JOURNAL. July 2026.
OW (30.07.2026)
My lungs feel so tight today... allergies are very bad lately, which obviously causes further asthma problems. Getting back on my preventative so hopefully that helps out a bit. Have shut all windows in the appartment and have also bought eye and nose drops in addition to my regular allergy meds (which I have to double up on in roder for them to work). Will see if regularly using my preventative helps things a bit, but I'm probably going to see an allergist soon anyways. Luckily many of them regularly treat asthma, so I should be able to switch over from seeing a pulmonologist easily. I would like to be able to enjoy going outside and opening the windows for fresh air.
I finished the original RE. Though apparently I fucked up a bit and got the bad ending, so at some point I'm going to start from an older save. Unfortunately for me I'm kind of dumb and overwrote the ones closes to the point I need to replay, but oh well. Not like it's a very long game, so whatever. (And then at some point I have to play as Chris instead of Jill, but anyways...)
RE7 and RE8 were on sale together on Steam and I still had a bit of my graduation money left, so I bough those. Honestly I feel gluttonous with all the games I got on sale, even though I didn't really spend that much. But it should keep me occupied over the rest of the summer. Gives me things to actually look forward to for once. It's kind of nice. I don't think I've felt like this in a while.
Bleh, I still have to plan my Ballard paper and prepare for my MA entrance interview.
Engaging with the World (28.07.2026)
Evidently it's been a long time since I've been on this site. In the meantime I finished my sociology degree and earned honors for it; now I still have to finish my philosophy degree and prepare for my MA. I've been fairly busy, as I still had to write a paper for my philosophy seminar, and then I haven't even started writing the actual BA thesis. I can't rest for long... But it does feel nice to have earned a degree anyways.
Anyways, my family gave me some money to celebrate my degree, so I spent it on games; with sales on Steam and GOG it was good timing. Normally I download stuff for free, but it does feel nice to "own" games sometimes. Plus these were older titles, and I want to support game preservation. So now I have a bunch of old Metal Gear, Castlevania, and Resident Evil games, which I've been enjoying.
I downloaded the very first Resident Evil last night from GOG. There were some weird compatibility issues, and I couldn't run it from the fresh install. Thankfully Classic REbirth makes it playable and adds a few improvements as well. So I've been playing through it and having fun. It's so ridiculous at points and very much peak 90s gaming in a way that makes it awesome. I quite like the puzzles. Getting used to a map with so much less information on it has been the biggest adjustment for me.
My first RE game was actually only RE9, which I also found fun, although the puzzles aren't very much to speak of. Still, I'm glad that it's given me a new "interest" and something to engage with.
I wanted to use Reshade to put a CRT filter on RE1, but unfortunately it renders in some old format which Reshade doesn't work with. There are some workarounds and rendering wrappers which I might try out later, but for now I'll just enjoy the "raw" output. I could also just get a CRT since there's a place selling plenty of them (many quite cheap) very near my apartment, but I don't really have anywhere to put it and don't want to carry it up several flights of stairs on my own. Should look into the different models they sell before picking one out, anyways.
For now I just want to enjoy having at least a little time to engage in the world and things that interest me. For the first time in a while I have something I actually want to spend time talking about (hence this journal entry). It's nice. I know I should spend more time doing this in general, even when I'm "busy"; I waste time anyways on social media, but that's a much worse way of wasting time. In a way playing these games (among other things) is actually reinvigorating and somehow stimulating.
I'm not super happy with how my seminar essay turned out, and now I have to wait until September for it to actually be graded. I do like the idea I decided to write about, and I feel fine enough with the first part, but the rest needs much more refinement. I need to engage more with Lacan etc. and return to the topic later, because it is something I care about and find interesting.