thoughts in orbit
a small collection of some things i've been thinking about lately. some of these might be worth individual blog posts, but i think i'm just trying to tidy up and put everything in one place first. i haven't written much the last two months, so i kind of feel like i've forgotten how to, haha!
- i love artfight. maybe my favorite time of the year — some truly "for the love of the game" type shit. it motivates me to get better at drawing. this year was a little different in that the desire to improve (although #tbh i've always been quite casual about drawing) hit harder. maybe because of all of my new incredibly talented oomfs. i am trying to be a good sport and actually work on this instead of moping around. i think i also need to get rid of my perfectionism paralysis; i am nowhere near close to the level of "good" i'd like to be and i have to accept that i am going to suck and make a lot of bad drawings. i'm especially grateful to have friends that trust me enough to commission me as i try out new things. inshallah i do their ocs justice!
- i think i'm fine being ugly. i stopped caring about my appearance earlier this year, something i initially thought was bad, as i began to go out bare-faced and throw on whatever was at the top of my clothes drawer (please don't take this like i think you are ugly if you don't do these things). the amount of new clothes i've purchased this year probably don't even amount to three. not that there's anything wrong with that, but the practice of getting ready used to be a lot more fun for me. i thought maybe i was spiralling into the same sort of depression i had previously where i stopped taking care of myself (embarrassingly led me very close to needing a root canal), but now i think it's just that i find more fulfillment in other things. i will have to reflect on this some more just to be sure, but it would be nice if all this was happening because i'm moving towards body neutrality.
- i have got to do some spring cleaning (i know, it's august) soon. both my physical and digital spaces need some decluttering. i think i want to update my blog layout again a little (you'll see i've made a few edits already), and i have to fix up my toyhouse and public-facing accounts. yes, i'm going to try having a public presence again, though mostly just to try and post my drawings somewhere. i deleted all social media on my phone except for instagram because i figured i'd need a place to be able to chat / maintain relationships with people who i don't have added on facebook (mostly coworkers and people i met after college) but it pisses me off that instagram puts reels on your feed even though you're not scrolling through the instagram reels tab. i miss when it only showed posts from people i follow. i've caught myself (thankfully fairly quickly) just browsing reels multiple times lately. i don't think deleting instagram is exactly the right solution to this problem, but i'm going to figure out what to do about this.
- i hate using twitter but i kind of have to, i guess. a lot of my friends are on there and nobody really wants to move to bsky because they hate that place all the same. i don't think bsky is perfect either but at least when i scroll through the replies on a popular tweet i don't see fuckass bot replies anymore. none of my friends are techpilled enough to use something like mastodon either, so please don't suggest it. i don't think anyone is going to jump ship any time soon, so i'm just going to keep using twitter. i guess it's kind of alright if i go out of my way to curate my feed (i strictly use following, not for you & block bots regularly etc) but i don't really like having to exert all this effort just to have a bearable social media experience.
- god, i almost kind of wish the internet just stopped evolving after 2015 or something. i miss when different social media platforms actually stuck to their niche instead of everyone trying to become tiktok. i miss when people were different from each other; in many ways, i feel like people these days just keep regurgitating what they see on social media like performance art instead of finding their own individuality. i hate ai most of all. i know, boring ass take especially on bear, but i keep being forced to use it at work and it's slowly killing me. i used to like my job but repeatedly having to use ai instead of, i don't know, scheduling a food photography shoot or spending an hour looking for the right stock photo is sapping away what little bits of motivation i have left. it's beginning to affect my work output in ways i really don't like.
- i think it's criminal i've only made the tiniest dent in the official filipino top 100 movies list on letterboxd. i will try and make a sizeable dent this august. for a while, i was afraid of seeing local films because i feared i wouldn't like them and promptly get crucified for having such an opinion. i have seen a couple of classics this year and liked all of them, but i do feel a little guilty that none of them are exactly near and dear to my heart (except maybe maynila sa kuko ng liwanag). they are all far from being bad movies, they're just not super up my alley in ways that are perfectly aligned to my tastes either. i feel a little sad, i think, because i always immediately feel how tight the budgets were. in some ways, this opens the door for the filmmakers to find other ways to be creative, but sometimes something like bad acting or a clearly damaged film reels takes me out of it a little.