Maybe, being broken is exactly what we need to be?

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Or in my case, cheap problems require cheap solutions.

It's no secret that our economic situation is on the brink of collapse. And honestly, for me and a lot of people, we're already in the recession.

The government says we're still doing fine. But we all know just how reliable their data is. Which is to say, not reliable at all. Even more so if your government is like mine. Absolutely corrupt, incompetent, and so disconnected from reality they might as well live in another dimension.

For the past two years, more and more of my salary has been delayed at work. A work that barely paid enough for me to feed myself and my family, and sometimes even help my parents. Since around 2022, I've pretty much had no disposable income. The industry I'm in is in tatters. It got even worse after the current cursed president took the throne (yes, throne. Because he act like a king).

The world we knew in our childhood ended in 2019.

Well, moving on. Since my hobbies are playing games, writing, drawing, and sometimes making videos, I of course need a device that can support them. That means spending money on computer parts. And just as I said before, I barely have any disposable income. I'm very much a bargain hunter.

Anything I can cheap out on, I cheap the hell out of.

From a cheap, not-even-Bronze PSU, a second-hand HDD for storage, a cheap-brand SSD, refurbished RAM and CPU, and finally an ex-mining GPU. My main goal when building a PC is simply to have it turn on and work well enough to let me do what I need. You could say, I'm literally scraping the bottom of the barrel with this build.

My peripherals? They're the cheapest of the cheap too. A bottom-tier Logitech mouse and an unknown-brand keyboard. The only decent thing in my setup that I bought new is my LG monitor, back in the good days of 2017–2018. I also finally managed to save enough money to replace my dying PSU with a decent one after blowing through two shitty ones. Oh, and the Motherboard too. But just like before, they were the cheapest decent options I could find.

A bottom-tier Bronze PSU from Corsair and a bottom-tier A320 Motherboard from ECS.

With all that background, it should come as no surprise that I also bought the absolute cheapest headphones I could find two years ago. I just needed something that could make sound.

The exact headphones I'm currently still wearing while writing this article.

I bought them for around five bucks. The sound they produce is meh, the mic is so quiet it might as well not exist. And this exact headphones have been broken for about a year. The mic is dead, and the speaker on the left side became loose after I dropped them. Now the audio balance is completely off.

For months, I left them as they were and just lowered one side to compensate, with unsatisfying results. But everything changed after I fell off my bike a few weeks ago.

One day, I came home from overtime and hit a rock with my bike. I fell onto the road, but since I was riding pretty slowly, both the bike and I were fine. It was also nighttime, so there wasn't any traffic.

I was so tired that day that I just lay there on the asphalt for quite some time. Just Lying there, folding my hands and closing my eyes, contemplating my life's choices. I didn't care that my clothes were getting dirty or how hard the road was. I truly felt exhausted, not just physically, but mentally.

It was at that moment a dumb thought suddenly crossed my mind.

If the speaker on the left side of my headphones being loose was the problem, then I just needed to loosen the right side too to balance things out.

So I got home.

I checked the headphones and found there was no way to disassemble them without breaking them. Just what you'd expect from something that cheap.

And so...

I hit them against the table.

Again.

Again.

And again.

And again until I heard something break inside.

And now both speakers are loose.

With both sides now broken, they can finally do their job properly.

Once again, the world has changed. It's no longer the world of two decades ago. So many things that used to work are now broken. A job is no longer something you aspire to climb up, just having one is already a blessing. Getting people to see what your hobbies produce is no longer just about consistency, but also about the blessing of the almighty algorithm. Niches that used to belong to passionate people are now crowded by those who are only in it for the money.

If I started listing all the new problems we face in this new era, there would be no end to it.

Sometimes I wonder.

In this new broken world, maybe resisting isn't the right way to face it.

Maybe, just like my headphones, I need to smash my old way of doing things before they can finally work again in this dystopian society. Which are both easier and cheaper than persisting.

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It's hard to restart to your mental state

An object at rest cannot move unless there is a force to make it move. That is one of the three Newton's laws we all learned in middle... school physics class?

But it turns out it doesn't only apply to physics. It also applies to the human psyche. When you stop doing something, it's much harder to start doing it again.

I have observed this phenomenon ever since I was little.

It's hard to muster the motivation to go back to school after spending time at a relative's house or being sick for a long time. Somehow, people and places that should feel familiar suddenly feel foreign again.

It's hard to reconnect with your old friends from grade school, middle school, or even high school after years and years of not caring about each other.

It's also hard to push yourself back into society after living like a recluse for a long time, fearing how you'll be judged by others.

And right now, I'm at the stage where I want to start my project again but just can't muster any motivation to do so because of various reasons.

As you have seen, I'm writing this blog. I love reading, and I also love writing novels as a hobby. I draw as a hobby too, and I make videos as well. Recently, I've also been dabbling in manga translation. And the good part is, I'm somewhat good at all of them.

Which, weirdly enough, is exactly the reason why I'm so troubled right now. It's like I'm caught in Gojo's Domain Expansion. When you can do anything, you can't do anything. In my case, even though I can do everything (on that list), I also can't bring myself to do any of it.

I have too many hobbies and too little time. And the worst part is, I think I currently have quite severe ADHD because of all the short-form videos I've been consuming over the past year.

It's been so long since I was able to focus on one thing and simply finish it. The last project I managed to complete was The Bleak Knight, which I published last May. But even that wasn't something I started and finished in one session, or a week, or even a month. It took me almost a year of writing and drawing to complete it. Mostly spent on procrastinating and getting distracted.

I've been in this place before, and I've managed to overcome this exact problem before too. So I know I can make it through this valley. The solution isn't complicated, either. Usually, I just need to DO IT instead of thinking about it.

But this time, it feels much harder to push through the mental block because of this phrase...

"Posting to the void."

You know how the internet works nowadays. Most of the things you make will end up in the stomach of the modern day monster called AI anyway. That really puts a damper on my motivation to do anything. Like, anything at all.

After all, you know that everything you create will disappear into the void, with barely any actual human ever seeing or reading your work. The sense of futility is just too strong.

This time, the valley I'm falling into feels much deeper than any I've fallen into before.

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Mushoku Tensei's ending is a generational fade

So, I just finished reading all the Redundancy volume of Mushoku Tensei. And my thoughts are. Well, if you already read the WN version. You missed nothing. It’s pretty much the same thing, just better written. And if you haven’t read the WN as improbable as it is. I’ll spoil it a little bit for you.

The first redundancy volume contain…

Norn got married.

Lucie goes to school.

Isolde got married. After that.

We go back to the beast village and Ghislaine finally fixes her relationship with her family. The next one is filled with his journey to Milis to finally fix their familial relationship with Lateria family. And lastly, there was Ars forbidden relationship with Aisha.

Which i'm sure all of you have heard of at least.

Anyway, instead of that. What i wanted to talk about is something else. And that is, the amount of congratulatory words from various famous authors. Here some of them.

Mushoku tensei may not the first nor the best at using``isekai`` as its main theme, but it is definitely one of the most influential series for this trends that still going strong even almost a decade later. Defeating the powerhouse of school battle harem of the previous generation.

I feel i can say for quite a lot of certainty that. Mushoku Tensei has been responsible for the creation a lot of series that we all know today.

Even you don't like it, you can't deny the power it has. A power that carried a whole generation of authors and stories into a new era.

And era that now too, starting to wane.. Exactly when it finally ended too. 

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A New Potential Ascendance of a Bookworm Spinoff?

So, I just finished reading Volume 2 of the Hannelore spinoff. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s an Ascendance of a Bookworm side story that focuses on Hannelore’s chaotic romantic situation after the Goddess of Time descends into her to summon Rozemyne. It’s packed with misunderstandings, drama, and a mix of emotional and physical conflict.

Yes, physical conflict. We even get some fights. It’s Dunkelfelger, after all.

But honestly, what intrigued me even more than Hannelore having her feelings tossed around by her suitors is the whole situation with Myne.

It looks like she was sent to the past.

PHYSICALLY.

In Volume 1, it felt like Myne being summoned by the gods to fix the “weaving of fate” was a one-and-done thing. Turns out, that was just one step in a much bigger process.

After Hannelore comes back from the divine realm, things get weird. Knights from her duchy suddenly have new memories. Memories of seeing Myne in the distant past, long before her rebirth in this world. She appeared at various points throughout history.

And here’s the wild part. All of this is recorded in the Grutrissheit, which basically means her actions in the past are now fully canon in the present timeline.

So now I’m wondering. Is all of this going to be properly explained in the next volume of the spinoff? Or are we heading toward another side story entirely, one where Myne goes on a rampage across time and space to save her beloved Ferdinand?

Honestly, I kind of want the second option. One last volume of Myne going all out would be a perfect final hurrah to wrap up the series for good.

Or....…Who am I kidding? This whole article is just my copium because it’s really hard to let go of this series for good.

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I can not remember a whole song

I can not recall a whole song.

I don't know when this started, but suddenly I realized that I have not been able to sing a whole song for quite a long time. Even songs that I liked a lot, I can't remember their full lyrics.

I used to be able to sing a whole song, even foreign songs whose meanings I didn't completely understand (with lyrics I found online, of course). But the worse part is that this forgetfulness does not apply only to song lyrics. It also applies to both the song title and the singer. Most of the time, all I can remember is the melody. Not only that, it's usually only the melody of the refrain.

This Fiirus really has become such an inconvenience when I find a song to be good but forget to like it (I stream music), and then can barely remember even its melody.

I'm sure getting older plays some part in this phenomenon. But I feel the main reason for this situation is the saturation of the market itself. In the past, especially before internet access became a daily fact of life, our exposure to music and songs was mainly through TV and radio, where if we missed the timing, we simply couldn't listen to them.

This created a scarcity that elevated the experience of listening to music.

If you were born in the early 2000s or late 1990s, I'm sure many of you have seen the rise of TV programs whose whole shtick was ranking songs every week.

For many people at that time, listening to a song was an event in itself. You were waiting for it, you were excited about it, and of course, you were paying attention to it. The easy access to music today, combined with the sheer number of songs available, has made them a part of daily life.

Which means we now barely pay attention to them. Listening to music is no longer an event. It is now just part of daily life. You do it while doing chores, you do it while working, and you do it while going to and from work.

Their abundance has literally made them feel less valuable, even though they are not. Our brains have simply normalized their presence and placed them in the category of "something not really special."

Of course, I do not wish to go back to the time when I couldn't afford to buy CDs and had to resort to recording broadcasts from the radio or TV with the low-quality microphone on my mid-2000s phone. Or spending massive amounts of cellular data to download MP3s from the internet over a slow-ass GPRS connection.

I just feel that we lost something important along the way to this current age of abundance.

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