Blog Revival? Maybe? What's all been happening so far...

 It's been long a while since I have updated here, and I doubt anyone really checks my blog here so much..or at least not to the extent of YouTube and TikTok. But hi, hello. I'm alive. I think I'm just desiring to somehow make content even on extremely low energy, So much has happened since I last updated this thing, so let me catch you up shall I? 

Almost a year ago, I successfully graduated from university. Surprisingly in the top fifteen percentile. I was so relieved to be finished with my studies given that I felt like I was taking so long. x_x I really shifted my entire lifestyle since then. 

Starting in January, I worked on an extra certificate to add to my bachelor's degree while job hunting. My certificate took a month and a half but job hunting too me so much longer. I think it took me a good nine months of job hunting and living off of my savings. I was extremely blessed that I was able to float for those nine months and not be in dire straights. It definitely sent me into this huge spiral of depression for a bit as I applied to 60 different places with no bite. I wondered if I was a failure despite succeeding academically. I felt like nothing was going fast enough. 

Took take my mind off of those negative feelings, I decided to throw my free time into social media when I wasn't job hunting. I was really shocked at how well my videos were rapidly doing. My YouTube was steadily growing and once I relaunched my TikTok with the theme of Gyaru Fashion History/J-Pop Culture content, my socials did better than they ever had. Not to the extent of other content creators but I was still very thankful and shocked. I have been making gyaru content since 2012, and nothing really took off until a year and a half ago once there was a rapid gyaru boom post-pandemic. 

Of course, I expressed a lot of opinions that people disagreed with on everything from gyaru, the community, and perhaps even people-given how I noticed how it was taking a toll on gyaru as a whole. It certainly took a toll on the community to where I feel like...the community isn't really an actual community anymore? How can you be a community when you're so separated right? When there is no such thing as togetherness and a lot of people are too afraid to engage with others or integrate into the community. People who claim to be a community aren't and I refuse to be dictated and be told I'm not welcome in the so-called "community" by people who newly arrived in on the scene with their army of 13 year old TikTok fans just because they disagree with me on topics and because I'm friends with people they don't like..  It just seems all exhausting and I was really irritated by it all. New and old people alike are just fed up with that energy and a lot of us have definitely kept to ourselves and it is a bit melancholy. In a way, it's kept the peace but it's sad not seeing people become friends and exchanging ideas/inspo with each other out of being afraid over who you can and cannot trust in a bigger sense. 

I've certainly been less social since but it was peaceful given how chaotic things were on my end but a lot more happened that made me take a step back. 

Unfortunately during the chaos, I had finally scored my first big girl job, but literally the day of my job offer, my mother who had been severely ill was instantly hospitalized. So for a good two to almost three months, I worked my job and on weekends was visiting her in the hospital. It was as physically exhausting to have to feel like I was two different people all the time. At my job, I couldn't be sad and had to remain present, which was probably for the best given that if I wasn't kept busy, I worried a lot. 

My birthday passed and it was the first time I didn't dress up or really celebrate. It was the first time I didn't hear from my mother at all on a birthday which made things really odd. My mom was a stay-at-home wife, so suddenly our house felt very empty. I often came back to a dark living room or left without anyone to say bye to. It was really hard to have that silence. Even when I had attended university and stayed in the dorms alone during COVID, I still checked in with my family occasionally and the environment didn't feel so grim.

I tried to keep as optimistic as I could in my emotionally fatigued state and even tried to squeeze a few gyaru looks in where I could because I really just hadn't felt like myself in the longest time. Gyaru truly felt like a battle armor around that time and I tried to occupy myself as much as I could during my free time. It gives me strength to be able to try to look my best and focus on nice things like what I'm going to wear or makeup since I have to go out anyway. I rather not going out all the time looking like shit...

I had bought myself a few books to stay off of social media but my desire to be social eventually won over after a couple weeks. I made videos of things that made me happy. I made and shared short TikTok videos of mangas I enjoyed that I was re-reading to stay off of my phone more. Eventually, I wanted to buy gyaru-associated books. 

I was (and still am) on a bit of a re-kindled Tsubasa Masuwaka fix, and purchased a huge majority of her old published works. I found them incredibly interesting and tried to translate/use translation aids to help me read them. I decided that Tsubasaism especially was too neat to keep to myself and decided to tackle the huge challenge of translating it. The first thing I did was roughly translate the autobiography section that she wrote, scan the photosets to share (I busted out my old scanner and gotta twist myself under my damn desk to use it x_x) and then I continued on to edit the style advice section. I had never cleaned up pages before in my life nor had a translated like this. I tried to clean up the Japanese text and get the English text kind of close so the reading experience could be similar. 

Back in the day, it used to be a huge dream of mine to not only become a writer but also work at a publishing company or help clean/edit manga for a company like Viz. Unfortunately, that never worked out but getting to do it as a hobby for the first time definitely has been a fun learning experience. 

Unfortunately, the day before Halloween was the last time I saw my mother alive. The week after she passed away on November 6th at 10:30 am... It was really shocking because when I had first started visiting the hospital, she had been entirely unconscious and on a ventilator. However, a few weeks into visiting, I think a month later, she was off the ventilator, and was able to partially engage with us. She had been out for so long that she was bedridden and not able to move her muscles, use her voice/barely move her jaw but we were able to engage by talking and her mouthing/holding hands. 

The last day was really difficult for me because I thought she would have been fine. I visited her that day and had gone to a cafe to quickly eat and meet a friend from my college days. I hadn't socialized since August and it was the end of October and I was feeling extremely isolated.  I had just been grinding at work, sleeping, translating, and not really doing anything for myself mentally outside of translating. I missed talking to people...

 My mom was getting better and I thought we were leaving in the evening, so I decided to spend one hour of that visit to quickly meet my friend and eat for a second since I hadn't ate all day. I really hate that I did that but I had no idea that day would have been the last day I would see her...she was doing so well/recovering. So I thought that there would be many other times to see each other or that if she did pass, it would be much later given she was making so much positive progress. 

Unfortunately the next weekend after that visit with her and my friend, she passed on a visiting day very suddenly. She had been diagnosed with leukemia among also having some other complications that made things like chemotherapy extremely difficult. It's frustrating...she was only 55 and it's so young to just pass....I certainly thought I had more time with her.

I'm glad I did get to engage with her for a few weeks outside of her being unconscious for that first month. I'm grateful I got to hold her hand and update her on my life. I'm glad I got to tell her that I found a job before she passed and that I was doing well because at least I know she passed without her having to still worry about me taking so long to accomplish things... 

The morning of her passing, because the hospital is a two hour drive from me, we were late by an hour to see her alive. When I touched her in the hospital, she was still warm... 

That next week I felt like I was on autopilot. I cried many times and as eldest, also had to keep myself together to make help funeral arrangements with my stepdad, and go to work still since my time off was being split between two weeks given that my mother's funeral was the week after her passing. 

I helped select the clothes and makeup for her funeral. The day of the funeral was really sad but aesthetically it was really beautiful. I chose this really pretty long-sleeved yellow dress that had floral print and layers that she had bought recently. I was really shocked at that purchase. I felt like me wearing Liz Lisa had kind of rubbed off on her recently because the dress she wore was kind of a more mature take on Liz Lisa. 

Her dress matched all of the flowers that were a part of the funeral. It was unintentionally ironic that my stepdad and his family chose sunflowers. At the beginning of her hospitalization, the last huge gyaru look I did was a Liz Lisa dress with sunflowers. I had mentioned in my post how I wanted to wear things that represented cheerfulness, loyalty, peace, honesty, and longevity. I felt like this era for me is best represented with sunflowers and since they were laid with my mother, they have that much more of a sentimental meaning for me. 

I think we put her to rest in her last physical form in a really beautiful manner. 

As I write this, it's been almost two weeks since her funeral. I returned to work for a few days and was looking forward to having a longish break for the Thanksgiving holiday. However, I had to call out again from work because for a good week, I've been violently sick with everything but vomiting. I think this flu has been the sickest and the longest I've been sick ever. 

I'm not sure if it's from stress or just from cooties. Maybe both because everyone I know who I haven't seen in months have been sick with similar shit or are just now getting sick. Regardless, it's been miserable and I'm just now somewhat recovering. 

This sucks because we were going to try to do an okayish Thanksgiving since it was the first holiday without my mom and I wanted to try to squeeze in a look for my own mental health's sake since I'm kind of tired of always looking so ran down lately. But I guess life is like, LOL NOPE. So here I am trying to write a blog instead while I'm somewhat alive. 

So what does this all mean? What are my plans?

The translation project is somewhat on hiatus but I'm definitely continuing it when I'm less mentally and physically fatigued. 

I'm currently really longing for socialization. It's all been such an isolating experience and I'm so sick of being in my area. I've just been grinding at work and going to bed. I'm kind of tired of that routine but I'm also too mentally fatigued to take on anything that's too big of project given how fresh everything is. 

I really want to come back to both YouTube and TikTok properly and more consistently. I miss making videos. I miss talking about things that I'm passionate about and that make me happy. I've bought a lot of pretty things that I want to wear out but I've also purchased a lot of neat things that that I want to share. Lots of magazines and gyaru-related tech items. I'm really delving into print media again and hard and it's a lot of stuff that I haven't seen covered or really touched upon/hyped up so it would be an honor to be able to eventually be that person that could break down all of these neat things that I've been finding. 

I don't know when or even how, but I miss makeup tutorials. They take so much damn fucking time to do but they're so rewarding when they actually turn out nice. How I do my makeup has changed drastically since my last makeup tutorial. My skincare and everything has just entirely changed and I feel like my gyaru makeup has somewhat evolved from two years ago, and I'd like to share that eventually. 

Currently, as I have mentioned, I've been grinding at work. I've quickly moved up ranks at my office due to being able to catch on quickly/show up a lot (other than recently due to physically and emotionally eating shit this month) but I have a few goals. I know I mentioned how before everything happened, I had really wanted to move to Japan. I was really bummed out when I wasn't able to just up and yeet across the ocean like I had planned. However, I'd like to believe that everything happens for a reason.

Had I left in September like I planned to, I would have never got to see my mother better for the short time she had been. She was hospitalized mid-August. If anything, I wouldn't have been able to board the plane knowing that. I would have had to ditch a job over there to head back home around this time for a funeral. 

So maybe God knew all of this and prevented it knowing all what was about to come. Hence why I landed the job I did for now. 

Nothing is really binding me to where I live currently, but I do feel like I need to establish myself more and exist more here before I just up and decide to live a life away in another place for awhile. Plus, I kind of am afraid to entirely leave just in case I lose another person suddenly like this. Call it cautious trauma.  I want to funnel my money into a place for myself or into a property for my remaining family so we actually have proper roots somewhere. I feel like it's needed just for a sense of security. 

However, I still do want to go to Japan to visit. So I think my goal for this next year is to save up to finally travel to Japan for two weeks. A part of it will even be a gyaru pilgrimage maybe..? I kind of want to go in August around the time of Summer Sonic...but that depends on the music lineup so I might base it around the firework festivals around that time instead if Summer Sonic is a bust in terms of the lineup. The original plan was A-Nation years ago but I don't know if that's even a thing post-COVID. Plus the lineup isn't as neat as it used to be. I'd go for Ayu but I could just go see an Ayu concert then without the trouble of a whole ass music festival. haha... 

I've always wanted to go to yes, a few music concerts to see some acts that I know won't visit California, but I also want to a proper Matsuri. I'm not fond of cold weather either, and while I'd love to travel in March for sakura season, given that the border just recently opened, tourism will probably be more insane than usual around that time...and it's just too soon and I don't want to wait more than a year to go. So around the summer it is. Not June or July because piss rain during rainy season..lmfao but I'm not avoiding the potential typhoons so I don't know if I'm actually gonna properly win with choosing August, but god I hope so. 

SO..I think that's some of my bigger goals. 

Smaller goals are to get through Christmas. I have half of my nice gifts for people all picked out. I just need to finish off my baby brother's gift and the other half of my coworkers gift. I have one part of it but not the bigger bit for them. Then I'm finished I think! I'm trying to make Christmas nice since these past few months have truly sucked. I feel like I want to end off 2022 on a nice note in hopes of 2023 being gentler on us all..

Anyway, I hope you all have been well. Hopefully, I can update here more maybe? Possibly? I know blogs aren't as popular as they used to be. I'll try to go back to making videos soonish when I feel less like crap x_x