Self reflection on 2023

2023 what a year!- well it has not ended yet…. but it should be in a few weeks, so it’s time to reflect on it, but first we need to recap why 2023 specifically.

Recap (For Context purposes)

Do keep in mind that I’ve made many mistakes I regret and I don’t agree with what I did unless I specifically say I agree with it. Let’s recap my situation and who I was. Unless you’re not aware (Can’t blame you, you might be from YouTube) I’m Amy! Now, before 2020, I have a very clear personality. I try to be nice and supportive to many people as possible, however I have an occasional prankster side which I try to suppress. It does occasionally show out from time to time, before “Atius” I used to be known as “BLUEBB_333”. Back then all the social media I had was a YouTube channel and that’s it. I did troll someone once with my cousin in the comment section of a YouTube reply, there was one infamous “thread” let’s call it, under Zajcu37’s video. It was not the most pretty thing I did. A while later, when I was playing Roblox, that side of me shows up once again. This might be one of my biggest mistake that lead me down a worse path. In the summer of 2018, I had a friend. We were playing Phantom Forces and I decided to vote-kick him for fun, because it’s acting up again. This one event made my friend pretty mad, he blocked me and left the school that year (Whether he left the school because of me or not is irrelevant, because that’s what I was feeling atm), I was pretty heartbroken. I was not one to confront my own feeling of guilt however, the best thing I did was try to suppress it and burn everything that reminded me of that era. I left Roblox, I decided “Y’know what? Fine! I’ll do my own thing” I got a little group playing lego’es. One of them was quite a history nerd, talking about stuff I could never understand, I had to get my mind off of Roblox so I decided to read more about it. I watched a bunch of “OverSimplified” History videos about WW2, and this is when things started to change. It was Grade 6 and while that year was generally relatively fun, it was quite bittersweet.

In Thailand, once you stop Grade 6 (Prathom), you move on to Matthayom. I move on to Matthayom 1 naturally. I (my parents) decided to go to CRU, which is the province’s “number 1” public school. (It was actually segregated between AMAB and AFAB people). Of course, I studied and make sure I can pass the entrance exam to get in. I did not get into the Gifted class (Thank god for that). I actually got into the “King” class which is like the most top “normal” one. I was pretty proud of myself actually, but when I’m not doing anything, I am starting to have nothing to do. I didn’t go to my grandparent’s house to play Minecraft and hang out with my cousins like usual, because well, I had an entrance exam to do. My little brother had been sent off over there to not disturb me. This puts me in a very weird and uncomfortable position, I am an extroverted person. Talking to people is like my whole thing.

Real life stuff out of the way, let’s jump back a bit to late 6th grade, I discovered these things called “Countryballs”. They’re like Country but balls, and they talk, and a while later, I discovered something called “Alternate Future of the World” by Cosmic Mapping, I binged all the episode. In an alternate universe, this would just have been a passing video, nothing more nothing less. A few days later, the YouTube algorithm decided to serve me videos from Japanese Mapping. It combined the concept of “AFOW” and “Countryballs” together, and it was fairly ‘well-produced’.

I decided to make my own because I wanted to make my own, it was okay-ish for a first video, but good enough to attract some attention by a few other ‘mappers’. Two of the people that commented on my videos are “Sebi” and “Hyperflame”, they later launched a Discord server together (I had to recover my Discord account for this lol). After the results of the entrance exam, I had nothing to do, so I started chatting there. Some people there have expressed some really sus opinion, but as I was young and stupid. I didn’t know what’s going on. I was never the most religious person, but I was raised a Catholic in a Buddhist country. I was kind of close to my “faith” because I am the minority and people tend to ask me weird question because of that. A Human defense mechanism is to be defensive and stick close to what they are. When by these fellas that there are people who wanted to destroyed what I (back then) hold dear? That makes me relatively mad. It’s just a small little starting right-wing bias, but the seed was planted. Just like many seeds of forest floor plant. It often lay dormant in the ground until an opportunity shows its head. In the case of seed, it’s an opening in the forest canopy. As for me, 2019 ended, and it was March 2020. Summer Holiday in Thai Schools are in March-May due to how Summer works here.

Hooray! The summer started, something is happening though… something unexpected. In March 2020, the world locked down. I live a long way away from my grandmother’s house, and that causes me to be stuck at home. As an extrovert, I don’t really like being alone. It’s not like I’ve saved up contacts with my new irls because I don’t like Facebook for whatever reason. Earlier in 2019, I have pretended to be “Great Siam Mapping” which I “prank” pretend to be a girl for whatever reason. It’s so weird as it’s something I always did when I was a kid (The signs were so obvious, how did I never notice). I thought it was funny, but the secret’s out. People makes snarky comment about it. I decided to burn the identity to the ground and try to be “cool” like Sebi. A few weeks later, there was a trans person who came out. Sebi went and harassed them. Unfortunately, I must confess that I decided to join in because I feel like I have to ‘impress’ someone because of that trick I did. After that, the school had dropped me down to Room 9 (Basically, fell from “King” class to one of the lower classes). I tried to act like I did not care, but I do. It feels like an insult to my intelligence and it shatters my confidence. I overate and I go deeper into the fascist rabbithole because what else do I have?

But there is light, light shining in. It was around June 2020 I think? The school is supposed to reopen, but due to COVID, everything is closed. I had found this guy called “ElectroDogeRB” (The guy Marshy Marsh was based on in my South Park series). He had join the server and has said the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard, he had just claimed that “Evolution is not real”. I am and was always an animal nerd from as long as I can remember, and there was this guy who shares the same religion as I do and using that to support his unhinged claim. This strike a realization in me “How far have I fallen from my ‘real’ self that I semi-share an ideology with such a stupid person?”. I realized that if my religion can be used to claim stupid and ignorant things like that, surely it could be wrong about anything. Suddenly I feel like everything that I “believed” in has fallen apart. I looked myself in the mirror and realized how much I’ve changed. I was never homophobic or transphobic before, I always thought that people should be able to do whatever they want as long as they don’t hurt other people but somehow that one core philosophy I had since I was a kid is undone by some time on the internet????? I realized that it is a time to change, I can’t have no more of this. It’s just not who I am. I don’t want to grow up being hateful, claiming what I am doing is the “right” thing when it has been proven wrong. I spent 2021 slowly recovering my personality which I thought was lost, I was quite struggling to get my grip of who I was, but I try to. I quit politics, history, and everything in relation to that. I feel like that was holding me back. The school started opening up again and I went outside. One of the friends that fall to Class 9 with me is gay, but he’s a really nice person. I realized that I have been more wrong that I have ever been.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. In Matthayom 4 (refer to the education system table up there), after a year or two under COVID I decided to go all in. I became the class captain!…. and made a total clown of myself. I decided to try to put myself out there as possible but it’s very clear that my confidence had collapsed. School work is catching up to me again. Not to mention I didn’t have my gender dysphoria fully figured out yet and I was still pretty shy about that. I have never had social anxiety but me without my confidence, I am nothing. I spent a year basically barely having anyone, but it’s okay. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on the fact that I spent all my life being confused about how someone could be socially anxious. I think that makes me understand them more, plus it also gave me time to think about myself, figure my issues out. After that, I quit the school and did the GED thing and went to college in 2023, which is where we’re at now! Yay!

Linux Community

So let’s first reflex on one of the things that I am involved in during 2023. I had switched to Linux back in 2022, you can read more about it here and I have viewed the Linux Community from afar. I am someone who likes to take part in things, I don’t like feeling left out. It was inevitable for me to join a space and this all started with Minecraft Bedrock. See, I have to be able to check out things in Java AND Bedrock and frustratingly, the “cross-play” platform is not on any PC platform but Windows! Back then Minecraft Bedrock Launcher wasn’t as good as it is now. I needed another solution and my solution is to literally run Android on top of Linux, it was Waydroid! I came upon this video by The Linux Experiment and then YouTube keeps recommending me his videos. I was preparing to get into university, so instead of doing that, I binged watch his YouTube channel (Spoiler alert: I still got in somehow). I then came upon this video he was talking about his old discord server, which he had since moved on. I decided to join his new server and see what’s up. (I actually hadn’t start typing for a while, I used it as a repository of opinions as I’d search up a thing and see what people think about them). So, after a while, I started to chat with people and see what’s up. I met a bunch of cool people there such as Heliguy, runarcn, Zoey, Beryesa, Flora, Gabby, ami, and probably a whole lot more people I forgot. As I talked to more people I have a desire to do something. Anything! Around this time I also found a bunch of awesome people on the Fediverse like TheEvilSkeleton, Daudix, Cassidy, and more that I probably don’t remember (if you’re not listed here, don’t get angry, I have a very short memory).

But my first “contribution” came in the form of the language I speak. I’m not a big fan of Thai personally, there are a lot of letters and it’s not the easiest to type. I have been using English as my device language since I’ve been able to read it. One day, I thought about a funny idea of changing my GNOME language to Thai for fun. I then realized how terrible the situation is. Many user-facing element are still in English, such as the Power Off button. I decided that it is time for me to do something, Anything! I then translate a lot of the shell element and a bit of Nautilus. (You’d have to manually edit po files, which is kinda ehhh). Other than that I also translated Warehouse and a bit of FluffyChat. I also did more than just translation work, I tried to flatpak Beeper it worked but there are a few things to do to get it on Flathub at which point I just gave up as I already wasted a week on it. I also made AdwaitaColors, which heliguy got it merged in the accent extension. I however do not enjoy a lot of the experienes, I know that people have overfixation over something (I do too), but when you don’t really care about that it gets really annoying. I frankly am annoyed at how fragmented the Linux ecosystem is, people still can’t decide the main way of distributing apps (It is slowly being fixed at a snail’s pace). There are people in 2023 who still prefers installing apps as root??????? It just annoys the hell out of me. It’s like they’ll say all these techy jargon that means nothing in the end. In a way, this is kind of like politics, people only really care about doing things their way, not what creates a good experience. I decided to call it quit, it was super annoying. I don’t like dealing with condescending nerds. I would probably stay on Linux for now until I can afford a Mac. I don’t see a future in this ecosystem anymore.

‘Academic’ Life

I started this year in Mathayom 4. I did not enjoy my time, as highlighted above at the end of the recap. I know it’s stupid, but in Thailand, there is a hair mandate in high school. During COVID, I practically did not cut my hair. I wasn’t feeling super happy about having to do that once school opened up again. So, after asking my parents about it, I realize that this idea is possible. Just skip high school entirely (well, almost entirely, as I had one year in it). I want to say I studied and studied and tried super hard, but like GED isn’t the hardest thing (Not to say I don’t study, but I’m more of a “I’ll just read a few things before the exam” type of person). So I passed the GED thing and my uni entrance exam. It was kinda awesome (I had to do RLA and Social Studies again, though). Safe to say that so far, uni has been a more enjoyable experience than my one year of high school (Albeit, I was more prepared mentally). It wasn’t easy and there were some difficulties getting used to things, but I am in a far better place now than I was earlier this year. SO, I think this is a positive. Oh, and if you’re curious, I am on Biological Science major, it’s kind of my childhood dream to be a zoologist or ecologist.

Being Transgender and using a new name

Now, this is kind of a heavy subject. In case you don’t know, I am Transgender! I hope it won’t be much of a surprise, but if it is then uh hi I guess. It was a feeling I’ve had ever since I was a kid. I had never really considered that I was one, in fact I tried my hardest to make sure I’m not one (I was not transphobic at that time, but I didn’t know that surgery isn’t everything and I really was afraid of surgery). I actually quit chicken at one point because I thought they added hormones to it. Last year was really the time I was still exploring it, and as mentioned before 2022 was not the year when I had the most confidence. My social life was kinda hell and I didn’t like that. I occasionally seem rude because I can’t decide to use “Krub” or “Ka” (Context: In Thai, to be polite you have to end your sentence with Krub or Ka depending on your gender, if you want to know more about it you can read about it here) and I ended up not using either. So, when high school ended this year I spent an effort to get into college as I mentioned earlier, to let’s say start over socially as well. During the summer I have been getting accustomed to “Ka” that I wasn’t shy anymore.

The name though, I have found a name that I like that resonates with me. I mainly use it online because well, it’s just a username. No one uses their real name anyways, right? A while later during the summer, one of my friend which used to be in the same schools since like forever wanted to invite me to a group chat about my old class during “prathom” (Again refer to the chart above). It’s an Instagram group. I was not a Facebook fan since I was a kid (For no legitimate reason, but later legitimate privacy concerns). It was during a holiday for me and I was kinda lonely so I was like “Screw it! Just one account” I created an Instagram account and I decided to use @AmyIsCoolz, which is like THE @ I use, even on my Mastodon Account. Of course, I just put the Instagram dm on Beeper (You might see me mentioning it before on the Linux community section). I didn’t think it would be done that much, until a while later. It was during my college’s orientation, for the first few people or so I did answer my given nickname. When I sat down however a person next to me ask my Instagram before my name which is not something that happened. I hesitated to give it to her at first because I didn’t want to answer the “Amy” thing, but I decided to do it. Of course, she asked my name and I thought about it. I mean, what’s a name, really? Isn’t it just a way people refer to you and as long as you know that they are referring to you then it does the job right? Besides, I like Amy better anyway. I didn’t find any harm, so I kept using the name whenever someone asked me my name. I’m Amy, and honestly I kinda prefer it this way.

In other news, I also started taking HRT and dressing up more. I think it really helps. I feel kinda glad that I get to have a clearer image of who I am. It’s weird you’d think the person I’d know best is myself, but even if that’s true, I didn’t really know who I was. In many ways, who I was were just a combination of who I really am buried with societal expectations, personal experiences, and more. It’s truly fascinating how who a person is can be shaped by so much factor that it can be very different. I’m glad I had some time to think it through. I still have voice training I have to work through, but I have no idea if I could do it but I kinda like playing with my voices anyway so we’ll see.

YouTube Channel

I’ll brush pass my YouTube channel for a bit (Yes, I technically have one). This year has been a relatively good year (I mostly upload during the mid-year). The series I uploaded were relatively successful, a bunch of videos reached more than 1K views, which I am very happy about. I might not have uploaded much during early this year and later this year as I’ve been busy. I reached two milestones this year which is 600 subscribers and 700 subscribers which I am quite satisfied by, I mean numbers aren’t everything, but it is kinda nice. I’ve had an enjoyable experience on it so far. I did put my Minecraft “TV Show” on an indefinite hiatus, though, because I was really burning out.

Conclusion

To conclude: This year overall is a somewhat good year. I usually have a negative mindset, but I think my life is heading in a good direction. It’s not perfect, nothing is, but from the recap I think it has gone a lot better, and I have fixed a lot of issues (It is still ongoing so if there’s anything you have complaints about me, feel free to tell me). I used to be a huge proponent of “Going back in time and change things” if you had a choice between going back in time and reliving your life with your memory or take a million dollars. I mean I have many regrets, last year all those regrets were bombarding me all at once. My mental health wasn’t the best. I changed my mind, because in many ways things I regret, the mistakes I made. It in many ways led to the way things that I do care about. There’s an interesting effect called the butterfly effect. Basically, if you change one thing, then there could be other changes to many other things. If you ever theorize about alternate realities or history then you’d realized that without A happening B might not have happened which could radically impact C. The truth is that during 2020 I was extremely stupid, and I did not think as I should have (A lot of people used that time to reflect on themselves, not me though I was 13). So, in many ways me recovering and trying to get my grip on my personality again in 2022 has made me a bit of loss, and it did make me go through probably the worst year of my life in terms of mental health, but it also gave me a lot of time to think, whether it’s about who I am, what I want to be, and plan out my future as a whole. I just want to say that 2023 has been quite a ride for me this year. I hope 2024 gives me even better days, but even if they are worse than I can’t really be mad about it. Life is life, unfortunately. I’ll try to remain optimistic, though! :D