• mood: accomplished
• listening: Wisconsin Death Trip by Static-X

holy shit y'all. I've been so productive on here these past couple of days. I adapted the 98.css project by Jordan Scales to work on here--it was mostly a lot of cannibalizing their colors and measurements--and then used angieblah's .js to help me get started on the theme-switching feature. with any luck, I will soon have three themes and there will be links you can use to alternate between the three of them, not just toggle between two. (this will require me to make another .css file, which I'm not going to do until I have more content on here.) what I'm quite proud of is that I refactored, from scratch with help from StackOverflow and my IDE, my .js files so that only one is necessary to load the five different toolbars I use. I still know how to do cool front-end stuff! I'm so proud of myself.

this week has been kinda hard for some personal stuff I won't really get into, but mostly I'm okay. I have decided to make a lot of changes in my life. some of them I can talk about on here and others are more personal. the main one that's been different for me has been my religion and my spirituality. this week was my first week where I was taking my religious practice very seriously. I ordered a pendant of Our Lady of La Naval de Manila, which is the venerated title of the Virgin Mary who is enshrined in Quezon Province, where my family is from. I wanted her to be here by November 5th, which is my paternal grandmother's birthday--she is not on my Filipino side; she suffered poor health and passed away in her 30, and I have always felt a spiritual connection with her--so that I could begin practice then. (it felt like no coincidence to me that November 5th was also the morning of the Beaver Moon: the closest and largest moon of 2025.) it at first seemed like Our Lady of La Naval de Manila wouldn't be here by then, which I had made peace with, because she was coming all the way from Italy and, y'know, bahala na.

Monday, I was suffering really badly with my OCD symptoms. intrusive thoughts popping up that I thought I was over by now. I was becoming frustrated that, it seems like when one set of thoughts are taken care of, there are always more to replace them--even ones I thought I'd treated. unfortunately on Reddit, I saw someone post that they were going to end their life due to the exact same problems I was having that day. it's a big struggle for me on a regular, almost daily basis to not want to end my life, mostly due to my OCD symptoms, so that was triggering for me. lo and behold, when I went outside, Our Lady had been delivered to me early. it was truly miraculous that she had come all the way from Italy so quickly. since my grandmother's birthday, I have spent time at my altar daily, thanking my ancestors for protecting me and my family, and asking them to humbly allow me to continue living in service of them. I genuinely think this practice is helping me be a better person.

that's one big one. another one is that, tomorrow, I'm going to get rid of a lot of my clothes. I have such a hard time deciding what to keep and what not. I always think that I'm going to make a huge mistake and miss a bunch of clothes I'm getting rid of if I get rid of them. the problem is that I rarely wear many of them, or some of them don't fit but I either made them and don't want to part ways, or I'm in denial about how they don't fit (as though I haven't gained 40lbs since I've made some of these clothes). tomorrow will really be a big day for me in general, because I'm going to be getting decorating done around here and building furniture to accommodate some things.

my eyes are getting pretty sleepy now. I'm so stoked with myself for how this site is shaping up.