2026.01.04: finding back to myself

The first week of 2026 has been calm, cozy and comfortably productive. I've been doing my daily yoga, studying Korean, watching old cartoons or playing videogames instead of scrolling. I've been eating a looot of vegetables. Like, a lot. Thankfully I have a lot of exciting things to look forward to. Healthy challenges and new experiences.

Ever since my last relationship ended, I have spent a lot of time detangling all the weird ideas I have internalized about what makes life worth living. That breakup was not even the worst breakup I have been through, but it was truly the final of many wake up calls for me. It forced me to look at myself in earnest, to look at the life I am living, the mental state I am in. And it made me realize that I spent the last five years in a strange limbo of self-prescribed suffering, seeking a false sense of safety in romantic love that doesn't exist and on top of that, not living my life to the fullest. Like not even remotely. While I wouldn't say that I didn't grow as a person at all, I think I caused myself a lot of unnecessary damage with some of the choices that I made. I understand now that I limited and held myself back in many ways.

This year I'm beginning to practice the skill of keeping promises to myself, which I'm not particularly good at. But I want my body and mind to regain trust in myself, so practicing keeping promises to myself is extremely important to me going forward.

Besides all the things I mentioned earlier, I am steadily working on preparations for Project SGH live. I'm super grateful to have the support of a few awesome, talented friends, who are helping us bring the live band to life, but there's still so much work to do. I'm putting together our presskit as we're speaking, which is something I never thought I would have to do lol. It's crazy to me that this little music project that we started roughly a year ago is getting its time to shine.

Also since I only have one week left before 80% of my day is swallowed by work again, I'm thinking of new strategies to not lose my mind (professionally). It's one of my longterm goals to go full idgaf mode at work, especially emotionally, so I can have more energy for actually important things.

Here's to another year of living for what really matters!

2025.12.25: the season of slowing down

It's Christmas I guess. I'm not a big Christmas person, but I managed to celebrate in a fun and chill way with my friends and with my mom, so I actually feel less depressed than I thought I would be. Ever since my vacation started I can feel my life force slowly coming back to me; and I can't help but feel a little bit unnerved by the fact that work has once again had such a deathgrip on my mental health. I'm trying to make up for all the stress I experienced in the last three months by just doing whatever the fuck I want for the next two weeks.

There are two "mantras" that I have been repeating to myself lately to feel more grounded: a) allow yourself to be in the process of things and b) let yourself arrive in the moment. I've noticed that I have so much trouble with just letting myself be as I go and do things. Probably the worst possible default setting for a brain to have when you want to learn and create new things.

I think a lot of my defeatist, perfectionist mindset comes from constantly being in settings where I never got the chance to learn at my own pace and without judgement of failure. School, University, even work, there was rarely ever a point in time where I felt I could just go about stuff comfortably, learn and experiment without worrying too much how it turns out or how fast it's done. So i'm trying to actively peel back this counterproductive mindset and readjust it to teach myself to be gentler to myself in that regard. Because honestly, if I won't then who else will?

This change in mindset is hopefully gonna help me in the pursuit of some upcoming creative projects; Preparations have begun to bring my friend and I's music project to a live stage. I'm thrilled but also scared because we are still at the very beginning of planning things and there is just so much to do. It's definitely going to be an experience. Hopefully a good one lol.

2025.12.07

I don't have a title because I've been in a slump. Dare I say even depressed. Work has really done me in and I'm just waiting for the winter holidays at this point. I've kind of been in freeze mode since last week. Just so overwhelmed by the stress. I tried socializing again after basically not leaving the house except for groceries and quick walks but I felt super overwhelmed. I met some friends and we went to the Photoism, which is directly inside of this huge mall. Since everyone is shopping for christmas presents the mall was chock full and it was way too warm and too loud and what not. It took a while until we were done with the photos since the line was quite long. I tried the most recent Enhypen Idol frame but honestly found the some of the poses quite hard to match. Generally I think the idol frames are really not that easy to get a good result out of (or maybe I'm a perfectionist lol). The 4-cut selfie is always fun though.

We then went to this Korean cultural christmas party event, but I couldn't stay for long because I a) felt overwhelmed since it was quite a big event and b) had to catch the bus which is currently operating in replacement of the subway line that I usually take, because of construction. I'm honestly starting to get quite frustrated with the lack of flexibility I have without a driver's license. The main reasons why I never got a driver's license is because they are super expensive here and because I have a lot of anxiety around the concept of driving. But recently I'm seriously considering getting one for the first time ever, that's how bad the public transport has gotten where I'm from.

Slightly but not entirely unrelated to this, one of my favorite songs to listen to these days is Joyride by CORTIS, because it just kind of reflects the weird happy-sad melancholic vibe I'm in these days. A lot of times when I know I have to make the next step out of my comfort zone to achieve what I want, life kind of feels like that song. Like I'm in the middle of things, and I'm doing things and it's scary but exciting. It's happy but it's sad. It's tiring but also invigorating. That's basically what life has been feeling like most of this year.

2025.11.16: sunday again

I know it sounds mundane but I'm proud of myself for managing to bring a home-cooked lunch for every day I was at the office this week lol. Not so surprisingly, it's much easier to keep your work-induced migraines at bay when you eat enough, who would've thought. And the microwave isn't as hard to use as I thought. (I know I sound really silly right now).

Anyway work is still crazy. I'm working on a whole new concept for my area at work, which includes design, communication, event-planing strategy and other things that I definitely love doing but at the same time having to do all those things by myself (with a little bit of guidance by my co-workers) is kind of a lot.

Besides that I ended this week by going out to eat with some of my friends at one of the few Korean restaurants in our city that I haven't tried yet. I had Tteokbokki and Kimbap, which were alright but not mindblowing. The funny thing is, one of my friends ordered Bibimbap and Bibimbap is one of those dishes that I rarely order at restaurants but when I tried some of my friends' I was surpised by how good it was. We then went to my friends' apartment and played some games, and I also finally got to meet the cat that the cat distribution system had granted them last year, which was so so cute!

I've been having a lot of luck with meeting cats these days. One of the farmers near the fields where I like to take walks just got cats and I always make sure to stop by and chill with them a bit.

When I first met them a few weeks ago they were still babies, but now they are almost grown up!

Since last weekend was a lot, I spent most of this weekend just decompressing, taking long walks with mom, playing video games and working on some music. I finally tried Dave The Diver and it's such a fun game.

The dreary weather is kind of soothing right now. I reflected on the summer as I walked in the rainy fields and I felt melancholic but content at the same time.

I tried my best this year to give myself a lot of good experiences and I'm proud of that.

I have a packed work schedule next week and also some events coming up that I'm excited about, but I'll tell y'all more about that later!