Zen Crib Notes

Yesterday I had my second Pfizer jab and now all of my family are fully vaccinated! Arm hurts a lot but not too many side effects yesterday. Until this morning; had a fever and wondered why I must work on Fridays as I lay hot under the covers. I'm fine now, but it was a pretty exhausting day just to get some immunity going on in my body.

I've been collecting books and manga again, now that I have some disposable income. I started getting into Witch Hat Atelier, Eniale & Dewiela, Aria, and Emma: A Victorian Romance. I just bought Hayao Miyazaki's two books, Starting Point (1979-1996) and Turning Point (1997-2008); this is mostly in an effort to understand his creative journey and start of his career than finding insight in his creative process, but I'm also interested in the animation industry in Japan in general. Now if only the TBR pile full of ARCs and previously bought books aren't also staring back at me...

I was getting into Bravely Default II but have not quite made it past Chapter 1 of the story due to being sidetracked by other games. Mostly, a replay of the Ace Attorney games on my Switch and Disco Elysium. Disco Elysium in particular held onto me because of how text-heavy and immersive the world is, and how the game encourages you to explore different aspects of your player character's personality in response to the absurd and fantastic world in front of you. The fact that it's fully voiced and involves incredibly character-rich NPCs really sold me, on top of having the PC's own personality traits speak to you and judge your actions (or lead you down to solidifying certain character traits) as you rebuild yourself. Also, I am largely incapable of being anything other than a weirdo detective who wants to restart Communism in that game, which I guess is like being a Purple!Hawke in DA2 terms but more politically edifying. 

Creatively, I feel like I'm constantly bombarded by inspiration that gets stuck in a very narrow funnel of my own capabilities, which is that I am only limited by using my hands and brain to write something but my imagination begs me to create giant magnum opuses that completely encapsulates everything I feel and want in a story. 

For example, I started on a WIP for an Ace Attorney fic, and then I google everything about law and procedures and then I google "what happens in a courtroom" as if I have never spent years watching police procedural shows but it had never occurred to me that they never go into the details of what lawyers do or what happens during and after trials. 

And then suddenly, my brain goes "do you remember Last Exile, that really cool anime with a not-quite-as-good-but-equally-immersive sequel?" and of course, the most vivid memory I have of Last Exile (aside from the villainess, Delphine, being deliciously and completely-over-the-top evil *chef's kiss*) was that there needs to be justice for Sophia Forrester, and that justice should come in the form of a coffee-loving guy who valiantly saved her from death and voiced by Steve Blum, not the unrequited not-love interest brooding guy who was totally into putting her in danger if it means killing the object of his revenge. 

And of course, I went on Ebay and bought art books of Last Exile and Ace Attorney because I need more visual stimulus and collection. I also fear that Last Exile products are going to be pretty rare and hard to get hold of, so I'm in the kind of hoarding-mode that I haven't been since I was very into anime fandom and attending conventions. 

Well, that's been the product of my first quarter of the year: me, impotently reaching out to the void and saying "Do-Do you remember... Last Exile..? Do you care about side characters a, b, and c?" 
 

I’m on my way to San Francisco to volunteer at Litquake for a couple of days! Will be in Oakland for a night at an Airbnb but will be around networking events and being with my old high school friend who is letting me crash tomorrow night. Pretty excited since I haven’t been to SF for a few years and also that being in literary settings keeps me motivated.  

I’ll be flying out this Sunday to NYC to attend Book Expo of America 2019. I’ll be staying with my grand aunt who lives... somewhere in NYC, and will mostly be networking and attending panels at the convention.

Earlier this week, I received a surprise email from Wiley asking for a second interview in their Hoboken, NJ office! I honestly was not expecting to be shortlisted and feel pretty good about myself when I saw the news early in the morning. It also helped that the available interview time will be next Wednesday, where I will be in the area anyway. It’s honestly a huge ego boost for me, after numerous phone interviews and in-person interviews in publishing roles but not advancing further in the interview process. Yesterday, I decided to buy some new clothes and makeup for the interview, and also asked my uncle-in-law for interview help, as he’s someone who is knowledgeable in that area. Sobs, I need to actualize my degree... the whole reason I put myself in London and faced indignities with my non-EU status... 

I’ve also had an interview offer with the local comic book store in my city, so you know at the very least I can start at the bottom of the industry in a field I am actually passionate with! Even though I signed the contract to work as an ESL instructor for the summer, I can either at least cancel it while in the early stages of training, or to rebound into it while taking on part-time work! I REALLY WANT SOME THINGS TO HAPPEN, YEAH? 

While in NYC, I will also be meeting up with some high school friends who live there, and also with a former roommate when I was in London. All in all, I think I should bank my life in the East Coast as soon as possible, whether that happens in the beginning or end of summer. I don’t understand how the heart of publishing is in the East Coast or maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough in California, but the Indeed openings really speak for themselves on that front.  

In March, I went back to London to get some stuff I left behind and also to attend the London Book Fair. London Book Fair was good: I got free booze and cake from publishers like OUP and networked with new people and hung out with colleagues I’ve known for a while. I gave one of my professors a See’s Candies Irish Potato in commemoration of St. Patrick’s day due to the fact that she’s Irish (which makes talking to her about Brexit super fun and also about the book Milkman, which is an excellent read), and I made some good connections with people in Children’s Literature through the Children’s Media Conference on behalf of my old internship. 

After LBF, I went to the Netherlands to tour around and visit places. I went to Eindhoven due to it being cheaper to fly into and stay in, but it’s only a two hour train ride to Amsterdam, which I visited throughout my five day stay. I also met with a Dutchman whom I talked to in Frankfurt Book Fair way out in the country, where he worked in a printing company. We talked about working in the Netherlands and the state of publishing there, and I still thought about filing in paperwork for a work visa in the Netherlands where I don’t need a work sponsorship to job search there. 

The big mistake was when I entered back into London. Border security became “concerned” that I didn’t have a return ticket to the states yet, and had even accused me of not having left the country after my student visa expired back in January. One, I did, and they even noted that i came back to the country back in the beginning of March anyway. They also asked me if I had a boyfriend there, as if that was reason enough to return to the country so soon after my visa finished, and they were suddenly “confused” as to why I would come back to visit the UK after leaving. which, for one, within my right to do so as an American traveler anyway, and also there isn’t any kind of grace period where i can re-enter the country. An issue which was already addressed when I flew in anyway by Border Security in Gatwick Airport. Well, they pulled me aside, and told me that they wouldn’t let me into the country until I bought a return ticket within a week after coming in. So that meant that I flew back to California on March 28. 

I finished my second play through of P5, choosing to end on a bad ending for my ENG file and starting over with full personality stats. Finishing it the second time around lets me see the story looking for all the foreshadowing leading to late game plot, and also seeing if some of the things that occur during the early story plot holds up for how the late game structures its conflict resolution.

Here’s some non-spoiler observations:

Not that it isn’t more evident in the JPN version, but Goro Akechi sounds more obviously patronizing in English, and especially so to Sae who is supposed to be his superior. I guess the mild-mannered personality doesn’t stop him from throwing jabs at authority through being condescending to at least two female characters (both Sae and Makoto). 

Also, Sae is a really good example of someone who goes through the risks of both the glass ceiling and a glass cliff, and it’s kind of irritating to see someone who suffers through this being used as implied motivation for her initial position as an antagonistic character. 

Having replayed through Persona 4 to completion recently, I can honestly say that Ryuji is actually less sexist and annoyingly horny than other male characters sharing those characteristics in this franchise. Eikichi and late-game Junpei (especially through FeMC in P3P’s route) are actually the best ones. I think it’s cuz Ryuji’s other flaws as a glory hound are more forefront, but compared to Persona 4 and in instances of 3, the fan service moments that Ryuji partakes in does actually move the plot foreword and at least doesn’t go through creepy, nonconsensual forms of fan service that Yosuke makes in the slice-of-life portions of P4. In hindsight, P4 really did not age well in that aspect, since I recall those specific shenanigans as being fairly normalized in that era of anime. 

Got an interview for a small film production studio in North London, was told it was great, but unfortunately they wanted someone with more experience in the field.

Which, siggghhhh. I was hoping they would take a chance on me so I can build on my existing skills alongside getting new ones; I was really hyped in wanting to do audio and help on their podcast, especially since audio is a huge opportunity now in Publishing.

This derailed my plans for coming back to the UK under a different visa, although I’m also seeing this as a blessing in disguise; I’m not really thrilled in the idea of spending most of 2019 in an unpaid, full-time internship when there’d be a very low chance of getting a work visa considering that Home Office isn’t exactly keen on getting more people into the country. 

I guess this means that I should just stay at home and apply for work. My student debt isn’t going any lower nor the interest rates, and I think I should just get on with trying out freelancing while applying for jobs in California. Or New York. I can at least apply for internships in New York for publishing jobs in the summer. The other option, if I decided to leave the States for work abroad, is to go for the Orientation permit in the Netherlands where recent graduates can have up to three-years work visa to find a job there. What with the Brexit putting the country in shambles, maybe getting out of the UK is a good thing. 

It just sucks to leave all the friends and contacts I had there. 

When I'm not volunteering at a historical house for the marketing manager, I go to network events. Talks at the Google Academy, parties at a pub, and panels about historical romance. It's not so much network as it is about knowing the industry, but I'm just about there to meet people. It makes me feel productive when I'm not procrastinating from doing my dissertation or writing cover letters. 

I hoarded a lot of free books from Book Expo, and I bought a couple for myself on Kindle and as a physical copy. Trying to go through the pile of YA from Pan Macmillan but, well, there's just so much I can tolerate from reading in a 1st person pov sometimes. But next on my list is "The Girl King" by Mimi Yu and "Darius the Great is Not Okay" by Adib Khopram, as they're going to be the coming fall's darlings in having more diverse authors. I finished reading "Solo Exchange Diary: Sequel to My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness", and "Call Me By Your Name" both of which is timely for UK's pride month in July. 

I'm listening to podcasts a lot. "Mostly Lit" which is like a book club by a trio of BAME professionals who are in publishing in one form or another, and having strong opinions about philosophy, films, and the book they're reading. The most recent episode has the grandson of Nelson Mandela as their guest for Mandela 100, which is really cool, and before that it was Gabourey Sidibe, when she was in the UK to promote her autobiography. I'm also listening to "Stuff You Should Know" to keep me company, and I try to keep up with "This American Life" but I feel recently it's sometimes hit and miss. I'm behind already on Critical Role, because trying to keep focus on a four hour podcast episode can test my ability to pay attention sometimes. "London Book Reviews" podcast also has some pretty neat authors speaking, and the actual physical bookshop itself is really cute. "Alice Isn't Dead" is also something I'm catching up on too, in anticipation for the book that's going to be released in October.

I haven't sat down to play FFXIV in a long time, not just because I felt tugged around by other strong powers, but also because I suspect that my computer might be reaching its limit on playing MMOs at the lowest settings. Which is a shame because I've been milking Heavensward still and still haven't started going into the next installment. I did finish playing "Transistor" and the Atelier of Dusk games recently, and am going through a replay of the Ace Attorney games. Visual novels has claimed me for a while, playing "The Arcana" and "Regency Love" because I really do like impassioned indie studios making a labor of love that isn't a fairly pared down anime visual novel app. 

Hopefully once this dissertation is done I can revisit past games and books I enjoyed. Persona 4 and a proper game of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Maybe trudge through FFXIV without fear of destroying my computer. Lot of netflix to watch. But now I'm just trying to get productive in a heat wave, and it suuuucks. 

 Term 2 is just about finished, once I got this essay out, and so it'll just be me, a dissertation, and a lot of events that I hope to fill out my time (publishing related)

Back in April, I attended the London Book Fair, where authors, people in sales, representatives of international and local publishing houses come together to buy and sell rights and get the intel on what is the next prospective hit in the publishing world. The theme for that event was the Balkans, which means many panels and events revolving around what's new and innovative about publishing from the Balkan countries such as Latvia, Estonia, and so on. 

It was a good walk around the convention center in Olympia, London; I went to a lot of events targeting networking and the Society of Young Publishers where people trying to get into publishing come in to talk with hiring managers and people in publishing about how to get a damn entry-level job there.

Pretty sure no one is going to get me a visa sponsorship to work in the UK tho. Curse you, big name publishers! Penguin Random House can be like "oh our pay gap is actually much more equal compared to other big names (cough cough Harper Collins), but they're like "oh... we don't mention at all how to get international workers here." Big sigh. 

I'm also going to Book Expo at the end of May which is at New York City, where hopefully I'll get more out of it in terms of career prospects, but also I'm looking forward to all the events that are going in the three days there. I'm particularly looking at Children's Lit and Graphic Novels, so Oni Press and indie publishers are having booths and talks there that I'm going to attend. I'm also looking at Romance-focus publishers too, since when I was doing my essays and my group projects, I didn't know how enjoyable it really is to work on something you really love and felt an affinity towards. 

So I'm gonna try to learn more about publishers that focus on genre lit, but I really want to focus on Children's publishing since it seems like more people are willing to try new things with it. 

 Just now i was going through some of my saved bookmarks- things I've had since the end of high school- and am amazed those links still work and the fic still survived. 

Like holy heck, the Beneath the Stitching link still works and all the Vincent/Tifa fics are still there without broken links. The power of Angelfire, I guess. Also makes me nostalgic and wonder if those usernames are still going on doing other stuff somewhere on the interwebs... 

Also all those FF7 fan shrines and online encyclopedias. I guess FF Wikia has taken over and centralized all the data, but still a lot of love in those websites. 

So January came and went, as did my first term at university. English schools make the students do final essays over the winter break, completely bonkers. I did manage to snag 6 days at Bordeaux, France for a 13 pound round trip on Ryanair, and that was super relaxing.

But the winter break also worsened some of my worst tendencies, no less because of doing all the research and finishing assignments almost at the last minute (although I was rewarded with decent grades on the confusing UK grading scale - a 65 is like an 85 on the grading scale). For one thing, it made me a lot more reclusive and flipped my whole sleeping cycle, and the fact that there’s only 8 hours of sunlight everyday in December kinda makes the days blur together. Also it’s really cold in this country, although I did see snow and frolic a little bit when it falls down magically in London. I suspected for a while that I’ve been doing some typical depression habits that made me suspicious of my mental health- I was reluctant to shower early, although if you see my shower you’d understand why, I don’t eat regularly and for a lot of days I just eat one big meal for tha day (which is dinner). I also found a couple grey hair for the first time on my scalp, and I had pretty deep feelings of my mortality as a result, and almost like the previous year in Japan I felt a big wave of existential crisis regarding my life and how I perceive myself in relation to time going by.

However, I think the biggest wake up call to my behavior was that I treated my friend poorly over break, where I was taking out my frustrations on her by implying things like how I help her more than she helps me even though I never really ask for her help. Sometimes it had felt to me that I make more effort in the friendship recently, which isn’t fair in my part because I know that it’s not like she takes me for granted, but it sometimes felt like it is. I also got irritated by the things she ask me to help edit because I see a lot of grammar and spelling errors, and that it felt more simple to me as a work than it should be, because I felt that I had to put in a lot of effort into something that isn’t about my own worries and concerns (like my final essay), and that I do sometimes forget that she is dyslexic and had admitted at the time that she was overcoming a stomach bug. But the whole of it is that I let my frustration and anger get the better of me, and so I took it out on her in a way that made her feel terrible, and it was something that really took a rift between us for about a month. Now she wants to talk, and i think it was a conversation we should talk about, not just because I wanted to apologize but also that I wanted to let her know that I was making efforts to change. Like today I went to the Mental Health and Wellness center to have a consultation, since like if over the break and at France if I just holed myself up in my hotel room for two days and not really eating during my personal vacation, then something must be really wrong because I decided to blow up a friendship over school.

 

But it’s February now, and I bought a month gym membership at my school’s gym. Gonna try to exercise regularly so I get some kind of pattern going that’s good for me. Gonna try to make myself eat more regularly even if it’s garbage food, since I more likely need the calories or else get more grey hairs on my head (which caused me to buy zinc tablets and b12 tablets alongside iron supplements). Starting to think more about what I eat and how to take care of my hair and skin even though I just want to replay video games and binge watch Fargo on school days.

in terms of Publishing and getting the most out of my program, we started talking business talk about content creation and ideas in the marketplace. One of the group projects I’m excited for is looking at children’s literature and seeing what kind of content can still be created for it that could be new or being more innovative. My group wanted to focus on children’s comics, which is pretty exciting to me. Other group projects is looking at a new imprint at Hachette’s imprint, Octopus, which acquired Kyle books which is primarily a cookbook publisher, and trying to come up with ideas on how to utilize the imprint for Octopus. One strategy is looking at what had worked at Kyle books and also what didn’t work which resulted in Octopus buying the publisher to make an imprint. Should we make the imprint stand out or should it contribute to Octopus in some way, or shuffle books from Octopus’ other imprints which are very diverse but more experience-based, like photography imprints or an imprint on antiques.