lagging

wrote this half asleep at some point this week

its 5pm, my eyes are drooping, and i'm falling asleep again

each day of jet lag has been better than the last, the first day i slept at 1pm, then the next at 3pm. each day i've pushed it 2 hours further

the act of forcibly staying awake is like torture

its like subverting nature

its like time traveling

it takes me a full week to get rid of my jet lag each time i come back from asia. a full week of hard work, a full week of being a complete zombie

when i can't stay awake, my head starts to spin and i feel vertigo

that's the sign that i can't stay awake any longer and i'm about to shut down

its weird that only when you seriously lack something, you realize how much you need it

---

some life updates

• mostly done battling jet lag now but its still very hard. my body does not want to cooperate. i wake up in the middle of the night to eat a huge meal and watch a movie then go back to sleep

• came back from 3 weeks of asia, where i went to japan, hong kong, and macau. took the shinkansen bullet train through japan from tokyo to hiroshima, stopping in yokohama, hakone, nagoya, osaka along the way, then going all the way back to tokyo to meet my sister. a highlight of my trip was trying the hokkaido soft serve at costco in osaka and the double skin milk pudding at yee shun milk company. literally the best things ever.

• i missed it a lot so made the milk pudding myself with fancy local milk i got in whole foods this week and it was actually pretty successful

• japan got me thinking a lot about kawaii culture and inspired to do something with my own characters (spam 3d print and make gashapon keychains?? sew giant plushies??). i can't quite describe the happiness i feel when walking into a sumikko gurashi store, but i'd like to recreate that

• there's still a little over a week until school starts up again. i'm taking a screenwriting class this semester that i'm really excited about. i know literally nothing about screenwriting but feel like i have so many characters bottled up in me that i want to unleash and i'm really excited to finally be able to learn how

• i'll also be learning unreal engine! i watched flow this week (its blender but not unreal) but just utterly crazy. i want to make cool 3d graphics like that too

• i started watching a lot of movies since i got a projector and found an indie theater near me with $3.50 movies... please add me on letterboxd and send recs

• i'm going to grand canyon this upcoming week! i can't find a single person who hasn't gone there besides me so i'm just going to make the trip out solo (sadge i can't be the only one left). i'm also going to stop by lowell observatory in flagstaff where pluto was discovered. i did the same, solo traveling to niagara falls last summer. my family just never bothered to do trips so i'm making up for it now

• i've been saving a bunch of random spots on route 66 to go to one day like these tipis. also really want to go on the amtrak sunset limited to new orleans and the southwest chief to chicago. and dateland.

• i'm going to be at treehacks at stanford in february 14-16 (i finally got in for their in person hackathon after many years of applying) and at cmu's spring carnival march 3-6 if you will be around please let me know :D

thanks again for reading and happy year of the snake

— from yours truly, a fellow snake zodiacer