Hello again friends, I apologize for my absence! I am still here and active as evidenced by the weekly book reviews, but I know I haven’t written any personal posts in a while. I’ve had a lot going on between school and my personal life, and if I am to be completely honest, I’ve been really depressed. I recognize that I have drifted away recently from a lot of my friends and the groups I was a part of, and besides the blog, almost all of my projects were put on hold.
So what happened? A lot, really.
Marriage & mental health
My husband and I’s first year marriage anniversary was earlier this year in April, and up to that point I was doing pretty good, all things considered. I felt more and more in love every day, my family adores my husband, he’s a wonderful father to my daughters, and we had become stable financially and were even considering buying a house. Things seemed to change for a few weeks in March, and he hadn’t been acting like himself, but I figured it was just me.
I still don’t feel comfortable going into it, and talking about it will only dig up more pain. But in short, I was cheated on, and I had my heart broken on our one-year anniversary, and that hurtled me into the deepest suicidal depression I had ever experienced. For a while, all I wanted to do was die.
It’s been several months now, and we’ve been rebuilding our marriage ever since, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t eat at me still and I’ve been very easily triggered. Whenever I feel happy like things are back to normal with my husband and with my family, I can’t help but feel sad again. Like this happiness is temporary, it all feels doomed that this had happened so early in our marriage. If I hadn’t confronted the situation, nothing would have changed. I know that I’m still not fully okay, but my husband has been supporting me and trying to show me that he messed up and that it’s all done for good.
I’ve been in a weird place, and my self-confidence has been in all but destroyed. But things are getting better, I think.
Career Advancements
I received a promotion to academic advising at my university earlier this year, and I’m so glad that I could finally move my career forward. While my old position in admissions was okay, I was highly praised and had been in a sub-leadership role and had been doing training, it was unsatisfying and I felt stagnated. Around the end of last year, I also began to experience some interpersonal issues with the leadership in that department. I found myself feeling targeted at meetings by a director who began to make passive-aggressive jabs at me and at one time accused me of faking illness on a day I was actually very sick and on the verge of passing out. I recognize that I had a poor attendance for a time last year, mostly due to sickness and a lot of stress from my position. Even so, I had continued to perform well and had consistently for two years maintained high numbers and had an exceptional end of the year employee evaluation, it began to feel like no matter hard I tried, it was never enough.
Office politics aside, I got on the good side of a senior director who gave me a lot of confidence and pushed me to transition to a new department, and I’m very thankful for this. It was the push that I needed to get to a place where I can somewhat enjoy my work. The only stress now comes from the occasional aggravated students, usually regarding financial aid or failing grades, but all-in-all it’s not as high pressure and I’ve had a lot of support from my colleagues.
Also with COVID-19, I have been working remotely from home since March. As scary as this pandemic is, in a way I’ve been thankful that I’ve been able to be home the last couple of months. I don’t think I would have survived the blow that I did if I still had to go to the office every day. The anxiety would have been disastrous, and I was already struggling to keep myself together at home, there’s no way I would’ve been able to do that surrounded by my colleagues.
Graduate Studies
I began the final year of my graduate program this year, and as of the time of this writing, I have just four more weeks until I finish my last two classes. I was able to participate in my university’s commencement ceremony this past Spring since I was only two classes away from graduating, but due to COVID-19 the ceremony was only an online slideshow. Even so, I am relieved to finally be so close to finishing my master’s degree and can close that chapter of my life. The thought of pursuing a doctoral degree has crossed my mind a few times, but I haven’t decided on what field I’d be passionate enough about that I’d want to do research for, and my current career path does not really require a doctorate. Perhaps someday I might like to be a professor, but for the time being, I am satisfied with pursuing my career on the administrative side of higher education.
In addition, my oldest daughter Mackenzie graduated elementary school and will be moving onto middle school next year. I haven’t decided what we will do with schools re-opening in the midst of a pandemic. I know that schools in my area have been making adjustments, but I’m strongly considering home school for a while for both of my daughters. Quinn will not be starting elementary school for another year, so I can feel comfortable about that for now.
Video Games
Lately, I have not been playing that many video games, primarily because of school. I have a hard time engaging with my usual hobbies when I’m in school because I can’t help but feel guilty for doing anything other than studying. I have been avoiding online multiplayer games specifically for this reason, I don’t want to become too engaged and start neglecting my studies when I’m so close to the finish line. I did pick up a few brand new games from the recent Steam summer sale, however, notably Lorelai, Coffee Talk, and A Plague Tale: Innocence which I look forward to playing soon.
Earlier this year I also picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons which has been just the game I needed! The game and it has done a lot for my mental health, and it’s low commitment enough that I do not have to feel guilty about enjoying for a short time and then putting it down when I need to focus. I have also very much enjoyed watching the love for this game grow online and regularly watch island tour videos. I grew up playing Animal Crossing on the GameCube with my brothers and I was so happy when this was announced on the Switch.
Where am I going?
My thirty-third birthday is coming up this Thursday, and I think I might spoil myself a little. I feel like I’m finally getting to a point of peace now that I am wrapping up my degree, and I’ve been working on rebuilding my marriage. I still plan to continue working on this blog and writing more content besides book reviews, though they are still my favorite type of post to write. I’d also very much like to get back into TCGs at some point and have been working a bit here and there on two games that I would like to open, but for the time being those are on the back burner until I finish school. I mostly plan on spending most of the rest of my time catching up on books, anime, manga, and video games that I’ve been dying to get around to and continuing to work on my mental health. I finally feel like I’m beginning to come out of a dark place in my life, and I hope that my next entry will be a far happier one.
The Great Gatsby is one of the classics that I somehow missed in high school, and though it is well-loved it was one that I never felt compelled to read. Maybe I just wasn’t that interested in the roaring twenties, but there was nothing about the various descriptions that I had read that pulled me in. I even skipped the film adaptations, I just can’t explain why I had no interest in this story.
The premise for this manga was ridiculous enough to pique my interest and I honestly don’t know what I expected. A teenage boy who hasn’t grown any body hair meets a girl with a lot of body hair, and the two band together to shave. There is some good commentary about the way that society judges both men and women about body hair underneath the obvious ecchi scenario of a boy shaving a girl. This little manga would definitely appeal to folks with trichophilia, particularly the ones that find shaving arousing.
Title: Makeshift Miracle
This comic was a little bit difficult for me to decide what I thought about it. I was really digging the first few chapters and the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. I loved how the main characters were the only colored parts of the panel, it made for really striking visuals. As the first volume wore on, however, I started to wonder where the plot was going. There were characters introduced and a few events, but nothing of substance was really happening.