Hello and welcome back. This is Issue 14 of “a bit of bird words” and I’ve managed to get sick again. Really sick this time actually. I imagine the immense stress of the last half-year finally caught up to me.

What did I do this month?

My partner and I celebrated our seven-year anniversary at the start of the month, which was very lovely. I hope for many more together.

I also finally heard back from the immigration offices early in the month, and to my immense joy and relief…they granted my application. I’m a permanent resident. I can stay here as long as I like.

I won’t be stopping there, of course. I’ve applied for citizenship, because this place is truly home to me now. I can’t imagine ever going back to the States, and I’m so grateful that I was able to leave, able to get this far already.

I’m still kinda-sorta taking a gaming break, but I’m plugging away at puzzles in Picross S6, and I did start Silksong. I doubt I’ll be able to finish it before the next Pokémon game comes out in October, but I’ll make a good stab of it. It’s a game that’s at once familiar and strange; NPCs, shops, benches, maps and quills and compasses, this is all familiar territory. But Hornet–the way she moves, the way she interacts with others, the way she works in combat–is not the Knight, and it takes time to acclimate to how she differs from it. It’s also a game that I think demands more from the player earlier than the original Hollow Knight, though I don’t know if it’s really “harder” or not. I think it’s pushing me to learn how to feel cool while playing, if anything.

I finished quite a few books this month, but honestly, I don’t feel particularly compelled to talk about any of them. Mostly it was to work through the handful of unread titles I have on my bookshelf still, and I ended up donating half of the ones I finished. Might end up donating more, honestly. The book I recently started though, Death of the Author, now that one’s quite interesting so far. I can already see the threads the author is weaving together, the things that will be called back and forward, and I’ve written more notes about the first 100 pages of this book than I wrote about anything else I’ve read in a while. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

What else?

I added a bunch of things to my website and finally joined a few webrings! I should really go say hello to my webring neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, one of my real-life neighbors sought me out recently and struck up a conversation with me. She’s pretty cool! We’ve had a handful of chats since, and fika once, and it’s honestly going a long way toward making me feel “grounded” here.

In the spirit of that, my recommendation this month is making that connection. Say hi to someone new, or send a message to someone you haven’t talked to in a while. Building connections with others is one of the ways we can resist the forces trying to isolate and alienate us. I know it’s hard—I have social anxiety, it’s painfully hard sometimes for me to talk to people—but it is still worth doing.

My personal recommendation to myself now is to rest, so see you next month.