Journal

journal or blog, its all the same.

1/24/2024 Happy New Year! Sorry I'm late!
Its been an interesting time of the year.
12/20/2023 Listening to Templuv songs on repeat.
I have been off of work for about 5 days now. I really appreciate that the job I work allows me a large amount of time off at the holidays, but I also struggle with keeping a routine and generally with disassociation. Its been half and half these past few days. Now I am done with wallowing in self pity and rotting in bed.

Firstly, I am going to keep working on cleaning up my room. I don't like that I am a messy person, but truthfully I am. My library (aka the third bedroom in my rented duplex house) is an absolute mess. Just awful! And it has been this way for.... too long. I have taken some of the preliminary steps to fix that, but there is a lot more work that needs to be done. In just a bit (its 6:30 PM mind you!) I am going to go to Target and pick up a bulliten board which will allow me to pin up some of the papers/stickers I have that just lay around and don't get used.

Then I need to go throuh some of my "project piles." What is a project pile?

Well it is exactly as it sounds! Its a pile of stuff that is supposed to be used for a project that I simply haven't gotten around to making yet. A great example is that today I finally unboxed the toy gatcha machine and filled the gatcha balls with little book covers to make a gatcha ball TBR! Cool right?!

I have several other projects:
1. Sort through/cull out Japanese language learning books
2. Decide on a project that uses the cool shopping bags I collected in Japan
3. Organize my "contemporary popular books" shelf that I made.... or switch it around with my other Japanese books shelf... not sure on that one yet.
4. Totally clean out my pink cart. Ugh I have been dreading this.

5. Pack up and store some of my crafting books. Get rid of the ones that I don't want to keep. Shelf space is precious!
6. Clean up and organize my desk. I have a large flat top desk that I just pile stuff onto. Its incredibly disorganized.

Thats what has been on my mind today. That and thinking about how I want to lose weight but thats for another day when I have organized thoughts on my self image for once. 5 days until Christmas! Yay!
12/15/2023 Wow, I am back for another day!
I've been slowly reading Schoolgirl for the past few days and I am hoping to finish it tonight. Its a short book, so that is entirely doable. I started out thinking "Wow this narrator is so pretentious!" But now I can't help but relate to her thoughts and emotions. She IS annoying- relatable- but she is also going through changes in life that she is struggling to cope with. She wants, above all, to be liked and loved and cherished. She is sort of a people pleaser now that I think about it.

And she is still very much a girl. She has girlish thoughts and a desire to stay in girlhood. I really like that about her. I have seen more of a buzz around the bookish sphere talking about that term/phrase "girlhood" and at first I didn't care too much. It wasn't unappealing. Rather, it wasn't an immediate interest. Now I might try to find another novel similar to this one because the theming is interesting. Also, Schoolgirl is written by a man in 1930 so there is clearly some biases to unpack here.

A basic google search for Japanese novels (translated into English) about girlhood brings up "womanhood" first. I had to sift through some suggestions on Reddit to find any Japanese novels about girlhood. First mentioned was Ruth Ozeki's A Tale For the Time Being which I don't think I own yet. Ruth Ozeki is a fascinating author to learn about. She is mixed race America-Canadian according to her website. I would definetly check out this book and her other books.

The Second novel people mention is one that has been on my TBR for a long while now. Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami- one of my favorite authors this year- definetly seems to deal with girlhood from one POV and motherhood from a second POV. I nearly started reading this book over the Thanksgiving break, but I was traveling and my boyfriend didn't want his family thinking I was reading something inappropriate. *eye roll*

Both of these are going on my "Read Soon" TBR!

Right now I am at work. I am doing this instead of work... but I also got work done today! Its lunch time now, so I am about to go make a salad, eat an apple and an orange, and be sort of healthy. I am trying my best to get back on track with some weightloss, but thats a topic of conversation for another day. Bye!
12/14/2023 My first little entry...
I'm Aubrey, but you can call me Aubreebree. I've gone by that name for over 15 years now. I have tried to do blogging/book reviewing and such before, but I never stuck with it. I think I always wanted something a bit more creative but never knew how to accomplish that.
Here I am now using my neopets & myspace level html editing to create a little site. Don't expect anything special from me. As a matter of fact, don't expect anything from me at all. I could end up like the hundreds of other sites that are started and abandoned. There is just no telling!
But for now, hi. I'm giving it the ol' college try!
That is very fitting of me since I work at a University. I love my job, but I get paid like crap. But then again I also spend too much money on starbucks and books. Basic bitch? You bet.

Right now I am reading two books: Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai and The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. I am reading Genji as a long term project that will probably take me months to work through, but every time I pick it up and read a few pages I am really entertained and enjoying it!
Schoolgirl I have read about 25 pages of, but I need to read it during a weekend when I am able to start reading in the morning. I am always too tired for the condesending narrator in that novel. It is a fastinating book that I am looking forward to reading nonetheless. It is also my first novel by Dazai. I decided to start here rather than with No Longer Human because this is shorter and (I believe) it is his first work.
I will hopefully write up some more bookish thoughts here and be able to go more in depth about my Genji project. Bye for now!
Aubreebree, 2023.