Warning for Talk of Death

One year and 11 days after my last posting effort, I think suddenly of this journal.

To the right of me sits an old fashion book journal, one I made and bound myself in cotton fabric and cotton thread, with quad ruled paper for pages. I’ve been using it as a Bullet journal and have been updating it since April 1st of this year.

I’m currently on page 166… well, technically 168, as there are two wrongly-numbered pages in the mix. Flipping back through it, I encounter rapidly noted down daily events and feelings, designs for dresses, shirts, and hand-carved stamps, lists of the shopping and to-do variety, and several pages of budgets devoted to tracking every penny (Money management; the never ending struggle and learning experience). It’s endlessly satisfying to have created so much content, even if it’s content only relevant to me.

On the other hand, I’m currently 11 days behind on updating it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten so behind and I know I’ll readily be able to catch up, but I’m putting it off (further). It’s a big mental exercise to roll my brain back through the past and try to sort out eleven days’ worth of events and activities in the order they happened. Did I work on handsewing on Thursday afternoon, or was it Friday? I usually make bread on Saturday, but did I really spend all of Sunday reading fanfiction (yes)? Ugh. But it’ll be worth it when I do it and get it done.

For now though, I’m writing in this journal instead. Remembering how long it’s been since I last updated (or intended to update) sent me on a less detailed and minutiae-focused review of the past year.

It struck me all at once that the last half of 2014 and the first half of 2015 combined to form a really... intense year. Significant. Adventurous. Emotionally trying. Good. Sad. All of the above, I guess.

Standing out strongest on the sad side, were two deaths.

( Loss of a family member )

I really didn’t expect to write all this or even entirely about this subject when I decide to make an update. But it’s the first time I’ve wanted to even talk about it publicly, so up it goes.

A Quick Accounting of My Activities from August to August

Here’s a more succinct re-counting of the past year, listed out loosely in order of occurrence:

• Started seeing a therapist
• Went to Otakon 2014
• Yoshi, my cockatiel, passed away
• Took a 17 day cruise around Asia, stopping in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Shanghai, then did a 3 day land tour around Beijing and Xian
• Went to Otakon Vegas 2015
• Spent 10 days in Ireland, visiting with my niece, wife, and sister-in-law
• Drove from Texas to California, stopping in New Mexico and meeting with awesome people along the way
• Attended the West Kingdom Culinary Symposium, an SCA event, in Northern California
• My grandmother passed away
• Got a full time job
• Stopped seeing my therapist
• Got a male Red Bellied Parrot, named Pepper
• Went to a Convention in Lost Vegas as part of my new job
• Went to Solvang, CA for a late celebration of my 34th birthday
• Went to Anime Expo, if only for one day
• Made three costumes, one dress, one tunic, four hand-bound books, crocheted a belt, a cape, two mug cozies, and a handful of coasters, and baked over a dozen loaves of sourdough bread

So like I said in previous post, even with leaving some stuff out, it’s been an active 12 months. Especially in regards to traveling. I am unspeakably lucky to have been able to do so much.