Contrails: Aug '26, Week 2

The week was alright! Considering that I had marked most of my week as a holiday because my partner was home, I managed to work on various things! ✨

🌙 Working 🌙

Before getting into the highlight of the week, let me briefly run through the various things I worked on (most of which are will W.I.P.):

1. Practiced the lyrics of the next solo cover. It's a mouthful, so I haven't moved on to practicing expression yet... But I believe that it will be worth the effort! 🎵

2. Edited collab. vocals. It's refreshing to edit someone else's lines! 💜

3. Split and assigned lyrics for yet another collab. This particular project will likely take VERY long, but it's with my long time friend (the length of our friendship will expose how old I am 🤣), so I initiated the project for us to have something to reconnect over. ⭐️

Now for the (work) highlight of the week: I'm back on YouTube with a full solo cover!

https://youtu.be/6hzCdztqo4U

The accents on ShenShouJing are intentional: it's supposed to be 神兽镜 in Mandarin, or Divine/ God Beast Mirror. 🥺💜 Fun fact: My nickname amongst my close friends in high school was 鏡 (Kyou, mirror, short for 鏡夜, Kyouya)

Since watching Symphogear (and Symphogear G) over a decade ago, I have returned to this song time and time again. I could never relate to how far Kohinata Miku (the protagonist's close friend) was willing to put herself in harm's way for her friend, but I've always appreciated the strength of her conviction expressed through her song. Back in the day, it was difficult to find the full version of this song on the internet, probably because this insert song was only played once. I only found 1 upload of it on DailyMotion, and bookmarked it so that I could listen to the crunchy low-quality track whenever I felt like it. 🤣

Fast forward to present day: I had included this song in the Anisong Karaoke Medley that I had planned to make. But when I decided to scrap the idea, I looked through the list of 30 songs for those that had official instrumentals available online. Lo and behold, I managed to find it for Waikyou ShenShouJing (only 4/30 songs had official instrumentals)! 🎉 So it was finally time to cover it!

I've made so many memories since discovering this song. I've walked in and out of so many people's lives. Some encounters left deeper impressions on me, and I tried to express the hollowness that they had left behind. I hope my spin on the song was acceptable by fans of the series. 🙃

いつも鳴き声で。

Anyway, I have just 2 more covers that I plan to publish before the end of 2026. Once they're out, I'll finally be able to fully transition to the new vision for myself. On the outside, it will seem like I went back to square 1 with regards to content creation. But I'm really looking forward to just being me (no, I'm not going to become a flesh-tuber 🤣).

I'm just tired of Content Creation. (Not that I've made a lot of it.) It has become too easy to be a "Creator" today. Too easy to trip on red tape, yet too easy to skip the learning process by outsourcing it to someone (or something) else. So whether the internet recognizes it or not, I'm going to keep making things, because:

We are all figments of someone's imagination. We are slaves to our past, masters of our present, and champions of our future. We continue to exist and live our truths even if without witness.

Only I can make my Self, Life, and Being.

Even if "I" am unmade by someone (or something) else, "I" will still be remade.

🎮 Gaming 🎮

Is Evercold here yet?

I spent a lot of time this week watching my partner play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, so I didn't game much myself. But I did play Forza Horizon 6, Divinity Original Sin, and Final Fantasy XIV! On 15 August (Saturday), my partner and I took some pics together in FFXIV for our Ceremony of Eternal Bonding anniversary. Happy 7th year of playing the game together! 🤎🐱🐱🩷

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🐰 Living 🐰

11 August was also the anniversary of our house move! We presented the house with a star that I made the week before to commemorate and appreciate the shelter and comfort it has provided us for the past year. 🙏🙏 I learned from my mother that Home is more than just the place and people gathered in it. If you care for the space, and let it grow with you through the seasons, memories of Home and the people in it will feel ever more vivid. The passing seasons spent in it are less likely to blend into 1 collective vague memory. You don't need lots of money, big changes, or perfection. Just intentional, sincere touches that bring you joy. 💖

She didn't explicitly teach me all this, of course. She simply did it because it felt right, and didn't need affirmation or logic to validate the choice to follow her heart. The eyes of true royalty to perceive such a faint, quiet beauty. 💜 Will I learn to see such depth and simplicity as she does within my lifetime too? 🥺

Anyway! My partner and I also made our rare shopping trip to town. ✨ We mainly purchased nice groceries from Don Don Donki and patronized the ramen and ten-don restaurant that we frequent. 🤣

At the start of the year, I wrote in my yearly planner that I wanted to eat dango, and I finally got my hands on it! 💜💜💜 It was everything I imagined it to be. 🥹 Also, we found smaller versions of my already SMOL hippo out in the wild! They were so cute, but after playing with them for a while I decided that SMOL hippo was enough for me. 💜💜💜

~💜~

Hopes for this week

♪ Edit vocals

♪ Practice vocals

♪ Start making lyrics animations for the collab MV if time allows

☆ General medical check up came back with no leads, so I'm hoping that my recovery progresses well so that there's no need for invasive tests. On the bright side, I seem perfectly healthy otherwise!

☆ Play Divinity

☆ Play Forza 💜

☆ Decide if I want to buy Spirit City: Lofi Sessions - Magical Library DLC on release. 🤔

Thank you for reading! 🌙🐰