Sleepy Dragon Leonie

I’m feeling this even now; night time is where I get some alone time to recover :’)

I’ve recently started daily 10 minute guided mediation short sessions from a meditation app (the free parts of it) since last week. This is because I am so tired and I need intentional/deliberate transition time and breathwork for me to calm down my anxious, exhausted system, sleepiness and brain fatigue from the day (especially when I’m drained from the overstimulation and sensory overload of going outside at all and other shenanigans).

I think it’s helping somewhat in calming my tense system :0 Then I become a sleepy blob. And then I can slowly switch to focused night owl time…but usually I don’t have much energy left to do intense brain heavy stuff. At least I strive to calm, relax and slow down. Attempt to wind down my mind and body before sleep.

Working on going to bed on time on most days too!! I don’t want to hurt my health any further with not sleeping enough. I can’t depend on loosely around 5 hours sleep too much anymore :’) Get at least 6+ hours if not 7 ish hours sleep…I find myself waking anyway after 6, 7 hours depending on the situation and my body. I’m not perfect at it though but I have been/am manually tracking my sleep for a long time.

I think it’s the going from A to B commuting/traveling/walking/public transport/navigating the weather, etc that drains me the most. Right after and super close to that is the open office environment & social things where I’m hyperaware of people and striving to block it out when working. I focus most of my energy on doing my work and communicating with the team as best I can, sustenance and life admin.

I don’t have much energy left to socialise like many people do so during the low times I envy those that do :’) My deadpan, low energy, reserved, tunnel vision, energy conserving survival mode and blunt disposition doesn’t help with my lack of approachability either ;P And I don’t welcome many impromptu things on my plate – it’s stressful if it gets too much! :<

I’ve learned via experience last week that I cannot go outside consecutively because after one outside day, I am not fully recovered! I need at least 1-2 days or more to recover from having a sluggish headspace before I can go out again! :’)

Aye my personal boundaries as an autistic, sensory sensitive person :0

Leonie rambles about…

Self reminder to keep internet finds short!! Eh…well I’ll keep it to roughly one rambly topic of interest per post.

• Exploiting Your Life for Art (Tensai Productions)
• Queerness, Autism and Sonic the Hedgehog (feat. Jessie Gender) Tensai Productions
  • I feel like an alien too and on the outskirts of never belonging,
  • the fantasy of love and romance but not really feeling it’s possible nor real for me
  • reality is more scarier, stressful, unknown, complex and full of doubt
• Powder and Ekko’s Dance Scene
  • I don’t even watch Arcane (not interested enough but I do appreciate the art of story/visuals/animation/characters/everything)
  • ARCANE: the Good, The Bad and the Jinx (Friendly Space Ninja)
• Why do we keep falling for the smear campaigns against women? (Bryony Claire)
• Everything is a little bad (cartervailmusic song)
• Stuck in UX. What if I don’t survive this industry? (honest chat with mimi michi)
  • “eggshells” feels apt; feeling a lot of job insecurity and with the industry too from all the massive amounts of gamedev, artist and tech layoffs
  • true – feeling how everything is competitive, interpersonal and beyond your work (social and internal politics)
    • I’m not great at these
  • don’t relate to her fancier, different lifestyle though haha
• Naps past 20, 30 minutes are bad…I forgot about it since it was a long time since I napped
  • now I only nap if I really can’t stay awake and if I have a horrible headache
• Homelessness: It Can Happen to You (Elliot Sang)

I watched the Tale of Princess Kaguya (Studio Ghibli) *spoilers & CW*

• It was pretty with the art and visuals and I know what the story is going for
• the traditional, conservative, “tiger asian parent”, one sided parenting is what triggers me
• also the sexual assault, icky undertones and creepy men and them valuing beauty and youth over everything else
  • it’s outright mentioned how men just throw away and discard women they “pluck” when they’re “pure, young, beautiful” and dump them at a monastery for the next woman/girl
    • UGHHHH this is vile
  • how all these people project all these judgements/expectations on her
• my tummy was uncomfortable and stressed out throughout and I didn’t enjoy the movie
  • I was just tense and scared of all these men/people taking advantage of her
  • especially when she’s aging fast while mentally I don’t fully know her maturity (which is pretty fast too)
  • and her just doing what she wants (sometimes selfish, bold, innocent, quick witted, etc) versus being crushed down by the expectations/rules of being a “proper princess”
• if I was her I would just leave for the moon as there’s just no escape and it’s suffocating in this world/system of men having a lot of the agency and power
  • I hated how the father just projected his “heavenly” version of happiness onto her and didn’t really listen or accept any responsibility for this “making my adopted daughter a princess and I get this high status” and trying to present her off to rich people like some object/treasure/prize with no agency
  • regrets only when it’s too late?? Tries to attempt to protect her with archers and whatnot? Did he learn his lesson to actually care about what his daughter thinks??
  • the mother doesn’t do much a lot of the time and does her own thing
    • until much later she hugs her and suffers silently with her (as company??)
    • then finally stands up for Kaguya as well but it was after Kaguya stood up for herself, tells her father to reject it and threatens to kill herself when the emperor orders her to go to him
  • how she just goes along with all this training and being pursued by creepos until it escalates, she had enough and got cornered by the emperor bothers me (ie the family pressure and to be filial)
    • I don’t even feel like the father ever listens properly or cares for what she thinks or feels, just as his princess to protect and gain power as his treasure :/
• also this old guy character who does the naming (how his eyes bulge and so on EWWW)
• the emperor (punchable face and him doing disgusting sexual harassment) both were the most creepy
  • weirdly enough the original tale had Kaguya rejecting the emperor
    • him and Kaguya wrote letters to each other instead for 3 years
    • and not whatever this is
  • I know this is “of those ancient times” where a lot of men in power are their own kind of gross/horny/disgusting/dehumanising/overbearing/objectifying with women
    • but it still makes me uncomfortable, grossed out and angry
• short lady in waiting has the coolest expressions and is the MVP too (and the sailor guy)
• disappointing and adding to my trust issues with men in this movie:
  • the childhood love interest already has a wife and kid when he was an adult and yet was ready to just leave/ditch his family with Kaguya anyway without telling her nor his family about his situation at all
    • no honesty
    • I was already uneasy when he first appeared as an older kid among the toddler kids in Kaguya’s childhood arc
    • kids and him were already seeing her as a weird being then for her abnormal rapid aging
  • he just keeps focusing on what he lacks and how they’re of different class/wealth instead / the different worlds of wealth and class
  • he feels like another guy infatuated like those other suitors who were ready to discard their wives to own/be with Kaguya
  • I don’t fully buy them being together when they don’t really know each other as adults and they’re all dreaming/thinking of hypotheticals (if they could be together they would be happy)
    • (it’s too fast!! Childhood friends isn’t enough when so much time/ a decade has passed.
    • And he has a family too)
  • I guess they like each other but I feel she sees him as the way to escape as well and doesn’t know him beyond the happy childhood memories and actually know him well
  • them flying together as a couple is arguably a dream???
• the dream sequences and the transitions aren’t fluid and are confusing – what’s even real?? Magic??
  • did she even leave? Did she meet her love interest and then she fell to sea?
  • Did that village meeting happen?
  • How did she teleport away from the icky emperor??
  • budget/short cuts happening here? This movie was in development hell too
• I did not feel sad when she left even though Kaguya and the parents were bawling
  • parents got paid with gold to raise her (not that they were aware but they got rich though)
  • I’m glad she’s out of there and left behind all the expectations that come with being a woman of those times
  • I didn’t care for them not wanting to leave each other (maybe Kaguya’s mother)
    • because all this time it was the father being a jerk and trying to make her a princess and treasure for powerful, rich men while the mother was a bystander/silently agreed and went along with it??
    • why would you stay when you have little agency over your life??
    • I guess I disagree with authority
  • it got so bad and unsafe that Kaguya wished she could get out of there and wished for the Moon palace’s help
    • all because of the father and emperor and all these expectations
  • Kaguya was on earth as punishment – never explained how or why here
  • UGH I didn’t enjoy this movie!!
• that song she sings was really repetitive and in your face – foreshadowing how she will leave in the extra last verse
• having Buddha coming down was different from the original tale – enlightenment and detachment message?
• the ending was rushed
• I don’t want to watch this movie again as my tummy was so uncomfortable and I felt stressed throughout
  • that’s how much it triggered me :’)
  • I pushed through because I wanted to see through to the end…

On not using/logging into bluesky much anymore

So those who follow me on bluesky might have noticed that I’ve just started autoposting my blog posts over there with this post (now that I can do it), just like I’m autoposting some things to Linkedin and my discord server (though I actually lurk at my discord).

Based on LinkedIn so far, I do feel like considerably less people check my posts if I don’t manually share the art there oof (like the other platforms). I don’t really want to share everything I blog about there because of how it’s full of business/career centric posts and genAI slop while this is my personal art blog. It doesn’t fit there. I’m not even sure if it’s worth crossposting there but I don’t want to cut it off entirely since I’m trying to survive in this industry, some industry peeps are only over there and I’m already out of the loop with it as it is :’) At least I won’t share everything there and will share work-related posts or art I’m happy about?? Shall be more selective moving forward…

Since switching to working 4 days a week from December for a bit over a month with two days in the office, I don’t have the mental capacity, energy nor time anymore to manually post too many places. I had to let go of Bluesky so it’s one less place to keep up with and one less addictive timesink to worry about. I’m free from checking another platform!! Yay!

Hey I’m a low stamina, neurodivergent, sensitive soul so I admire people who juggle much more than me and beyond my personal limits.

I will randomly check bluesky if I feel up to it but I won’t really actively check there too much anymore. I’m burnt out from posting on short form social media, I don’t have the confidence anymore with these platforms, it still feels like a draining, noisy popularity/witty engagement/interaction contest that I’ll fail and struggle at (based on past experiences with previous platforms, how saturated things are with genAI slop in the mix too and how I am in my reserved nature). I doubt whether I’ll actually thrive and if it’s worth my time…I don’t want to be addicted to my phone further.

I’ll keep my art blog posts as the focus and won’t post my art directly there. I know with twitter/bluesky, art with minimal captions get shared the most but I will stubbornly still share my blog posts as is. I don’t want to care too much about optimising for the platform right now when I don’t have the mental/time/energy capacity. I’ll see how I go and hopefully I won’t cave and change my mind if it doesn’t work out :0

I’m not sure how often I’ll check bluesky so don’t try to reach me there if there’s something urgent. I’m still active here at my blog (blog comments are open since last year), my little discord server (see my updated blog footer), youtube (community tab at least) and Cara. Trying to cut down where I post and figuring it out!

Not sure how to best cut down video posting to youtube too via compilations but figuring out how to best group things stump me :’) I’m considering not doing much subtitles and posting whatever timelapse I feel like…? Or just not bother posting too much youtube videos anymore given how I’m super tight on time now hmm

Again, I will post status updates at my discord server (and my blog as usual) instead of bluesky! I will use my updates discord channel more yay!

Personal update with art, health checks and being slightly poisoned

Sad I didn’t get to finish my backlog of Year of the Dragon fanart before the dragon lunar year ends later this month 🙁 But I’ll still chip away at it when I can (among the other projects/subjects I want to tackle) and if I still want to.

Also I’m glad my eyes are okay – my optometrist got me paranoid last year so I had to be sure and asked questions about it from recent changes. I got told off for not booking a longer session but how would I know I was going to do impromptu eye scans on the day??

Also the throat issue I mentioned – it became phelgm which went away after some days so I don’t know what that was. And my dry asthma-ish cough randomly happens.

Also dentists are annoying as they haggle you to go every 6 months when I can’t afford it nor see the value of going that often. It’s so expensive!! I got ghosted when I insisted on at least a year between visits, wow. I guess they don’t want me back if they ghost my reply?? I don’t even know if I need to go every year…

Also on Monday I was very lightly (very diluted) poisoned. Someone’s absentminded accident of pouring something they shouldn’t to the water thermos. And flushing it out twice wasn’t thorough enough – so that wasn’t fun when I drank water from the thermos :’) Luckily it’s super diluted (it was a diluted solution and it was roughly but not well rinsed twice). And according to the poisons hotline my discomfort and the weird taste was normal with a diluted corrosive.

It was a scary, stressful (and being rushed) morning…oof. I rammed my head because I was rushed too. I wasn’t feeling comfortable though for most of the day as my throat was a bit clogged and my chest felt a slight pressure/weird sensation that I’m not sure if it’s pain. But yeah now I feel much, much normal now. Phew.

Lessons:

• stop drinking any further if it’s tasting funny immediately
• Be careful with corrosive descaler agents
• flush/rinse it out many more times with boiling water if this ever happens again?? I hope it doesn’t happen in the first place!! When this happened I kept warning that there was descaler solution there but whelp :<

Well I’m glad I didn’t die and it was a minor discomfort that passed.

Also feeling existential and empty as I sense time going by and I feel like I’m supposed to do something “grand” as a personal project. Yet I don’t want to burn myself out. Oof.

Yeah I’m insecure with what I’m doing and am juggling :’)

Also stressful months ahead with life too!! I can’t put too much on my plate right now wahhh

Anyhoo busy juggling as usual and doing my best! Let’s goooo >:0

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