Hoo boy...

I'm "alright", but barely, I think.  Went through a depressive episode last week, but pretty clearly identified where it was coming from and talked myself through it all.  Was pretty easy to spot once I went to the grocery store and felt really uninspired at the thought of cooking...

I actually ended up putting in a 500 for this year's TGM "Carnival of Death".  I didn't think I would get there, and I definitely don't think I had it in me to get an M rank, but I decided at some point that I would just forego my normal strategy and just stop manual locking as soon as I hit 300 and just focus on survival; that seemed to do the trick.

Speaking of TGM, TGM4 released, which is a bit crazy given that the game was originally teased in 2009 before being cancelled in 2010.  15 years later, I guess it's here.  It's...an interesting existence, in all regards.  It released to some very mixed reviews -- deservedly, due to some pretty glaring issues.  I bought it because, I mean, having an official TGM release on PC is just...cool, right?  But honestly I wonder whether I should have.  I mean it was fun to try, but I haven't been playing TGM these days and even if I =did=, would I really want to focus my time on this game versus something like TAP master, or even TGM3 at the very least?  I honestly don't really know.  But I mean, it got me to play some TGM, and that was cool.

Did this week's weekly ALTTPR seed and I sorta played like ass (ish...I mean overall it wasn't too bad but the end was terrible and made a pretty major decision-making flub) but wasn't even too disappointed or shocked; like 20 minutes after the run ended I realized I was =exhausted=.  Which is surprising in a way given that I got a really nice amount of sleep last night (10-11 hours I think?) but that was after a long and tiring day, and in general I've been running on low batteries.

There has just been a lot to think about and take care of, including a little "camping" outing next weekend which I still need to gather and buy supplies for, and organize a bunch of stuff for.  Hm, scheduling some PTO might not be a bad idea after all...

Hopefully that goes well though, I am planning on setting up a little letter-writing station.  I realized that even though it's a lot to plan for and think about and put together, I actually enjoy planning and preparing.  Luckily I still have some time left to handle all of that, but the time is approaching quite rapidly.

The chicky coop renovation is halfway complete, I'm super thankful to have that being taken care of, it's one less thing to worry about and one more thing to put onto the "completed" checklist.  I took my car in to have the brake pads replaced and the undercarriage inspected, only to learn that I need to also get another set of pads, some tires, and I still don't know what part I'm missing on the undercarriage thanks to a theft (!) that happened at the adjacent gas station.  Sheesh.

I'm trying to put together my GCC dance late this month too, just another thing on my plate.  That one isn't stressing me out yet but I'm sure it will, I mean I'm sure I can put together a cohesive lesson plan in like a week, but still!

But yeah.  Getting all my ducks in a row, as it were, will make me feel better about things, I know.  In the meantime, I should be thankful, being busy generally means I'm forced to just turn inward and make sure that my own life is working along okay, and that's kind of the mode that I'm trying to be in now, anyways.  After feeling kind of down this past week had already wanted to just turn back around and instead of being all social and everything just focus more on self-care and everything.  You know, finding the cozy joys in life and all that.  Of course, having stuff to worry about also sort of disrupts that, but like I said, I think it also makes it seem like really not a big deal at all if or when people don't have time for you.

That does put things into perspective for my past self though, like all those times when I felt a lack of attention and and all that bothered me but didn't seem to bother other people as much, was part of it just because everyone else was scrambling around and stressed out about other stuff going on in life and I was not?  I'm sure there were other factors too, but I think even past me always felt like people were living at a different speed than me.  Now that I live with other people who are also roughly my age, I kinda still feel like that's true to some degree (the different speed part).  I mean, everyone is necessarily different as a person to begin with of course, but the "tempo" and rhythm of life definitely feels different to me.

All I want is to be steady and calm...even in the face of all the things that I have upcoming, I'm just always doing my best to try and achieve things in that way.