Another month, another recap. Hope you guys got through the weather okay, too, whatever it was like on your end. Over here, at least, the hot weather had come back with a vengeance, but fortunately it's looking to get cooler again going forward. Either way, I'm glad the grocery store has ice cream in stock again. I dunno how well I would've gotten through the weeks without it.

Work has been getting a lot more doable, too. I find myself able to stay for longer hours and get more done with less breaks necessary, although how long I actually stay still depends on what tasks I have queued up, as well as just my mental state that day in general. I've had to leave early on at least a few days because I just couldn't concentrate, for instance. Overall, though, my work tolerance is definitely on the increase, and recently I found myself thinking that I genuinely love my job and that I really wouldn't wanna be doing anything else. Hell, today my boss even pulled me out of a meeting just to praise me for how well I’ve been doing. Mind you, I’ve only been at this job for two months and I’m still in training.

Of course, more hours worked also means less time to myself at home, especially since I refuse to compromise on my 8 hours of sleep minimum for what are hopefully obvious reasons. As such, I've come to the realization that I need to do more to make my mornings count.

First of all: Productivity. It goes without saying that I don't have the time to complete three tasks a day like I used to have, but that doesn't mean I can't at least do one, so I've set that as a goal for myself. I can still use Saturdays and Sundays to get more tasks done, after all – assuming I have the energy after a tiring work week.

Secondly: Fitness. While I've yet to find the time for complete workouts again, I've at least begun to do a few pushups every day. It started off as just 5, in order to wake myself up, but by now I'm pushing myself to do 15 in a row and looking to increase that number further as the reps get easier.

And third: Commute. The time I spend sitting in a bus can definitely be put to good use, too, such as by drafting up blog posts like this one. Using this time productively will be especially important a few months from now, since work is planning on moving its base of operations to a more remote part of the city, practically doubling my commute time as a result. It'll feel like much less of a time loss if I can make the most of it.

That said, if all else fails, I can look forward to a new work laptop sometime in hopefully the next few weeks, which would enable me to work from home if need be. Not that that's necessarily something I'd want to make a habit out of, given that I feel like the office environment is definitely doing its part to boost my productivity.

In other news, the 19th mainline Touhou game came out earlier this month, and I managed to get a Lunatic 1cc in it after just a few days. Given the brokenness of Reimu, I was also trying to shoot for LNN for a while, but decided to put that on hold for now because it was starting to stress me out. Maybe if I come back to it after a few months...

I'm also noticing that these update logs are starting to be less about my creative stuff and more about how I'm doing at work. Granted, I've been having fairly little time and motivation to pursue the former these days, thanks to the latter, so I'm afraid this is just how it's gonna be for the foreseeable future. However, given my lack of activity on Twitter, that still makes these posts my most significant and comprehensive sign of life, and it's not that I don't want to find the time to write music again... especially since I still have a whole album that hasn't seen any progress in forever.

We'll just have to wait and see what the future brings, I suppose...

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Somehow, the month both dragged on for way too long and was over way too quickly at the same time. But hey, at least the weather’s not trying to bake me alive anymore. Lowkey hoping it stays cold and rainy like this for the rest of summer.

So, as I mentioned in my previous update log, I’ve started my apprenticeship this month. Four weeks under my belt already, going into the fifth, and I’m only slowly getting used to the fact that working five days a week doesn’t leave you with a whole lot of time for other things. As exhausting as it is, though, I’d say it’s going quite well. My coworkers have had nothing but praise for me so far with how quickly and efficiently I’ve been getting my tasks done (once I have a clear idea of what needs to actually be done, anyway, and figuring that out tends to be the lion’s share of the work already).

That said, I was still off to a pretty rough start. 40 hours a week right out the gate isn’t something I was able to accustom myself to at all, and it kind of culminated in a mental breakdown towards the end of week 2. The week after, I had a talk with HR and they reduced my hours to 30 a week, but I intend to slowly work my way up towards a full 40 again over the next few months while I work out my work-life balance.

One step towards said balance happened to be a change in my sleep schedule, with me now waking up at 5am instead of 6am like I used to. The reasoning being that, after work, I’ll usually be too exhausted to want to do much of anything, so that time is kind of wasted, anyway. Better to have it early in the day where I could potentially put it to use for creative endeavors, once I’ve got a tight and consistent morning routine going again.

And on the topic of creativity... yeah, you can probably guess that I haven’t gotten much of anything done this month. Work leaving me with too little time or energy isn’t even the only reason, either — I’m actually once again finding myself with crippling anxiety at the very thought of working on music, and I’ve yet to break through that again. It’s not like there’s any such thing as an elaborate strategy to magically melt it away, either. It’s just gonna be a slow process of chipping away at it bit by bit until I’m back in the groove again.

As for drawing, honestly no dice there, either. Again, my motivation’s been kind of nonexistent for the past several weeks, although YouTube’s algorithm has ended up showing me some art YouTuber content that’s kind of made me wanna try my hand at it again. Maybe if I find the time and the weather’s good enough, I’ll go outside with a sketchpad and a pencil and do some life and nature sketches, seeing as most of what I’ve been doing this year so far was cold hard practice and study.

I may also consider refactoring my website again. Turns out that working with websites for a living gives you a lot of insight into best practices for all sorts of approaches, and I’d definitely like to make my own code cleaner and easier to maintain at some point. That’s a low priority compared to art and music, though.

And... that’s pretty much it already, actually. Apologies for the rather anemic update, but I suppose it’s to be expected that not much would happen this month. Well, lack of noteworthy updates plus having a sudden crunch period thrust upon me right after my lunch break, which you can imagine sapped me of just about all my energy reserves for the day. I almost didn’t think I’d even get this done before August.