Categoria: my life Page 3 of 4

Hello everyone, how have you been?

As you probably noticed, I’ve basically disappeared for a couple weeks; I’ve taken a little break from my blog and social media in general for a while, to focus only on myself and improve my life.

I really needed it.

But why did I make this choice to shut down from technology for a while?

As we all know, we live in a society obsessed with smartphones and social media: we keep checking out notifications and updates all day long, wasting a lot of time that we could use for something better.

I’ve seen random youtubers who were enthusiastic about their sudden lives’ improvements, just by deleting social media apps for a while and focusing on other things they’ve always wanted to do, but “didn’t have enough time for”.

Well, not surprising, but if you ignore completely Twitter, Facebook and whatever social media you use the most, you basically end up having free time to do everything you want.

Learning a language, reading a book, writing, drawing…. trust me, if you don’t keep scrolling your TL all day long, you can focus a lot more on everything else.

Youtube is not a social media, but it’s addicting too, so I suggest you to delete it for a while.

Great, isn’t it? But it’s easier said than done.

Don’t pretend you aren’t addicted, we all are. We can’t just stop when we want.

So I decided to challenge myself with a “15 days without social media detox”, and while I’m at it, I thought I could keep track of this experience and share it.

I hope it encourages someone to try it!

Day 1 was obviously the hardest.

When I woke up in the morning, checking out twitter notifications used to be the first thing I did, even before taking a shower or having breakfast.

But from that day, I only looked if I had important messages on Whatsapp, then I tossed my phone away in another room.

To avoid feeling lonely, I turned on my mp3 player and listened to music or random Finnish sentences to learn while I was doing house chores and my usual morning stuff.

It was almost scary to see how my hand automatically tried to reach my phone, from time to time, to check out notifications or open a random app. I literally had to stop myself and avoid being in the same room with my phone while I was reading or doing everything else.

My productivity on that day increased a lot and without distractions I was able to fully concentrate on my tasks and get them done faster and better.

At night, I always used to sleep kinda late: I went to bed around midnight and stayed awake for about an hour watching random youtube videos.

Since I couldn’t do that anymore, I went to sleep as soon as I felt tired. It was 11 pm.

On the 2^nd day, I obviously woke up early without any effort.

But my impulse of checking out twitter still was there. I realized I needed to physically touch my phone from time to time, with random excuses, like checking out the time at least.

So I went back to my dear watch, which I haven’t used since college days.

From that moment, I gradually started to detox from social media and it became easier each day.

The biggest problem came when I was out waiting for someone and I couldn’t scroll twitter or random apps to kill some time while waiting; but it was easily solved, I just listened to music as I used to do when I was a teen and twitter didn’t even exist. Yeah, I’m that old.

After a few more days, when I felt satisfied enough to give myself a short break, I’ve decided to jump back on twitter for a little while, just to read if I was missing out something great or if I had urgent messages to answer; after I replied, I backed out immediately and decided to make my social media break longer. I wasn’t missing anything important at all, but my productivity increased a lot in the past days, so I knew the best way for me.

This led to a total of 15 days without social media of any kind, and I can say proudly it was a great choice to make.

I can’t go as far as saying “it changed my life”, but it improved it a lot, that’s sure: my free time increased, my eyes don’t hurt anymore (spending hours in front of a screen will damage your eyesight, be careful!), I read a lot of books and overall I just feel better.

So, here I am to encourage you to try it, at least for a few days, and see if you feel better and your productivity increases too! I swear it works, it may be hard, but it’s definitely worth the effort.

I’m not here to say I won’t use social media anymore, but after this break I’ve realized how addicted I was and how it damaged my life; but now I’ve changed, I can control myself and draw a line.

I’ll still go back on twitter from time to time and I’ll still update this blog, of course; but you may not see me around so often anymore. Don’t be sad, I’m not disappearing!

I’m still playing games, so reviews and updates will come soon.

See you in my Starry Sky After Summer review!

One day I randomly woke up thinking: “I wonder how many routes I’ve played… I guess I’ve dated about 600 2D boys, but maybe they are actually more?” and since I love writing these kind of random and useless posts, I actually counted them!

Can you guess how many are they?

Let’s talk about my most memorable routes, before looking at numbers.

You already know my best boys, since I made an husbando Top10, but there are a lot of unforgettable routes and characters who never made it into any list, so I think they deserve a mention now, for bad or good reasons.

Obviously, this might contain some spoilers, be careful!

MOST MEMORABLE ROUTES FOR WRONG REASONS:

Talking about horrific moments, obviously Moshikami’s Masato is the first one who comes to everyone’s mind.

But there are many characters twisted in different ways, whose routes made me think “who the hell decided this stuff was appropriate for an otome game??”.

One of the most terrible experiences I had was Seri, from Dynamic chord Liar-s.

Well, that series had abuse in many routes, but Seri was the most disgusting, since he was even guilt shaming the poor heroine for not falling in love with him and deserving rape for this reason. A fine gentleman we have here. Not that Tokiharu’s route in Kyohso was that better.

Rapists aside, there’s another shocking character who has absolutely no feelings of empathy, which makes him an emotionless creep: Chouchou Jiken’s Riitomo.

Wow, that man was really something.

But I think the route that got stuck in to my mind as the most annoying and painful to sit through was Ayato’s in More Blood: he kept sucking blood from the poor Yui, insulting her and leaving her alone after she fainted. The whole route just kept showing similar scenes of abuse, she felt so weak and fragile, all alone… I’ve never felt so much pity and sadness for an heroine. I couldn’t like Ayato from the moment, even if his personality changed a lot in most recent games.

MOST MEMORABLE ROUTES FOR GOOD REASONS:

You’d probably expect me to talk about good boys here, but…. you know, my tastes are terrible and maybe not conventional.

I could explain to you how Shinnosuke’s route gave me a sense of fulfillment and pure happiness, when I completed Glass Heart Princess Platinum; I could tell you how my heart started racing wildly when I was playing Ikki’s route in Amnesia Later; I could show you all my love for that sad, lonely creature called Kagiha, from Kokuchou Psychedelica.

But it’s something you can also read in my TOP10 husbando.

Here I won’t judge their actions.

Here’s the place where even bad boys like Mejojo and Auger are loved, since their personalities are so strong and powerful, but at the same time fragile and complicated, I couldn’t help but pity them, instead of hating; they were probably the greatest villains I’ll ever met in an otome game.

They were so amazing, they managed to crawl from the status of cruel villains to main characters.

You can love every single character of Black wolves saga, you can feel empathy for Julian, you may want to heal Rath’s sadness, you may want to devote yourself to your perfect oniichan… but you can’t stop fearing the wolves. You can’t pretend they don’t exist, no matter which route you’re playing.

Same goes for Piofiore’s Yang. Just by looking at characters like them, you can feel their special aura.

Another route I’ll never forget, is Bad Medicine’s English teacher.

I imagined myself confined in that punishment room, alone with him and his whip, in fear for my life… if only his route was longer and better written. It’s sad to see such potential wasted.

Can we also take a moment to appreciate Haruma from Blackish house?

His route was a roller coaster of pain, despair and sadness; but most of all, I can’t forget how he was somehow always observing the heroine in every other routes, being also present in many bad endings.

I’ve played a lot of great routes, with happy endings and weddings, but somehow the characters who are still carved deep in my memories are the most desperate ones, the tortured souls.

I wonder if I’m the only one? I bet most of the players expected me to talk about Lupin from Code realize, or Aiji from Collar Malice. Or Hijikata.

Well, they were good too, I can’t deny it. But their personalities are not that impressive for me.

Somehow, I feel I could write a book just analyzing every Diabolik Lover’s character instead, it would be more interesting; but I’m sure someone already did it and wrote some kind of never ending Bible.

Now, let’s go back to the question which led to this post in the first place: how many characters did I play? Since I’ve recently reached my 100^th game, I expected them to be around 600/700.

But since there are many series, sequels and fandisks (I obviously counted every character only once, even if I played more routes with him), they were actually only 469!

Are you surprised? I was, but it’s still a pretty high number of confessions, first kisses, happiness and pain! But still, there are many memories that will stay with me for a long time.

I wonder if someone else will get curious and start counting too… let me know your number, if you try!

2018 really ended too fast, it feels like the shortest year of my life; a lot of bad and good things happened, but overall it was nice and enjoyable.

It felt like a peaceful year, especially if I compare it to 2017, while 2019 it’s going to be harder for sure. But it’s too early to worry about it now.

Well, let’s take a look at my past resolutions and see what I was able to accomplish in these past months.

In 2018, I wanted to:

“Be positive. I want to wake up in the morning and feel happy just for being alive, instead of sighing and complaining all the time.”

I feel a lot better now, my mental health improved a lot after I quit my job and I was able to leave all the worst feelings behind me; it was hard, but I made it.

“Find a better job.”

I haven’t started yet, but I found a place to work from January/February.

I’m worried but happy, I hope this new start will be positive!

“Study more Japanese.”

Well….. I admit it, I haven’t studied that much.

My japanese probably didn’t improve, but I’m still playing otoge almost everyday and I keep watching idol stuff and dramas without english subs, so it didn’t get worse. At least, I hope so.

Without a goal of traveling to Japan soon, I didn’t feel the motivation to increase my level.

“Learn Finnish.”

I did my best! Well, honestly my level is still terrible, but I can understand many words and even simple sentences. I’m nowhere fluent and I probably won’t ever be, but since I started from the most basic point (I literally knew just kiitos), being able to listen to music and somehow understand the general meaning or at least some words, still feels good to me.

If next year I’ll be able to travel there, as I hope, I’ll do my best to keep improving!

“Improve my blog.”

I can’t judge for myself, my readers should tell me if my blog improved… but I updated it at a good pace and I always tried to write interesting posts, so I think I can be quite proud of my work!

“Write on another blog.”

I wanted to write on another anime blog, but I only watch like 1 or 2 anime every season, so it didn’t make sense. Well, no regrets!

I’m quite satisfied, I managed to accomplish a lot of my 2018 resolutions!

I guess it’s time to aim even higher and set my goals for 2019:

1- Start a new job

After my needed break, I’m ready for something new! It’s going to be hard, but also exciting and I hope it will be a good experience! I’ve never worked in a shop, my past job was in an office and it was completely different… dealing with customers will probably be hard, but I’m positive.

2- Move to a better city

I don’t like this town and I just lived here because this house was close to my previous job.

But I’m done with that place, so I want to move somewhere else, with a nicer environment!

3- Travel to Finland

It has always been one of my dreams, maybe it’s the right moment to make it come true!

4- Improve my Finnish and Japanese. And maybe even start learning German?

I love languages, but learning is a never-ending process so I can’t stop studying or I would probably forget everything; if I have time enough, I’d love to learn German or Swedish.

5- Read at least 20 books

I love reading and this year I discovered again my long lost love for Agatha Christie.

I want to read all her books, they are more than 80 so it won’t be possible so soon… but I set a goal of 20 for next year!

6- Keep working on my blog to make it useful and interesting

I don’t think my love for otoge will disappear soon, but it would be nice if I could keep up writing reviews despite my busy days.

7- Make more friends!

Moving for my job and life problems made difficult for me to meet real life friends and after college ended our lives became busier.

I’ll do my best to meet new people and become more extrovert.

Well, that’s all.

I set a lot of goals, maybe I’m too optimistic, but I can’t just stay still and expect miracles to happen without efforts. I’m going to work hard next year to become a better person.

Thank you all for reading my blog and bearing with me through these years, I hope your 2019 will be wonderful and your wishes will come true!