Overwhelmed

Ok, long time no post again. I'm not sure I should even try to recap. Anyone reading this knows I haven't posted every day since the early days of this blog, and even that didn't last long. Really all it's been is work and school, with a few bright spots in the midst, like the fact that I appeared on Miss Dream's podcast this week to advertise my SeraMyu site Myu Corner, in a couple hours of Skype mayhem on Thursday night. The podcast is up now if you want to listen to it, it's #4. I haven't listened to it yet so I don't know what got edited out (we ended up on a lot of distracting tangents, so I'm sure some stuff got edited out). Oh and yesterday I got an e-mail from iTunes saying that because I had somehow gotten charged twice to upgrade a bunch of songs in my library to iTunes Plus format (probably cause I clicked it twice because the "iTunes Plus" thing was still showing up on my menu even though I already authorized it once, so I thought it didn't work the first time), they were sending me a code for a $100 credit as a way to apologize for the inconvenience. Having never had that much money to spend on iTunes without using my debit card, I'm not quite sure what to spend it on. All I've done with it so far is buy a couple songs recommended by Genius, buy a couple iCarly episodes, and rent (500) Days of Summer. I might check out those pricey "Productivity" apps that I never buy because they're like $10-$20.

In other news, it's Valentine's Day today. I didn't get any flowers or chocolates, but my dad did give me this cool 20-cassette set of old radio shows. By "old," I mean like Burns and Allen and Jack Benny sort of old. Both my dad and I love them. I actually have a cassette set already of old radio shows, but it's not as big as this one. Also, tonight I'm going to the 3rd annual Un-Valentine's Day Party put on by the Asperger's group. I bought mini blueberry muffins to take (since we can't take anything red or shaped like hearts). I hope it goes well.

It's also the beginning of Chinese New Year today. To anyone reading this who celebrates it, Xin nian yu kuai. (That's "Happy New Year" in Mandarin). Please enjoy this picture I drew of my character Jalin for Chinese New Year a couple years ago: http://bit.ly/aFyhnf

Ok I've stalled long enough. On to the reason I'm blogging.

I am overwhelmed. I have 5 classes at school, three at CSUSM and two at MiraCosta for my web design certificate. I have a job which generally requires me to get up really early (due to the bus on days I start at 9am, or just early the days I start at 6am). My spiritual life remains in a rut, or at least it feels that way. I have been trying to keep a weekly book review blog as a reason to give my personal site a raison d'être and not done well at all. Aside from that, I have four regular websites (my personal site; my writing site, my PotterCast Acting Troupe fansite; and my new SeraMyu site) as well as two subdomains (my LAR Productions site and my pretty much inactive Nalyd1996 Sailor Stars Fandub site) to manage. I would like to start a PGSM site, but am not sure how to make it unique from others currently in existence. I am at a loss on how to market my writing site and myself as a writer. My creative writing teacher is an avant-garde lover, though he knows his traditional poetry - he compared my writing on my first assignment to John Donne, which I don't know whether to take as high praise or not - which may spell doom for my writing acceptable poetry or fiction in my creative writing class. He said on my first poem, the only one I've gotten back, that my language was good but I should bring in more contemporary ideas, which makes me feel like now I have to write a contemporary poem, even though my friend Jessica, who's also in the class, has told me repeatedly that I don't have to write contemporary poetry just because the teacher says so. We'll see what he says about my sestina, which was also very traditional. (I also haven't gotten the poem back that I wrote for the in-class writing assignment. I'm pretty sure some people got those back already. It was to rewrite James Schuyler's "Salute." I wrote a fairly long poem about letting go of the past, based around one of Rei's lines from PGSM - "I've become tired of the words 'past life'").

I really don't know how to deal with all that. I wish I could just withdraw from these things, but I can't. The only possible ray of light I've had is while I was in church today I had the idea of putting craft and cooking ideas on my PGSM site, like directions to make a muffler like the girls do in the show or a cake with their favorite senshi's theme color on it in that swirl pattern my coworker Miyuki does on cakes (it's a pattern kind of like starlight mints have on them, except going over the middle as well as the sides). I even had an idea for doing a cake of Luna or Artemis that would be akin to the Cookie Monster and Elmo cakes and cupcakes the bakery at my work makes (another originally Miyuki idea), except that they wouldn't really look like how Luna and Artemis look, and there'd be the problem of how to add the ears (dollops could work, but it would be hard to make them the right shape). I thought of paper dolls too; there used to be some Sailor Moon  sites that had those, I think (not PGSM ones, of course, but Sailor Moon ones). I probably wouldn't add it right away, probably after I'd done the episode guides and culture guide I wanted to do so I have a better feeling for ideas that would relate to the series. But it's a thought.

I thought of some sites I could affiliate with. There is Miss Dream (which also does PGSM translations), The Oracle, Kirari-pgsm.net, sailordream.com, three-lights.net, Shingetsu if it gets back up, and Tsuki Mubi, a site for PGSM fan-made videos (the name means "Moon Movie" in Japanese) that affiliates with PGSM websites. Then there are the numerous fanlistings.

Well, it's almost 6 and I think I'm going to have some dinner so I don't pig out at the party. Good night!