Talking About the Mundane, Headcanons, and Meta

Today I left the house with my mom to get a few things from the store, and it was a plus because there's a sporting goods store is in the same plaza as the grocery store. I still wanted to get a heavier kettlebell, so I thought that's what I wanted to do today. We stopped off at the sporting goods store, and their kettlebell selection was small —they had a lot dumb bells, though—. I tried out a few and I picked out the 15lbs soft kettlebell. The classic 10lbs kettlebell was fine, and while it had some weight to it was still too light for me, and the classic 20lbs was too heavy for me. Sure, the 20lbs one put more power to my swing, but it was difficult to do a kettlebell halo and other exercises. So, 15lbs was about right for me; it has more weight, and I still have control over it while performing some moves.

Here's what it looks like.


Afterwards, we went over to the grocery store to pick up a few things and went back home.

Then after dinner, I decided to cut my sets, and reps in half so I would get used to handling it. It's nice, and it did make me more aware that my left arm and shoulder needs some more work (I'm right-handed :P). For the most part, it was a good day. :^)

My parents' home printer is broken because of a software update. It's been like that for some time now, so for yesterday and today I went to the library to print out a few things. Some pieces of music and copies of my resume to be specific. While I was there yesterday, I got myself a library card and flyers for a couple of clubs to try attending to in the future. At least I'll get myself out of the house more if I try some clubs; I wonder if I can make my own?

But, now with a library card I got to borrow a DVD today, I decided to give Better Call Saul a watch since I've heard good things about it. I was surprised someone donated four seasons worth on DVD to the library. I only got the first season since there were 10 episodes (each an hour long) on it. The first episode left me wanting to see what happens next with Saul, and I love the setup so far. I feel like this is the closest to watching something new I'll ever get (other than Deadpool and Wolverine, of course).

Oh! And, I thought it would be easier to have a card if I needed to use a computer to print stuff again, instead of asking to get a guest slip printed all the time.

Finally! I'm done posting all eleven chapters of Beyond the Haze. It was originally suppose to be longer but I was running out of steam at that point. I was thinking of writing some more but I'm not feeling well (fucking summertime cold!) Also, I've been job searching for a long time now (well, a year now). So far I had a few interviews from a couple of places back in May. The results being didn't get a call back for a second interview, not answering my emails, or I just turned down the offer because I wasn't that interested.

I don't know, everything seems so uncertain in the job market. I hope I find a job that I'm fine working at and I'm not completely miserable working there. Oh well, I'll just keep looking for now; that's all I can do...

For the few days I've been feeling nostalgic of the old Internet and 2000's tech. Where you can customize your computer's DE and exploring the web did feel like an adventure; with people's personalized webpages and crazy looking DE. Yeah, I miss the bubbly, shiny aesthetics of the 2000's. Cellphones were just phones with extra features that didn't eat up our attention like no one's business. It felt like the world was our oyster growing up. The Internet was the escape from daily life; where people created things because they wanted to share it with people online. But now, with the corporatization of the Internet for last 20 years or so, it's all so dull and samey. Making money is the main or only reason for making stuff, and nothing else. And, people are finding ways to leave the Internet and go back to daily life just to get away from the virtual nightmare we're all in. The technology is sleek and nice, but there's very little personality to them where it feels like it's yours. Just take a look at smartphones where they're over six inches in length, and they're just slabs of plastic and glass. Overall, it's depressing... So, what am I changing?

I've been filling that time with changing up my DE to be a little more exciting. I'm also browsing around Neocities and Newgrounds a little more; just something to make exploring the Internet a little more fun again. I've added more items with my flip phone to carry with like an old digital camera, notepad, and an iPod mini. It's tough when your brain is addicted with the Internet because that's where the music and videos I enjoy are at! Seriously, I got to stop picking up that tablet in the morning downstairs -I got better things to do with my time-. I'm using websites that are slower and way more chill than the mainstream ones like Pillowfort and Dreamwidth. I would try SpaceHey, since I never used MySpace before, but from what I read from one user (here) that it seems the user base is mostly 14 to 19 year olds. And y'know what? They deserve a space on the Internet to be themselves and it's properly moderated for that age demographic. That's a different topic to talk about some other time, but back on topic. Hell, I would like to learn some HTML or CSS coding to create a Neocities website just for the fun of it. I know a little bit of HTML for bold, italics, and creating paragraphs; and that's it. It gets a little overwhelming after awhile to remember this stuff.

Was the era perfect? No, every era has its flaws -big or small-. I'm impressed with how far tech has come to be more convenient and helpful. But with that convenience, laziness can happen but the real biggest issue is over-reliance that can develop. Where you feel like you can't do anything without it. I'm used to not having a smartphone growing up (and it was probably for the best) since my family couldn't afford them. I got my first smartphone back in community college (about 2018 or something), and buying a new smartphone a couple of years back was eye opening! Just seeing how big it was was something. My hands are small, and my fingers can only stretch so much to tap something. If feature phones were just as common as they were in the 2000's I would use a QWERTY phone just like my old LG phone from Tracfone.


I know Unihertz has the Titans series of phones, but that would be more like a work phone at that point than a daily drive phone since it has Android on it.

So, it's the last month of the year and I don't have any ideas for the holidays. Just the usual: go to school, work on homework, and practice viola when I have time. Yeah, not much to say about it.

I've been going on walks on a trail with my mom and it's been nice when the weather permits. I've been tending to my plants, hopefully the cuttings will be a success as well as my grafted cacti surviving. I'm caring an Amaryllis plant and it's growing nicely; eventually it'll bloom later in December. But, the thing is that the plant is poisonous to pets and I don't my cat chopping at it while I'm gone. I don't know if I want to keep bring it with me to school on weekdays -especially when the temperatures are becoming freezing-. So, I have no clue what to with it other than putting it in my room and locking my door so he won't get at it. Does that sound like an okay plan?

I've been using a flip phone for several months and it's going well for the most part. I still find myself wasting a couple of hours a day on either a tablet and/or desktop, but it's better than having a smartphone to waste more time for me, personally.

At one point, I think we did have a sweet spot/happy medium with technology during the 2000's; landlines and cell phones handling calls (along with text messages on cell phones), computers whether on a desk or it's portable where people can wait for you to get back later, and mp3 players to store all of your albums and songs. A lot devices but it made people think what they really want to have like either a paper map or a GPS. Do I want the processing powers of that time? God, no!

I just think we need less features on phones that I (and possibly other people feel this way, too) personally don't need like Google Assistant for one. It gets a little overwhelming and it becomes bloatware at this point.

Either way, I'm still trying to find a better use of my time when I don't have school work to finish up like getting back into reading or even baking. But, I'm glad I'm getting some of my sense of direction back; it used to be better than this.