IT WOULD what have i done!!!!
is exactly how it happened.
God.....god.......... This was a mistake. I have no idea how to style or maintain hair. It looks so bad in real life. Every little movement, every time I walk, with every small breeze, my bangs get fucked up in unpredictable, uncontrollable ways. They have a mind of their own, those forehead tentacles.
These days, I usually wash my hair in the morning after waking up late, then I'm too lazy to blow dry so I'll saunter into work late with wet hair and let it dry throughout the day. Luckily, my hair dries straight so I usually don't do any sort of styling. Now I can't do this anymore :c.... Pretty much every morning I have to spend time curling my bangs... Which means I gotta put on heat protection... And I can't even style them until my moisturizer absorbs into my forehead or it gets super greasy/sticky... But then my bangs have been greasy everyday anyway (like today, even tho I just washed them last night I DON'T GET IT AAAA) so I'll probably have to put on dry shampoo every night... It's a commitment......... And my brows get so itchy... And I am so constantly self conscious... W h y.
Blegh they look different all the time so here are a bunch of selfies before I call it quits on the bangs. =.= I've already decided that on most days, I'm just going to clip up my hair and not bother, and save the suffering for select special days.
(3rd pic has fake app makeup i cant do that shit)
EDIT:
My bangs... They peaked and I'll likely never achieve this again.
It's July and I've just remembered to do my annual Birthday Girl shirt selfie LOLOL... I turned 25 in May! I kind of just pretend to be a functioning adult—largely a lie as my lack of Life Skills™ strikes fear in me every so often.
Here is IU's masterpiece of a song called Palette, which is about being 25 except I can only hope to one day reach IU's level of self comfort.
It's been years since I've written a post like this, but I'm gonna give it a shot! As my memory gets worse and worse, I feel like write-ups will be really helpful and yet also terribly difficult to compose since I've already forgotten what I did on this trip...... And I got back...3 hours ago.
Overall, this was a good AX that went fairly smoothly! Yay it wasn't a mess!!!
Admittedly I'm extremely spoiled/a bit numb because I'm privileged enough to be surrounded by my youtaite friends in my everyday life and it was also my 7th time (WTF IT DOESN'T FEEL LIKE IT) going to AX so I don't necessarily get super excited about everything or get post-con depression anymore..... I'm truly happy for how this event has impacted others—people's tweets are so, sooo cute ;;;—but is it weird to say that I feel almost left out because I don't feel as emotional about it as others do anymore?? Regardless, AX is still one of the most special things to me each year! It's strange but I simultaneously feel like I was more social than ever this year, yet also didn't socialize as much as I feel I should have—but I'll elaborate later. ;o;
This time, my hotel arrangement ended up being 10 people split between two rooms that we were luckily able to get next to each other. My room was with Chiisana, Hinoe, Sophie/Kuroko, and Diji; and the other room was Fome, Myst, Chris/Hakuro, Toast, and Lisa. They're all friends that I've already hung out with a lot (everyone was NorCal other than Hinoe) and was pretty comfortable with, so that went super well!
HELLO I HAD MY HAIR RE-DYED YESTERDAY FOR AX AND I JUST FILMED A LIPSYNC VIDEO FOR A COLLAB YAYAY but i'm so fucked for ax and packing and preparations for everything fuck
WOW HEY, LOOK WHO HAS FREE TIME TODAY!! TO BLOG!!!! The bright side of some things not working out is that I get a bit of chill time, instead of being constantly burnt out while AX looms dangerously closer. I've also been working hard on 3 really, incredibly big videos at work (as in, they're going to be shown to 140,000 people.....) and I'm finally almost done! So close! Fingers crossed that there are no more/minimal last minute changes, so that on Monday morning I can simply export final versions and be free of deadline stress ^^;;
(skip to 0:40)
I'd say the only kind of significant thing that really happened between my last post and now is that I fell down the Produce48 hole, but it's a fluffy nice hole and I'm not going to get out. Somehow after watching episode 2—which the girls spent learning to sing and dance Nekkoya (Pick Me), their theme song—I felt this burst of inspiration to try to learn the dance... And this is coming off of feeling disheartened about my dancing, losing all of my confidence in it, becoming scared again about doing it around people, thinking that I'd probably never get to a presentable level no matter how I try because I have no idea how to fix the fact that my movements are fucking awkward and uncontrolled and blahhhh. Anyway, I still got off my ass and tried to dance that night, and I'm glad that even though I looked like absolute shit—really like a giant long piece of shit dangling from a wire during a typhoon, the worst—I did enjoy doing it.
It's been a few days of slowly kind of trying to practice the chorus arm movements, and...I almost kind of want to say that I'd like to keep trying to work at this dance? I was thinking to aim for being able to comfortably dance it by the end of Produce48's run. But idk. It could end up being a goal I drop just like other goals I've dropped. (coughs at practicing the Bad Boy dance)
I did realize today though that there were two big things that I cowardly ragequit simply because I was bad at them: animating and dancing. I used to make all the videos for Gemini until I couldn't keep up at all with animations and aesthetic, and decided it was better for me to not do it anymore. I've also uploaded a couple of bad dance covers back in the dark ages, which I took down. I definitely told myself, "I'm never going to do a dance cover again." But.....ya girl is back to badly animating and reaallyyy terribly attempting to move her body in a way that vaguely resembles dance, so IF IT ALL CANCELS OUT I'M NOT A COWARDLY QUITTER AFTER ALL I THINK???
Ever since it was announced, I had my doubts about Produce48—especially coming off of watching Produce 101 China, which was also girls except it's an incredibly frustrating show... But there's something magical about Produce48 for me. I forgot how much I liked AKB48. My interest in Japanese idols waned a ton; but at one point, idols like Hello!Project and AKB were my life... When I was in middle school, I thought I would try to audition for a H!P global audition if they ever held one. Even as I was starting to become interested in k-pop, my dumb fantasy then was to get into SM Ent and be part of a Japan-centric group. (Interestingly, they never did come out with one since they've dedicated themselves to tackling China, so I guess I don't have to regret not trying that path lolol.)
We were all grimacing in expectation of the AKB girls being one-sidedly humiliated on this show where they were up against Korean trainees who're part of this extremely cutthroat, systematic bootcamp where you're either the best or not good enough. It's easy to compare the foundations of their skills and see the imbalance. But what I'm loving is that people are discovering what makes the AKB girls so well-loved despite that, and that there's something the Korean trainees can learn from them too to make their performances more compelling. A lot of the AKB girls just sparkle when they perform—they're so full of charm and energy that you can't help but enjoy seeing them enjoy themselves and do their best. I'm finding that I'd personally rather watch a lot of them than the girls whose moves are more accurate. Perhaps that's some of the appeal of the "girl next door" concept, but this kind of thing gave me hope in middle school when I had no skills but didn't close the door on myself anyway.
Maybe it's giving me that same hope again? Obviously not to pursue an idol career or any kind of performance career, heeeelllll no, but I spent the past few days trying to sort of dance and I'm also memorizing both the Korean and Japanese lyrics (I never actively try to memorize lyrics lol) and now I think, "Maybe I will try to do a dance cover again."
Under the cut, I'mma briefly talk about my faves on the show LOL.
