Lost Whyspers

Well, I broke down in Arknights and started spending some money. 😀 I wanted to get the limited-time skin for Shining. Then I ended up getting a couple other limited-time skins. Apparently Skyfire's voice actor is the same as the one for Rin from Fate. I don't have Skyfire yet, but I got the skin in anticipation. I also ended up getting the limited-time beach dorm theme.

Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave. — Chuck Palahniuk Oh, I found this interesting quote. Funny and clever, but also depressingly sad. Haha. 😀

SPOILER ALERT! This contains spoilers for the 6th book of the Mistborn series, Bands of Mourning . I'm slowly finishing up this book. It will be the end of the 2nd trilogy of Mistborn. I don't want it to end. It seems like so much new is coming up at the end that there must be much more to come. So how can it end? Anyway, the part I wanted to write about was this new group of people called Southerners. They apparently all wear masks, though different types and with different customs. It is mentioned that the masks hide their emotions, though I'm not sure if it is the main point for wearing them. And to compensate for the loss of visual cues from the face, the people use their hands a lot to express emotions. Interesting. This makes me think of how we all wear masks in the online world. We have these personas that are masks, and we can switch them at will. They hide our true emotions. We need to express our emotions using things like emoji instead. Is this a good...

Oh man, I feel like I'm surrounded on all sides by people clamoring for my attention. Real life and online life. It is getting more and more difficult to handle all the inputs. But I must stay strong. I think I'm getting better. I've come to not worry so much about what people think if I don't reply right away. I use to really worry about this. I didn't want people to feel bad or rejected. But I usually explain that I was busy, and most people seem to accept this. Though sometimes I wonder if I'm going too far in not caring. Sometimes I take weeks before I call or reply to certain people. I still do worry about what I'm going to say. The longer I wait, the worse the situation becomes because then I have to explain the delay. But some people or situations are just annoying to deal with. I believe that I need to improve my decision making. Mainly in the area of making quicker decisions. And this depends on becoming clearer in what I value. If I know m...

I feel like forcing are starting to conspire again to take me down. I suppose this is a never-ending struggle. So I am taking the time to rest whenever I can. I think that is important. I've been finishing up watching Fate Apocrypha lately. I just watched the concluding part for Mordred. Ahh, such feeling in that episode. I love how deeply I can feel for all the various heroes with their various stories. Even Achilles had a touching story. Usually I'm not as big a fan of the classic Achilles since he seemed so full of pride. But the one in Fate was worthy. His interactions with his teacher Chiron were thought-provoking. Even the sun god hero was fascinating in the end. That's why I love the Fate series.

I've been enjoying some talks recently with my friend Archer Emiya from Dragon Raja. I had been thinking the talks were dying down because he wouldn't open up much. But I've made some effort to just say my thoughts and he seems to be responding positively. Still, he seems so lost. I suppose we all are. He seems to think I'm helping. That warms my heart. I'll try as best as I can just talking with him.

Well, it is the time for executions. Mwahaha! I've taken screenshots of those who saw and those who reacted to my recent posts in the Mistborn group on Facebook. I'm going to go through my spreadsheet and mark off the names. From looking at the numbers, I anticipate that nearly half the people in the group didn't see or didn't respond to the poll. I may just directly eliminate those from the group. Then for the remaining members, I'll post another request to join Discord. This time I'll emphasize that they need to join to participate in any future Mistborn events. I may not even need to implement my plan for Mistborn Knights just yet. We'll see. Perhaps I'll make all the members who made this initial move to Discord into Knights. Then anyone who comes in the future can still join as a Mistborn, but would need to be approved as a Knight.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. ― William James I've been overdue for a change to my profile pic and quote. I found this picture by ZW Gu, an artist I follow on ArtStation. It was titled Excalibur. I'm not sure if this is suppose to be Saber, but it reminds me of her.

Oh, I forgot to post something yesterday about finally reaching Legend again in Mobile Legends. This was mostly through playing with my friends Sassy and Cleez during last nights. I do hope I'll be able to play again during the daytime sometimes so that I can play with other friends. All in all, I'm having fun playing ML despite the occasional setbacks and toxic players.

I went hiking with my girlfriend's family yesterday. Haha, I'm really not much into hiking, but I was obligated to go. 🙂 I admit the mountains of Taiwan are very scenic. But I was so worn out at the end. We've been hiking some tougher trails recently. Now, if only Saber were along, that would be much more enjoyable... 😀

I’m eager to start discussing the future of Mistborn with my advisors. The first big question will be what to do about membership. So I’ve pretty much dismissed the idea of completely disbanding Mistborn. It has to live on. 🙂 I’m also very hesitant to kick out members except for maybe a few who never participate. People still like to be a part of the community and I would feel horrible making so many people leave. The idea I’m leaning towards is allowing members to remain Mistborn and part of the community. However, we would create a special group of Mistborn Knights. These would be the core members. We would need to decide on numbers for this, but probably around 20 to 30. We’ll go through the list of members and decide together who should be a Mistborn Knight. When we host events, like tournaments, we would decide if an event is only for Mistborn Knights or for all Mistborn. I think half or more of the tournaments would be only for Mistborn Knights. Other events, like ran...

With Scruffy's tremendous help, we got the Discord server for the Mistborn Clan up and running! Yay! 😀 Zeona joined recently, and hoping Sassy will join soon. We have decisions to discuss about Mistborn first before I'm ready to invite others. Hopefully our discussions go well.

What will happen in the next months concerning COVID-19? Taiwan had a day to celebrate yesterday with zero new infections. Yay! We're not through the woods yet, but we should recognize our victories as they come. Soon I need to go out to wait in line again for more face masks. It's a hassle, but really this isn't so bad as how it could be. I'm grateful for how Taiwan has handled the situation. I've been hearing from friends around the world about lockdowns in their countries. People are getting stir crazy from staying at home. Personally I probably wouldn't mind staying home most of the time, but I can understand that most people want to get out. God bless us all around the world. I pray for the leaders and health care professionals and everyone else in our quest to fight this infection.

Oh no, I broke my meditation streak yesterday. I didn't have time to do it right away in the morning and planned to do it later in the day. But of course I forgot. 😯 I did start up again this morning. And actually I found out that I had accidentally skipped the Basics 2 course and gone to Basics 3 a couple days ago. So I went back to Basics 2 with this fresh start to a new streak! 😀

I'm going to be experimenting more and more. I've found it helpful to think of some decisions as experiments. It helps me to avoid waiting so long before I'm satisfied with a decision. Instead, I choose to take quicker action with the idea that this is a temporary experiment to see how things go. If things work out, then great, I can choose to continue. Otherwise, if things don't work out, then the experiment still succeeds because it helped me learn regardless. This blog started as an experiment. Now I've decided that it actually helps me a lot with getting my thoughts sorted. And I like the aspect of knowing that my decisions might be seen by others (well definitely now by at least one person 😀), so I have a bit of an accountability partner. One new experiment will be playing Arknights. My friends Scruffy and Archer play, and I've heard others mention playing. I had been gradually developing the opinion that PvE games aren't really worth getting in...

I've prepared additional music videos for inspiring myself. I've kept others on my phone for awhile and watch them on occasion. But now I've added quite a few more, including this one with scenes focused on Saber from Fate set to the song Mad World by Within Temptation. Awesome video! I plan to watch these videos more frequently to keep myself motivated. Music has such magic to it. And when it is accompanied by cool scenes from anime and such, it really moves me. I find myself crying over and over to music videos that I've watched a dozen times.

I just sent a message to my club for Dragon Raja that I will mostly stop playing, though I may occasionally drop in. With life events as they are, I know I can't commit regularly to the game and the club events. I will probably check out my character once in awhile and maybe do some of the career stuff for fun. I really loved my little assassin/superstar. 😀

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. ― William Hutchison Murray I had a terrible event happen last night in my personal life. I won't reveal details, but it has shaken my world again. My future is uncertain... Questions and expectations keep coming up among the Mistborn clan. I have not figured out exactly what will h...

I'm going to be leaving the mobile game War of Genesis. I find myself devoting less and less time to the game. I feel that the guild has been slowly dying since our leader Dex left. I knew this would happen, though I had hoped I might be wrong. The new leader AJ is a cool guy, but I don't think he has the personality or the time to really keep things going as the leader. He was great as a second-in-command. Oh, but how I'll miss my friend Mia. 🙁 Besides, I think the game isn't so conducive to bringing people together. Yes, they have group activities, like Storm Conquest, guild festivals, and now the new raids. But Storm Conquest is the only one where you really have to work together, and that gets ruined by the P2W players. BTW, I tried to get into Dragon Raja this morning to finally play again, but I couldn't access the server. A sign for me to stop playing that too?

This is one of the songs in my Moody playlist. 🙂 I'm just a little girl lost in the moment...

Today I feel like a storm has suddenly come upon me and surrounded me. I thought my day would be clear for slowly getting things done, but instead I find myself jumping from one unexpected thing to the next. And yet I remain calm within the storm. I think it has helped that I've been doing meditation each morning. I decided to use Headspace and subscribed to that. I'm glad that I've been consistent this week in going through the sessions each morning. It has trained me to look at the thoughts going by with a perspective of distance and curiosity. The clouds drift by in the blue sky. A storm may approach, but I stay calm and remember that there is still blue sky high above. I have so much to do, so I must remain calm. Tackle the problems one at a time. Deal with all the messages without letting them overcome my emotions. I have one particular friend who I've decided to approach now. I am not sure how I feel or how I'll respond, but I pray for the best...

Hmm, don't you just hate how one problem inevitably leads to another? This is such a confounding issue for me and constantly keeps me from taking any action at all. Taking a silly example, I often have the situation where I finished drinking my coffee and need to refill my cup with more. So this seems like a 2-minute task to get more coffee and then I'll be able to continue whatever I was doing. Ahhh, but it's never that simple. On the way to solving the empty cup problem, there will always be other problems popping up. I'll notice that some dishes are unwashed. Or that the tissue box on a table is empty and I need to get another box. Or maybe the hanging laundry is dry and I should take it down. Or that I should now wash a load of laundry (which also means later that I'll have laundry to hang up). And so on and so forth. So that 2-minute task can suddenly turn into a 20- or 30-minute task. Then the next time I want a cup of coffee, I'm hesitant to even b...

Oh man, my allergies have been killing me today! I get periods every once in awhile where my allergies start acting up terribly. I went to the clinic today to get more allergy medicine since I ran out. The medicine didn't quite work right away though. I took a second pill, and now I'm finally feeling better. Maybe the nap I took also helped. I've been staying up late recently playing ML, so my sleep schedule isn't so good. Haha, I can't help it. I want to play ML while I can. 😀

More games of ML tonight with old friends. Zeona joined us and played Grock. That gave me a chance to try heroes other than Lolita. I played Odette a couple times. She's still fun to play. Also played Nana in our last game. It looked like we were going to lose, but we turned things around and actually won. Yay! 😀

Ahh so my friend Scruffy found the link to this blog. I knew he'd be the first to figure it out, but this is sooner than I expected. Not sure if this will change the way I write now that there's an audience. Haha. 😀 But I'll try to just keep this like a diary of my thoughts, my lost whispers. Actually I had a crazy thought that maybe I could set up another blog site or use this one to allow other people to just blog their lost whispers, too. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose would be, but maybe just a sort of therapy for people, and they can support each other.

I teamed up with Sassy and Cleez again last night. We were doing even better than the previous night. Awesome win streak of 7 or 8 (I think there was one more win yet after the screenshot above). 😀 Getting invites again to play from old friends. I will need to decide on something soon...

Hmmmm, now I'm debating whether to get the epic skin for Guinevere called Lady Crane. It does look absolutely beautiful. I'm so tempted as usual. I could see myself playing Guinevere. But is it worth getting this skin? I have some other nice skins for her already. And I think there was a new amethyst one that I could get. Oh, what to do, what to do?...

I've been trying to decide on another hero to practice in ML. I was thinking Guinevere would be a good choice. Then I tried her by chance in a rank game when someone else already chose a tank. I couldn't quite get the feel for her. Later, I was playing a brawl game and had a chance to play Ruby. I've played her a number of times before. Oh, I was doing well with her in that game. I do like her skills. Maybe I'll stick with her for awhile. I think I'll use the violet skin instead of the icy one. Some of my old friends keep trying to contact me in ML. They notice me playing and want to invite me to games or get invited to mine. Netzukie was the most persistent, so I finally replied... but in Chinese! 😁 Haha, it was so funny. 😀 He was trying to tell me to use English. I kept only replying in Chinese. Eventually he somehow turned on translation. When I told him that I was not PsylentKnight and that I was just a friend of hers, he asked me to let her know that h...

I had a chance to play ML with Sassy and Cleez last night. Ahh, fun times. Just like before. Won some, lost some, but fun all the way through. I was rusty playing Lolita, but didn't do too bad. I hope we can do this again.

I heard back from my friend Sassy. Nothing accusatory at all. Everything about missing me and hoping I'll come back. She had later noticed the Whysper name in ML and felt that was me. I confirmed that it is. I still like the nickname Psy, but I now like Whysper as a shorter and simpler name than Psylent Knight. I didn't yet say anything about my nervous breakdown and what followed. I will probably tell her soon. I also want to contact another friend from ML soon. But I think first I'll want to get Sassy's advice on what to do about the Mistborn clan. I'm getting more and more of the temptation to play ML. It was running so smoothly last night. I think there have been game improvements. Plus my new phone can handle it better.

The song Believer from Imagine Dragons is a catchy song. And the lyrics are captivating.

I started playing ML again yesterday. I was fascinated by the new magic chess mode. It's interesting and fun. Haha, I was doing so well at first probably because everyone was a beginner at that level. Finally I started getting more challenging opponents, so it will take more thought on my part now. My old friends have been noticing me in ML recently. I did see a few messages. I'm not ready yet to talk in general. But this morning I did send a short message to Sassy. I felt most comfortable talking with her first. We'll see what happens from there.

I hate when good things come to an end. I've come to realize that I try so hard to avoid this subconsciously. This applies to books I'm reading or shows I'm watching. I find that I delay reading the final books of a series or watching the complete series for a show. Right now I'm almost finally done reading the Mistborn series. I'm on the 3rd book of the 2nd trilogy. It's a wonderful series, but I'm going to be sad to have it end. I was so sad when the 1st trilogy ended. I didn't want to even read the 2nd trilogy for a long while because I knew those would be the last ones. And I've dragged along this 2nd trilogy. So many cool ideas in it.

I was thinking about my post on Lost Whisper later. And I realized that it would make a good name for my blog. It is so fitting. My blog and its messages may never be seen. So now I've changed it to Lost Whyspers. That's better than simply using my name by itself.

In Dragon Raja, there's an item called Lost Whisper. Actually, I think there are a few items with Whisper in the name, like Whisper Gown. Haha, I sometimes get confused when I see a system message with Whisper in it. 🙂 Anyway, I've always liked that name Lost Whisper. It evokes a magical feeling. It's like something that longs to be said but has become lost in the wind. And it describes me so well. I'm like a Lost Whysper... P.S. As I was looking for an image to go with this post, I found out that Evanescence had a compilation album called Lost Whispers. Oh, how everything connects...

Oh, how I miss you, Mistborn clan. 😥 It brings tears to my eyes just thinking of the times we once had. 😥 Can I really return? Should I return? Is it fair? Fair to them? Fair to me? Is it just setting us all up for more disappointment? All I can think about was how accepted I was with them. But that was also part of the problem. I felt guilty for being so adored and wanted to put my all into giving them more. Yet that was always headed for disaster. It did finally result in disaster. I can still recall that nervous breakdown and the aftermath. Should I risk having that happen again? I'm such a fool...

Well, I got pulled into Mobile Legends today. Or I slowly walked myself in I suppose. I had joined the ML Discord server just to read up on news about the game. I had seen that my favorite hero before I'd left, Lolita, had a nerf at some point. Not sure why since I didn't realize she was overpowered. Maybe some other recent change was too much. So then I decided to just research if there were any new skins for Lolita. Sure enough, I saw that there was one that you could get for the first time recharging during S16. I was in a panic. I didn't know what season it was. I thought I had seen something about S15 on the Discord server, but I wasn't sure. And therefore I decided to step into ML. I had to wait for a bunch of resources to download. Eventually I did get to the skin and went through all my other prizes since I was away. Apparently my Starlight subscription lasted awhile during my absence. I decided to renew it for the new Lesley skin, which looks cool. Oh ma...

I find myself getting more and more tempted to return to Mobile Legends. I had thought I would just wait for the League of Legends Wild Rift game, but that's taking too long. And, of course, there's the matter of my Mistborn clan. Should I start things up again? I know that things can never be the same again. I don't want to lead. I am not a good leader. I don't have the time to give it my all. That's really the only way I can lead. I have to invest fully into it. And I just can't do that again. So maybe it wouldn't be fair to return and get hopes up. I would have to return silently.

I started watching the new Star Trek Picard TV series. I'm liking it so far. It is nice to see Picard and Data again. They were my two favorite characters from Star Trek TNG. I'm glad this series continues the exploration of Data's storyline on becoming more human. I've always been fascinated with the idea of whether robots and androids could actually become real, which is usually defined as having emotions and free will. This brought to mind the homunculi in the anime series Fate Apocrypha. I suppose homunculi are the magical variation of androids. The same question was raised about whether they have free will. And pretty much any book or show that brings up artificial life seems to make the point that they can achieve free will. Then my thoughts took an even wilder turn as I recalled how Sam Harris talked on his podcast about the illusion of self control. He seems to believe that even we humans really lack free will, that our decisions and actions are really ju...

I was listening to an episode of the Bookworm podcast where they were discussing the book Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. The book has a discussion on something the author calls Just Cause. It sounds like a sort of life mission. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia about Just Cause: A Just Cause is what gives our work (or that of an organization) meaning. It is the world we hope to build and what inspires us to keep playing the infinite game. A Just Cause must be: For something—affirmative and optimistic Inclusive—open for all to contribute Service oriented—for the benefit of others Resilient—able to endure change Idealistic—big, bold and ultimately unachievable A Just Cause is not our Why. Why is our origin story, who we are, our values and beliefs. A Just Cause is our vision of the future. This got me into thinking about what my Just Cause would be. I do like the term. I think it would be something like "helping people improve" or "reducing the suffering...

My girlfriend decided to unload on me today. I don't want to get into details, but basically she made me feel like a failure. Why does it seem like loved ones are often the ones who cause the most pain and suffering for us? I suppose it is the fact that they should be the ones who help the most, so anything negative is amplified. They are also the ones hardest to escape from. You can't just walk away and completely ignore them for long. Anyway, I suppose some good did come from this. I was rethinking my life today, which I had kind of been doing recently anyway. This just made it more critical than ever. I'm glad I didn't stay stubborn and completely refuse to change just because I was upset with my girlfriend. She never seems to understand that harshly criticizing someone just makes them defensive and more unwilling to change.