thought log

2/16/2026 ; 4:51PM

went to a very delicious dinner with my partner on saturday night for valentine's day. it was this tiny italian place in the next town over, relatively new, and they had a special 7 course dinner menu for valentine's. it was so much food... we were pretty full already by the 3rd course, but we pushed through until dessert! it was a lot of really interesting dishes: crab butter with bread, octopus salad, scallops in a passionfruit butter, mixed mushroom pasta in wine sauce, strawberry soup shots. but, it was all delicious!

don't really have much else to talk about here... got some more supplies i need to take with me to that winter camp in montana. i didn't realize how close it was, it's in like 2 weeks. kind of nervous just because i'm gonna be travelling alone and won't be with my partner or my dogs for almost a whole week... but i'm also excited about all the cool stuff i'm gonna learn and the whole experience of being out there. i may make a whole page for it once i'm back. gonna take my camera with me and take lots of pictures of everything.

i think i'll keep this one short and sweet and end it here! i'm brainstorming ideas for what to do with this page, since i don't really use a digital journal like this anymore. whatever, we'll see what happens!

2/10/2026 ; 12:35PM

well... i guess i didn't intend to be away for such a long time. to be honest, i've sort of removed myself from the internet socially. i completely stopped using instagram, blue sky, discord, absolutely everything. the only thing i've kept using is youtube, and more recently, substack. i even thought of writing my own stuff on substack, but i realized this website is kind of that. i might make a separate page where i write about specific topics and ideas i have to keep them compiled in one place.

i've sort of gone full throttle into physical journaling. i have a whole journal system i use for different things like planning, appointments, daily entries, junk journaling, and collecting things i think are cool. i just really love the tactile feeling, writing with fountain pens with cool ink colors, gluing in pictures and stickers and things. it's satisfying to see the journal chunk up after i've glued a bunch of things in. that's one of the primary reasons for me leaving this site, i just really didn't know what else to do with journal entries now that i was doing everything analog. maybe i'll do away with this page? and turn this page into that "ideas and musings" page i was mentioning earlier; like how i would use substack. or use substack as its own thing, i don't know.

last week i had to unexpectedly travel to florida because my great grandmother passed away. she would have been 100 this april. i'm still working through my grief, because she was a big part of my youth, and practically raised me as a kid. i spent almost all my time at my great grandparent's house between the ages of like... 4 to 12. as a kid you don't really realize and appreciate the things they do for you, and once you're an adult it all comes back. i was thankfully able to get bereavement time from work to fly down there for the week and attend the funeral.

this was my second funeral ever, the first being my great grandfather who passed in 2017. of which honestly, i don't remember much. but i do remember the stress and the grief and sadness of everyone around me. in going to this funeral last week, i've realized a lot about death and the way we treat the passing of people into the next world. even though this one was wonderful (i guess if you can call it that) with the flower arrangements and how everyone came together, it at the same time made me feel very removed from the process. we have no autonomy over our dead. we entrust them to a funeral home, who might honestly wipe their ass with your requests and what you ask for. we only have a brief window to see our loved ones before they're taken to the cemetary. once you are at the cemetary, you can't even see them bury them in the ground. they ask you to leave once the final prayers and lowering of the casket are done. it doesn't fulfill the closure of knowing they're in their final resting place.

it just makes me sad for a time where we didn't leave our loved one's sides once they passed. where their bodies were left in the home or easily accessible in a temple or place of worship for everyone to visit before the final arrangements took place. hell, even elephants and horses will linger around their dead for days - if not weeks - processing the loss before moving on. orca mothers will carry around their dead calves for awhile in a sort of grieving, even occassionally bringing them to the surface as if they were helping them get some air. granted, things in the modern world are different in the sense where the body needs to be prepared and embalmed before decomposition takes place. but it all feels so... sterile and devoid of personal touch from their loved ones.

an unsual but sort of on topic pivot, i am going to a winter hunting camp in montana this march. this woman arranges it during the buffalo migration and hunt, to assist native american hunters with the processing of their kills. she goes through teaching you how to maintain a winter camp, chop firewood, run a wood stove, all of that survival stuff. but also teaches you how to skin, prepare, and butcher whole animals, with an emphasis on using every single part of the animal to honor its life and sacrifice. uses for the blood, brains, skins, eyeballs, suet, all of the typically "discarded" parts of the animal. all of this is interwoven with a strong sense of magic and spirituality. honoring the animal and all it gave to us, our ancestors, and spirits of the land. using magic and ritual to not only nourish and care for the land, but for ourselves. didn't anticipate this year to be all about death and rebirth, but i guess that's how things happen.

i've been feeling really lost lately, as far as my future goes. it makes me feel guilty, because i have so much to be thankful for. but it feels like i'm on a treadmill, constantly exerting energy but not moving forward. my job - as good as it is that i make good money and work from home - feels like i'm not doing anything real in this world. it's all pressing buttons on a computer. i've thought about possibly going back to school, but i can't afford another expense right now. i was thinking equine studies, specifically veterinary studies, but everything just feels like too much. all i know, is that i need something else. a job or career that actually makes a difference in this world and has real results. something that feels fulfilling to do. the urge to just run off into the woods and live in a tent is always in the back of my mind.

anyway, i'm going to try and use this website more often. i need to get back into the swing of html, so let's see what happens. if you think i should make either a substack or make a page on here, let me know in my guestbook! maybe i can use substack to reach more people, then redirect here? i don't really know.