I'm doing ok, here, in this place away from home.  As much as I like to always keep the same pace and do the same things, it's hard to argue that taking a little break away from myself isn't good every once in a long while.

My last trip out of town wasn't super "relaxing" in that I was basically always doing stuff every day, though I still managed to take a day on my own to go pet cats and drink tea and everything (wonderful!).  This time I may have some more time to do...okay, normal stuff that I'd probably do if I was out and about at home too, catching up on some work, maybe writing a letter, maybe getting a head start on this month's pixel art, blahblahblah.

There's a tea place here, too, though my first experience there left me feeling half-dubious.  I'll give them one more shot to see if it'll be a nice place for me to stop by again, but I miss my home tea cafe(s) already haha.  It's too bad, too, I think both of the spots that I went to during my last trip were really nice, particularly that second one.  But I guess nowhere is perfect, really.  Maybe I should have brought some of my own tea with me, I guess...

The mentor tournament has continued to be fun I think!  I'm starting off the season strong with 6 victories and 1 loss (heh), somehow I'm actually catching up to that crazy 8-1 record that I had at one point last year before the losses started rolling in.  In my mind the mentees are kind of at the point where their journey and destiny is really under their own control; you can (probably?) really see the difference between mentees that just keep on making the same mistakes over and over again, versus people who put in the work and really learn how to execute every screen in the game well.

I've probably talked about this before, but it's always weird to try and coach people through the process of learning.  Like, I feel like most of my learnings have just been a matter of "expose me to something new" or whatever and then I go and learn the thing myself because it's just EASY for me to figure out how the thing works on my own.  Even if it's not immediately obvious, I can just look up the appropriate resources myself, =or= I can do the science on my own.  So it's really weird to think to myself, how am I supposed to interact with, and =help=, people who don't just figure everything out on their own?  My first instinct is always like "here's a video, go and watch it".  And I mean on some level that's valid, right?  The reason we have these videos is to serve as a nice and (hopefully?) concise explanation of concepts, with prepared footage to accompany it.  Wouldn't that be better than some on-the-fly half-baked runthrough that's unprepared?

But of course, like, people don't always know how to diagnose what they're doing wrong, right?  Again, I have to like, understand that rationally rather than experientially because if you put me in the same situation, 9 times out of 10 I =will= be able to diagnose what's going wrong.  Like, if you see something and try to replicate it and it doesn't work, you should isolate different factors, look at the inputs and outputs, etc.  I dunno, isn't that just...basic? (it's not)

It's real hot here, and =dry= too, so I've been trying my best to make sure to take care of my skin.  Tomorrow I get to give that tea shop another chance, but also get to shop for some knives -- hoping to find something to take home, or at the very least buy as a gift!  I'll probably try to get some work done, but I want to vary that work, too, you know?

Life goes on, for now.  We'll see.