The moment the last wrap up went live on the blog under the former name, I started this on Google Doc so I didn’t like… forget blogging exists and just disappeared forever from the blogging world frolicking in the grass. 😂
But hey I made it back! Let’s talk about the past couple months while I was away rebranding (because life still marches onward), shall we?
Book Hauls and Reading
September and October had a few copies added to my collection, though one box got sent away to new homes with another left that I’ll send away before the weather gets any colder and I get busier.
I got the 20th Anniversary of Princess Academy by Shannon Hale, which was a staple of my childhood and I’m hoping to reread it again one day. I came across it while running errands on my birthday along with the hardcover deluxe for Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer, so we’ll consider these presents for myself, hehe. Entangled Publishing sent me a copy of Not Today, Satan by Samantha Joyce in October, which is such a fun title that I almost let out a little giggle when I opened the package.
I love fun titles. I hope the book is just as fun as it seems to promise.
September had a lot of reading, most of it graphic novels and manga. I actually think all of my reads were either one of those two despite a few novels on my reading list, but I’m at the mercy of my mood, and it was not a good time for September. October had less books read, but I also focused a lot on rebranding so I could get it done and just not think about it for the remainder of the month. I also started picking up novels again, though most of them ended up either being DNFed or put on pause.
Media Consumed/Discovered
Movies
September
- How to Train Your Dragon (live action)
- Ant-Man
- Cinderella – I’m not her biggest fan or follow her that much (her music isn’t really my type), but I feel like Camilla Cabello got done dirty a few times in this movie because the visuals and sound production is just… not it sometimes. But I wanted a silly little musical movie, and I got that.
- Thor: Ragnarok
- The Hating Game – I wanted to watch a romcom, so a romcom is what I get. 😌
- My other option is looking for the most outrageous covers or synopsis on Amazon as a form of entertainment because I’d rather do that than doom scroll. At least with this option I get a good giggle. Usually.
October
- Captain America: Brave New World
- Deadpool and Wolverine
- Karate Kid: Legends
- 10 Lives
- Elio
Music
September
- Ceremony by Stray Kids – I actually didn’t really like it at first listen but it grew on me by the third time! Other songs from their album I liked: In My Head, Mess and Phoenix
- Rich Man by aespa – I couldn’t pinpoint what I didn’t like about it at first since I also loved it but upon further listening I just think “I am a rich man” is repeated a bit too much. It’s grown on me, though.
- I also prefer the demo version of this; it hits harder
- Haunt Me by Blindlove
- Do What I Want by Monsta X
- M.O. by Yuqi
- 对 是错的 by Lil Ghost
- Sunkiss, Hate2 and Existential Crisis by Wendy – I, too, am having an existential crisis, Wendy. Sunkiss is so joyful I kind of want to dance around in the sun (or the rain) whenever this song comes up.
- Unhappily Ever After by Purple Kiss
October
- B.B.B. (Bigger Badder Better) ft. A2O LTG by A2O May
- FaSHioN by CORTIS
- Who Are You, Light the Fire by Suho
- We Go Up by Baby Monster
- Burning Down by Alex Warren
Rebranding Updates!
Contrary to the heading, no I’m not rebranding again. At least, I hope not…
But I thought it would be fun to yap about all the fun rebranding stuff I did during the time I was away and actually doing the things!
September
Lots of testing things out and starting over from scratch, compressing images and resizing them in bulk, many urges to throw the blog out the window and just starting over from scratch with maybe a few of my posts getting carried over (but the formatting was mostly there already and it’s not as bad as moving from Blogger to WordPress; it’s really just going from one theme to another).
Actually migrating the blog to a staging environment is honestly the easiest part. 😂 I was tempted to close down comments and turn off likes earlier than two weeks, though (you could still like posts through the WP reader but most of my readership isn’t going through that and those stats likely wouldn’t get transferred). Thankfully, I made sure to select the correct option for Jetpack Safe Mode this time and everything transferred perfectly fine with no issues. 😅
My intention for September was having no qualms about starting over on the staging environment and deleting the files when something went wrong, like when I was changing the username from my pen name and the link to the posts written by me. All of this wasn’t the main site, so I had no worries about breaking all the things or if formatting transferred badly since I was switching from the Genesis framework to Kadence.
I’m really liking the flexibility of Kadence, but I’ve also run into a few issues that are more personal preferences. I’ve gotten used to the new theme by now, though, so it’s no longer bothering me as much, and I’m actually liking some aspects better. There’s a learning curve for sure. Having a custom home page feels so weird to me, though. I tried to keep it somewhat similar to the old look since I like it a lot, but also gave it a little touch up.
I definitely wanted to throw the blog out the window a few times, though. I forgot to compress and resize the replacement images in August, which would’ve made things a little easier for me. While it didn’t take too long to do, I also hated doing it – I had a lot of images (not as many as when I moved from Blogger, though!), so I had to do this in portions. This resulted in nineteen folders, all of which had to be extracted and moved into a single folder. And of course, there’s my least favorite part: going through each post and replacing them all so they’re under the new blog name.
The icon and header was still in the works with more drafts sent and feedback provided, but I got to see the first coloring! I struggled with choosing the main font a lot, but I’ve managed to narrow down the secondary font at this point.
October
October was when I really had to get down to work going through the posts – updating links, fixing formatting, changing “Sophia” and “Soph” to “Hannah,” etc. There were a lot of old posts that I cringed at – is this what growth looks like? I suppose there’s a certain charm to seeing snippets of who you were – I don’t have my journals from back then (decided to get rid of them mostly), so this blog is pretty much the only thing I have with snapshots of high school Hannah. I’ve deleted a lot of the posts that you see now, but I still have the original posts on Blogger. I might not go back and read them, but I’ve at least kept them for posterity.
I worked on replacing images too and I decided to download a plugin to put my images into folders, which I knew about from a post by Sumedha and Kal and I talking about it. I didn’t download it at the time, though, because I didn’t feel the need to do so and I couldn’t drag and drop on my phone (this hasn’t changed), but going through the images made me realize that it’s definitely time to get that plugin. Plus, I no longer blog from my phone mostly now that I have internet access at home. I found a really old pin from two designs ago while doing this! I don’t know how I forgot it.
The final thing I did after going through my images and replacing them and sorting out my media library was working on the pages and revamping them. I started working on some of them in a Google Drive folder before my hiatus so I could just copy and paste mostly. The biggest changes were my about and portfolio pages, with the latter being password protected now. I thought about getting rid of the portfolio entirely since there would be personal information and I didn’t want anyone to take that information and run with it, but I decided against it. You never know what life will send your way (sometimes at the most inconvenient of times) and therefore I don’t know when that portfolio will come handy.
After all of that was done, I realized one of the colors really bothered me when I was going through and doing a final lookover, so I spent a fair amount of time messing around with color palette generators and testing them out with my existing palette to make sure they coordinated well together. I also got the final versions of my header and icon from MikaLogo, too, which helped since I had to do some minor adjustments to the look of the blog. Some of my closest friends got to see the progress, and I’m really happy with how it ultimately turned out. 10/10 would work with them again.
I finished everything earlier than I planned out, so I got to relax a little and not worry about the blog until a little closer to the end of the month when I’d reach out to my web host to start the process of migrating the site. I was originally going to wait until the last week of the month but decided to do it a week earlier than planned. This worked out in my favor since there were some unforeseen things that would’ve pushed things back a little (email subscription broke). I still got to rest and not think about the blog, though!
(Although it looks like an issue did crop up with the email subscription recently – somehow most of the email subscribers upped and disappeared. But anyways, follow.it is looking into it since yeah, that’s weird.)
Anyway, that’s all the updates with rebranding and everything is now live! I hope you all love the new look as much as I do. ☺️
The Breakdown
A breakdown of what the universe had in store for the month (or longer).
And now we’re back to the regularly scheduled programming of life updates from the past two months! Can’t believe we’re in the final couple months of 2025 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (I’m literally that screaming bird).
Like everyone else, I feel like I’ve abandoned all the goals and have not been productive even though I’ve been doing things (like rebranding) and being productive in other ways. I don’t even remember what goals I’ve aspired to do this year, but we’ll see next month when all the year-end posts start going up.
September
September was not a good month for me, especially during the week I was on staycation. I failed No Buy a lot that week because of my emotional state and being constantly drained, and I’m definitely paying the price for it now. I won’t share the details regarding my relationship with my mom (outside the surface level unless you’re in my direct circle or my therapist) since I don’t intend to villainize her despite the hurt she’s caused, but I will say that it was a really bad week and I was tempted to see if I could just return to work early.
The upside, though, is I got to find some new stationery stores! Most of my favorites are in Canada which kind of poses a problem due to tariffs, so I’ve been looking to diversify a little. I did upgrade my washi container (which I got from Daiso) because the 3 index card containers I originally got weren’t cutting it and I couldn’t easily carry them around. They also weren’t all in one place, which kind of makes it difficult to shop my own collection. Not that a singular container makes it any easier since I still have to pull them out. I did keep the containers so I can pull out themed washi for the season/month, with one of them being used to store a couple from The Washi Tape Shop (they’re so large and take up so much space).
And I got rid of part of my book collection! I have another box I’m going to drop off and sell in the next month or two before the weather gets colder, but my room is now more walkable than it was a few months ago when I first pulled out the collection and started going through them. I’ve started to declutter some clothes and a corner of my room, and Marie Kondo was not wrong about the amount of bags involved.
I got new glasses as well! I forgot about how much I hate the adjustment period — it’s been well over a decade since I got my eyes checked, and despite getting suggested not to go (you can guess who), I figured it would be good to do a checkup and make sure I was still doing okay with my vision.
I started my new, larger Five Year Diary on my 28th birthday. I’m not a fan of soft covers in general, but this one feels pretty sturdy? We’ll see how it holds up over the years. I got a jelly cover for it for some protection despite my not carrying it outside of the house a lot. If it starts showing some wear and tear I’ll probably turn it into a 2 or even 3 year — the ability to do so is one of the things I really love about the Sterling Ink Five Year Diary even if I’m wary about the paper (52gsm Tomoe River).
I’ve been thinking a bit about my 2026 journaling and how I want to set that up. Do I want to continue with my current layout, or do I want to try something new? Or was it just the planner craze getting to me? I started looking at some of the different ones out there and have been thinking about getting the Sterling Ink Daily Planner since I might be adjusting my setup sometime in 2026 depending on a few things. I’m expecting my current notebook to be filled up by the end of the year, so it’s the perfect time to review and see what I could change to better serve myself.
And finally, to further declutter my life a little more, I decided to part ways with Messenger and a few other apps from my phone since I don’t use them. I removed Facebook earlier this year and maybe check on my laptop like once a month or every two months, but it has been quite freeing – the people who are in my circle know exactly where to find me/know where I’m active and the people who wish to be in my circle and are not simply only reaching out when it benefits them will actually find me.
I’m mostly just tired of feeling like… I don’t know. That I shouldn’t exist or belong simply because I’m Asian. That the very people who celebrate our culture and partake in it once made fun of me for it (or continue to do so). And those same people would also turn a blind eye and overlook our people when they’re targeted (this isn’t the first time; there’s a whole history, but I won’t get into that). The same people who wouldn’t be mourning for us but expect us to mourn for one of them who actively advocates for people like me to not exist. And if we’re not, we’re considered celebrating even if we’re not.*
*Look, I’m not here to condemn anyone or even speak ill of the dead, or even be overly political (reading is political, though), but it’s quite telling and it’s frankly exhausting. That’s all I have to say. Don’t come at me.
October
October was a little better, though I did pause on decluttering things. I’ve been feeling tired all month again, and there was a weekend that I got sick, so I didn’t do too much either – not sure if it’s because I never recovered from burnout or I just get emotionally drained every time I do get a chance to rest, which is about as equivalent as not resting at all.
No Buy went better than September – much better. I had exceptions for the Paper Echoes advent calendar that I’m saving to open at a later time and the STICKII Club advent calendar, along with some sticker sheets since I skipped the October and November pack. 25 sheets is a lot to go through (assuming I like all of them! But I did look at a spoiler video, and I’m loving most of them) but I find I go through them pretty quickly, and I’ve made it a personal rule to skip a pack if I don’t like at least 4-5 sheets from the spoilers, which is pretty high since each pack has 7 and then 3 stationery items. But I think it’s a good ratio for me to get my money’s worth.
The few times I did break No Buy was getting some 2026 items before they sold out completely and the holiday delays/rush, though some of the items I had to go through a third party, or find an alternative. I decided to get the Sterling Ink Daily Planner after all to try out next year, and if it doesn’t work out, then I’ll have a couple notebooks I can fall back to in 2027. I’ve yet to decide what I want to do with the yearly and quarterly pages, but I have the rest of November and December to figure that out. There are a few other items I want to get for my 2026 setup, but those can wait until a little later in the year or possibly until after the holiday rush. I’m hoping to get all of it done by the end of the month.
I also started a washi tape journal so I can keep a record of my collection and know which ones I have. This was something I originally started in my Five Year Diary that’s less organized since I didn’t want to carry an extra notebook around, but I have a perfectly suitable B6 notebook that I can use that doesn’t add much weight.
Let’s talk!
Hopefully you’re taking care of yourself and staying hydrated! Tell me all about the past few months!
Hannah has a penchant for chaos, which is probably how she ended up blogging since 2012. That, and she was probably too expressive for her parents to handle, so it had to go somewhere. She can be found occasionally at The Arts STL. If you’d like to fuel her boba addiction or just enjoy her posts and want to support her, stop by her KoFi or Buy Me a Coffee!