YEAR FIVE? YEAR FUCKING FIVE??? dawg i didn't even think i was going to make it this long. but on my run this morning (RUN?) i paused mid-stride and hit that "i'm growing up and i have to stop fucking around". every year i want to say that time snuck up on me with a cartoon hammer but now i know that i will never be able to write about the year until i really feel like it's about to end. this realization was brought to you by the soul-shattering revelation that real self awareness happens even when you're trying not to! i love growing up and wondering when i became the older people i used to think of! what do you mean this was the peak of adulthood!?

> FANDOMAPTHY: losing my internet religion: reflections on 20-something adulthood

this year i didn't write anything. that's a lie i actually started the barest outline for a jigyuwoo medical au that was about like. growing up and what it means to live and love the adult life. but that remains a pipe dream that i may return to in the future as some sort of weird full circle moment. maybe when season 3 of hospital playlist drops if ever. i would like to give a warm shout out to the recurring fever dream of medical aus as an outlet for whatever hyperfixation i had about medicine and house md when i was younger.

anyways i didn't write anything because for the first time in what may have been 14 years, i have not consumed media in a fandom setting. last year i wrote "frontal lobe developing???" and that was a prophecy, not even a self-fulfilling one. i tried Very Hard to be in fandom and my brain could not do it. is that what it's like to be normal. is this what my peers were doing instead of learning photoshop so i could create gifsets of exo. what do you mean people had fun with their friends and scrolled through twitter instead of meta-analyzing the sport of hockey. this is all strange and foreign and not by choice. i need a hyperfixation to live but unfortunately i also need to study and work in order to live. this also begets the question: is it really living when you're not actively experiencing fandom psychosis. who knows! perhaps 2024 was a fluke. perhaps there is something bigger. perhaps i am going to get a job and i have to rethink the entirety of my wrapped recap posts as i am starting to now.

fun facts include:

• rewatching the entirety of virtuemoir including roxanne py2018 with quinn and michelle... 15 yr old would have lost it...
• actually genuinely casual hockey enjoying: scorekeeping with lucy goosey at a local beer league game! not even fandom related. dawg i'm so cooked. im gonna watch more seattle hockey this year.
• from 2024: "changed my tumblr username to a hockey inspired username we're here baby we're not going anywhere" ok well i changed it back.
• 4 hours on average screentime on my phone. what da hell!
• nora goes off script was probably the only book i like!

> OH NO I HAVE A LETTERBOXD

after joining the movie watching house, i surprisingly started. well. watching movies. which now that i reflect, is probably what took my time in place of fandom. things i watch include:

• dune 2 off the penjamin (OH MY GOD HIS BALD HEAD)
• black swan (IT. WAS. PERFECT.)
• the entirety of star wars prequel + original in machete order. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE HAS DADDY ISSUES! my favourite animal is me getting the zoomies after the reveal. bought a star wars shirt from uniqlo afterwards. it was so good.
• baseketball off the unicorn tears. no words. did that really happen.
• conclave! in the final minutes of 2024 it was a really good movie that is making me think deeply about my religion.
• korean films with my dad. we're a little crazy about JTA and steel rain.
• leave the world behind. so creepy so eery and VAGUE. actually what i fear most is not knowing.

anyways i think madboxd sundays have been really good for me in terms of watching movies because there rlly are some good stuff out there! god stuff that and also it makes my attention span better.

> AIRPODS LEFT IN CHANGI AIRPORT

good year in music for me! except for when i left my original pair of airpods in changi airport hk! goodbye casablanca. you were so beautiful and i will never forget the day you were born in december 2020. anyways. my number one artist was thundercat. i'm not surprised because [oh shit i'm fucked up!] [exploding bass line] i really do just want to party. music this year meant a lot more to me than it did because i spent a lot more time purposefully alone. this is the first year i've had almost this many minutes since 2019, and in many ways this has felt like a return not to 2019 but to a better, more balanced person i was in 2019. played more badminton, tried new things, ate good food, moved around a lot.

things that i got really into: house music, spacey jane (darby was ahead of his time!), 90's korean sentimental ballads/rock songs, a lot more indie rock! actually listening to my friend's recommendations & favourites. SHOUT OUT zack fox boiler room that shit is so good. and also finally archiving a lot of old playlists.

• never gonna be alone - jacob collier, lizzy mcalpine, john mayer (oh HEAVY on this song. it is actually insane how much i listened to it. feels right that there's a jacob collier song on my wrapped though.
• i did you wrong - joy anonymous (found this song while strolling through a shopping mall in belgium which really. encapsulates this song. my european trip soundtrack! i can feel it!)
• sta sera, chesera... - matia bazar (ITALIA CHE AMO! i love italy and mash mash and the venice tapas bar)
• them changes - thundercat (somethings will never changed. like them changes in top 5 since 2021.)
• witchoo - durand jones & the indications (feeling just a litle lonely in the spring semester. and listening to it on the alexa while trying to clean my room. and trying to bring color into the light of winter. oh fuck it's gonna be. winter again!)
• shangri-la - electric light orchestra (the last two minutes on repeat)
• va händera - tjuvjakt (THINGS MAY CHANGE!!! BUT I WILL ALWAYS BE A TJUVJAKT FAN!!!)
• hard to let go - men i trust (in the same vein of witchoo but with the added thought: i hope maïna is doing wonderful)
• guy (l'imperatrice remix) - remi wolf (hmm. i think i may have been playing my 2021 playlist too much)
• look easy - lucky daye, kaytranada (THANKSGVING BREAK LOCK IN!)

> 2025: fully develop brain

because all things are divinely so, my entire life has so far followed the fabled image/meme titled, "five year plan!!!" horrifying to see my brain actually develop accordingly to. a MEME. and yet this year i am going to try and fully develop my brain. whatever that means. i think that means being good to myself about growing up and allowing myself to let go of things that have supported me in the past but lack any meaning now. and i think that means fandom? and social media? and it's like. it DOESN'T have to be like that. but what else am i to do? there's tv shows and movies i want to watch casually, hours in the gym i need to spend, work and soul searching and job seeking and actual work, and STUDYING, most of all. i don't like the fact that i have to force my brain to do things i don't have a compulsion to do. i hate the fact that i can force my brain to do things i don't have a compulsion to do.

i think i need to be better about reflecing and journaling as a way to keep the nostalgia at bay, in the same way that many a nights i've spent on the front porch in torrey pines, or in my chair looking at the expanse of green grass, a view that no longer exists. or sitting under the tree in banilad, the same cloth-bound and slightly waterlogged handmade journal i bought all those years ago in the gawad kalinga farm in 2018. like the listography wrapped i still do for myself every year. i need to do these things because i need to know that even if everything about me is changing in ways i had never expected and perhaps don't even want, and while maybe these rituals will never weigh the same, they're still here. like the christmas in grand con we used to have — like looking at all my cousins and saying, maybe we won't have them but we'll have our own thing, and isn't that just as fun?

but anyways. i think i know now what my theme for 2025 is. and it's going to be, "YOU CAN JUST DO THINGS!" missing your childhood? your sense of purpose? the comfort of known unfamiliars? you can do things about it!