Journal Entry: December 16th, 2017

I know that journals are the sort of things that people like to start on January 1st and resolve to continue for the rest of the year, but I'd rather just start now. Partly because I don't ascribe to the magic of the "clean slate" that drives so many people to buy gym memberships and diet subscriptions for the new year. Instead, I'd rather just begin today and try to write as many entries as possible. If I miss a day that's fine. If I miss a couple of days that's fine. But, I'll try not to. Anyway, on to the entry itself.

I spent the day wandering around various stores looking for Christmas gifts for friends and family. Honestly, I always wonder around this time of year whether it's all worth it. Sure it's great to give gifts and share dinner with family, but the stress of trying to find the perfect gift and plan the perfect meal can be exhausting. What's worse, I know that everyone else is going through the exact same experience. It makes you think, even if you do it every year.

But that's not all I did today, I also continued working on a side project of mine that I began about four months back. It started as an experiment, something that I honestly expected to crash and burn, but quickly turned into something much more serious. Over these past months I've watched a few hurried sketches in a notebook turn into actual working parts that have actually functioned in various forms. Unfortunately, the success of bringing my inspirations into reality was short lived, and I've spent most of these four months trying to wrangle broken pieces into something stable and dependable. It turns out that the hardest thing isn't making something that works, it's making something that works well. Anyway, that's a story for another time.

As I'm writing this it's 11 PM and I can already feel my eyelids drooping. Honestly, I should've have spent this last half hour working on my project, but I'm feeling pretty burned out right now. There's something so draining about trying to fix broken things... it's astonishing. Well, this is it, I guess I'm signing off for today. Hopefully I'll have something here tomorrow. Until then, stay safe and enjoy the holidays, whatever they mean to you :)

P.S. I'm going to purposefully leave these without proofreading (them). I'm thinking it'll make them (feel) more natural, but I'm sure you're just wishing I'd bothered to correct my grammar. Oh well.