My, where does the time go? It's already been a month since I first arrived here in Songring, and I haven't written since? Well my time apparently goes straight into working, as there is so much that has to be done here. I had never before considered what all must be done to build a settlement from the ground up, and I am quickly learning that there are quite a few often overlooked aspects of it that must be taken into account. This eats up quite a bit of time that I would normally spend recording my thoughts here in this journal. Or sleeping. Or bathing... or anything else that might resemble taking care of myself..

My time is evenly spread out between delegating work to the individual ponies throughout the day, drawing maps of the surrounding area for reference, devising vague blueprints and structure design ideas, counting the supply stockpiles, and trying to get some sleep despite the stress of knowing how much is left to be done. I really wish I was still a postman now: It was much less responsibility, and I could let my mind rest when I was not on the clock. The amount of work is what has kept me away from my journal all this time, but I will continue to try to make updates. If this workload continues, I may have to limit it to one entry a month: Take a day off to just record what has happened to me during the previous weeks. That is indeed what I am doing today; taking a day off and writing in my journal to try and help ease my mind.

How did I get a day off? Well, to be honest, it's being forced upon me. I overworked myself one evening, and while taking count of the supplies, I stumbled over something within the stockpiles and landed rather hard. I lacked the strength and energy to even pick myself back up, so I did not bother and just fell asleep draped over a barrel. I woke up to the sound of Teardrop crying inconsolably (believing that I was dead) and Maple staring me in the face with her stern brow scrunched while Springfield held my head up by grabbing my hair in his teeth.

"Nah, he's just had a little too much. Lightweight." Maple reassured Teardrop that I was not dead, which at least made her stop crying.

"I haven't had anything to drink. I’m not even old enough."

"I meant work. You're too soft to be doing so much. Springfield, take him back to the dorm and make him lay down; the only way he can be of less use to us is if he's dead from exhaustion."

I was not in a position to put up a defense against her accusation concerning my lack of usefulness, nor was I able to overcome the strength of the lilac-colored farm pony that threw me over his back and took me to the dorms to get some sleep. I awoke to find that they have locked the door and will not let me leave until I have had my day off. So with nothing else to do, here I am, writing of the past month. One note: I get the strange feeling that Maple is going to hound me endlessly now about the fact that I stated I wasn't old enough to drink; this could very well be bad for me in the future, but what's done is done. Only by a few months, however – wait, how long have I been here in Equestria? Two months now? What day was it when I stowed away on that Buzzard-model APC? I might be mistaken, and my birthday may have already passed. Am I already 18?

At the beginning of this venture, I learned that the most important thing we were missing was a fresh water supply. This soon became irrelevant: Thanks to Salmon's surveillance (mentioned in my previous entry), a river that must come from the mountains to the west was located further inland, and thus we have a fresh water supply. The distance of the river from us makes it rather complicated to get water back and forth of course, so we will still be relying primarily on catching rainwater until I can hopefully devise a way to filter the seawater into something drinkable. The river is definitely a good plan to fall back on should rain become scarce. (It has rained almost every other day since we arrived here, so I don't believe this will be a problem.)

Second, we lacked lodgings of any sort. The wagon sufficed to keep all of the ponies dry at night while the rains were falling, but I myself was not as lucky. The first days, I simply tried to catch naps during the daylight hours and kept myself dry at night by finding dense clusters of trees to hunker beneath and set down my bedroll to keep from becoming covered in mud.

My first designation to the ponies was to create a dormitory of sorts for us to sleep in until we were able to create more permanent lodging. Maple, as a lumberjack, collected the wood for it whilst Willow set to work constructing what I can best describe as a hut. I would say the interior was 200 square feet in area and about ten feet tall. Not a magnificent structure, but we were able to fit nine beds within. (I had Willow construct the bedframes, and we simply threw the bedrolls over them for now. We will need to find a way to collect some type of material to stuff mattresses with later.) It is rather cramped in here, and the snores of a couple of the ponies are prone to keep the rest of us up at night, but it is still preferable to sleeping outside or in the wagon.

While this was being constructed, Silence set to digging into the side of the steep incline on the shoreline to create what might be most safely described as a bunker. After slapping on a door, it was ready to be our new storeroom, which allowed us to empty some space in the wagon and keep our supplies from getting ruined by the common rains and overabundant pests. I feel rather lucky that Teardrop brought a cat with her on this venture (an orange tabby named Garnet), as he will be very helpful in keeping rodents away from the supplies in the new storeroom. Ironically, that is where I had been sleeping while waiting during the two weeks it took Willow to make the hut.

After digging the storeroom out, Silence brought me back a stone which I can only surmise to be some kind of sandstone. Feeling it was durable enough, I asked her to start bringing back these stones, and requested Overcast to make them into bricks and begin using them to lay a foundation out on an inlet of the beach: We lack a meeting hall, and I hear many complaints from the ponies about having nowhere to eat and converse with their fellow settlers, so I hope to create a sort of seaside eatery with this. Not my best idea, but it is very temporary and will not have to be torn down to make room since it is on the beach.

Aside from those work orders, Springfield has informed me that he is planting strawberries and hopes to get a harvest from them before winter. Salmon has spent his days snoozing on the seaside with a fishing pole in his mouth waiting for something to bite. He did get a rather large turtle recently, which I guess may make a good soup or something. I know these ponies do not consume meat, but do they by chance eat fish? Would fish be considered a meat exactly? I mean, I suppose so, but it is also lower on the food chain than, say, a cat. I haven't bothered to ask this; I can assume they do eat fish, because otherwise Salmon has just been here on vacation instead of actually helping us with the settling of the land.

Overall though, I am worried. The food supply is rather iffy at this time and we will have to wait until a harvest before I can feel comfortable about it. Springfield assures me that it will take no more than a season for the strawberries to be in, and that he expects that they should be able to sustain us through winter if he can get a second growing in before Autumn. We also have been promised a caravan in Autumn to bring supplies for us, which I am sure they will bring food with them. However, that idea is only mildly comforting, since I remember that the settlers of Clean Ages went over two years without contact from a caravan. I can only hope we happen to be more fortunate than they were.

Really? It's already been a month, and that's all I have to write? I wrote more about a span of three days back in Ponyville than I am able to write about a month here in Songring. Is it because nothing is happening? (Going to reread this entry, then return with my thoughts.)

I suppose from the other entries, quite a bit of content came from dialogue between myself and someone else. The problem with this is that I have specifically spent the past month avoiding any contact with these ponies that was not mandatory for my position.. The interviews went so poorly, I started to believe it best to not try to force anything more than acquaintanceship with these settlers. Willow was honestly afraid I might hit him, as I learned later when Maple told me not to lay a finger on him or else I could expect to deal with her personally. (It seems that he is her little toady at this time. She's starting to remind me more and more of a schoolyard bully.)

Oooh, scary. A big, drunk-slut pegasus, with a severe need to compensate for her weak personality by using exorbitant amounts of alcohol and a violent disposition. I would be lying if I said that I never considered ordering that the contents of those liquor kegs be dumped into the ocean so that she'd actually get some damn work done instead of drinking like a fish half the day. I'd be more intimidated by her if she wasn't perpetually on the verge of falling over and vomiting on herself.

Overcast has been rather clingy since I got here. Well, perhaps clingy is not the right word, but he has spent quite a bit of time following on my heels when he was not busy with the sandstone crafting I had assigned him. I might describe it as him rambling, since he continues to talk to my back while I'm usually already busy with another portion of my day. I do my best to listen to him, but between the fact that he picks rather inopportune times to want my attention and that his topics usually revert to something dreary that brings the mood down, I cannot always give more than a mindless nod and an 'uh huh' to appease him. At one point, he was speaking of apples. Then he spoke of worms. Then he asked me if I thought that maybe he was the worm in the apple known as Songring.

"Only if Mapleleaf is considered the worm in the tequila bottle called Songring."

Not even a chortle from him.

Salmon has been a rather pleasant individual to speak with, but I notice something rather peculiar about him in particular:

He's an idiot.

Perhaps that is not fair to assume just yet, but one conversation with him will derail as many times as my CCMI will play inappropriate music for a given circumstance (most recent example of this was "Morning Mood" playing while I watched Garnet sever the head from a rat outside the storeroom). What starts as a conversation about weather will become a discussion of favorite types of wood, then about his poor experience with a broken leg, and finally might end up somewhere in the vicinity of speaking about why cows make the best traveling companions. (He got uncomfortably descriptive with that one when he stated why they would be the best pony to bring with him if he was stuck on an island. I would have corrected him that a cow cannot be a pony, but I suppose his suggestion was mildly less distressing knowing that he considers them to be of the same relative intelligence as his species when I heard the specifics of his... observations.)

Just now, Teardrop brought me a mug of water and a small bag of midnight berries. I think this is supposed to count as lunch. For the record, these Midnight berries are very similar to what we call boysenberries, but I notice that they are much more subtle in their flavor. Actually, I pretty much mean they are tasteless. I assume they would be better if baked in something with large amounts of sugar, but I guess then they would only be there for texture and color.

Enough berry rambling, now about Teardrop: She is a very helpful little pony, but her docile and servile demeanor can actually become somewhat frustrating sometimes. Not to be mean, but she is truly an invertebrate. Without extreme positive reaction to her work, she begins apologizing for inadequacies and asking if she can fix it, or if there's something else she can do. I am not sure if she is only this way towards me because she sees me as the overseer or if she is this way with everyone here, but it does get exhausting at times. The words "I'm sorry" have started to lose their meaning to me with how often I hear them after Teardrop seeks my approval when completing a designated task, which at this point has been fetching water, some basic cooking, some cleaning, and other menial tasks while I try to figure out what the hell to do with a jeweler at a starting settlement. (A jeweler? Really? Whoever hired her needs to have someone do that thing where they jam the bottom of their palm into their nose and puncture their brain so they die.) Perhaps I'm just not expressive enough? I say “thanks,” and “good job,” but it seems that she's never happy with my lack of enthusiasm. Well, geez, I'm not Ms. Pie, now am I? I can't get that damn happy about... socks! And lunch!

Back to waiting for the caravan and for my fellow settlers to finally unlock the door and let me out of the dormitory so I can continue planning. I will begin scribbling a vague overview map here in my notebook to give some concept of the surrounding area for future entries that may include reference to the nearby geography. Too bad beyond classroom doodles born from my boredom, I have no cartographic experience. Do not expect this to be pretty or possibly even legible.

As a final note following my first month here, perhaps I should give my hypothesis on the outcome of Songring. I cannot at this time, for I have never been a part of anything like this before, and I could not begin to guess if we are doing well or failing horribly. We may be doomed to destruction, we may be headed for riches and success; only time will tell me this. Why have you done this to me, Celestia? Why have you chosen me for this position? Is it out of spite for my transgressions? Is it to truly teach me a lesson? Do you really, foolishly believe in me?

I am just a boy, and you expect me to take this much responsibility?

Why?