Aw man, I didn't mean to be away from (was about to say LJ) *ahem!* DW for so long.

I'm a creature of habit so if I'm in the habit of doing something, I do it. If I'm not, I forget it's a thing. lol It's terrible. I can't imagine what my memory is going to be like when I'm an old person if I'm in my 20's and already having to leave notes for myself and keep important things in sight.

O-oh my goodness, on that subject, I will only be able to say I'm in my 20's for ten more months... how weird. Was just looking for grey hairs the other day now that my roots are growing out. Didn't find them, but found a lot of bright red hairs?!!! I don't mean a rogue strand. Under close examination, it truly looks like mousy brown peppered with red! When I was a child, I prayed to "God" for red hair but since there is probably no god this cannot be the miracle I was waiting for. lmao Does anyone know the science around this?!

Look. I even took a photo. One regular strand with a brown root, and one of the MANY reds.

Okay. Anyway. On to bigger and better subjects.

The last few weeks have mostly been going by in a blur of the YYH fandom scene on Japanese twitter, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I'm so glad I started using my twitter in only Japanese and stuck with it because it really has been an immersive situation without being in Japan. The same thing happens there that would happen irl: you see the same phrases and kanji used repeatedly, look it up, start using it yourself, get better at piecing together what people are saying, learn more because of that, pick up on patterns, blah blah blah. I needed this. I knew polite classroom Japanese but not colloquial, casual stuff. I mean yeah, what I'm writing would be attacked with a red pen by a teacher, but now I don't sound like a robot. I have literally woken up with Japanese thoughts ready to fly off my finger tips, which is pretty cool. hahaha I read and comprehend a lot faster, and absorb what I'm seeing without translating it in my head into English, which is good since Japanese just-- is not a literally translatable language at all. So many things that are said in that language are loaded with meaning but come out in English seeming super long and vacuous. I also have a couple of young friends who try to speak English at me and they clearly are using an English word that they think is the literal equivalent of the Japanese they would be saying otherwise, so in order to understand I have to think of it in Japanese. My friend Mai thought my brown hair was as pretty as my red, so I told her I was hugging her and she went "me too!" lol 

Immersion is great, truly, but I firmly believe what makes immersion work is that you are faced with all the stuff you actually have to do the work to understand and contextualize. You are still spending tons of time with your nose in a dictionary, it's just it isn't to get a passing grade on homework, it's to communicate with real people about things that are important, so you make the time to do that and are happy to do it. And in truth I love looking up words and all the ways a kanji can add nuance. There is a high chance when looking up a word you want but don't know that you'll pick something wrong because it sounds like an English word you would use, but with knowledge about kanji that mistake is less likely to happen since they are so much like Latin roots. Roots with roots INSIDE since the kanji alone has a meaning and pronunciation, but the radicals inside also give you hints what it's about. There are radicals for words to do with our hands, to do with water or the symbolic meaning of water (distribution, emotion, etc.) It can all get really poetic and cool. Anyway, I'm dorking out. Sorry.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, yeah, I'm about to watch the season 2 finale, and it has been a joy. I have a strange little crush on Valencia - she's like a materialistic, latina version of Hiei to me, I guess. This show is like a surreal bubble of absurdities and happiness, and it's nice to share it with Gianna, WHO BY THE WAY is working as a storyboard assistant or something for Angry Birds 2, and it was announced yesterday that Rachel Bloom (the star of C-E-G for those unaware) is part of the cast doing voice work for it now. She even called in sick the other day and Gianna heard about it and checked her instagram and realized she wasn't actually sick. lmao

I wanna get my ass down there and visit her. She wants me too, as well. She took a picture of the giant couch she has in the living room and said "look! You even got a place to crash!" Lord knows I need a vacation. But at least in two weeks I have a four-day weekend coming up. I plan these every 2-3 months so that I can stretch out a little more and get some extra things (creative or otherwise) done. Still have lots of PTO and sick time since my attendance is nearly perfect. 

Last bit of news: I stuck to taking it easy and the health has been alright. Patrice got back to me about HT and wrote just a lovely letter with advice about what to do from here to seek publication. She seems to want me to consider mastering in Creative Writing, and it just. :( Pulls at my heart strings and makes me sad because I'm in such a sour state about-- well, money, education, my future. I'm already 30k in student debt and my BA got me nowhere. Uhhh, but anyway-- no, but the letter was really nice. I'll share it later, but for now I have to tend to some things.

Thanks for reading,
J