March 2026 Breakdown: Down the Dreamlight Valley (and Probably Fountain Pen) Rabbit Hole

I had a whole plan to finish this wrap-up and post it on March 31 (and anything that happens on the last day of the month that I want to/normally mention in a wrap-up can just go on April’s) and then that got pushed to April 1, which that didn’t happen either.

Unfortunately for the blog, I got a little occupied with Disney Dreamlight Valley, which ill-advisedly I started 2 days before the month ended. Oopsies. I should’ve known better.

Anyway, we’re in for a little yap session this month (especially if fountain pens are your thing…)!

March Musings

Dialed a little back in blogging for March as well.

• [10 Mar] February 2026 Breakdown
• [27 Mar] Mini Reviews: Ex Marks the Spot, Dragon Cursed, Fitting Indian

Book Hauls and Reading

March had 4 books: 1 was a book I saw over at Dollar Tree and wanted to read, 1 was from a Booktrovert giveaway, and 2 were ARCs—1 of which was a surprise book mail from the publisher towards the end of the month.

Immortal Consequences by I.V. Marie is one of my favorite reads of 2025, so I very much stalked Netgalley for the day Ruinous Ends (the sequel) went up for request in one of those rare times that I request a book these days. I’m trying hard not to read it right away, but maybe that’ll happen sometime in April anyway if the mood really strikes since the prequel novella is also up for request.

The other ARC that came near the end of the month was The Verdant Cage by Jess Lourey, which comes out next week. Not a book that was on my radar but I love a good murder mystery set in a dystopian world, and I’m finding that I’m enjoying Mayhem Books’s releases rather than a hit or miss like it seems to be with Red Tower Books.

The last two books were The Comeback by Lily Chu, which I thought would be cute and fun to read, and A Deadly Inheritance by Kelley Armstrong, which has a murder mystery set in an elite boarding school.

As for reading, March was pretty good compared to February with almost all of the DNFs. I did have one that I almost called quits that I ended up pushing through, though, which probably was a bad idea.

What I Read:

• Moriarty the Patriot Vol. 3-4 by Ryosuke Takeuchi – I’m really enjoying reading Moriarty’s villain origin story.
• Temping is Hell by Cathy Yardley – I should’ve called it quits when I wanted to call it quits. :c
• Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood
• Love Between Fairy and Devil Vol. 2 by Jiu Lu Fei Xiang
• Accidentally Yours by Christina Lauren – this was short and sweet and I absolutely loved the banter between Veronica and Jude.
• Shakti by S.J. Sindu
• A Cat from Our World and the Forgotten Witch Vol. 4-5 by Hiro Kashiwaba – my library finally got the last two volumes in! I thought the ending was pretty rushed but still enjoyed the series.
  • I very much picked up this manga because of the cat on the cover.
• Aria of the Beech Forest Vol. 1-3 by Yugiri Aika – honestly, I’m surprised this ended at 3 volumes since it felt like there are a lot of loose ends that haven’t been tied up.
• Give Me a Reason by Jayci Lee – this one was one of those where I read it at the right time in the right mood (and I absolutely read it because of the cover).
• A Stage Set for Villains by Shannon J. Spann – loved the play format; absolutely brilliant with that but arguably confusing and a lot going on.

Slowly making my way through my checkouts; I have just Hamnet left. I’ll probably get that done in the next week or so.

Music

• Carry You by BamBam and Minnie
• How the Fire Started by Eric Nam
• Tongue Tied by AleXa
• Home Sweet Home by Jiwoo
• Normal by BTS
• พระรอง (Phra Wrong) by S2
• Steal the Show by Lauv
• Rock the Heavenly Palace and Tractor by Lay
• Code by Everglow
• No Halo by Melissa Minh

Movies

• Joyride – I remember when this first came out; the movie ads were all over my socials. It’s a very wild movie with absolute chaos, and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would; 10/10 soundtrack.
• Wicked: For Good

The Breakdown

A breakdown of what the universe had in store for the month (or longer).

March was mostly okay. Emotionally, not so much, but I had a few wins? I shall take them. And I’ve actually been sleeping decently at least towards the end of the month—we’ll see how long that lasts.

I finally got rid of the books I kept forgetting to bring for selling, or whenever I did remember, it was raining. At one point my mom said that maybe I should just keep them if it kept raining every time I tried; the books aren’t meant to go anywhere. That aged as well as chocolate sitting out on a summer day.

I got to meet up for dinner with a friend I haven’t seen since high school! We fell out of touch after I transferred back to my original school from tech school and only recently started speaking again in recent years. Unfortunately for her, I almost blew a spider on her. Not exactly the ideal way anyone expects a reunion to go after over a decade. We’re planning on grabbing food once a month so we can catch up and yap about our lives.

I also got a Steam Deck! It was one thing I planned on getting sometime this year, but with all the memory shortages and supply issues, the Steam Deck ended up going out of stock earlier this year. It came back into stock briefly at the end of February, but I honestly didn’t want to fight the scalpers and everyone else or stress over it (it’s just a handheld console that’s 4-years-old), so I didn’t even bother. I lucked out with a refurbished one when it got dropped in mid-March*, so I guess it was nice knowing you all.

*If I woke up like 10 minutes later, I would’ve had to do some fighting, and by that time, I’d just pass it until the next time.

It’ll be nice to have a moment to play some games while moving, though, since I doubt I’ll be pulling out my laptop much (or wanting to, honestly) between packing things and moving them over to the new apartment. It’s also nice to dedicate most of my gaming to the Steam Deck now since my laptop isn’t a huge fan of the graphic intensive games especially.

Anyway, now that I’ll probably be going through my backlist and actually playing games a little more often because I don’t have to pull out my laptop when I do want to game, I’m probably going to move the gaming section up into Media Consumed/Discovered in the next wrap-up (ideally April).

The Games I Did Play

Palia made up most of my March still, and the developers released a new update about halfway through the month. I’ve been spending most of my time in Palia very much ignoring all the quests, though, so while I could’ve caught up (not my first rodeo speed running in a game), I spent a lot more time crafting, foraging, mining and petting/giving treats to a very cute dog when I cross paths with him.

Around the end of the month, I caved and got Disney Dreamlight Valley*, which I started playing as well, and it’s been a new rabbit hole. I’ve downloaded an app to track my progress, mostly because I don’t think I’ll remember which character is assigned to which task when they hang out with me. It’s only downhill from here on out… Unfortunately for all the characters so far, I absolutely adore Moana and hang out with her almost exclusively (at least until I unlock Mulan, then I’ll probably hang out with both of them most often) even though I assigned her to fishing. I love her little happy dance; it’s so cute.

*Ideally this is the only game purchase I’m getting aside from the one Humble Bundle recently that were chess games.

Like Palia, Dreamlight Valley did give me motion sickness (though it was very light; probably because I started on Steam Deck), but it’s gotten better over the past few days. I’m not a huge fan of the super limited storage, though, but I’m also a hoarder with the stuff I acquire in video games.

The plan to talk about stationery panning and low-buy progress, but it turned into yapping about fountain pens

I got some items from the TCMC anniversary sale, mostly for the sighing blob wooden stamp (god knows I’m going to be using that a lot) and some stickers for my reading journal as I wait for some other stamps to come in that I preordered from Sum Lil Things.

(I had a whole plan to show off this blob in action because I love it so much and have been using it at least once a week, but alas it was dark when I wrote this section.)

I also got some ink pads for my stamps and an acrylic block. Prior to this, I usually used my Tombows to color and then stamp them, but I find I use them less. I guess it’s because I’m spending that extra time that I could read or journal somewhere instead? Additionally, some of my favorite shops have had to switch to tracked shipping, so I feel it’ll be more cost-efficient for me in the long run to start switching to stamps now that I’ve a better idea of which ones I use up the most; I personally don’t feel it’s worth it for me to spend $11 for shipping stickers, and honestly, I’m pretty bad at estimating how many sheets I’d use for 6-12 months. I got some ugh emoti sticker sheets at TCMC back in July 2025, and I was on my last row of my last sheet by the time late August rolled around. My only issue with stamps is I can’t carry my stamps around as much, so I tend to not use them unless I’m at home, and I usually try to not journal at home if I can avoid it.

I’ve been experiencing an increase in headaches, so I started using up one of my extra journals solely for yapping purposes. I’ve been using the Journey app since 2018 before but I don’t have as much ready access to my phone or laptop these days. The app is still there for me, but it’s a lot easier these days to carry a notebook around and I’m finding it’s helping quite a bit when I write a few pages each day; I’ve not had a headache since doing that. I finished a large chunk of the notebook that I started and I’m expecting to start a new one in April (then again, there was a lot going on that affected me mentally, so it’s possible all of April could fit in the rest of this notebook!).

I’ve also been going through more washi tape (so much more) since I decorate the tops and bottoms of the pages. The wide washi has been extremely helpful for the bottom of the pages since my handwriting gets terrible as I get closer to the end of the page. I figure if I’m going to end up wasting the ends of pages, I might as well just decorate them. 😝

On the downside, my hands also experience much cramping and it probably doesn’t help that I have a death grip. I ended up getting a fountain pen (a Platinum Preppy) for the long writing sessions (sometimes I do 10 pages a day) since I heard fountain pens help with that. The death grip is still there but I can at least write longer without being in pain. Fountain pens are probably a very dangerous rabbit hole to go down, but unless I catch myself a billionaire banter king (or overthrow a billionaire and become one myself), you won’t catch me spending 5 paychecks on a pen. Or a whole paycheck for that matter.

(I think even then I don’t think I’d spend that much on a pen; I’d be paranoid about losing all that money. 😫)

It’s a low-buy year for me, but I figure this is one of those exceptions for the betterment of my health. I decided to get a Prefounte and a TWSBI Swipe to rotate once I’m through with the cartridge on my Preppy (after testing it for a week to see if it’s for me), though someone did suggest getting a TWSBI Eco or Go. I’m not a fan of pens that look like a vaping pen, and it’s probably a bad idea to carry those around with me to work. I also thought about getting a Lamy Safari since I can think about throwing it at people and it’ll be perfectly fine (for legal reasons this is a joke) but considering my Jetstream Cinnamoroll pen is still kicking 2-3 years later and that’s mostly plastic, I think I’ll get the most out of the money spent if/when something breaks on the fountain pens.

Both the TWSBI Swipe and Platinum Prefounte (and Preppy) pens either come with a converter or I can get a separate converter, so if I decide to go with the bottled version of my current ink cartridges one day, I can easily switch. I’m not a huge fan of glass bottles, though, since I’m not too keen about the prospect of spilling it by accident on carpet I don’t own.

And I don’t see myself going into a huge rabbit hole with bottled inks since I was never the type to venture outside of the basic blue, black and red (unless we count blue-black ink). For now, though, with moving, I’m sticking with cartridges even though they’re more expensive in the long run.

The actual panning progress that happened, and not about fountain pens or stamps

When I tell you the amount of washi tape used is a lot in March, I mean it’s a lot. Which is actually a good thing because that means my collection is getting used. I actually finished up an entire roll! It’s my Days of the Week one, though, so I’ve been using it daily for the past few months and therefore not a surprise that I finished it first.

I also used up 2 ink cartridges! 1 was a ballpoint and the other was a fountain. I don’t usually keep more than 6-10 ink refills since I go through them quite slowly, though I suppose I’ll be filling up my fountain pen ones quicker.

Anyway, for March, I used 57 items, which is more than what I used up in February and January. I usually do the math for the month, but I’m opting out of it, so I’m just going to list the total progress as of March 31st for 2026:

• 1 complete washi roll
• 33 individual stickers used, 19 given away
• 37 STICKII sheets used, 2 given away
• 23 sticker sheets
• 2 writing tools used, 6 discarded
• 2 ink refills, 1 discarded (I’m fairly certain I ended up with a bad batch of Sarasa since the new refill seems to be working perfectly fine)
• 4 journaling cards
• 5 misc. items used, 10 given away or discarded

For March’s washi tape challenge, I wanted to do plants and Sailor Moon. I didn’t really follow that the entire month since sometimes I gravitated to my fish swimming among seaweed one, but I did use up some of those rolls I have at least. Like the previous section, I’m just going to list the total progress as of March 31st for 2026:

• 4.5 page length
• 245.5 page width ( I think February and January were like 10-25 pages, which is typical for just using it my daily planner that I use for memory keeping since I also use stickers for those)
• 210 emotis
• 20 stamps
• 2 washi samples (from friends)
• 2 washi samples (not from friends), 43 given away

My April plans include using up another roll of washi tape (a star themed one I got from Clo)I’m pretty close to using up; I might make it my daily goal to use it until then, but I was looking forward to my April theme (Cherry Blossoms!) so it might not be until May that I finish it since I also have a Cherry Blossom one that’s close to being used up. It’s not as close to being used up as the starry one, though, but we’ll see. Maybe I’ll rotate between the two since I get bored easily staring at the same thing each day.

Let’s talk!

Tell me about your March! If you play Dreamlight Valley, tell me all your thoughts! Have you ever considered using a fountain pen, or do you currently use one?