20/08/24 - family.

i saw my grandparents for the first time in a month or two. i've been too ill to see them, and i feel so guilty since they're getting older. my great aunt came to visit and it was so good to see her. she's almost 90, but i swear she doesn't age. i feel terrible for not seeing them as much as i should, but i'm really glad i saw my great aunt. i cried on the way home. my great aunt usually makes calendars with pictures of all of us in it, and she always has her camera on her - but today she said she thinks the calendars have come to an end. it feels.... bad. like i'm getting older. but she brought me chocolate like i'm still a kid, and still took lots of pictures of me and the dog. she doesn't change i guess.

i wish i had more eloquent words to describe how i'm feeling, but i also wish my feelings stuck with me longer. i'm so fucking forgetful - i'll forget what even happened today by tomorrow. i feel like i'm missing out even when i'm present. but i took my bag with me that i made, and my grandma and great aunt were really taken by it - and it felt amazing. my grandma liked the colours i used and my great aunt said it was the perfect size for carrying paints in. i hope i remember that.

01/08/24 - makeup and music.

i did my makeup today. it felt nice. i never wear makeup, and i feel like it makes me less of a girl. i've never liked girly things - i was a tomboy as a kid and i wasn't really in touch with my femininity until recently. anyway, it felt nice doing my makeup and listening to music in my room - even though it's practice to go out in public and wear it for other people. yadda yadda "you are a woman with a man inside watching a woman" yadda yadda. i hate margaret atwood but she fucked with that quote. i don't really know how to look at my face objectively, let alone know what suits my face shape and features, and i feel like i'm kind of really behind in that regard. i feel like i'm lagging behind everyone else my age in general, but that's a topic for another diary entry.

my cds wouldn't burn. i scoured old dead reddit posts for help and nothing seems to be helping to make it work. i think the disks i bought aren't compatible with my cd player (maybe they weren't good enough quality). i have different ones arriving tomorrow, hopefully they'll work. also fuck windows media player legacy all my homies hate windows media player legacy (i'm lying i love her <3)

my mum officially quit her job after everything that's been going on. it feels weird - she won't be working any more, at least not in the same job sector. i feel for her. if she's retired though then she can help me when i go back to uni, which will really help. i'm both nervous and excited to go back to uni, but i'm glad it's still a while away. i went with her to pick up her things, and it felt pretty weird. it's all finished now, at least for her, and i think i'm jealous. i wish i could do nothing sometimes. but that's kind of all i do anyway, so i should probably stop complaining.

28/07/24 - cds.

i bought a bunch of burnable cds today. i miss when buying something meant it was actually yours. fuck the streaming system monopoly. pirating isn't stealing if buying isn't owning.

i don't know what i plan to put on them yet, maybe my favourite tv shows or songs. i have a cute little dvd player i bought a few years ago, and it was nice to feel it humming under my hand as i plugged it into my laptop. the cursor indicating a cd had been inserted was pixelated and looked fucked up compared to my screen's resolution - i guess windows never bothered to update it.

i miss all the old video tapes from when i was little that are gone now. i miss all the lost media i'll never see again. i feel stupid for wanting to hold onto them but i feel all i do at the moment is scroll the internet archives for the sites i used to frequent. they feel like graves now. i recently discovered flashpoint which archives flash projects, from games to animations to everything else. lots of the games i used to play as a kid were on there, but the compression made me feel old. i feel stupid for wanting to hold onto things like this.

either way, i'll burn something nice onto my cds. maybe i'll decorate the cases and make them look nice. i like the idea of keeping my media as a physical entity, because i'm scared of it all slipping away. i'm so interested in the internet and the online world and everything about digital culture, but the media that shaped all of it is disappearing and embarrassingly enough it scares me a lot. maybe i'll print some nice stickers and decorate the cd cases, and maybe i'll post a picture or two here if i remember.