justicescoolandawesomeblog

[justicescoolandawesomeblog]

MY BEST DAY EVER: MONSTER HUNTER EDITION

Allow me to give some background don't worry it gets less boring when I get into my perfect day part, but this was VITAL for you to know. You NEED to know my lore and background

2018 era- I still remember the exact moment my Monster Hunter journey began: January 26, 2018. A wide‑eyed 14‑year‑old me—Justice, living in Louisiana—saw the launch trailer for Monster Hunter: World and thought, “Whoa, you literally hunt monsters? Sign me up.” I’d never touched a single entry in the series (hard‑core veterans would probably crucify me for starting with World), but that title alone was enough to reel me in. The very second I got home, I booted up the game. I remember vividly the opening cutscenes and the hours of linear playing that followed before I was finally free to go about and do (mostly) what I wanted to do. I was hooked immediately and ran to school the next day to drag my classmate Avery into the chaos. We flailed through a very small portion of the game for a solid week before kinda just… stopping. The game felt brutally hard, and—let’s be honest—middle‑schoolers who have the attention span of a goldfish, not reading anything and skipping important information, are a recipe for disaster. Monster Hunter: World went back on the shelf, gathering dust while life kept rolling 2020 era- Fast‑forward to 2020. I’m in Tennessee now with a brand‑new friend group who finally convinced me to buy a PC. The Steam Summer Sale hits; Monster Hunter: World is cheap. I tell my friends that we should check it out. Summer was great—about 100 hours were sunk into the series, and we spent so many days just running around having fun—but, like everything, we played too much at once and got burned out right at the end of the big DLC, so back onto the shelf it went, again.

2022 era (third times the charm baby)-

Two years later, we dusted the game off again—and this is when the addiction clamped down harder than anything I’d felt before. We didn’t just clear the story; we 100‑percented everything: every quest, every crown, every achievement. The final monster (looking at you, Fatalis—my most hellish gaming experience ever) chewed us up for three straight months of on‑and‑off attempts before we finally triumphed. The dopamine rush was unreal.

2023-2024 MH:Rise & The Long Wait-

High on victory, we steamrolled through the next game, Monster Hunter Rise, and its Sunbreak DLC expansion. Then came the lull. The older titles weren’t on PC, but Capcom threw us a lifeline on December 7, 2023—the day they announced Monster Hunter Wilds. From that moment, our group chat became a nonstop rumor mill: datamined leaks, trailer‑frame‑by‑frame analyses, and wild theories about new weapon moves. Needless to say, we were excited.

February 28, 2025 – Enter Monster Hunter Wilds

After two agonizing years of countdowns and praying that our schedules lined up, launch day finally landed. My friend Avery from way back in Louisiana took PTO to play with us; my friends from Belmont—Tim, Raa’d, and Asher—and I (sorry, academic integrity) also skipped our classes and spent all day talking about the game. We stocked up on snacks—far too many snacks, if I’m being honest—but hey, we’d waited for this game for years, and nothing was going to stop it from being perfect, so dammit, I’m eating those Oreos! We spent the entire hour leading up to launch pressing the refresh button until 11 p.m., when we finally got in. There was a lot of screaming while we waited for the game to load, and the instant the servers went live, we dove head‑first into the untamed frontier.

mass panic right here as we struggled to get in ^ I'll breeze slightly quickly through this part of the story to get to the meat and potatoes a bit faster, but we first started with character creation and spent a good amount of time on it. I decided that this time I was going to use a Hunting Horn—which is basically a musical instrument for combat—so I made my character look like a clown / jester, which I thought fit perfectly. After the character was finished, we hopped into the action for real this time. 

my awesome character who i love so deeply ^

I have to say, despite the reviews claiming the game was unoptimized and ran poorly, we all had a really smooth time with the actual gameplay. The cutscenes were fluid, and we were able to join up and hunt together almost right away. The first few hours flew by as we got our bearings and figured out all the new mechanics. It played much like the games we were used to, so it was easy to pick up.

We tackled the first few hunts together, beating the hell out of the entire first area before branching out to get sidetracked on our own. Around 2 a.m. we were all geared up and ready to keep going. Exhausted as we were, we still pushed forward, playing through the entire day—and beyond—with literally no sleep. This went on for almost two solid days before we finally decided to take a small nap at the 31 hour mark and then continue.

the ganggggggg ^

After we woke up about six hours later, we got back to hunting—and I mean a lot of hunting. We fought through a slew of monsters together, multiple times, trying to snag the best pieces for our armor. Luckily, near the end there was one target we could all grind for to get ready for our first big hunt, but first let me explain something very important.

some cool screenshots i took during our fights ^

Every mainline Monster Hunter release is split into two parts: Low Rank and High Rank, with a brutal‑but‑fun Master Rank arriving about a year later as a DLC expansion. The roughly 40 hours my friends and I had poured in so far were just to reach the Low‑Rank boss (Zoh Shia), so we were amped to kick its butt.

awesome banana sword for my cat and my fluffy armor (not drippy at all and super ugly tbh) ^ Now this is where it gets fun-

Zoh Shia’s lore is wonderfully complex—especially for lore nerds like me—but here’s the short‑and‑sweet version: it was a secret super‑weapon engineered by an ancient civilization called Wyveria to defend the kingdom from an unknown threat. The weapon proved too powerful to control and eventually wiped out its creators. The last few survivors sealed Zoh Shia inside the Dragontorch, a living bio‑reactor that powers the entire continent. Naturally, the ultimate weapon learned to feed on the Dragontorch’s energy and began twisting the continent’s natural phenomena. Realizing the danger, the Guild assigns our hunter to slay it—which let me say it's no small task, especially on only a few hours of sleep, because this thing is an absolute beast.

Zoh Shia (if you look closely you can see me at its legs down there) ^ We got slapped around a bit, and while we didn’t have a ton of trouble, it was still a close call: we had one faint left when Zoh Shia finally neared death. Cue the screaming and panic as we ran around flailing and healing and making tons of mistakes in the heat of the moment under all the pressure.. When we finished the hunt, we celebrated—only to be reminded that even bigger threats were waiting in High Rank. That, however, would have to wait for another day. A quick glance at the timer showed our little gaming binge had lasted 59 hours, 38 minutes, and 3 seconds.

my cool hunters name and my progress ^

Reflection- 

I figured this would be the best way to knock out two birds with one stone—I’d get to binge a game with my friends and complete a hefty assignment, but it honestly turned into the best day…well, days…of my life. Even now, we still talk about it; the whole marathon became a core memory, and I love my friends for making it happen. They’d only planned to stay up for a little while, but when I told them about the assignment they buckled down with me, playing until we were ready to drop. That kind of support felt incredible.

This project showed me just how much I love and appreciate my friends—and how lucky I am to have people willing to go all‑in with me. Using what the textbook taught, I make sure to tell them I appreciate them more often, and it feels great. Seriously, it was an amazing, amazing, amazing time, and you’d better believe that when the DLC drops in a year or so, we’re doing it all over again!

onto the next adventure ^

[justicescoolandawesomeblog]

The Final Blog Post!!!!!!! (except when i make my blog for the happiest day assignment)

Dun dun dun, the Chapter 10 finale is finally upon us, and with it, Sonja Lyubomirsky is about to give us some crazy knowledge about the five key principles that will apparently support lasting happiness. First, let’s start off with the fact that positive emotions are something that must be repeated and varied in order to prevent adaptation. That’s a lot of big words, so basically what this means is that if you do the same positive activity over and over, your brain will get used to it and it won’t work anymore. Too much coping = no more success.

Second, activities should fit your personality and values to feel authentic, which means that happiness feels and works best when it’s natural and something that fits your vibe, not something forced. Basically, do what you enjoy and feel comfortable with. That means that when practicing happiness activities, the more you like something, the more likely you are to stick with it. This leads to the third point, in which they should come naturally and be enjoyable, which I think is pretty self-explanatory: find something that makes you happy and is easy—it will keep you happy. Pretty simple. Next up is fourth and fifth. Fourth is that sustaining happiness requires ongoing effort and commitment—it’s not automatic. This means that staying happy over time takes regular effort and that you’ve actually gotta work at it. Shocking. Happiness doesn’t just happen on its own, and even the best strategies won’t help if you just try once and it doesn’t work out. It’s important to do stuff like set up goals and self-reflection, and literally everything else we learned about through this book. This leads perfectly into the fifth point, where finding good social supports plays a vital role in these processes, as surrounding yourself with encouraging people really helps maintain these happiness habits. So go out there and find some awesome friends who will uplift you and make sure you stick to becoming mentally well.

Not gonna lie, when you said to read the afterward, postscript, appendix, and everything else, I thought it was kinda crazy, but actually, there’s some good information in there that’s worth talking about. Our fan-favorite character, Sonja, talks about how writing a book about happiness actually grew her understanding of happiness quite a bit, in tons of ways she didn’t even expect. She said that even though she studied happiness for years, actually trying and doing the activities made a huge difference for her. Shocking, a psychologist actually practicing what they preach—pretty unheard of. She states that some parts of her book, specifically focused on some of the things that she wasn’t good at so she could see the results, and voilà, they actually had the biggest impact on her. She realized that by actually following these simple habits, people can feel better. I really liked this as a final message because she said that now she hopes by people reading her messages, they’ll try them too. I’ve been putting some of these into practice, and I’ve noticed I’m much happier in my relationships. Taking the time to appreciate and reflect on your friends and family really pays off, and for that, I say this book was amazingly worth the read.

[justicescoolandawesomeblog]

The Blog Post the 3 towers (like the hobbit but with an extra tower cause idk im running out of jokes its late what do you want from me)

Good morning, Tumblr nation, and by good morning, Tumblr nation, I mean hello, Papa Pat. It’s 11:25 PM on the night this assignment is due, so let’s just get this over with.

i swear the image is relevant hes literally living in the moment like the chapter name CHAPTER 7 (imagine a cool thunder effect here and maybe some lightning)

Alright, this chapter’s called Living in the Present, which, like, I’m already pretty good at considering I can’t time travel, but I digress (no clue what that word means, but I think it fits). This chapter talks about the importance of mindfulness and how savoring the present moment is an incredible way to increase your happiness. Lyubomirsky explains that tons of people spend too much time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, which, in turn, diminishes their well-being.

Me, personally? I don’t have an issue with this because my memory is terrible. My only option is to live in the present, so maybe she should put that into her strategies section—just simply forget everything, Lyubomirsky. It’s that simple.

Anyways, like I said, her strategies section. This part basically talks about practicing mindfulness, appreciating small joys, and avoiding distractions. Yeah, the same thing we’ve heard a billion other times.

NOW onto the part of the chapter you’ve been waiting for: FLOW!

I chose to discuss the other stuff first because this part was long, and we already discussed a lot of it in class (see, I do pay attention sometimes). Okay, so essentially, flow is a state of super deep immersion—basically when you’re LOCKED IN, and your skill meets your challenge level PERFECTLY. Doing any activity that brings satisfaction and fulfillment will put you into this flow state.

CHAPTER 8 (imagine what I said to imagine in the prior chapter, but somehow cooler—idk, add a dragon too, maybe)

Good ol’ Lyubomirsky talks about COMMITTING TO YOUR GOALS in this chapter—another big activity chapter, whoohoo, yay, fanfare, fanfare, etc. So, in this chapter, she talks about how pursuing meaningful goals can significantly improve someone’s happiness, specifically emphasizing that goals should be self-concordant—which means aligned with personal values and interests—rather than goals driven by external pressures.

She then goes on to explain that setting and achieving goals can grow your motivation, sense of purpose, and overall life satisfaction, which, like, I agree with, but also—I get so excited and plan a big thing just to be like… eh, too much work, maybe later. But oh boy, when I do hyperfixate on something? Come hell or high water, I achieve that goal because I’m stubborn and unreasonable when I REALLY want something.

Wrapping up this chapter, Lyubomirsky also discusses the importance of persistence in your goals, celebrating progress, and maintaining those long-term commitments to happiness.

CHAPTER 9 (totally didn’t notice we had to do a third chapter and am reading this now)

I’ve spent the better part of the last hour reading Chapter 9, and let me say—there’s some fascinating info in here. Really swell.

SO, basically, Lyubomirsky mentions that there’s a super strong connection between physical health and mental well-being—specifically, happiness. She talks about how, by taking care of your body—through exercise, sleep, and eating healthy foods—someone can significantly boost their well-being.

This is actually what I’m writing about for my third-year writing class, so, TBH, I’m pretty glad I’m going back to this chapter and reading it, because now my brain is so big and full of knowledge.

CONTINUING ON, she also says that beyond physical health, this chapter explores “nurturing your soul” through activities like meditation and spiritual practices—such as praying and engaging in acts of kindness. I looked at this in my own way and kinda took it as doing things that you enjoy, such as hanging out with friends and playing games. That’s MY meditation, so it’s close enough to praying and helping the needy… kinda?

But through this, Lyubomirsky says that when people care for both their physical AND emotional well-being, they can create a strong foundation for lasting happiness. Her words, not mine.

So basically, what she’s saying here is that if you take care of your big ol’ complex brain, you can stay happy more. Because, as we all know, brains like to make us sad and angry when we’re not stimulated—so make sure to keep doing fun activities ‘n’ stuff to keep it working.

ANYWAYS, I hope you like my Chapter 9 reflection and insights. I think they were pretty good—I tried my oh-so-best.

Grand Finale:

Wow, here we are. The end of this wonderful blog post at 11:55 PM. Bet you didn’t think I’d get it in on time (COUGH COUGH half of the class that didn’t submit it on time), but hey, I somehow did it, and that’s impressive. Well, more like irresponsible and also insane that I’m typing this into an official assignment that I’m submitting to a professor, but hey—these blogs are supposed to be about our inner thoughts, I think.

So, here they are.

ANYWAYS, GN AND STAY SAFE! (edit. upon turning it in wow 5 people submitted it as i was writing this thats crazy right?? i guess it wasnt half the class but more like 1/3 that didnt submit. tbh even less than that either way glad im not the only last minute submitter)

[justicescoolandawesomeblog]

3 Chapters, 1 Blog Post: Because Attention Spans Are Overrated

sup papa pat today's blog post is gonna be split into 3 sections talking about each chapter IN DEPTH with a slightly less funny tone because i crave a full 20 points. SO let us begin with chapter 4

"Practicing Gratitude And Positive Thinking" In this chapter, Lyubomirsky talked a lot about performing happiness activities, and I mean a lot. Gratitude practices were honestly interesting too because, according to her, regularly expressing gratitude can shift one's attention from what's lacking to what's abundant. She expressed that keeping a gratitude journal, writing thank-you notes, and even just a simple task like mentally acknowledging your blessings can all contribute to a more positive mindset, and honestly, this really works. I spent some time reflecting and realizing what was positive in my life, and I genuinely believe that it made me happier that day. She goes on from there to discuss another few topics, such as how optimistic thinking helps you bounce back from temporary setbacks and how visualization techniques can help reinforce that optimism. After that, she went on to explain lots about how you should savor life and not rush through positive experiences and "flow" activities, which is where you engage in a deep state of engagement with an activity… which, like, I guess? I don’t really get her point here all that much because if this only occurs when skills match the challenge, and it’s something you can always overcome… then where’s the challenge? If you're doing activities that are hard but you never fail at, then it wasn’t much of a challenge at all, was it? It was just difficult. Me personally, I think failing and trying again at something is more rewarding than this "flow" state, but I GUESS I understand what she meant by it—it's just worded in a weird way.

"Investing In Social Connections"

OK, honestly, you've seen I'm capable of a good summary, so I'm gonna go back to the writing style that makes ME happy, but I'll still cram as much info about the chapter summaries as I can in. SO, in this chapter, she talks a lot about how one of the STRONGEST and MOST CONSISTENT findings in the ENTIRE field of happiness research is that social relationships are the key to well-being. And like, yeah, I can't imagine a world in which any friendless dork is happy—like, how can you be happy without friends to spread joy and whimsy? OK, so continuing on, she talks a lot about how happiness is strongly tied to the quality—but not necessarily the quantity—of relationships. Which I fully agree with. As long as you can have a few super close friends, I think you'll be way happier than with a ton of just fair-weather friends.

This chapter continued on a lot about how expressing love and gratitude is important, and you should always remember to do small acts of kindness for your friends and family to nurture that good relationship. Tbh, who wouldn't be happy if your friend was like, "OMG, I love you, oomfie, you're the greatest and coolest and awesomest friend ever and ever"? I'd like that personally.

Finally, in this chapter, she said to limit toxic relationships, and dude, I'm not even gonna extrapolate on this—it's so self-explanatory. Don't surround yourself with chuckle schmucks. Like, just don't.

"Managing Stress, Hardship, And Trauma"

The Big Lyubomirsky talks about a few key strategies in this chapter about how to manage—well, it's in the chapter title, so you figure it out—and they're all pretty simple, tbh. First off, you've gotta develop some resilience. Resilience is the ability to recover from setbacks, and you do this by having a positive mindset and lots of optimism.

The next strategy is to reframe negative experiences to look at them in a new light—take a look at the silver lining and all. Next on the agenda is to meditate and let the anger and sadness flow out of you. It apparently does something, but tbh, who meditates?

FINALLY, you've gotta seek social support from the besties, which lets you trauma dump on them in a HOPEFULLY effective way.

Anyways there's my blog post no conclusion bye.

[justicescoolandawesomeblog]

erm... we all just wanna be happy

So, everyone wants to be happy, but womp womp, so many people walk around all sad and bummed out. With my newfound knowledge from the greatest book ever (The How of Happiness), I’m here to impart my stolen knowledge upon YOU, the reader (and also probably my professor—what’s up, Patrick!—and maybe three strangers who stumble in.) So allow me to give you my stolen knowledge that I'm gonna pass off as my own now. Alright, alright—so what exactly makes us happy statistically, you might be asking? And to that, I say: “Wow, you’re a nerd. You can’t become happy by looking at stats.” But since you’re here, I’ll tell you what happens when you’re statistically HAPPY: so according to the BOOK apparently

-50% of our happiness is hardwired. (Thanks, genetics.) -10% comes from stuff like money and how good-looking you are. (Yeah, being hot helps, but only a little.) -40% is up to us and our choices. (Kinda cliché, but also true!)

You might be lookin at this chart and thinking: “Whoa, hold up—40%? That’s a WHOLE lotta effort. Almost HALF my happiness is determined by ME?!” And guess what? You’re absolutely right. It is.

So stop being lazy, practice some self-gratitude, and look for the silver lining. Shockingly, this can actually boost your happiness in the long run. Science said so.

Despite this SLEW of amazing info I just dropped on you, you might still be thinking, “Well, erm, but, but, but... some people are just happier naturally!🤓☝🤓☝🤓☝” To this, I say: Jeez, man, please stop making me answer these questions—this post is getting rather long.

But sigh, I guess I’ll answer it anyway because I'm such a good person (and also to meet the word count).

Okay, so it turns out people aren’t just naturally lucky and always in a good mood—they actually have these things called HABITS that keep the evil thoughts at bay. For example, remember how earlier I mentioned being grateful for the people in your life? Well, there’s a good chance they do that, too.

A few other tips: stay positive and bounce back from setbacks instead of taking a few days to wallow in sadness. Now, I’m not saying you should bottle up every emotion (don’t do that—bad idea), but I am saying you should hang out with friends and have fun when you’re feeling down, even if you have to force yourself a at first.

We all know life can throw some wicked curveballs your way, but staying happy is all about learning to handle them a little differently.