{"id":158,"date":"2017-07-11T15:14:23","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T22:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/?p=158"},"modified":"2017-07-11T15:14:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T22:14:23","slug":"chronicles-2017-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/2017\/07\/11\/chronicles-2017-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronicles: 2017 Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Academic<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I spent most of the spring finishing up job interviews and calling\/visiting\u00a0with the companies I had already interviewed to try and figure out where I want to go! I thought the interview process itself was agonizing, but I think this part of the process was even more so. I had to decide whether I wanted a more academic research career, or whether I wanted to do something a little bit more product-focused, and I had great options for both paths. In the end, <strong>I decided to join Adobe as a research scientist<\/strong>, and I&#8217;m very excited about starting there this summer!\n<ul>\n<li>Though I don&#8217;t have any regrets about my choice,\u00a0I will always be curious about what my life would have been like if I had chosen the other path. It&#8217;s the story of my life: should I have\u00a0gone to art school\u00a0rather than major in computer science in college?\u00a0Would I have been a successful artist? Had I focused on art, would\u00a0I be happier than I am now? Would a life as a user experience researcher been a better fit for my life goals? Or would I have regretted it? Do I now have more freedom to work on the creative projects I want to work on than I would have had otherwise?<\/li>\n<li>People say &#8220;you never know until you try&#8221;, but I feel like in certain cases (like when choosing a career path), you can&#8217;t really try all the options because the side effects are expensive (like choosing where I live\u00a0considering where my partner lives, how much I&#8217;ll be able to work on my other personal goals in the meantime, etc). I guess the truth is I&#8217;ll never know, and I should accept that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Art<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Finished a print featuring one of my favorite game series in whole wide world, <a href=\"http:\/\/jojostory.deviantart.com\/art\/Harvest-Moon-Life-673184889\">Harvest Moon<\/a>! One of my goals was to work on unifying color schemes and I&#8217;m really happy with how it turned out.<\/li>\n<li>Continuing to do my &#8220;weekly&#8221; color sketches, though I only ended up doing one of <a href=\"http:\/\/jojostory.deviantart.com\/art\/The-Best-Maid-680658965\">Tohru from Dragon Maid<\/a> since the last time I made a blog post.<\/li>\n<li>Designed some new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.etsy.com\/listing\/527919059\/life-bar-clear-acrylic-charm-phone-charm?ref=shop_home_active_1\">charms based on video game life bars<\/a>!<\/li>\n<li>I tabled at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.acen.org\/\">Anime Central<\/a> in Rosemont, IL, then <a href=\"http:\/\/fanime.com\/\">Fanime<\/a>\u00a0in San Jose, CA the week after! It was my first time at both cons, and it was crazy and hectic, but I made awesome friends and ended up selling out of many products at both cons! I&#8217;m super flattered that people loved the stuff I make ;_;<\/li>\n<li>Got <a href=\"http:\/\/jojostory.deviantart.com\/art\/Anime-Central-2017-Commissions-Part-2-688553714\">lots<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/jojostory.deviantart.com\/art\/Anime-Central-2017-Commissions-685159738\">commissions<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/jojostory.deviantart.com\/art\/Fanime-2017-Commissions-685165207\">done<\/a> for these cons as well! I still have a few I need to finish, ahh!<\/li>\n<li>Participated in lots of fanzines: <a href=\"https:\/\/z-foodzine.tumblr.com\/\">Pokemon Z-food<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/ffxivwolzine.tictail.com\/\">Memento Lumina<\/a> (FFXIV player character\u00a0zine), <a href=\"http:\/\/ff30thfanzine.tictail.com\/\">Lux Itineris<\/a> (Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Fanzine, featuring fanart of all the major games in the series)<\/li>\n<li>I was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/AnimeSketch\/comments\/6bpzah\/interview_with_an_artist_jojostory_uthedandylion\/\">interviewed for \/r\/AnimeSketch<\/a>!<\/li>\n<li>Got into <a href=\"http:\/\/crunchyrollexpo.com\/\">Crunchyroll Expo<\/a>, so I&#8217;ll be going to that later this year! I got into <a href=\"https:\/\/geekgirlcon.com\/\">GeekGirlCon<\/a> as well but decided to decline (and I reallllly wanted to go!), but I&#8217;m already going to San Japan that month, and don&#8217;t want to make life\u00a0too crazy while I&#8217;m still getting used to my new job.<\/li>\n<li>Started my first freelance design project ever! Working on logo and website redesigns for <a href=\"https:\/\/tabletopvillage.com\/\">my sister and her husband&#8217;s trading card and board game store<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Personal<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Travel: Visited home for a few weeks for a lengthy family emergency. Thankfully things turned out fine, but I was definitely focused\u00a0on nothing but home for a while.\n<ul>\n<li>My baby sister graduated from college, and my partner graduated with his PhD! Yay!<\/li>\n<li>A couple of friends of ours got married! They had a beautiful\u00a0outdoor wedding with video game music and a boba bar and it was\u00a0<em>so<\/em> perfect for them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Finally moved off campus and into an apartment!<\/li>\n<li>Anime: Kimi no Na Wa (really cute and emotional movie!),\u00a0Gintama (binged several more episodes and I&#8217;m at a point where backstory and plot actually come into play? I like the mix of story and slapstick humor!), My Hero Academia S2 (still very good, loving diving into each of the characters more), Kemono Friends (cute with a\u00a0mysterious story, don&#8217;t let the low production quality fool you!)\n<ul>\n<li>Tried: Eromanga Sensei (I hate this show so much D:),Sakura Quest (had high hopes because it&#8217;s by the same studio that made\u00a0Shirobako, but sadly it&#8217;s not very charming or funny)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Games: Started FFXIV Stormblood! Too bad early access day ran into so many problems &#8212; I&#8217;ll have to\u00a0revisit it after server issues get sorted out. Also started Persona 5 <em>and it is fantastic<\/em>! The music is great, the UI design is great, the character designs are great! The writing is still pretty good, but I agree with others in saying that characters all seem to talk very similarly, which is a bit strange. Still playing mobile games &#8212; but despite the fact I&#8217;m trying to quit most of them, Granblue Fantasy is still a daily staple and\u00a0I recently tried out FF Brave\u00a0Exvius\u00a0and Fate Grand Order, both of which I haven&#8217;t quite figured out yet.<\/li>\n<li>Books: Finished Improv Wisdom, highly recommended and an easy read! It&#8217;s definitely one of those books with nuggets of wisdom that I&#8217;ll refer back to\u00a0repeatedly. Started reading Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.<\/li>\n<li>Podcasts: Tried out a tabletop gaming podcast called Friends at the Table! I haven&#8217;t gotten too deep into it since the episodes are so long, and I&#8217;m maybe too used to the faster pace and storytelling style of The Adventure Zone. I&#8217;ll keep trying it though! I also started Rose Buddies which I was surprised to find I enjoy even though I don&#8217;t watch The Bachelor(ette) at all.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve definitely fallen behind on my goal to being more\u00a0politically engaged and active in contacting my state representatives! I need to get back to doing that!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Academic I spent most of the spring finishing up job interviews and calling\/visiting\u00a0with the companies I had already interviewed to try and figure out where I want to go! I thought the interview process itself was agonizing, but I think this part of the process was even more so. I had to decide whether I&#8230; <a class=\"moretag\" href=\"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/2017\/07\/11\/chronicles-2017-spring\/\"> <strong>Read More<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joyk.im\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}