Tuesday, April 16, 2024

I initially said that we were going to try and do Ludum Dare, but we decided to back out -- just as well since I was feeling a little stressed about getting everything ready in time along with doing all the other things I needed to take care of.

Even better, it let me stop by to dance with the Stanford kids at Jammix where I actually had one of the most pleasant nights out dancing in recent (or even non-recent) memory.  My life has/had been going really well lately so I think bringing that positive energy really helped me to open up and feel comfortable.  I've always tried to consciously push aside and quiet down the anxious voice inside of me that wanted me to push past my comfort zone and try to be more outgoing, instead reminding myself that when I felt truly comfortable, I would naturally lean into it (as I have in the past), and it was a nice feeling to see that blossom into fruition so clearly.  Almost sad, in a way, thinking back to all the times when I went to dance and just wasn't in a great place.  But there was meaning, and learning, in all of those times, too.  I don't regret it; all of it was part of the journey to where I am now, and beyond.

Anyhow, combined with my long weekend, those few days were unmistakably another one of those rare "5 out of 5" periods in my life.  I came down a little bit off of that high -- actually in no small part due to spending a lot of time debugging complicated infrastructure stuff while working on a Rhythm Quest side project.  It really feels like no matter what you dig into -- self-hosting web services, gamedev, healthcare, even taxes, ...there are just infinity gotchas along the way and nothing is ever intuitive.

That, is actually one of the strengths of a lot of good video game design -- that it is clear, readable, intuitive, and yet still interesting.  These games engage us in the same way that the best parts of our jobs engage us -- when we are engaging with a problem that we're interested in, with nothing else to get in the way.  It's unfortunate that sometimes (many times?) somewhere along the way the people who work on videogames forget about the merits of this readability, not just in terms of visuals (though quite often so), but in terms of everything else, too.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for enjoying games that reward you for knowing arcane intricacies, but it troubles me when games make things more complicated just for the same of being more complicated.  Don't we already have enough of that in real life?

Fortunately, I was able to dig myself out of the rabbit holes I got myself into to and put down my work to take a break today and play some DDR and rando to chill a bit before I'm on the job again tomorrow.

Speaking of rando, I'm trying to make a slightly more concerted effort to wrap my head around keysanity now, but I still feel as though I suck a lot at it.  I played another seed today and things started well but I felt like I really didn't make the right decisions after that at all.  I guess it'll just take more reps and thinking about it, I guess.

Similarly, for cubing I think I'm doing...okay.  It's about time for me to relearn all of the OLLs, but at the same time, .....goddamn, I really suck at my cross, lol.

Keyboard-wise, I'm back on my Neo80 with some new switches, and a syringe to more easily tune up the stabilizers, but I'm becoming more and more interested in giving the Cycle7 another whirl, or even a few -- I can try out a few different configurations, maybe.  I ended up switching to the wireless mouse for now.  Took me a few days to get used to it, but I'm doing alright.  I miss the button layout and the overall feel a bit, for sure, but the first time I took it out of my backpack and flipped a switch and had it instantly working again sure felt niiiice.

My sleep got thrown out a bit by the latest long sessions of debugging, so I'm trying to wind down and see how I can do tonight, haha.  But yeah, overall things are really going quite alright.

Monday, April 8, 2024

Feels like I worked on quite a variety of things today, unfortunately a lot of them are still in flight and still need additional work.  I have a letter that I wanted to try and work on this weekend, for example, but I haven't gotten around to it =(  At least I got some other stuff done, like laundry, vacuuming, even set up some smart bulbs in my ceiling light so that I can control the color temp and brightness better...

Ludum Dare
LD55 is coming up this weekend (already!) and today I started the process of trying to make sure that I'm actually prepared for it.  This is finally the time that I switch over to using Godot 4.x (upgrading from Godot 3.x).  Godot 4 still doesn't support single-threaded web exports (coming in 4.3, available via dev snapshot) but rather, itch.io's SharedArrayBuffer header support is now good enough for me to just switch over to using only threaded builds.  Safari, in particular, didn't play nice with the itch.io headers, but a workaround has been added where on Safari the game will just break out and open in a new window.  So finally we can get OK audio latency, use a threaded build, use all the new GD4 features, and have OK support for most browsers.

Of course, I had to spend some time figuring out how to make sure that the viewport gets sized correctly in the popout new window.  By default everyone just assumes that you should be able to resize your games at will and just fullscreen them to play and...arghhhh.

There's still a bunch of work to be done in terms of cleaning that up, but also I'm just going through and migrating all of my starter/common GDScript code to GD4, also making it idiomatic (changing my naming conventions) along the way.  I also fixed up some dev environment issues -- turned out I had faulty/conflicting python installs leading to some strange behavior for some of the VSCode extensions I was trying to use...

Keyboards
This'll have to change back before the weekend hits, but I've switched over my KTT Strawberry switches and my Osume Sakura keycaps -- taken them out of my Neo80 and put them on my Cycle7 so that I can use that for a while!  Despite the Neo80 having the superior featureset for me (magnetic connector/no ribbon cables, wireless since I didn't order a wireless Cycle7, and of course, a function row...), I'm quite enjoying the typing experience of the Cycle7!  The sound profile is actually a little better; I'll have to see if I can tweak the Neo80 to be just a little bit more to my liking.

I also opened up my cheap smaller board, the GMK67, because the left bracket key wasn't working.  I dunno what exactly I did to it, but everything's AOK with it now, and I was using it this past weekend since I was out and about.  That's all for the best too, that board isn't super duper nice but it's actually perfect for portability.

It's been a while since I spent any money on this hobby (lol....) so I ordered some new switches, HAHA xD.  I also put a mouse on my wishlist, it might be time for me to finally finally jump ship from my current one and get a wireless mouse -- just continuing along the trend of decreasing the number of things on my desk!

Tetris
I didn't manage an M rank for this year's "Carnival of DEATH", unfortunately, but it was a good experience playing for a week.  I could certainly feel myself improving a lot over the course of those days of play, just couldn't manage to put together a good run, especially in the 400-500 section.  I managed to get to 500 in 3:27:xx twice, just two seconds away from an M rank, so I certainly got close.  Oh well!

Cubing
I've been continuing to fiddle around with speedcubing, actually managing a sub-20 average of 12 at one point (woo!).  I haven't started to bother learning 1-look OLL yet, probably later at some point, but right now I'm focusing on learning more efficient F2L solutions.  I have my old "standard, tried and true" single solutions for every single case that I used way back when, but some of them involve like double cube rotations from certain angles, etc etc, and I'm trying to implement some other solutions, like especially ones that use sledgehammers to set up nice cases, or even some that use wide turns.  There's a few really unintuitive solutions as well that =would= be nice to learn, but those are going to be harder for me to remember I feel like.  We'll see.

FL Studio
This probably won't happen in time for Ludum Dare, but at some point I might consider a cleanup of my FL Studio setup.  My samples and plugins themselves are doing OK, but ever since I got my new monitor I've been dealing with this annoying issue where some plugins do totally OK with scaling up to the higher resolution / handling DPI scaling, but other ones don't and as a result are really tiny.  Since I was looking up hidpi support stuff because of Godot, I took another look at it today.  Previously my attempt at fixing the issue was to enable "bridged" mode for those small plugins, which allows them to scale up.  Unfortunately, that requires those plugin windows to pop out separately from FL, which overall I just found to be too clunky.  So I pedaled back on that and have just been living with small tiny plugins.  But I think I might actually just go and run FL in "scaled" mode, so basically FL uses a smaller viewport and then the OS just scales everything up (?).  The end result is that I no longer have tiny plugins...unfortunately all the text and everything is a little more blurry, but honestly, that might be fine as a tradeoff for me.  I'll have to fiddle around with it later, once I'm all done with LD.

Minigolf
I was over in the South Bay this past weekend and on a whim I went out to Golfland at night and just did some solo practice on the good ol classic course.  There've been some changes here and there since the last time I went!  One hole in particular has a nasty surprise where part of the turf is this super new and soft/cushiony section, which eats up your ball's speed a lot more than you might expect.  Hole 18 on the "King's Quest" side (the one with the dragons) is the big square pyramid (probably hardest hole among both courses?) but they re-did it...it's now a bit less tall and instead of being a square pyramid, they shaved off the corners and made it slightly more octagonal, so you don't get super screwed over when you end up in a diagonal slot.  The circular mound (hole 7 or something?  i forget which side) is also different, they added a short backplate at the back on the top, so in theory if you hit straight you can just bounce off of it which should make it a lot easier as long as your aim isn't too far off.

Being out there on the course alone was kinda cool!  It was more brightly lit at night than I had remembered and it was nice being able to just go at my own pace and practice hitting the holes multiple times if I wanted to.  I'm going to have to perhaps work on my technique though, I want to really get more consistency with both my aim and control.  Also, the holes where you have to shoot up the ramps and land in the bullseye are basically impossible...I don't know how I was ever doing those before.  It's really hard to get the ball to roll true / have enough topspin to just roll flat and still have enough power to get up the ramp with enough speed, so it's sort of RNG in terms of what angle the ball ends up hitting the ramp at I felt like.  Maybe there's some secret to hitting the ball that will make it stick to the ground a little more?? (maybe that's the kind of thing you'd need a real golf putter for...)

I thought I came out with a pretty good score on the king's quest side (I got wrecked on the other side) but I looked at my old scorecards and I think I did even better before.  Also apparently I got a 42 on the Safari side at one point, what the hell??  That's 12 under par for an 18 hole course...I don't understand how I was able to string together so many birdies...sheesh.

Anyways I was looking into whether there are any other courses here and there and there's actually a golfland in San Jose area that I'll have to hit up (along with the Milpitas one).  Of course, all of them share the same basic ideas and decor, so I probably won't go anytime super soon, but it'd be fun.  There's also one or two different courses around SF / Berkeley / Walnut Creek area, maybe someday I'll hit those up.  Honestly going to that random indoor minigolf place (pales in comparison to golfland) during my overseas trip kinda made me remember how fun it is.

ALTTPR
Been still playing pretty consistently!  Recently got piloted in a pilot spoiler seed, which was fun to just run a seed in 56 minutes -- did pretty well besides a death to chain chomps and then failing torch glitch on Ganon.  I've been trying to wrap my head more around keysanity routing, we'll see if I can get more into that mode like I've always been saying that I will.  I've been neglecting the Super Metroid side of things for a while though, so maybe it's time to switch gears to that at some point too.  And then I want to do some timings for Misery Mire...

Haircut
I finally got a long-overdue hair trim, maybe getting a bit more trimmed off than I should have.  It's not THAT short (feels that way in comparison...) but I probably could have left on a few more inches...oh well.  On the plus side, my hair is super healthier now, though on the other hand, I'm going to have to wait a while before a re-bleach/recolor otherwise it's just not going to be worth it.

Rhythm Quest
Is going OK!  I'm waist deep into a pretty big refactor to enable recoloring of the in-game beat markers and obstacles based on beat (basically beat skins).  There's a lot of work involved there but not too much creativity so it's just a matter of getting through it with time.  If I can manage it, I'll be able to make some sort of devlog on all the recent work I've done before LD hits and destroys all my productivity for like a half week plus.

Life
Overall is doing pretty okay, all things considered.  My weekly copay for my eco sessions was a little higher than it should have been which I took up with them, so it feels good to be getting a (quite) low rate for that.  Like I said there's still some more things that I'm hoping to get done this week, hopefully that all manages to work out well.  I seem to have falled back into my old sleeping habits, especially over this past weekend (oops), so maybe I can push that forward a little bit.


Friday, March 29, 2024

Things are going alright, I guess!

I finished watching Sousou no Frieren!  There were a few points when I was a bit worried that they were taking the series in a different direction and sort of forgetting their themes and what made the show good, but I enjoyed it all the way through and overall it was one of the more enjoyable shows that I've watched in my memory.  Really refreshing and covered good ground that I appreciated.

Rhythm Quest work continues...I caught myself at this moment earlier tonight wondering whether I had done enough work on it today.  Sigh...it's always an eternal struggle.  The year is already 25% over, after all =/.  Well, I'm doing a good job of trying to bounce back and forth and just work on different things here and there, I guess.  I'm starting to work a lot more on bonus levels, which is nice because it's very concrete and fun to work on, but of course there are a ton of other things that need attention, too...

Therapy and life in general have been going well I think!  I had a pretty good couple of days this past week, feels like I've managed to empower myself to fix up some of the things that I've been unhappy with, and in general I think I've been getting more well acquainted with self-love and self-compassion, in various different forms.  Not just the emotional spiritual stuff, but even just the day to day pragmatic taking-care-of-yourself kind of thing.

Carnival of DEATH 2024 is upon us, and I've started trying to de-rust a bit in TGM so that I can hopefully put up a 500 (or even an M rank) in this year's Carnival.  We'll see how I end up doing and whether I manage an M over the week.  I'll just give it an honest shot.

I missed this year's Journey anniversary due to being out of the country.  I was considering the thought of perhaps doing a make-up journey, but perhaps I'll just skip this year.  I think I've finally gotten to the point in my life where it no longer feels important that I catch every single thing that I usually commit to.

Speaking of which, the next Ludum Dare event is coming up in just 2 weeks.  It's been what feels like ages since I did one of these, so perhaps we'll try dipping our toes into the water again.  We'll see, I guess?

I'm slowly feeling the tendency to want to sleep later and later...it's something I'm now having to try and actively stay conscious of.


Wednesday, March 20, 2024

The trip went okay!  I ate some good food, saw some cool things, etc.

As far as food goes, there wasn't any particular standout highlight, just a few good things.  My takeaways are I might try to make Shkmeruli (a Georgian dish, with chicken cooked in a garlic/butter/cream sauce) at some point.  I had a shrimp ravioli with a...(pumpkin-based?  I don't remember) nice sauce that was pretty good as well, I don't think I'll be replicating that one but it reminded me that the flavor of fresh chives can really add a nice note to a lot of dishes.  I had a really nice pasta alla forma there as well, basically spaghetti in a really creamy parmigiano reggiano sauce, flavored with porcini mushrooms.  Reminds me that my cacio e pepe could stand to use some work...

We did a little indoor minigolf activity -- I basically crushed it, though the courses were a little small, so not a ton of "hard shots" (I made the really hard ones), more like testing your medium/short range putting consistency, which I wasn't the best at, but did well enough.  It got me itching to go to out to Golfland sometime again.  I visited the one in Castro Valley not super long ago, which was an interesting experience.  It's been ages and ages since the one time I went out to the Milpitas one, it might be nice to find a time to go out there and see how it stacks up, and compare it to Sunnyvale (the baseline).  Overall the Castro Valley one seems more difficult due to shorter banks, longer putts, and lots of slightly-sloped ground everywhere.  I like the course design more at Sunnyvale overall.

I did a LOT of cubing practice over the course of the trip.  I'm actually ~25s....ish....now, with some solves actually creeping into the sub-20 range, so honestly not half bad given that I'm still doing 2-look OLL.  My PLL recognition and memory is still really sucky, but at least I managed to learn algs for all 21 cases over the course of the trip.  Now it's just a matter of getting more comfortable with all of them.  I also realized that I'm generally really slow on cross, that's something I tried to work on a little.  And then of course F2L...I think I'm totally fine with just doing F2L with my trusty good ol solutions, but I realized that I need to work on efficiency and learning some better solutions for certain cases and avoid having so many regrips for certain cases.  But anyways, it was super fortunate timing to get back into this for the trip, it really helped me pass the time well.

The plane ride actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Maybe it's because the last time I flew international I had a layover...?   I did some cubing, played some phone games, watched some anime/videos, played some rando, got some sleep.  Just casual chill stuff, nothing too serious.  Honestly I felt pretty lazy about my time on the plane, didn't even pull out my letter writing supplies or anything.  But eh, whatever passes the time, I guess.  I lucked out and had an empty seat next to me on the way there, which was excellent.  Unfortunately, had a big guy next to me on the flight back, but eh, made it work.

It's good to be back home, doing all the normal things, including cooking everyday, streaming rando, etc etc.  My chickens seem to be doing better than before, maybe they're just happy that it's getting more sunny out.  I'm actually sleeping somewhat normally due to jetlag, so we'll see whether I can keep that going or not.  I basically didn't work on Rhythm Quest at all this past week, so we'll see if I can play catchup on that a little.  I worked on it an "ok" amount today, maybe not as much as I would have liked, but I had other things to do, and hey, progress is progress.

Been having a bunch of talks about friendships and such, we'll see if any of that ends up coming to a head in the near future I guess.


Saturday, March 9, 2024

Let's take stock, I guess...

It's been a week since the eventful night of VBall.  I didn't do a full recap, but I somehow didn't really feel the need to, either.  The vague words that I wrote already will have to suffice.

Anyways, I'll be out for a week; we will see how that goes!  As usual, I'm going in with tapered expectations and a hope to "take it easy" and have some time to myself to just enjoy a nice change of pace.  I mean, I guess VBall was an example of life taking my "tapered expectations" and smashing everything around, so I guess anything is possible...

It's been a mix of like, bad habits together with getting stuff done, but at least that doesn't really feel like a battle or anything like that.  I keep on alternating between not getting enough sleep and then sleeping in a lot, but I guess that's not really anything new.  We'll have to see if jetlag does anything about it or not.

I finally finished putting together my 70-minute diatribe about Ice Palace routing, and came out of it with an extremely good understanding of what should be done when going through the dungeon, so I'm happy that that has finally happened.  I still have to go and edit the captions on the video and publish it and all, but it's mostly done, yay!

I felt guilty again about having neglected my chickies, but today I spent some good time with and around them, making sure their bedding was replaced and their food and water topped off.  I'm not really too worried about them, but going up to see them daily is another one of these good habits that I'm going to have to make a more concerted effort to maintain, along with my morning skincare and just being on top of stuff in general.

At least, cooking has been going well, as usual.  I mean, of course, I have a few misses here and there, but mostly successes.  I've been making more purees and soups as of late -- earlier today I did a chicken soup out of the leftover trimmings and bones from a whole chicken that I roasted the other night.  I hardly ever make homemade chicken stock other than when I do poached chicken for hainan chicken; it was actually really refreshing to have.  I tried a corn chowder as well, which wasn't too bad.  I have been finding that the immersion blender I'm using isn't really quite cutting it for getting these soups and curries to really be smooth enough.  I have another one that I'll have to try next time, but failing that the only options might be to just get a more powerful countertop blender, or just a more powerful immersion blender.  Of course the latter is way more convenient, so that's ideal, but we'll have to see, really.

Cubing has just become a thing that I do idly now, I guess.  It's...still really weird to be doing it again.  What's going to be really really interesting is when I actually have the new LL algs in my head and muscle memory, and then start actually being able to compare times to how I used to do.  That will probably be a really fascinating experience.  At least I've been getting lots of F2L practice, trying to develop newer and better habits.

Well, on the plane ride I'll have my fair mix of things to pick from to do.  There will be some rando, of course, probably learning a few algs if I can, and I've got some anime to watch if I so feel inclined.  There's a bit of Rhythm Quest work to do, even, and if I'm feeling extra motivated I can even write some letters.  I downloaded FF6: Brave New World as well, though it remains to be seen whether I actually decide to get pulled into playing that or not.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

I guess tonight was life's way of seeing my plans, and giving them a giant middle finger, telling me that it can do better, and that everything I thought I knew so surely can also be totally wrong.  And that maybe I don't have to be so goddamn cynical all the time, if I can only just put aside my standards and aversion to failure and open my life to a little bit of uncertainty.

Why do I keep on deciding that I have such a heavy burden to bear?  Who asked me to bear it?  Surely, not anyone else?  I said in my last post that I felt that I was at peace.  Perhaps that was true, but peace can come both from conquering your fears and also from hiding from them.  That is not to say that one of the two is necessarily better, contrary to popular belief.

It worries me, a little, that the energy of hiding from my fears, of sitting back, of being quiet, calm, collected, and not needing to speak my mind, seems like it's becoming more and more lost within myself.  I know it's still there, but somehow, in so many moments, a different side of me decides to emerge instead.  That side is fine, too, but when will the quiet me ever shine strongly?  Even if only for myself?

Well, that is a question for another day.  For today, I consider myself a bit humbled.  Maybe it's a bit fitting that life told me, in a similar way, almost a year ago, that I should be open to new experiences, and things that I might have otherwise written off.  Of course, a bit after life gave me that reminder, it had also given me a different middle finger, and I retreated to the hole that I've been hiding in for quite some time.  Oh, life.


Friday, March 1, 2024

Today felt good!

I woke up a bit late after sleeping in.  I might have caught a slight cold (?), maybe something going around our household, but it felt pretty mild, mainly just a little bit of fatigue (could explain why I felt more tired than usual lately, or maybe...just vice-versa).  I didn't get any exercise done today, but I've been generally doing good with that elsewhere -- did a booty workout yesterday and played a good session of DDR earlier in the week.  Checked up on the chickies yesterday and restocked them...

Anyways, I managed to start figuring out some travel logistics this afternoon, for an upcoming trip, including ordering a power adapter.  Still need to do a few more things for that, most importantly making some sort of allergy card for myself so I can hopefully NOT have to use my epipen while abroad... and then making sure that I've got my laptop all prepared with a bunch of entertainment that I might want to have on hand.  I'll have my fair share of things to occupy myself, not only on the plane but hopefully during downtime as I'm sure I'll want some introvert time to myself where I'm just not doing anything and am just chilling.  I think there have been one too many times where I've gone traveling without really making a conscious effort to get some of that time in... anyways, I can do anything from working on Rhythm Quest, learning cubing algs, playing rando (of course), or perhaps I might even start a playthrough of FF6 T edition???

I also started working on a new Rhythm Quest level for the first time in quite some time (wooo).  Not a new campaign level, but just a bonus level, as that felt more low-stress, and a good way to experiment with the newest mechanic.  There's not really such thing as too many bonus levels for me to make, so this is a good way to feel like I'm making progress while also getting other people excited about the game (all they want is to have the game in their hands and see more levels.......) and make sure that I don't completely forget how to make levels.  Plus it's just good to bounce around between different aspects of the project from time to time, anyways.

Made some good progress on that...didn't finish, but I had to transition over to doing OHC, which actually went quite well today.  I had released my single yesterday and today I took care of the release work for my monthlies album, so really feels like I'm sort of firing on all cylinders as far as music work goes.

Made dinner as quickly as I reasonably could and spent some time with my housemates before doing a rando run.  I still make mistakes here and there of course, but overall it went well, I felt like it was an interesting seed and for the most part I was happy with how I played it!

Tomorrow's another day; I'll probably hope to do laundry as well as maybe hopefully finish the brunt of the work on my new Rhythm Quest level.  I still haven't started sitting down and re-recording that Ice Palace Routing video, sigh...someday, though.

Viennese Ball is coming up soon!  Fortunately, it's in the usual familiar location (more convenient and better for sure than the other one where we were last year).  Unfortunately I have to make a pretty huge detour for carpooling purposes, so I'm planning to just pack myself a sandwich to eat while wading through traffic or something I guess, and I'll just change later when I'm at the venue or whatever.  Honestly, changing at the venue is something that felt quite nice before; kinda just takes a bunch of hassle off when you can just show up in comfy warm clothes and not worry about anything.

Speaking of not worrying about anything, despite the minor hassle I already mentioned, I'm feeling...overall quite, erm...easygoing?  About VBall this year.  I donno, I mean I guess it's not like I was super stressed out about it last year (besides it being in the weird location...and a weird snafu where I wasn't sure if I could get my car out of the lot), but you know, in past years it was this big thing that I wanted to make sure I was all prepared and equipped for.

I won't be bringing my Journey outfit out for the ball this year; perhaps it's fitting then, that my attitude toward the event seems to have changed somehow as well.  What are my hopes for the ball?  Really, to just relax and enjoy myself, whatever that means.  Honestly, that probably just means "trying to see if I can have fun being with people, or even by myself".  That's rather nebulous, I guess, but I think it's because I've not felt that much of a need to invest in dancing as much as before.

I guess last year was a little interesting because I was in the middle of "figuring out" my dancing.  I had been unhappy with the way that I was dancing for some time and was struggling to really land on how I should be or ought to be dancing.  Of course, looking back on it, everything is pretty obvious in hindsight...

Perhaps something else that's different this year is, oh, actually, the event itself has some odd curveballs (rotary waltz contest at 1:00AM...?), but more than that, well...thinking about those "contests" themselves, I realize that I feel a sort of liberation knowing that I...don't feel any sort of responsibility to the dance scene any longer.  I danced in many of those events (okay, maybe a little presumptuously), out of a sort of funny sense of obligation because, ....okay, I really don't want to get into it here.

I felt a sense of commitment when putting together JaSmix, too.  Like I had this need to give back to the dance community that I had ostensibly been a part of so long (albeit a bit on the outskirts at times).  But I...don't really feel that way anymore.  I guess the passage of time sorta does that, maybe.  Maybe it's because I feel like I already "paid my dues".  Sure, I know that JaSmix was consistently a night with the best dance energy and music among comparison events that I've been to, but I no longer feel like I "need to" keep that going.  If I want to show up in force, then sure, so be it.  But what if I don't want to?

Like...what's really in it for me?

The shifting of the crowd I think is also part of what did it for me.  Like, sure I can be respected or appreciated or whatever, but like, if I stop running JaSmix is it really going to be something that's bemoaned?  Or are people just going to move on with their lives and nobody is going to bat an eye?  People are interested in their own things.  It'd be rude of me to presume what they may or may not want.  If everyone really cared about the same things that I did, maybe I'd feel more of a burden of responsibility for making those things happen.  But I think I'm starting to bring in learnings from other parts of my life -- learnings that frankly, people just don't really give a shit about the exact same things that you do.  I don't really have to ask them about it; it already showed clear through all of their actions.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel sort of at peace with that part of things, when it comes to dance, and Viennese Ball, at least.  The problem, perhaps, is that I feel a little less okay with it when it comes to life.  But you know, perhaps I'm still learning to see things in different ways.  How to accept that not everyone is the same as me, or each other.  We are all different.  It makes us so very alone, until we can find the ways to navigate and construct the bridges between us.


Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Today was a little bit better than yesterday.

Things seem to be working out well with my new therapist!  I find that I'm able to access my intuition well, which is great.

Unfortunately, my ALTTPR run today was a little disappointing; I didn't play terrible but made some mistakes, and got quite unlucky, so that never feels good.  Eh, better luck next time.

However, I did work on a new art piece; that's always a good way to make sure I feel good about myself for the day.  I'll probably give it another rough pass, but I think it's mostly done.

I had to take a nap in the afternoon...I didn't catch enough sleep on Sunday night and since then I've been playing catch-up.  Tomorrow morning is my last wake-up-early day of the week, hopefully that will help.

How do I make sure that I'm getting into the right mode of living?  How do I make sure that I'm working, comfortably, but also learning how to grow?


Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Interesting...

I've never really written too much about attachment theory/styles here, it's something I've never explored at depth within myself, even though of course I already know what points I resonate with from attachment theory.  I think perhaps more interesting is how that has changed over the past 5 or so years, especially after certain key junctures of my life where things changed, or I suffered pain in a way that caused me to critically reject certain parts of being.

When I said that I'm fundamentally different than everyone else and like that I used to think the world sucks and all that, it's like...I wasn't =wrong=, per se, I think that the world isn't all that it could be cracked up to be, but at the same time my visions of what things "ought to" (?) be like are of course unattainable in some regards too.  I think there is some merit in my disdain of why things aren't "better" than they are, but at the same time the path toward "better" is probably not the one that I'm hoping for.  There are many paths, some just less appealing than others, but some are still open.

I still have some projects to take care of.  I'm not really sure honestly whether today was a good day or not a good day.  I didn't really do that much, but I cooked my two meals for the house and I got a new PB in Super Metroid, so it's hard to call it a failure of a day, really.  I did spend a lot of time doing not really that much though, and my sleep is all whack again...

Oh, that's right, my Cycle7 PCB replacement came in, so that keyboard is working now, but at this point I feel like I'm so sold on just using the Neo80 that the cycle7 has so little chance of becoming my main board.  I just learned that the upcoming Cycle8 doesn't necessarily have to have the god-awful ugly slot on the right-hand side, so if anything THAT's the more interesting board for me, but.....I think I've really gotta cool it on the purchases for now; there is =nothing= wrong with the Neo80 for me, so I'm happy to just work with what I have.  Not really sure how I'm going to be setting up the Cycle7 in general though, maybe I take the Cinnamoroll keycaps off of the WK870 and put them on there?  I dunno...

To the surprise of....um, pretty much everyone actually, I ordered a new speedcube.  Really surprised me, but spurred on by some good speedcubing content (really fascinating how much more knowledge is out there these days compared to 10 years ago) I've been messing around a lot, mostly with F2L, learning a much more modern and efficient approach to it, and that has been fun.  Of course almost all of my PLL and OLL algs are basically out the window for me after years and years, but that doesn't really matter too much because all of the newfangled algs are probably better anyways.

Anyhow I decided it might be fun to try out one of these modern cubes and see how it can feel to drive one of them on a regular basis.  I ordered one that was known for being a bit lower-pitched and quiet, it should be very interesting to get accustomed to it and pick things up again.  I really never thought I'd be doing it again, I really intentionally hung up that hobby after I felt like I got to a skill level that I was satisfied with and was very uninterested in engaging with anyone from that community, and didn't appreciate being known for being into it either.  It's really so unexpected.

But I have 13-hr flights coming up in a few weeks and you know, relearning a bunch of cubing stuff in between rando sessions and such really doesn't sound like a bad way to while away those hours at all!  So that might work out as good timing, anyways.


Tuesday, February 20, 2024

When I was in high school I used to think that I was just fundamentally different.  I guess, most of the time, I thought I was better than everyone else.  But there were plenty of times when I thought that something must be wrong with me, too.  Maybe it's not an uncommon feeling.  People have myriad different experiences and ways of living life and all of our parenting, schooling, and social structures were trying to stubbornly reinforce narrow-minded views on success.

I guess I don't really think that way anymore.  Well...no.  Maybe that's a lie.  Sometimes...it does still feel that I am just different than everyone else.  Everyone...just ships sailing by in the night sea.  I can't tell which is more sad.  If you all are the broken ones, or if it's just me.

But even as I lay "broken", I find that I cannot deny what I believe in.  Even when the world tries to tell me again and again that what I am searching for does not exist, it doesn't matter.  Even when I have lost "faith", it still doesn't mean that I gave up.  Because it's too sad otherwise.

I wonder if someday you might understand, too.  How sad your world is.  Maybe it's just normal to you, because it's the only way you've seen things be.  But it shouldn't be this way.  It just shouldn't.