on aging (gracefully?)

Thursday, 1 January, 2026 at 8:00 am

After the wouldyourecognizethisperson-poll for Joan Chen on Tumblr I went scrolling through her tag because I felt bad I didn’t know her. But then it turns out I kind of did know her, just not by name. (Or even by her face; I just recognize things she’s been in. I need to watch all of her stuff now!)

Seeing her over the years made me think about my own age and appearance. I know my skin looks older now, there’s no way I believe my cousin insisting I still look like a high schooler. hahahaa. (Five years ago sure… as a joke. But definitely not after Covid and *waves hands around* everything.)

And this is after almost twenty years of applying sunscreen (mostly during the summer…) and trying to stay out of the sun. Inspired, morbidly, by my grandmother at her funeral and hearing her friends compliment how good she looked, and others commenting how she always stayed out of the sun. (She was my indoors, cooking and baking, sewing and crocheting grandma.)

Five years ago I started applying more moisturizer (lotion? which one is the hydrating and restoring oils one?) because I thought the skin on my neck felt more… felt less elastic. I’m still not religious enough about it, but I hope my oily skin redeems itself at this point in my life ahaha.

Four years ago I had to start carrying lotion around with me so the timeclock at work could scan my fingerprint. (Thanks Covid for the reminder to keep up sanitary habits. ._.) I decided to throw in moisturizing all parts of my hands, including the back. I’m not very good at applying sunscreen to my hands. Or re-applying, after washing.

I’ve been trying for a little while to remember to apply oils to my hands (and nails) overnight, but it happens maybe once every few weeks. Every time, I remember a teacher in college who was actually pretty young, looking back now. She may have been in her late 20s. She hated showing her hands on the projector. She said she knew it was ridiculous, but there was just something about seeing her hands up close and huge that made them seem old to her, and she didn’t like it.

This is all just how I’m dealing with aging on the outside. Maybe not the most well-adjusted. But on the inside I am loving this aging thing. Having more experience (wisdom?), being more secure, not caring so much what others think. The sole perk of being a millenial at this point: not experiencing a mid-life crisis!

my camera is saved!

Monday, 4 September, 2023 at 2:11 am

Here is the point where I realize I never mentioned my (newer, but now old) camera on this blog.

I managed to save my Canon Powershot G12 from going back to the repair shop.

Long story: last year I busted the lens (again) because my camera was in my purse in preview mode and I hit the shutter button when trying to pick it back up, so the lens got jammed. Two trips to Pasadena and a little over $250 later, it works (again). It’s still within the 90-day warranty, by about 20 days when this new problem popped up, so…

Short story: when I turned on my camera the screen showed a purple-tinted image, flickering and smearing everything. After a number of seconds (30? more?) of being on it would go away. Then I’d turn it off, rinse, and repeat. One time rotating the camera from landscape to portrait fixed the image.

I’ve been dreading having to make another trip, probably two, to Pasadena to get my camera looked at. But I looked it up online and got two different hints.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yX8fhEdFMk he opened the case to press down on the image sensor connections, says it was caused by being “kind of dropped/took an impact”

DPReview (forum): https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/55006277 “Sensor broken” (images nonexistent) “Interestingly, the problems disappeared when I pressed on the back of the camera, next to the dial…” and proceeded to open up the camera to more permanently secure the connections, and mentioned the camera taking a fall.

My camera hasn’t been dropped (this year, and to my knowledge, at least) and I don’t want to open it up; I don’t want to set up a clean room or close facsimile. Just to see, I tried pressing on the back of the camera, underneath the screen (I pulled the screen away), and it’s fixed! :O Camera is back to normal!

Like the guy in the Youtube video, I don’t know how long this will last. I think I’m willing to take it back to the repair shop and pay to fix this problem if it comes up again out of warranty. I don’t know if it’s related to getting the lens part replaced earlier this year. I just… can’t find a new camera I like as much as this G12. Sure there are better cameras with newer technology, but this one works fine for my purposes. I don’t want to drop over $1000 on a new camera just yet. Hopefully it’s fixed for a long time!

blog-a-log

Monday, 12 June, 2023 at 8:29 pm

Here’s a (portion of a) notation from Wil Wheaton’s Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir on blogging and writing.

…my editor has continually reminded me that there’s a difference between writing a speech, a novel, a novella, a blog, and hundreds of notations.

…there was a very distinctive voice we all used in the 2000s when we wrote in our blogs.

Unfortunately, as I read through it now, it isn’t aging well for me. There was a deliberate immediacy, an unpolished, unvarnished, raw, conversational tone that, today, feels amateurish. In the moment I sent these thoughts out into the ether, though, it was important to me that the readers receive only real emotion and real truth from me…

I say all this because I hope you’ll believe me when I say I’m a better writer now than I was then. More experienced and more confident.

…writing is a process. It should be about putting words down on the page, revising those words, throwing out some (or all) of those words, and continually honing and shaping and polishing and crafting.

In the early 2000s, that’s not how really anyone blogged. I certainly didn’t.

So maybe I’m not “great” at writing yet, but I’m literally decades better, and that’s part of being an artist: keep working on the craft.

I read (/heard; it was an audiobook) this notation in Wil Wheaton’s new book last year. (So good! A must-read for Wil fans!)

I agree with him on how blogs were written back then. I still prefer to read more personal blogs than “professional” ones. There are very few blogs I keep up with now though.

I mean, based on my own blog I can kind of understand why. Teens and twenty-somethings have more free time and have more they want to say. Older people just settle into life and don’t remark on anything new because… there is less that is new.

I wonder if how the culture of the internet has changed also has something to do with the decrease in personal blogging. The fear of the older, nerdier internet was creeps finding you offline and your irl friends finding you online. Now we have to fear doxxing and your employer(s) (current and future) discovering too much about you.

But back to the reason behind Wil’s notation, that he’s improved as a writer. I love reading Wil’s blog. His posts are well written. Another longtime blogger I still follow has improved her writing as well, coming off more polished and … I don’t want to say professional? (Because she wouldn’t call herself professional, I don’t think, haha.) She’s given more thought to her writing.

Whereas I am still just throwing stuff on the wall my blog and seeing what sticks. Or … lands. This ended up weird.

All this to just say, the “state of my blog” is the same as the last time I gave serious thought to the subject. It’s a place for me to stretch my writing muscle (ugh I need to stretch way more often) and write whatever I have on my mind that I want to share here.

Jeidai.com

Sunday, 28 August, 2022 at 11:34 pm

Finally! Finallyyy! I finished moving my blog! Well, not quite. Still have to redirect fs.net here. And a little bit more cleanup behind the scenes. But jeidai.com is done! Woo!

Or, not done, really. Just live. I couldn’t hold up this blog anymore just because I don’t know what to put in the sidebar or in the about section. So that may come later… eventually… at some point.

Two’s Day

Tuesday, 22 February, 2022 at 10:34 pm

I barely remembered I wanted to post here today! 2day! Hur hur. Happy Two’s Day! 2-22-22. Or as a palindrome, with the day first, 22-02-2022. hah

I didn’t do anything special today. Work. Take-out Tuesday (not tacos :( ). And they forgot part of our order so we had to drive over there to pick up the missing piece. It was dessert, it was decent. The rest of the meal was really good, I’d go back. Or at least dine inside, when I feel safe not wearing a mask around other people.

(Oh gosh is that my first mention of covid on my rarely-updated blog?)

I don’t know what else to write. hahahaa…