HAPPY NEW YEAR, today’s deck is the Necronomicon… no yeah, that’s the name.
Today’s choice of mat and deck was deliberate as a way to close the year. A deck about the unknown plus a mat with art I really like. The latter bit will make sense when I talk about this year’s goals.
The deck itself is… a bit tryhard. I don’t like using that word because it has been used so many times in the past to dismiss someone or something trying to be Genuine, but Hierophant and Lovers becoming Knoledge and The Aliens does feel like it’s trying a bit too much.
Today’s reading suggests that the key to moving on is to be content (though not complacent, mind you) and just move on.
I’ll start with my day, and I’ll start with the fact that this is the FOURTH year where I don’t make a reservation in advance for trains and then act shocked when everything is full to the gills.
I got into a Gran Class car (or rather, there were no options) and had a very comfortable ride to Nagano. On the way I finished the Oscar Wars book and was… flashbanged by the fact that the Sokkai Gakkai nutjobs were mentioned, but then again it wouldn’t be the first cult Hollywood partakes in.
Overall the book was really good, it had that very specific combination of being made by someone that’s both critical and a big fan of the Oscars.
I made it to Nagano after hour and a half and then decided to splurge on a cab instead of the bus because fuck it, I wanna treat myself first thing in the year… also I didn’t know if a bus would leave me close enough to the hotel where lugging my luggage wouldn’t be a problem.
Hakuba was most definitely a closer ride than Niseko… and yes, if the name sounds familiar I DID literally pick Hakuba just because it reminds me of Aria of Sorrow,
The hotel is lovely, but I also immediately thought “either Hercule Poirot or Conan Edogawa is gonna knock on my door any moment now to ask me for questions about a murder case in the building.”
I got to the nearby ski resort to grab food and because I went right after lunch time ended but like an hour before dinner, I just got a Subway sandwich, Rost Beef to be specific.
The one fast food chain I miss from Venezuela is Subway, they didn’t even pretend to keep up the healthy pretense.
I got back to my room, took a quick nap fully expecting this to be when I sleep through the countdown but I got hungry, noticed there was a Seven Eleven at a reasonable walking distance… and this is where the night got interesting.
So the walk itself had nothing noteworthy aside from how brightly lit everything was. My last frame of reference for this sort of thing was Niseko and that’s a place with no cabs where if you don’t take a bus or ride a car you’re fucked, so seeing sensibly walkable streets wth people still walking about was pleasant.
So I get back to my room and… I don’t have my room key.
I drop my conbini loot, check every single pocket, empty out my wallet and still no luck.
Well whatever, I just go to the reception aaaaaaaaaaand the reception’s closed.
And so here lies Fer, receiving the year 2025 sitting outside the room he got locked out of, eating Seven Eleven ramen on the floor while thinking “well, it’s a story to tell, at least”.
In hindsight, if I spent all that time and I had the keycard in one pocket I forgot to check, that would’ve probably been even more painful.
Plenty of things ran through my mind in that moment, and one of the most salient one was the fact that this was “on brand” for me, but if so, what’s my “brand”?
After talking with friends and ruminating about it, I came to the conclusion that my brand is basically “that sure is an immensely dumb thing to happen to someone supposedly smart”.
My life tends to be filled with many moments that leave people… not concerned or horrified or anything extreme, just wondering how and why. And the answer is that I don’t really think ahead ever. I might project obvious consequences and I do have a sense of self-preservation, but on the whole I’ve lerned that if I think too hard I do nothing so I just act and use my quick wits when needed.
That’s how I end up locked outside my room, or crossing shallow water with my only pair of shoes, or doing groceries during a hurricane advisory, or walking a few kilometers uphil with luggage in the middle of summer because “hey how far could the hotel be?”.
That was in many ways where my night ended. I had to loiter on the lobby until 6AM when the staff finally dropped in. If you’re wondering how I didn’t go insane, turns out spending a good chunk of your life in a country where there would be daily blackouts of upwards of six hours IF YOU’RE LUCKY trains your patience something fierce.
So let’s talk about what I want for this year.
I want a girlfriend.
…ok that one is half joke half more of a complex matter.
“I want a girlfriend” has been a wish I’ve projected into the world since I was a teenager… so effectively for like 20 years now I guess. And to be fair, if one is to believe in affirmations and all that nonsense, the world HAS heard me. Each year I’ve gotten a new Girl Friend that I would gladly take a bullet for, why in 2024 I even reconnected with at least three! But no Girlfriend singular word.
Like I said the statement nowadays is at least half a personal joke, Like I’d be married and still giggle to myself saying I’d like a Girlfriend as New Year’s goal just for the sake of tradition.
No I will not fix my sense of humor, thank you.
And while I’m just a romantic in the end, the fuel behind the wish itself has definitely shifted.
As a teenager it just felt like needed validation, like “if I get a GF that will be proof that I deserve the same as others”. Then it became more like “I just wish I had someone I could share my interests, hobbies and whatnot with”, then it was like “I’m lonely I just need honest companionships”, and finally I got to “I’m always on guard, I just wish I had someone that I could share some of the load with”.
Shockingly (especially for someone as Horny on Main as me) lust has never been a factor. I guess I’ve always craved the companionship and intimacy while thinking that if I need to relieve myself I’ve been doing that just fine by myself.
I’m the complete opposite of a touchy person, and even though I’ve learned to handle the touchier social conventions, it’s just not something I’m 100% comfortable about, which makes Japan’s more distanced approach to socializing a shocking fit for myself.
Back to the wishes, those have never left. All of those complexes from the validation to wanting someone I can lower every single guard with are still there and are definitely partner considerations… but they’re also things I’ve had to work on for myself by myself.
While this statement is obviously tinted by someone with a complex about relying on others, I do believe that working on those complexes and such instead of hoping that someone else (be it partner or offspring) will fix it is a fool’s thought. We all carry our own weight, sometimes the other person will have too much on their plate and if you depend too hard on them then things are gonna get ugly.
That last thought doesn’t come from Fer the Untrusting but from the Fer that once had a really bad dependency problem. The one whose whole emotional stability depended on whether or not I’d have a conversation with someone that day.
Sure, I still get grumpy when lonely and chatting with friends does improve my day, but it doesn’t get to “I forget to eat in anguish if I wake up and there’s nobody around”.
So as all those complexes have been worked on, what’s left? Just someone to share life with, really, that’s it. No big ambition of having five kids, no laundry list of physical requirements, not even someone with specific shared tastes, just someone to live with, support, and be supported by.
For the record, if the the cosmos throws another Girl Friend, two words, my way, I will not complain one single bit.
Professionally, last year was a cleanup sort of year (yes, YEAR) and I hope to be able to actually start working on some projects I want this year. In fact, you might remember me voicing frustrations around September about not being able to work on said project.
Creatively I want to keep taking travel photos every month, I’m already working on a new photobook, and there’s a photo tutorial I told a friend to help me with. I also wanna keep singing.
The main difference this year is that I wanna get “serious” (as serious as one can be about something not intended to make a living out of) about drawing.
it’s a topic that probably will require explaining bit by bit as relevant, for example, one big factor was that in 2024 I finally had all the artbooks that I perused digitally to exhaustion as a teen and that reminded me of how much I liked illustration back then.
The bigger macro point, however, is that it feels like I’ve finally shook most of the weird pressures and chains I imposed on myself on the matter. Like I finally dug to the core of “I like it, it makes me happy” buried underneath a million layers of practicality and anxieties.
I said last time 2024 was the year where the me I built felt like one I shouldn’t be anxious that it might crumble, 2025 is probably the year where I dig around the rubble from the last catastrophe for bits even I might’ve forgotten in the shuffle.
And if you noticed your browser has a different icon for this website, that’s my first step on that path.
The specific origins of this rune have been buried by the sands of time, but it was a symbol I used for my OC in elementary school, meant to be like… his insignia and stuff.
You see, my middle name is Angel (pronounced Ann-hell, like the KOF character) and like many kids I tried to find my identity in my own name, so with a bunch of doodling and vague recollections on the rules of how kanjis were drawn I ended up with this.
It was EVERYWHERE in my old notebooks and such.
And so as my first act for the year, I’m bringing back the angel rune from the depths of oblivion, may it be the bridge between current me and the fragments of myself lost in the chaos.
…yeah, I’ll make a version that’s less of an eyesore eventually.
All of the above thoughts were drafted while I was stuck outside my room by the way. Thank God my phone’s battery didn’t die before I could type most of it.