shannon_a

I haven’t written a journal entry in a bit because it was a daily goal for me for a while, and I recently started having really bad stress, so I decided to (at least temporarily) remove most of my daily goals until I’m doing better.

I think the main cause of my stress/anxiety has been how hard I’m working on getting my knee/legs rehabilitated. I’ve been doing a barrage of physical therapy exercises twice a day, going to the pool a couple hours twice a week (which requires the Paratransit process), going to the physical therapist’s office once a week, and going for walks as often as possible, usually at least once a day.

That might not be so stressful, except that I don’t have a great mind-body connection, so I have been making a concerted conscious effort to pay attention to my body—especially my left knee—and keep track of how it’s feeling: whether there’s any pain, whether there’s any tightness, etc. And I’ve been exerting this effort pretty much every moment that I’m awake. Eventually this kind of awareness should become automatic, like I think it is for most people, but in the short term it requires an incredible amount of energy.

But it’s been yielding great results. I think my knee and legs are doing better than any time since I broke my foot in 2017. I notice as soon as there’s discomfort and change what I’m doing as a result, adding in different stretches when necessary, not continuing on with things that are causing discomfort, even when it’s something I really want to do, even if stopping causes Shannon inconvenience. I’ve gotten to the point now where I can go up and down stairs without pain, so I was able to actually do some laundry last week! I know most people wouldn’t be excited about doing laundry, but I was ecstatic! I went up and down the stairs a few times that day, and my knee has been feeling a little tight since, so I’m going to be cautious when I try it again.

In addition to daily goals like writing in my journal, I’ve also mostly put my Korean studies on hold. Most days I spend about 10 minutes reading in my app of short intermediate stories/articles (though I seem to have progressed beyond the intermediate into the advanced level of the app), but don’t do any other studying. I just don’t have the emotional or intellectual energy. Luckily, my main study Discord server is on summer break right now, and the person who leads study groups on the other server where I’m active has been on vacation. So I’m not missing many group study opportunities. But I’ve lost my streak in various flash card apps and such, and for a long time I was writing a Korean journal entry every day, and I haven’t done that since June 28. But I’m trying to keep my priorities straight. Right now my top priority is leg rehab!

Though I’ve stopped some of the other things I was doing, I’ve actually been working on some fiction writing, inspired by the writing group I went to at the library last month. I have a short story I’ve been working on, and I’ve written a couple of poems. I really like one of the poems, but I don’t think I’m ready to share it with anyone because it’s extremely emotional, about all of my experiences with death. I wouldn’t want to take something that heavy to the writing group, for example. At least not right now, when I don’t really know the people. But I’m still hoping to have a rough draft of my short story done before the next writing group meeting in two weeks. It started out inspired by a children’s story I’d written in Korean, but it’s grown to be much more introspective than I would have been able to write in a foreign language. I think I might have a full rough draft finished maybe tomorrow, and have time to put it through a couple of revisions (maybe with Shannon’s feedback) before taking it to share with other people.

I say I might have a rough draft done by tomorrow, and yet I’ve been quite sick the past couple days. Last night I was woken repeatedly by itching, which has continued today, and my digestion has been terrible the past couple days, too. It turns out that stress is one of the triggers for mast cell activation syndrome. Yay. And apparently the dosage of the Xolair that controls my symptoms most of the time isn’t enough to control them when I’m really stressed out. I’m talking to my allergist in about two weeks, so I’ll consult with her about whether there’s anything additional I can do when I get breakthrough symptoms like this in acute situations.

But for now all I can do is try to reduce the stress and anxiety. That’s why I’ve cut back on things like my Korean studies, but Shannon has also suggested that I talk to my physical therapist to find out which activities are likely to be having the most impact on my knee/leg progress, and maybe eliminate something I’m doing. I’m guessing most likely I would eliminate going to the pool for the water exercise class. I think it’s helping, but maybe it isn’t helping enough to be worth the additional stress right now, until my anxiety has subsided. I’ve been making such great progress that I hate to stop any of the stuff I’ve been doing … but … I’m anxious all the time and now I’m itching and having diarrhea.

In the past when my anxiety became this bad, I usually took enough Valium for a couple weeks to break the cycle, then could go off the Valium again. But when I take a truly therapeutic dosage of Valium, it makes me sleep pretty much all day long. So right now I’m taking a dosage that makes me sleep a LOT, but not all the time, and it isn’t really enough to stop the cycle. But I don’t want to increase the dosage and fall unconscious for days/weeks on end. I’ve got too much going on right now. Of course, the amount of stuff I have going on right now is probably WHY I’m anxious.

Maybe I should talk to my psychiatrist about what to do about the anxiety, rather than trying to solve all my problems myself. I’ll phone her office tomorrow.

Oh, one last thing that I want to remember. Gary was over here today, sitting in the rocking chair in the living room, and Megara was very interested in him! It was the first time we’ve ever seen her show interest in anyone else instead of fear! She kept trying to get closer to him, but Mango kept getting jealous and driving her away. Gary suggested that sometime we might want to lock Mango up for a bit and let Megara approach him as much as she wants. It was a shock to see her so confident and curious! It made us really happy.

So … BTS did a liveshow recently (when they video stream casual conversation for fans, responding to questions viewers type into the chat and such) and announced that they’ll have a studio album coming out in spring 2026, accompanied by a world tour. It’ll be their first world tour in 7 years! First there was the pandemic (which led to the cancelation of 2020’s scheduled Map of the Soul tour, for which I had tickets), and then they went into the military. They hadn’t even done a live show with all of them together since September 2022. (The first member of the group joined the military at the end of 2022, and the last member was just discharged less than 2 weeks ago.) They were all emotional about being all together again after so long.

There’s been some confusion among muggles (lol, non-ARMYs) about whether BTS have broken up, since they’ve all been doing solo work over the past couple of years and not group projects. But the group never broke up. The entire time that they’ve been doing solo work, they’ve been describing and defining themselves as members of BTS. The group was just not able to be working together for logistical reasons, as all members joined the military at various times, so it was a great opportunity to explore their own independent music.

All the members of BTS have different musical and performance interests, which can only be expressed so much while performing as a group. Their management company has always encouraged them to pursue their own individual projects if they wanted to, but their schedule with BTS was so taxing that most of them really didn’t have the time/energy to do side projects.

They staggered the dates when each of them entered the military, so that the ones who went in later had time to do solo projects before joining up, while the first ones to join had time after they were discharged. So, for example, Yoongi/Suga did a solo tour before he joined the military in September 2023 (he was just discharged a week or two ago). Hobi/j-hope did the reverse, joining the military earlier (in April 2023) and doing a solo tour at the start of this year after his discharge. There was a period of only a few months when all seven members were in the military, because they scheduled it so that the rest of the time there was always at least one of them out, making music.

Each of them, while they were free but other members were in the military, took this time when BTS as a whole was separated as an opportunity to each pursue their specific passions. One member, for example, really likes jazz, and so he produced a bunch of very jazz-influenced music. Another had always wanted to have time to improve his piano skills, and so worked on that and added more piano playing to his solo performances. One went full on into mainstream hip-hop. A few of them wrote deeply introspective albums about their personal emotional struggles. All seven of them had a chance to really explore their own personal musical interests as individuals who make up BTS.

But now they’ve all completed their mandatory military service and are starting up group projects again. One member (Jin) will be in the U.S. throughout the latter half of this month on his solo tour, so that’s apparently when a lot of work will be done on the album, since during the liveshow they specified they’d be following him to the U.S. to work on it.

There’s also a live album that will be released in just a couple of weeks. It’ll be their first group album release since June 2022’s anthology “Proof.”

It’s an exciting time to be BTS ARMY! Now that they've announced a tour in spring 2026, I have more motivation than ever to save money! The tickets I bought more than 5 years ago were more than $300 each, so who knows how much they'll cost now! (TicketMaster is such a scam.) Plus airfare and such...