And I sort of kind of regret it…? Maybe just a little.

So back about 100 or so years ago when I was young, I got my first job at _McDonald’s and spent most of my money on importing J-Rock magazines and CDs among other dorky fun things. I’d buy merch at concerts that took place in the US as well. One time I even got to go backstage and take pictures of D’espairsRay during an interview!😭 Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the pictures. Logging back into my Hotmail (Outlook) account was a fruitless endeavor as all of the old messages and attachments were just…gone.

Nevertheless, I was obsessed and bought a lot of magazines and CDs. There were a few fashion, dance, nail, and even comedian-focused magazines sprinkled in as well. They were all stored in a container for well over a decade. 💀 On my recent trip back for the new year, we uncovered them in the garage and the majority were surprisingly in really good condition.

Through all the chaos and focus on decluttering with what time we had, I made the semi-silly decision to just get rid of them. I don’t listen to visual kei anymore, but looking through some of them was nostalgic and slightly cringey. It wasn’t like they were taking up that much space, but the container was extremely heavy. Perhaps what makes me feel better is knowing that they’d just end up in storage for another decade anyway… ⛓️

Now I wish I could’ve kept them to scan and upload to some sort of archive. 📚 That would have been nice! It’s just that I really didn’t expect to be able to go back in time for the whole moving situation, but now that I am going back that’s where all the regret stems from lol.

I mostly enjoyed bands that were aggressive, and my favorite was definitely Dir en grey, but I haven’t listened to anything from them since The Insulated World, which just didn’t do it for me. 😮‍💨 2011 was one of the weirdest years of my life. Just…a whole lot of things happened, and I’d listen to DEG songs at max volume to feel better.

Uroboros brings back a lot of weird 2011 memories (even though it’s an older album).

If only there was a little emo emoji. Come to think of it, I didn’t get to search for any magazines with them on the cover. 🫠

Thankfully, my box of CDs is still there, but exactly what’s inside remains a mystery.

Also, we didn’t just throw the mags in the garbage, we hauled them off to a Goodwill… So I’m guessing there’s a 90% chance someone there was like wtf and then threw them away hahaaa. 🥲But maybe someone there was intrigued and took them for themselves?

And now I feel even worse after writing this up and uploading the pictures. 🤡 Such is life?