I need to pause for a sec and share this little tidbit: So… I’ve just started a new project for my design class, which involves visualising data. I was brainstorming what sort of data to visualise, and I decided to look at my blog’s Google Analytics, figuring it would be easy because the data is all there starting from around May 2015 (which is when I switched to WordPress). Now I usually never check Google Analytics because it’s too confusing and stats can be toxic for me to care about. But I checked for this project and I realised that my stats plummeted after May; like, my sessions/users/page views per month have almost halved 😮

With a bit of reflecting, I feel like my content has started to become very formulaic and I haven’t been very creative with my writing. Sometimes I’m not even all that thoughtful with my writing. This past week was the first time in a long time I drafted a week-in-review blog post the night before I planned to publish it. And I’m doing the same for this month-in-review blog post (eek!).

I guess I’m just saying this to commit to myself to… put more effort into this space? Make this space more intimate? Do more than just documentation? Do more reflection? Find more inspiration? Anywho, since I’m thinking about this right now, I would love if you could leave some of your favourite posts/categories from this blog down in the comments! What would you like to see more of?

This past week was both long and short. It was a blur. Honestly I didn’t do very much. I’m usually good about not sleeping in, but this past week I probably spent most of my time in bed. I was feeling down for no particular reason and found it hard to find motivation to do things. (Don’t worry about me! I’m fine, just a little moodier than usual.) Normally if I feel like this for awhile, I’d go for a swim in hopes of catching some endorphins, but my cartilage piercing was feeling sensitive so I didn’t want to risk it. And also it’s so cold in the mornings, which makes it hard to get out of bed. And I need to get more sleep now that I’m not relying on coffee anymore. This week I’m going to try to get early kickstarts to the days, and get myself out of the apartment with meetings or work sessions with friends.

This past week I was on fall break! I had a bunch of plans but I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t do most of it. I realised that I’m not good at doing a little bit of everything every day; I’m better at spending one day doing one thing and another day doing another thing. Or maybe one big thing and one or two small things per day. I don’t know if this is something I should work on or work with, but it’s something I have to figure out for days I don’t have classes to structure my schedule (like, every day of fall break).

It was a rough week man! I’m just glad that it’s finally fall break! I spent my previous weekend working on finishing the “zeroth” draft of my senior thesis, which meant that I didn’t do any work for any of my other classes, which meant that I was playing catch-up throughout the week and staying up late to complete assignments. I was looking forward to recovering this past weekend, but my schedule has been packed, what with everyone wanting to celebrate and hang out before they leave for their fall break trips. I’m just staying in Philly though–got lots of things to do! Did you see my fall break plans?

Last fall and spring break, I filled my days with creative endeavors, and since I haven’t been working on my own creative personal projects this school year so far, I thought that I would use my fall break to make up for it (I wanted to try an Instagram challenge and the 10×10 wardrobe challenge). But alas, there are too many things for me to do, so I won’t be able to go as overboard as I usually do (last fall I tried a new recipe, shot my new watch, had an autumnal photoshoot with friends, and made cookie butter freakshakes–even I’m impressed!). BUT. It’ll still be a great fall break, and my future self will thank my past self for being productive. And I’m actually interested in the work I’m doing, so that’s a plus.

I had a long weekend this weekend! It wasn’t particularly eventful for me since I had to work on my thesis draft all weekend, but I had a long weekend nonetheless! UPenn was on fall break starting Thursday, which meant I didn’t have my Thursday 4:30PM-7:30PM class, and my linguistics senior seminar cancelled class to give us time to work on our thesis and turn in our first draft (“Draft 0”) by Sunday night, so my last class of the week ended Thursday at 1:00PM and my weekend commenced!