The Recently I

Lately, I have been delivering longer posts more than ever, and I think that I’m doing a decent job of that. Not great; decent. But anyway, the reason behind the mini-surge of lengthy posts is that, after a few years of working in my current day job, I found the right balance between doing what I have to do (e.g., my day job, relearning my skills) and doing what I want to do (e.g., enjoying my fandoms, writing here on The Diary). That balance gives me more time to plan and contemplate, and then put them all to writing here in The Diary.

That being said, I miss writing quick posts, and I haven’t made a new blog series in a long time, so it’s time for the debut of a new one: The Recently. Think of it as a page from a slumbook where I write the recent things I have watched, listened to, eaten, or whatever I have done recently.

Now, let’s begin the first edition of The Recently.

Continue reading The Recently I

XXXVI: The Nocturnal’s Struggle of Waking Up Early / Notes to Self XVI

If you have been following The Diary lately, you should know that I’ve been making gradual changes in my life. One of those changes is waking up early for work—ideally at 8:00am. I did just that on most workdays after ToyCon 2025, and there were times I even woke up at 6:00am. (That’s a feat for a nocturnal person like me, and even my family is shocked by the fact that I woke up before they did.)

Now it’s beyond the middle of August 2025, and I admit that I haven’t really been waking up as early as 8am lately… and that’s fine.

(Buckle up because this is going to be a long post.)

Continue reading XXXVI: The Nocturnal’s Struggle of Waking Up Early / Notes to Self XVI

10-Minute Warning CLXV

All right. I’m supposed to write a longer post, but I opened my WordPress at 11:40pm. What can I share under 10 minutes?

Well, I really, really had a long day. I woke up earlier as I promised this week, but my sleep was not good, so I felt groggy. But I forced myself to do my morning rituals, fueled myself with extra-strong coffee, then ran today’s errands… and there were a lot of errands. My smartwatch is so happy that I got to walk 6,000 steps before lunchtime, and I honestly didn’t feel tired until I ran my last errand: having a watch fixed. I waited on the bench for several minutes, and I almost fell asleep. Looks like my extra-strong coffee is not strong enough.

With the caffeine out of my system already, I walked to the nearest Army Navy and ordered my favorite chicken burrito with extra orange cheese and a Coke Zero as my beverage. Once again, my heart and tummy are happy. (And this is why I’m fat.) After that, I enjoyed a slower walk around the area.

Crap. My 10 minutes is almost up. That’s it for now. Happy weekend, everyone.

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Header image: Julia Sakelli of Pexels. Edited on Adobe Photoshop 2025. Uploaded on February 22, 2025 at 12:04am.