April was probably 65% annoying or too hot, 20% sick or suffering from allergies, but the remainder was very good! Almost great enough to make up for the rest. I will try to talk about the good stuff, save the bad stuff for another day.
Cherry blossom season
Cherry blossom season is a wonderful start to spring for me. As someone who strongly identifies with the movements of seasons, it feels like a moment of rebirth - waking up from winter slowness, getting ready for the activity to come without pressuring yourself to do too much yet. In winter I am a real hermit, and I am sometimes in summer too due to the heat, so I like this kickoff to what's next.
I live near DC so that may be part of it. There's a whole festival throughout cherry blossom season and it's hard to miss. Every year I try to make it out to at least one event, or even just to see the flowers somewhere. This year I did the Japanese street festival (Sakura Matsuri) with a few friends. Friends, food, and taiko are why I go and I satisfied all three.
Pictures:
- Taiko groups playing in front of the Capitol (2 photos)
- My lunch of yakitori (chicken on a stick), cherry blossom smoothie, and spring rolls
- Two metro station pictures (I love the metro stations here but I know a lot of people think they are ugly)
Work on websites
I've been doing a lot of work on websites and I'm trying this new thing where I don't "launch" them until I at least have all of the pages done, even if it's not full of all the content I want to add yet. I'm starting to realize that maybe "publishing" early and iterating from there helps me stay on track. I visit my site and I'm reminded of the last time I updated it because it's right there on the page... the alternative is usually forgetting I had something in progress because it's not linked on my site dashboard.
Anyway, I don't hate the approach for these particular projects so I'm going to stick it out.
- Since my "shrines" are actually just video game profile pages that I want to expand on, I'm converting them into pages on a video game site. I probably won't want to update the Animal Crossing one until another game comes out but I've been ITCHING to update the Monster Hunter one and perhaps keep a log for Monster Hunter Wilds. That way I can make pages for any game I feel passionate about making a page about and it doesn't have to be scoped into the idea/label of a 'shrine.'
- I've been working on a site for Cryptkickers that shows what I'm listening to but also links out to multiple pages about how music shows up in my life - dance parties, drumming, collections, other things. It's almost all complete except for the drumming page which I have to scan a bunch of things for so I've been kind of lazy about it.
- I'm also throwing around ideas for a new homepage. I have one very ambitious idea that I'm still figuring out but realized it might work better as a sitemap. Instead, I found an old zine-inspired layout I made but never used which I will probably convert to this use.
I am very excited to be so engaged in making sites again about my hobbies and interests! I don't know if anyone else will care but I probably visit my site and read about myself more often than anyone else, so that's okay. When I was making sites 20 years ago I loved to find ways to challenge myself with physical art and then converting it to digital to make the site layout, so we'll see where these ideas go.
Digital balance
My "social media break" ended with winter, but I've decided not to go back to Instagram or TikTok. I am enjoying spending my time reading, writing, and learning, even though I basically replaced social media 1:1 with phone games. I don't spend any less time on my phone, admittedly, but I have more energy and focus for other activities which I never wanted to engage in when I was using social media frequently.
I sometimes use other social media on weekends, but I mainly stick to Bluesky and Reddit since it seems like it's a lot easier to control my habits when it's mostly text based!
It seems more important to focus on how I spend my attention, rather than how often I'm using my phone. I would like to play phone games less often but I don't want to discourage myself from using my device to read or make things. I also love taking internet walks.
Taxes
Camping trip
If you missed it, I also updated the travel journal!
Zenny after I returned (a mixture of anger and furious biscuit-making love):
Links
- Watch this: https://four-seasons.glitch.me
- Color contrast checker for accessibility
- Bone collector caterpillar adorns itself in insect body parts
- WebZine01