Mishka

 I've got to stop reading my current library book only after I'm completely mentally too worn out to do anything else. It's really not helping with how well I can understand anything in it. A shame, since I really like the writing style too. It's a style similar to mine, and in the direction I want my writing to go in

Everyday I get on the internet to COMPLAIN and that is just what I plan to do again. Anyway, today I'm feeling miffed about the constant misuse of the words "essay" and "thesis".

Language is constantly evolving. We as a species are constantly evolving and the things we mean can be completely different from culture to culture and from time frame to time-frame, but we assign meaning to these words to mark out the edges around these floating concepts and give them form. We've added standards and requirements to them over the years to better categorize and critique them, all in an effort to better understand each other. There's always something to be said about WHO is setting these standards and meanings, but that's for another day.

Today I just wish people would understand "essay" doesn't mean "anything over 100 words". Call it an article, a blog post, a review maybe, but an essay it is not. I've read so many "essays" that are just a vague rambling deluge of words with barely any research done. Thought-to-keyboard posts are fun to read as well, yet not when I click on something expecting more research than "I saw a tiktok talking about it". I've watched too many "youtube essays" that are also entirely made up of people talking into a camera to introduce a topic, and then playing a list of other peoples barely researched tiktoks as their citations as well (I am genuinely so sick of people using tiktok as though its a reputable source of information to cite to other people SICK OF IT I TELL YOU).

On more nitpicking, I've been seeing people say "oh my god please tell me more, I could write a thesis about this!" and I want to know what exactly is their definition of thesis when after much labouring they come out with a grand google doc that has less than 2000 words and with the most surface level information possible (not a one time occurrence!).

I'm grouchy about everything always, this is just a fact. But maybe other people should stop raising my expectations and being disappointing. Granted, the only silver lining to this nonsense is that at least I know they're writing this themselves instead of leaving it up to the ai.

Terrible books have always existed, and will continue to exist for as long as people write books. The word "slop" has begun to be used for those things that range from bad to incredibly average, done quickly and carelessly and put out to fill a quota, and it's one that applies to books as well. I remember rows and rows of cheap and badly written mystery novels that go nowhere, and the same story about young women meeting a rich domineering man written over and over again by different authors with different covers, and nowadays, I find rows and rows of books about ghost stories that go nowhere, and the same story about a young woman who finds love with a domineering fae prince by different authors.

Yet there is still a marked difference in quality I can take note of. Very often I've started a book and wondered if it was self published, so I can cut them some slack for the occasional spelling error and bad sentence structure, but most times I find that they've all gone through traditional publishers. And yet so many of them read as though they were first drafts that accidentally got printed, or that the editor who read them did it while half asleep. There are far too many errors, some of which could be very easily solved if someone had pointed out it could be written just a bit differently.

Perhaps this is also survivorship bias in a sense. The truly awful books from before may have been filtered out through public opinion before people cared to shelve them, but now with the age of the internet, these books don't have to travel through vigorous marketing and word of mouth to make it's way to everyone's front page. I don't know what or which it might be, I'm just very tired of picking up 4.5-5 star rated books people have been raving about only to be met with something I wouldn't allow to leave a draft document, let alone be printed.

I've had a book on my shelf for years now that I kept solely because I wanted to re-read it before I gave it away and never got around to reading. I finally finished it today, and my opinion on it is that it was incredibly average. The storytelling was just fine enough to keep the frankly unremarkable stories from being too lackluster, but not enough to really make a lasting impression. I know remember why I'd read it so long ago and then proceeded to forget any details of it immediately after.

That's not to say it was awful, it was a good way to pass the time but unfortunately that's all it really ended up being.

This must be a warning not to take naps so early in the afternoon, but I just had the most stressful dream that my cat had run away on a spontaneous road trip to visit places I'd mentioned around it.

....I do not own a cat, and I have no clue how it could have found itself in America when I have neither been there nor do I live anywhere close by...

Being in debt is a strange thing. Atleast in the way it's come to us. Life goes on, I work each day the same as before, but everyday it always feels like it's never enough.

Perhaps this is what persistence hunting feels like. It feels like there's a slow but ever approaching presence behind me, and I keep on walking but I can never tell how many steps it's taken for each of my own.

I wake up. I go to work. Rinse and repeat, and it takes another step closer.

Its been a while since I read a proper English book and so I've put myself to the task of re-reading Dracula. The last time I read it I was 15 years old and in the middle of studying for exams so needless to say I don't remember much of it.

Maybe not the best book to start with when my focus is this shot, but hopefully my interest in all things vampire and spooky will win out.

Rigid plans never seem to work for me. Whatever ideas I may have for the future I must first take into account our hectic household and my ever present ADHD, which makes it very difficult to schedule things out neatly. I've found it's much more convenient to have a vague list of things that need doing, and tackle them bit by bit as i go. A few things moved here and there before I head off to work, a few things sewn before i lie down to bed, and my work seems to go by faster than if I'd waited to tackle it all as one big project.

I would have thought myself far too impatient to work like this just a few years ago, yet it's taught me that a slow and steady lifestyle suits me. I love the results, but there's a joy in savoring the effort and skill I've put into that journey as well. Now I'm just being far too sentimental, but I'd say it's given me a better appreciation for the work I've done when i look back and remember how i enjoyed the time i spent on it.

To bring up some personal grievances, in a world (especially the online world) that's designed to chug on faster and faster each day and turn our lives into an endless game of catching up, it brings me a lot more peace to say that i won't play that game. It saddens me to see people take a glance at the newest thing to come out and get bored within a week after some newer shinier thing comes out. A life of endless trudging through "content" produced to be "consumed" and spat back out with no appreciation for the work and time that the creators put into it isn't a life I want to live.

I have a shirt i absolutely love because its one of the few articles of clothing i have that properly fit both my shoulders and my hips with how strange my measurements are, but its unfortunately a little small in the chest area. It's not so noticeable to be stretched but it does make the gaps between the buttons gape a little.
I didn't bother much with it as i only wear it inside the house, but someone suggested i add a few more buttons to close it up a bit more.

I quite like the look of these buttons but i don't have any more in their design, so instead of replacing them i decided to add some snap closures in between each button.
After days of putting it off i finally sat down to sew everything on.....and immediately decided that was going to take far too long and just sewed the whole thing shut ^.^"

It's no longer a button up shirt in anything but appearance but it looks a lot nicer in my opinion. The button plackets lie fully flat without any pulling and i left a little gap at the top so i can comfortably fit my head through it. I used a small back stitch in a similar color so the stitching is almost invisible unless one goes looking for it. Admittedly i only did it because i was pressed for time, but it turned out well. Sometimes you don't stick to your original plan but it all works out, and i have a few more snap closures to use somewhere else :)