This time it's just funny.

I didn't get to take my driver's test today, either, and I found that quite funny; the thought of explaining the situation to my friends made me burst out laughing. XD This is the third failed attempt, but this time it wasn't due to not being able to find my social security card or the ridiculous facility not being open on Monday; this time it was because I have a "medical condition that can cause me to temporarily lose consciousness." Wheeeee. So they gave us a form, which we took to my doctor, and we'll get a call from the doctor when she actually fills it out. My mum's estimating we'll have it back on Thursday.

At least this time we still have some bananas left, though, so I think it'll be okay. I might not need them, though; I'm hoping my nerves will have burned themselves out after three days of anticipating the test. But eh. ^^;

A number of interesting things happened today other than that, anyway, so I'll go ahead and list them all.

1. My baby sister was awake at five-thirty in the morning for some reason.
2. I was awake too. I like waking up early.
3. There's a lot of pretty people at our DMV.
4. Yellow-green is actually a sort of soothing color.
5. I have a lot of things on my to-do list.

• Get Dragon Soul published.
• Finish all my other stories.
• Catch up on reading stuff on Twig. 
• Become fluent in Japanese.
• Develop my own language.
• Gain more creativity.
• Move to Japan.
• Get a job.
• Get a phone.
• And a digital camera.
• Wash the chopsticks sitting lonesomely on my desk.
• Make an actual profile (for more than one website :P). 
• Play (and beat) every Zelda game ever.
• Cut my hair. :D
• Have a fangirl.
• Mail a pair of letters (one accompanied by a box full of awesome stuff) to two of my grandmothers.
• Get married.
• Answer all my PMs and emails.
• Develop a way to type that involves nothing but a USB gamepad.
• Draw more often.
• Finish rereading the Inheritance cycle.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt and don't overanalyze stuff.
• Figure out what to name my Tumblr when I make one tomorrow. HONESTLY, WHAT THE HECK DO I NAME IT.
• etc~

6. My sister, Annabelle, said to me today, "I'm gay Link! I love gay Link! He's so cool!" o_o
7. My other sister, Samantha, found volume 1 of Naruto on my shelf. She's actually reading it, and she actually recognizes Sasuke. <3 I'm proud of her.
8. Eh I don't have anything else to say.

I'm going to try not to worry about all my irrelevant rambling anyway because like I told a dear friend of mine recently, I feel better when I just say what I want to say rather than worrying about it or its wording or anything like that. So, HELLO PUBLISH BUTTON.

Of all the fsking nuisances in the world . . .

>_>

I do not particularly appreciate that my mom's lack of foresight and research has wasted a good portion of my time and efforts and energy. And bananas.

I suppose I could've taken the initiative too, but damn. ._. Why couldn't she have thought of this like twelve hours earlier?

So last night I spent time being nervous about today because I was supposedly going to be taking my license test. I went and took a shower before bed so my hair would look proper the today. Then I carefully arranged my schedule around having a good several hours cut out of my day since I didn't know how long I'd be at the driving facility place. I went to bed early so I'd be well-rested and able to get a lot done, then I woke up and wrote for a while before getting dressed in Matt's ribbed jeans and striped shirt and going to play DDR early. Then I had breakfast afterwards, which I usually don't, but my breakfast basically consisted of bananas because I didn't want to be collapsing with nerves when I went to take my test. Then I got my shoes on and waited for mom to get home from taking my brother to church, at which point she was going to take me to the driving facility.

Then, just, dammit. She told me to go check and see when they were doing tests and it turns out they're not even open on Mondays, and I'm incredibly pissed off because the contents of that whole paragraph above was wasted, and now we have no bananas left, and I'm going to have to go through the exact same thing all fucking over again tonight and tomorrow morning. ._.

I bet there won't even be any more bananas.

Damn this bloody nonsense.

. . . on a positive note, ACen is finally beginning to make guest announcements. The first one up is this visual kei band I've never heard of; I'm tempted to try and see them in concert just for the experience, even though I don't particularly care, which would be lovely to do if I'll have the spare time (and willing company) at the con—but I don't know if I will. I'm not certain whether Aki or Sophie or Rhi will be interested in seeing it, and it's uncertain whether Jenna will be coming, annnnd even if she is I don't know if she'd wanna see a visual kei concert either. But then, if there's other panels I'm thoroughly interested in at that point, or if I need food or something, lolol there's no way I'm gonna go. I'll probably just listen to them from out in the hallway or whatnot. ^^;

The con is going to be lovely, though. c: I'm excited about it, and they've also been releasing the programming schedule which is even more asdfghjkl exciting, and my cosplay is nearly done. I just need to get one or two more packs of fake cigarettes and then a couple PSP games; I won't be purchasing an actual PSP (thanks to my bloody mum), but Adam is lovely and he's letting me borrow his. <3 And then I'll also be borrowing Nicklaus' wallet with the chain on it so the chain can go and dangle off my right hip, seeing as Matt has something like that.And then the only other thing I'll need will be the haircut, but I'm not going to worry about that until a week or two before the con since I'm worried that if I cut it too soon, it'll just grow out and turn out improper. XD

It still feels like all that could be considered "a lot of work," but it's really really not. I've already finished all the hard parts of my cosplay—namely, the vest and the ribbed jeans, which both required a sewing machine—and I've also gone through with all the expensive and time-consuming parts, like finding the right goggles and gloves. After that, I feel ready. It's lovely.

Other things I have to do would be acquire a Nerf sword—specifically, the Marauder—and paint it so it resembles the master sword, and then I have to figure out what I'll need to make the Hyrule shield and then get those materials and assemble 'em. Cus Aki has commissioned me except not really since it's not like I'm a professional or working for pay or anything, but I'm going to call it commissioning all the same since it'll make me feel like I'm getting more adept (even if just by a bit) in making good cosplays. :D

Oh yeah, and then I'll also need money. Lots of it. Cus I'll have to pay for con merch, and if I'm driving us there then parking will also be my responsibility, and possibly gas money as well, and then emergency money would be nice in case we forget lunch, and just . . . yeah, the more the better; I spent a solid $200 at Anime World Chicago, and that was only a small con. I'm anticipating that Anime Central will have a lot more merch. The only thing saving me is that I may already have a lot of what I'd buy (like Death Note playing cards, Ouran messenger bags, wallscrolls, etc), so there might not be much there that I'd really need to bother with. But that's a maybe. You never know what you'll find.

Oh but I do hope there'll be good DN merch.

And I really hope I can get my computer signed by Vic Mignogna (assuming he really is going).

And I'm not sure I really dare to hope for it, but all the same, it would be so lovely if my mom acquired more bananas at some point today.

"How to Read a Book" (supposedly)

So my second semester of school involves the course Critical Thinking, in which I'm required to read a book called How to Read a Book. I'm just going to quote it here.

There are four main questions you must ask about any book. 

 1. What is the book about as a whole? You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way by subdividing it into its essential subordinate themes or topics. 

 2. What is being said in detail, and how? You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author's particular message. 

 3. Is the book true, in whole or part? You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated, if you are reading seriously, to make up your own mind. Knowing the author's mind is not enough.

 4. What of it? If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them? And if the book has not only informed you, but also enlightened you, it is necessary to seek further enlightenment by asking what else follows, what is further implied or suggested.

[lala insert paragraph you don't need]

The four questions stated above summarize the whole obligation of a reader.  

 Well then. Evidently this book is trying to tell me what my purpose in reading is. ._. I do not exactly appreciate having any purpose of mine defined for me, so: No thank you.

That aside, though, this book has promise. XD I think. In all honesty, I'm intrigued by this course because I'm hoping it'll help me better analyze the things I read and from there give more in-depth opinions about them. That, honestly, is why I pay attention to themes and the like when I read: because I want to tell people my observations. I don't know whether that comes from the urge to show others how observant I can (sometimes) be or the urge to have intelligent discussions or something else or all of that, but eh. I can figure out the reasons later. My point is that I'm not taking kindly to this book's attempt to compromise my motivations, regardless of whether the motivations are similar enough or whether the book is right. It's got my skepticism now, so if I end up agreeing it'll be of my own free will, thank you very much.

(Also, I'm really tempted to go into detail about the punctuation errors in the above passage. Now I just wonder whether they're there due to the author's inexperience or due to being written decades ago. Situations like this frustrate me. I don't like when I can't figure out whether the author had an excuse for these errors. >.<)

ANYWAY. Books are cool. I'm reading Eldest right now, or rather, reading the whole of the Inheritance series; I've already read Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr, but that was years ago, and I wasn't making any analyses about their content, so I decided to reread them before continuing on to Inheritance. On top of that, the fact that it's been years since I read them means that I'll be missing out on a lot of tiny details, and I've realized after lots of time in discussion forums that a lot of the supposedly irrelevant details in these books may actually be brilliant examples of foreshadowing. I'd hate for the effect to be lost on me, so there's another good reason for me to go back and reread them.

I haven't regretted it so far; I've already noticed several little things that I wouldn't have even thought about previously. XD For example, in the end of one of Eldest's chapters, I observed that Eragon and Arya have some really distinct personality differences. When I was reading Eragon, I did my best to make guesses at the major characters' Myers-Jung personality types and decided that Eragon was an extrovert and Arya was an introvert, primarily due to how they express themselves: Eragon is heavily talkative while Arya only speaks occasionally. Even though extroversion doesn't necessarily mean a person is talkative, and introversion doesn't mean a person rarely speaks, those traits often are marks of their respective personality elements, so I based it off of that without too much further thought. So at the end of that chapter in Eldest, I noticed something interesting: When Arya seemed upset, Eragon's first thought was that she might find company comforting, but he was shocked to find that she seemed to not mind solitude. I was amazed by that; I was intrigued to find their previously theoretical extroversion and introversion being expressed so obviously. I promptly became convinced that Christopher Paolini is very good at giving his characters concrete personalities. XD

On the other hand, I had a problem with their manners of speech. Maybe there were mild differences that I didn't notice, but for the most part it seemed like everyone spoke exactly the same way: with Christopher Paolini's expansive vocabulary and directness of speech.

I pin the vocabulary and to-the-point nature of speaking on Christopher because that's basically the way the entirety of the books are narrated. On every page there's at least one or two words that I'm unfamiliar with or can't use myself, and he doesn't really bandy about; it's extremely impressive. However, I really don't like that all the characters talk with the same style. XD Eragon and Roran grew up in a small village, living on and maintaining their uncle's farm; they received no pompous education and didn't even know how to read. It's beyond me how they could reasonably be expected to have the level of vocabulary that Christopher gave them. If it were only the more noble and wise characters like Arya and Saphira who had this vocabulary, it wouldn't have been as much of a problem to me, but I felt like the story could've been enhanced if Christopher had kept this in mind. To be fair, though, I have no clue how difficult such a thing would be and have never attempted it before, so maybe he had an excuse, but, to quote the movies: "I expected more . . . well, more."

That's really only one small complaint of mine out of numerous things I love about the books. I love how much detail there is; some might find it tedious, but I just find it another impressive indication of Christopher's intelligence and the amount of effort he put into making these books realistic. :3 I love the fact that there's dragons. I love that so much thought is put into the different languages the characters speak (and sort of aspire to make my own language now); I've become fascinated with language in general as of late, so it was so interesting to experience the difference between the "normal language" and that of the elves. I love the cultural differences, too, and how obvious it becomes that Eragon and Saphira and Arya are all different species. The elves' culture also really reminded me of Japan because they attach honorifics to names (like, they have elda in place of sama and ebrithil instead of sensei and I so love it <3), and the elves attach a lot of weight to diplomacy and gestures of courtesy as methods of holding peace.

Plus, elves sorta look like Asians, right? :D Riiiiiight?
Well. Okay. Maybe not. But I still really enjoy noticing these little similarities.

Anyway though, I really need to keep reading How to Read a Book. They're about to tell me about the various ways to "mark books" to "make them my own"—in other words, they're about to tell me to do that which I've never dared to do and actually highlight and underline and scribble in the margins and asdfghjkl. o.o To be honest, I have wondered what it would be like to try this, but at the same time, it seems like it'd ruin the experience for me to write in these books. What if I want to read it later with a fresh mind and not have to worry about the notes I made previously? Or what if I want to sell it or pass it on to somebody? I couldn't do that in good conscience knowing how irritated I am to find that used books I purchase contain past readers' annotations. Maybe it could be a good experience, though—in all fairness, I guess I should try it at least once before dismissing it. But when I attempt it, it's sure not going to be in one of my favorite books unless I have a spare copy. XD

And until I do attempt it, I think I'll be quite fine with keeping my thoughts on the internet or inserting them into conversations or writing them down in journals.

Lol I write long blogs.

Onward to reading! :3

they say your head can be a prison~

When I first decided to use this as a blog title, I think I intended to ramble about how lovely lucid dreams are. Hah. Luckily enough though, I can use it for other related (yet not quite similar) purposes. Primarily, how hard it's been for me to fall asleep quickly.

For the last few nights, my mind ended up so occupied by thoughts about the state of life and theories about the world that it took me quite a while to sleep. It was actually quite frustrating, especially when I realized the problem and had the urge to blog about it, yet I knew if I did that, it'd only take longer for me to sleep, and it was likely one in the morning as it was. Instead I patiently waited until my mind decided to let me sleep.

Every time I board this train of thought, it's always the same questions about love and apologetics and the morality of sex. The answers should be obvious, and they were three years ago before I got closer to asdfghjkl people. I don't regret developing friendships with people and being able to really get to know them; I don't think I was ever this close to anybody a few years ago, so I look at certain moments in my life as turning points for the better. (For example, the moment where I realized to myself that I didn't simply get along with my best friend—that, rather, I absolutely adored her and thought everything about her was beautiful and wanted everyone

I also became open-minded and realized that I could understand the moral viewpoints of essentially everyone, even when those viewpoints conflicted with the ones that I as a Catholic was supposed to be following.

Over time, this brought me here: stuck between two opposite answers to the same question, knowing which one seems more reasonable but unable to determine properly if one is really better than the other.

For the sake of my own sanity, I'm going to have to assume that these questions even have answers. If they don't . . . I'm screwed, I suppose.

Anyway, there is one point which I'm firm on believing, not because the Catechism says I should or because the rest of the world insists upon it, but because I believe it: Love is perfectly okay, and likewise, so is having affection for everyone.

But then the question gets complicated when I have to define just what love is. Personally, I look at it as the choice to show absolute selflessness for a person. I believe in most cases that this selflessness, ideally, should be accompanied by knowing a person well and having some level of adoration for them. Love isn't necessarily a feeling, but there's certain feelings that it inspires.

Infatuation isn't love, though—as in, being infatuated with some pretty boy at school that you barely know. There you have the adoration, but everything else is incomplete. You don't know him all that well, and you usually can't do anything selfless for him, but to begin with the infatuation was probably accompanied by the purely self-motivated wish to be more than friends with this boy, so it was really all about you and a daydream in the first place. I think infatuation is okay in ways because I'd expect every human being to be infatuated with some(one/thing) at some point, but I find it foolish when all people do is look at their personal butterflies and say "Oooooh, I'm in love~" The answer is no. D:

Lust is not love either. There is a very distinct difference between the two. Lust is based on hormones and your own sexual gratification, and love, well. I haven't even figured out what place sex should have in a relationship based upon true love; all I know is that sex exists for a purpose and that people like to have sex once they're married.

See, just look at how my morals have changed. Whatever happened to "People shouldn't have sex with people they're not married to"?

I'm just questioning everything. But I'm hoping that isn't a bad thing. I feel like I do need to define these things for myself, because if I can't, then I'm sure as hell going to be a pretty half-hearted sponsor of these causes. ._. Nobody needs a heartless member on their team.

But to get back to what I was talking about, eh. I think lust really makes life confusing. People run amuck having sex with each other all over the place, and this part of me is still convinced that marriage is the ideal environment for it, but I don't want to entirely fault people for not knowing/believing that. On top of that though, from the Catholic church's standpoint, you're not supposed to have sex until you're properly marred to somebody, but once you're married, the whole point is to have children—guess what—by having sex.

I don't really like that. Personally I feel that sex shouldn't have anything to do with love at all, but—hormones just really don't make any sense to me. I guess it all just comes down to the natural desire to reproduce because our race would go extinct if we didn't, but at the same time, I don't like that lust plays such a pivotal role everywhere. People end up in relationships purely based upon pleasuring each other and call it love, but I don't like it. I don't approve. ._. It comes down to selflessness again, I think. If you're only having sex because you like the way it feels, then it doesn't matter how you feel towards the other person on top of it—it's just sex, and you're not doing a very good job at "loving" this person.

I don't know how to answer anything though.

And with the Catholic church, I understand that marriage should involve sex because having children brings new souls to God, but what if bad things happen to kids while they're being raised? And wouldn't it be better for that married couple to help bring each other to God and the people around them rather than bring the responsibility of extra souls along the world? I haven't found the logic yet. I don't know I don't know I don't. x.x

World, you should make more sense than this.

I wish I knew how to answer these questions but yee. ._. Until I do answer them, and probably even after that, I'm sure my mind will just continue to occupy itself pondering them and thinking of new points and trying to make rational sense out of stuff that was hardly ever based upon reason in the first place. Cus feelings and lust, even if they can be explained scientifically, eh. Reason hardly has any control over them.

Except if you're L.

There was this beautiful fanfiction I read where he was becoming riddled with emotion, so he squelched the emotions by first acknowledging them, then letting them play out, and lastly letting go of them.
Although he didn't actually succeed in letting go of them.
Poor L.

But anyway, yep, my opinions may make no sense, and there may be obvious answers that I haven't yet figured out how to reach, but I'm sure I'll get there someday. Maybe.

Lol life what are you you're funny.
I'm going to close this with an inspirational picture.

Ohhhhh yesssssss. Look at that hair. Those eyes. That nose. That mouth. That expression. :'D 

I'm going to pretend now that I don't care whether life makes sense so I can just be happy examining this lovely picture.

Oh procrastination, I don't need you anymore~

My dear blog,

I feel like this is some sort of public diary. Goodness. But that's not really the point. If this were a diary, I'd probably just ramble way too much about personal details that shouldn't be on the internet, and then things would end badly. Hm.

But it's only fair to ramble about why this blog exists in the first place, I think. I have this dear friend named Sophie and we were talking about anime conventions and romantic encounters that may occur there, which turned into a conversation about how we'd always wanted to start our own blogs. Then she told me to go make one. So I did. AND HERE I AM. \(^o^)/

I feel like this is going to turn to irrelevancy, though. I don't really want that. Sophie told me to just blog about whatever I want, but I'm not good at doing that—seriously, I suck completely at doing "whatever I want." I'm always wondering how other people will perceive it and if I should make it better. I love doing creative things like this, but the pressures of trying to do a "good job" always hover over my head. It happens when I draw stuff and when I write my stories and every time I make a post in public. XD Every time.

Nyehhhh, but I have to get over this, don't I?

K, well, hello, blog-san. My name's Shadow, I'm sixteen years old, and I can't stand fancy restaurants. I'm also a slacker—a huge one. I constantly mourn myself for being such a slacker, but I never really change. A few years ago, I used to actually get things done, but that was before I started my own website or bought myself all these terrible yet glorious iDevices. Now I have too many constant distractions. IM and Facebook are always waiting for my attention. If it's not them, it's Twig, but there I have a pile of PMs and roleplays that go unanswered while I dally my time away reading the less important threads that I'm never going to post on anyway. And of course school always offers new terrors for me to work on. I have less than three days to make a map of "the Bible lands" and submit it, yet the task is so daunting that IM just pleads with me to let it take some of the stress off. But it's never just stress it takes away; the time always vanishes along with it. Why do the best things have to go by so quickly? Why can't productivity just be an automatic human instinct?

I honestly miss the days when I knew what I had to do and just got it done. But at the same time, I don't think I'd ever want to go back . . . ? I keept telling myself that they were "better times," but really, they weren't. They were just different. Maybe I got all my schoolwork done before 4:30 in the afternoon, and maybe I had just enough time to read and reply to everything important on Twig, and sure it was sort of amazing that I managed to constantly update the five pointless stories I was working on at the time. But I didn't have a computer or an iPod Touch, and I didn't have IM, and I honestly didn't have all the amazing close friends I do now. I didn't even care enough about people to mind how close I was with anyone, anyway. Those were the days when I barely even recognized that everyone was a completely different person. I don't know what I thought of people exactly, but just, one human didn't matter more to me than another. I cared about my friends and family, but it was in an automatic sort of way. I couldn't recognize differences in personality, and people's preferences didn't mean much to me, and it was dismal. It was like seeing everyone's souls in shades of gray or something because I knew who people were, but I couldn't admire them completely because I couldn't even recognize their differences.

But it changed, and I'm glad it did. ^-^ I like it better when I can actually realize that everyone is different in their own glorious way. It just means more this way because now I'd actually give a damn if I had to lose one of the people I care about. It wouldn't be just "I'm sad that Doodlebob died because he was my friend. ;__;" It'd be more like "WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITHOUT DOODLEBOB. D: How am I ever going to replace him? I can't go on without him" and then eventually I would be happy again, but Doodlebob would stay in my memory forever because of the special person he was. People just have more value because they're all unique, and I like being able to actually realize that.

My best friend's name is Christine, but I call her Komoda. She and I have never met in person since we got to know each other over Twig, but we talked face-to-face for the first time last night on Skype. x3 But it doesn't even matter that we hadn't spoken that way before—the experience was gorgeous, of course. And I couldn't stop smiling afterwards (or while we were Skyping for that matter), and I'd been dreaming about actually seeing her face to face for a long time; I always woke up disappointed when I realized that it hadn't been real, and kept telling myself, "Someday, Shadow. -sigh-" and then it was actually someday and there she was and it was beautiful. Thinking about it makes me feel like a cookie. A very happy cookie.

But not having talked like that before doesn't mean we were any less close. Actually, she's the best friend I've ever had, and that's not going to change. There's been a few other people I was/am really close with along with her, and then I seem to have no lack of friends in general, but Komoda is truly my best friend. I don't know anyone else as amazing as her, and I could go on about her forever. And someday, someday we'll actually meet, too. Someday.

Until we do, though, I'm happy. x3 I can't complain, not at all.

We also just sent each other our first real, tangible presents this month. *u* That's sort of a different matter because it's not like presents are the most important thing in the world (because if I said they were obviously my values would be screwed), but even with that in mind it truly means a ton to me IT JUST. I love it and I love being able to exchange gifts with her. She is the sweetest most incredible thing ever for getting me a present in the first place. Mine is just Inheritance because that's a series we both love, and then I gave her a handwritten ~note~ along with it, but hers. Oh my goodness. I feel I can never compare to it. She went to Japan for a few weeks this summer, and that was where she got nearly everything that was in the box. There's all this Japanese candy and the face of an actor I adore on a keychain and a plush ice cream cone in which you can stick stuff (I used it as a wallet last time I went shopping, hehe x3) and an adorable bear wallet (this one's next~) and Hello Kitty pocky and a Hello Kitty notebook (the Japanese have a thing for Hello Kitty) and this layered light-up stone—I'm not sure of the actual term for it. But it's just like a clear stone with little flecks inside, and it's harder to see in the light, but you're supposed to put it on this lit-up base and then suddenly there's this green dragon floating in there like RAWR I'MMA EAT YOU, ONLY GRACEFULLY~ and I adore it. x3 And she sent me yen and these gorgeous stones and chopsticks, these absolutely beautiful chopsticks. They're brown and they have cherry blossom petals on them and I named them Mello and Matt. :3 They're more beautiful than the other two pairs I have (which are named L and Light and Hikaru and Kaoru) by farrrrr and I adore them. I adore everything she sent me. Even the candy, which sort of is going to make eating it difficult beacuse it'll feel like I'm eating my own children or something every time, but it's okay. Someday Komoda and I are going to go to Japan together, and I'll show up randomly at her house with buckets of candy so this won't be the last time I eat it. It'll just be the first. :3 I mean, I've had pocky and botan rice candy before, but I just got that in America. This stuff is straight from Japan. That's why it's going to taste better. XD

And you know what, I always had difficulty writing thank you notes. It's just sort of awkward for me for whatever reason. I end up having parties or Christmas and even if I only got a few gifts, the list of thank you notes to write just sits there on my desk. And then a few weeks later I think I should maybe finally write them. But I don't. And then it's suddenly months later and I feel so bad for not sending them, but it's so late that I just throw the list in the trash because I don't want to awkwardly send a months-late thank you note. AND IT'S NOT THAT I'M NOT GRATEFUL but just . . . I don't know. I don't really have an excuse because it's just something that happens, so when I say I can't stand formality among the people you treasure, it's really just me guessing at why it's something I have trouble doing in the first place. But goodness, this is one of those things that I will always regret putting off.

You know what, though?

When I got Komoda's gift, I went on Twig and sent her a PM. I think I said "thank you" more than five times, and then after she replied, in my following PM I promptly launched into a big description of how much I loved every single little thing she sent me and how amazing she was for actually wanting to get me anything in the first place.

And that just, I find it interesting. Because I didn't even write it for the sake of writing a thank you note. I just wrote it because I was overjoyed and because she's my best friend and damn well deserves to know how much I adore her and everything she sent me. I wanted to. XD

I want to say that I should look at all the gifts I receive like that—a treasure, something that overjoys me not just because I love it but I love the thought behind it, and something that makes me want to write a thank you note. Obviously that would be more ideal than me putting it off forever.

But I don't know, somehow it's . . . different? I don't know. But it's Komoda. It is different even if only because I adore her more than the other people I know.

Heh, though, you know what—this'll be the year. This Christmas. I'm actually going to send all my thank you notes out this year. They deserve that for once. I'm not putting it off this time. I WILL DO THIS.

I will.

Productivity, you could come back whenever you like. Any day now.