Time: 19:45
Weather: Rainy and windy
Listening to: ラヴィ
Topic: Updates, grad school, too much work!
Whoa, what's this? An update?!
Your eyes do not decieve you! I'm alive and well, though perhaps a bit overworked. Since the semester began I've been at full pace working on assignments, preparation for grad school, and my actual job. It's been good to have routine, especially after such a rough summer, but it's left little time or energy to work on this site. I hope to be able to get the substantial updates I want done sometime in December during my break.
First off though, thank you all for the 20k views on Neocities, 550 on the homepage counter. Even in hiatus it's been nice to see people checking the site and enjoying what I've made. I don't put stock into view counts as a metric of worth or anything, but it's always nice knowing that in the void of the net someone still found what you put your heart into.
As I mentioned, I'm finally starting preparations for grad school! I've talked about it here before so it's not a major update or anything. However, in the face of actually preparing for it I've been signing up for conferences, working on my writing sample, researching colleges, and looking into journals I may be able to publish my work in. I'm going to apply to lots of places but there's one in particular I believe I'll end up at.
The main reason I haven't been updating the diary entries much is because that's really all there is to say about these past few months. I work, work, and work some more! My spare time has been spent gaming, eating, and dealing with health stuff. Fun for the day to day but not much to tell people on Neocities about. Or at least, not without these entries becoming repetitive.
For the website updates I'm planning, I want to do a full redesign of the site. I'm hoping for a cleaner, ethereal look to the whole thing. I've been enjoying the light blue trend in the Japanese clothing brands I follow. I've also been wanting to do a slight redesign to my vtuber persona, V. I don't think I'm going to do a whole rigging process anytime soon, but I do want to make a proper new reference and art for him. Keywords for the redesign are light blue, angels, PC-98, and ethereal.
I want to create a website that feels really immersive. Since I started the site I imagined "Waterfall" as the name of a virtual world I could step into (hence the welcome on the homepage). I hope to better define that world and add more of my artistic flair throughout the site. All assets I've currently grabbed from free resources I hope to replace with my own. I'm also hoping to include more consistent visual theming from page to page. Part of that involves pixel art. I'll admit I've never done detailed pixel art, just simple small sprites, so it'll be a nice change to try something new!
All that's to say, I'm looking forward to the point where I have more time and energy to work on this site. I've always found that lying dormant for a bit can be a good way for creativity to thrive. By the time I come back to a creative project, I'm enthusiastic and full of ideas in a way that can be a little difficult to maintain if I'm updating more frequently.
I plan to get back to updating the daily song so at least there's a little something I'm doing to maintain the site. Otherwise, this hiatus will continue for just a touch longer. Look forward to the redesign. I for one can't wait!