1 september 2025
Finally feeling more settled in. I've got everything that I need more or less where it needs to be, and I've even gone ahead and picked out my clothes for the week. Going to keep Fridays as work from home days, because with the sleep debt I'm going to pile up from Thursdays, it just makes more sense to pace it in that sense. The charging situation is still kind of dire- I never realized how slow my laptop is to charge, and the cable management is a fucking disaster at the moment, but I still have my makeshift mobile work around and I can listen to music off of my phone, at the least. Thank goodness for Lo-fi Hiphop Beats girl and her long videos. Mostly hopping on my laptop for when I want to write a long play-by-post reply, or archiving said replies in batches on my personal site, or hitting up the Neofeels terminal to update my silly bo billy little blog daily, since I've been enjoying that process. Loaded some funds onto my pass, and found my keys where I'd stashed them away alongside my favourite hat, knowing that future me would struggle to find them otherwise: I love it when I do myself a solid like that, especially because I even found a bit of a treat I'd left for myself to enjoy in there. It reminded me of talking to my brother on campus, huddled away in a tiny forgotten corner late at night. Going to settle some admin related stuff tomorrow, and maybe just kind of play around on campus for a bit- figure out my rooms, sit until I really feel like returning: and settle in to get set up for the weekly grind. I'm a little nervous.
Everything I've seen has told me to approach it like a 9-5 the best that I can, and I am taking the suggested amount of courses for students in my position. I was deemed capable enough to enter the program, I should be capable enough to actually address it. And the rigours of academia are a familiar friend, even if stressful, at times. I have a cute little cat cup of caffeine that isn't atrocious and I can make up with cold water in a pinch, and I have my notebooks all settled aside, my September bullet journal set up: a weekly to begin with, and the flexibility to add in more daily musings if I need it. I have a portable, battery-less hobby, I have been maintaining my journalling habit, and a little vial of ink and needle to reup on the go- 26 pages of writing between the solo TTRPG I've been playing and my diary entries ate through the body, which feels like it's more or less what I expect from its typical output. I'm excited, I think. A first day of school on the horizon. And a day to ease into getting my life into order. The new move soon will be frustrating, but not too bad- most of my stuff is still packed up, and I found my darn silicon scrubbie for my hair, so that's nice. Got to be careful about not getting the minty shampoo into my eyes. But I'm feeling good. And I've been keeping up on top of my iron. So that's also great. It'll be alright. Just a little bit nervous heading into the new year. I'm playing it safe, with jeans and a plain t-shirt, but in the second week of class, I'm going to relax into my Sanrio merch: just figured I should dress up a tiny touch to attend my first classes, and get a feeling for how strict or relaxed the dress code is. I mean, it's STEM. It's also engineering. It won't be that bad- it's not like I'm entering a law or business program. But still. Doesn't hurt to try to make a slightly more elevated first impression, I suppose. I've prepared everything that I can. Now it's just a matter of going out there and doing it. It's fine. I've got this in the bag.
Fiddled around with my profile settings for the terminal, and now the text entry is a lot more easily readable for me- bumped up the font to a 16pt. I think I still like the generic monospace one that it came installed with, though I'm also considering placing it into Garamond, just to see how that looks. It is my favourite font, after all.
(Turns out that's not a built in option. Monaco is pretty enough, since Palatino does strange things with the spacing. Considering making the background a pale pink, rather than the default black and white, but I sort of enjoy the crispness of the default design. And the color switching is nice not to blow your retinas out at night.)
Still not totally sure how to fix weird paragraph issues after the fact in a manner that isn't nightmarish. I think I should just try to be more mindful of hitting enter a bit more often when I start rabbiting on in my thoughts, hah. Or at least until I find a better solution!