I've just been having boring updates for a while, rather than those internal life reflections and vaguely-worded wistful posts that I tend to have sometimes.  Sometimes I wonder which are more or less interesting to read.  On the one hand, the boring update posts are more grounded in reality, it's more obvious what I'm talking about.  But on the other hand, a lot of it is probably stuff that isn't as important.  Well, it's no matter.  Here we are, anyways.

Sometimes I get caught in a weird, formless, timeless space-between-days.  Here I am, staying up late, not so much because I want to (surprisingly), but because I can, and maybe even, because I should.  Shifting my sleep schedule backward for Big Dance, I think about all the things I could be doing, but am not.  Working more on Rhythm Quest.  Playing some more ALTTPR.  Continuing on my letter.

But it's not always the worst thing, to "do nothing of value".  Sometimes these liminal times can have some sort of value, too.  I played through some of our old games that we made together -- Bath Time, and Birdie Burglars.  I read through what people thought about A Day in the Life of Death.  I was a little sad that the comments on our older Ludum Dare games have been lost to time, but not extremely sad (edit: looks like they are still on archive.org).  I was a little more sad when I opened up Melody Muncher, one of my old flash games, and found that some of the backgrounds were missing.  Really not sure what happened there; if it was my fault and I just goofed on an update, or if it's just something about the old flash player version that I use locally, or what.  Well, that's definitely beyond my willingness to fix at this point, as getting any of the old Haxe/HaxePunk games to build and compile is a nightmare.

It's been an interesting and odd set of days.  I'd hesitate to say I'm "off-balance", more just that things aren't quite normal.  The weather seems to be starting to play into that as well, as I've found that the evenings and nights are warming up a lot more than just a month or two ago, especially when Kaya wants to cuddle up under the covers with me.  I find that I'm able to tap a little less into that peaceful cozy tranquility where I'm just working on my letter or project or whatever-it-is, with some nice lighting and a cup of tea.  It's not the worst, but I'm beginning to feel a longing to return to that.

Well, I'm taking this next week off of work, so we'll see about that.  But before that I'll be heading to Big Dance 2024, my 9th one!  It's weird, there's always this strange inclination when I go to these annual events like Big Dance, VBall, or Fanime, to have some sort of "plan" of making the most of it, until I realize that that's totally unnecessary.  Heck, my "plans" for VBall this year were totally destroyed from the get-go anyways, so that just goes to show you.

After a week or two with my Cycle7 (f-row-less keyboard), I've learned that I can, indeed, survive without an f-row!  It's possible!  I was beginning to really think that I've gotten accustomed to the clackier sound signature that I have set up on my Cycle7, but decided to jump back to my Neo80 (full TKL, wireless) today, which is currently set up with a bunch more foams, and some deeper-sounding switches.  And I like this, too!  Well, I guess if nothing, being undecided about which one I like better, means, that I didn't really waste my money buying both of these boards, haha.  The pink cerakey keycaps (with white legends) are back in stock now though, so I finally will be able to put together a full set of those.  Should be interesting to see how they feel and sound!

Speedcubing-wise, I seem to really have gotten back into the groove of solving.  I still don't know most of the dot OLL cases, and some of my OLL algs need a lot more reps before I can feel confident with them, and PLL recognition can be tricky (not used to this whole AUF thing...), and F2L can be more efficient, and my cross sucks....wait, okay, that's basically everything in a solve, lol.  But no, really, I'm getting brief spurts of consistent sub-20 solves, especially when I'm taking the time to look ahead.  It's weird watching videos of other people solving...I guess due to the nature of being so old-school, my turn speed is slower and I lean more on lookahead in F2L, so it's weird to see people rely more on just executing F2L cases very quickly and then pausing frequently (something that really doesn't work for me at all).

I...have admittedly, been strangely impressed by my "knowledge of self" recently.  Knowing who I am, what I'm willing to be, and what I would like for myself.  Just the other day I was driving somewhere alone, and I was practicing a little bit of my "other voice" along the way, as a mental exercise for feeling like I am exuding a different sort of character than I might otherwise.  I think it really helped put me in a good mindset.  Reminded me that I can be beautiful, not just in my appearance, but in my nature, too.  As long as I remember about it.

I've been having a few more of those marching band dreams lately =/  I don't know why they have been cropping up now, I feel like it's more often...I don't remember having had them for a while.  I don't know why.  I hope that my dream self can remember what is important, and what can keep me happy.  That I don't need to put myself through any of that.  That I don't need to put up for it anymore.  I have that privilege.

I thought about things, recently, and I also have been thinking that I don't need to put up with managing a Discord for my game, either.  It's something I have been mulling over for a while, how exactly I wanted to handle it moving forward.  Whether it's good for me to start searching for moderators, or even a community manager, to handle things.  And it was only a couple days ago that I realized that the answer is I shouldn't handle any of that, simply because I don't want to, and of course because I don't have to.  It was a good conclusion for me to come to, and informs me of what I'll end up doing in the future, as I move (slowly) ever closer to releasing my game.

Now, the question of whether I'll run a Jasmix event this year...that's probably a little bit more in contention.  Just like the Discord thing, it's something that I'll just think about, and eventually end up at a conclusion about.

As much as I wish I could
reach out into the past
and tell you that I still love you

I also wish
that you could reach out into the past
and tell me that I am loved
that I will be loved

And not just by you
but also, someday
by me