17th Journey

The Journey anniversary (March 13) is one of those "annual events" that comes along every year, along with the other ones (usually VBall, Fanime, Big Dance, etc), but I've missed it the past two years -- the last Journey I made was back in 2023.

Given that it's been a good 3 years since then, I feel like my journey across the sands was equal parts trying to pull things out of my memory for exactly where a bunch of things were, as well as noting that since I've taken the journey so many times (and only once a year) that by now I have a sort of "routine" for how I approach it.  Of course, in the past there would be times when I chanced upon a veteran/experienced player, but it's been a long while since that really happened -- the last I can recall was back in 2019, during my 13th journey.  Since then I've just encountered a traveler here or there in the sands, but never really stayed along with them and =really= accompanied them as a partner.

So the journeys have been rather self-directed, and as such, there's a sort of "checklist" of things and places that I find myself gravitating toward.  Especially given a certain amount of time that I wanted to spend (I don't want to dawdle too long everywhere), there are places that I generally don't spend too much time in or avoid -- the out of bounds area in the Underground level is one that I think I can recall how to get into, but I generally always avoid.  It is a dark and expansive place and I've gotten hardlocked multiple times in it by encountering the "black screen of doom".

Similarly, there are places that I'm generally really keen to visit.  The lantern room in the snow level, of course, which I've talked about many times before, but if I had to pick one level to go out of bounds in it would probably be the Sunken City, as there are some really cool and beautiful sights there.

Overall this journey was honestly not very remarkable, it was a strange mix of "routine" as well as fumbling by way through some things.  In the Broken Bridge I experimented a little bit with charge-boosting (a technique where you accumulate velocity "charge" and then use it to rocket upwards).  I was able to make it to the end-of-level history lesson area, but I really wanted to make it all the way out of bounds, which requires you to go a little higher since I believe you need to make it past the top of the invisible "wind wall" that blocks you from going out of bounds.  I also spent a small bit of time trying to "headbonk" my way out of bounds by jumping through a specific seam in the level, but my memory of that was hazy and I wasn't even confident on the correct steps to take after that anyways.

I did make a new discovery though -- even if you don't chargeboost all the way up past the windwall, there is a specific spot (hopefully I can recall where it is next year) up near the top of the "sandfalls" where you can also chargeboost from.  Starting from that higher-up spot let me more easily get all the way up past the windwall and into the out of bounds area.

As per the usual tradition, I got lost in the Pink Desert level (hah).  This is also where I encountered a fully-tiered redcloak, and I followed them through the first half of the level, trying to be a good companion and sticking close to them and chirping every so often.  But when they went toward the end section of the level, I stayed behind, since they hadn't collected all of the glyphs/symbols.  I never remember the relative locations of anything in the Pink Desert, it's the level that's the most spread out and I just don't have a good sense of where everything is.  I didn't end up finding the flower (reminds me that I didn't visit the little flow easter egg in the tower either....), but nabbed the other symbol, and went up the structure at the end of the level without much incident.

In the Sunken City I actually brainfarted and missed the first glyph entirely.  In the rest stop area I played around with diveboosting a little bit (as always) and then tried to chargeboost up to the "invisible ledge" in the air, which again I couldn't remember exactly where it was.  I think I landed on something (?) but ended up slipping off, so I moved on.

I did want to make it a point to go out of bounds here, so I spent some time fumbling around at the end of the level trying to remember exactly where to go before I figured it out.  I feel like I didn't see AS cool sights as I usually see back there (there are some really pretty glittery sand structures), but after a while of wandering around I simply moved on.  Again, I had other plans later in the night, so I didn't want to linger too long.

I kind of just sped through the Underground without doing anything interesting -- again, I don't like exploring OOB here, and I don't really have any experience with playing/tricking around with the war machines.  I don't know if this is a false figment of imagination but I seem to remember some way that you can meditate-sit through the last section of the level where the war machines chase you, but I feel like I can never really get it to work -- this time I did a jumping meditation sit and ended up going onto the "end level slope" but slid to a stop without going very far -- once I got up it just started the end sequence as usual.  Maybe this is something that requires two people, one to push the other?  I don't really remember...

In the Tower I 100% wanted to only activate the first level of goo/water, and then use a flyer-assisted diveboost to get up further.  It took some attempts, but I was successful in gradually making my way up, collecting the 3 glyphs, and then eventually boosting all the way up to the top!  This is definitely going to be a regular "practice" of mine, it feels like something "cool" that is satisfying to pull off.  One thing that was different this time is that I said hi to (and rode on) the whale, which is found circling in the room with the "curtains" with the glyph.  Of course, normally the whale comes out to the main tower area to say hi and give you a lift, but since I never activated that level of the tower, that never happens, so the whale just stays circling in its room.  I don't think I've ever said hi to it in that room before; that's probably gonna end up as another tradition...

I had some success with the first steps of making it out of bounds in the snow area -- I found the chargeboost spot in the beginning of the level, but once I chargeboosted I really wasn't sure where to aim to go, so instead of ending up out of bounds I just ended up at the later part of the level, where the lantern room was.  So I guess I skipped the first half of the level and went straight to my favorite spot, haha.

I lingered in the lantern room a bit, as usual, and again reflected a bit on how it darkens -- forever -- as soon as you leave.  I went through the rest of the level without much incident -- tried a few headbonks near the tapestry to try and get oob again, but no luck as I don't remember exactly where to do that either.  Probably for the best, as I really have no recollection of how the oob area here is structured and I remember from one companion leading me around in there that there are some weird stretches of tricky-to-navigate thin air or something around there.

Paradise was both a little fun/funny but also unremarkable at the same time.  I spent some time just flying around and boosting, and I ended up skipping the first half of the level with a boost and then going back through it backwards.  Somehow this ended up confusing the game and the rest of the music cues for the level didn't trigger properly, which meant that the entire time I had this tentative string ostinato playing -- even during the final "golden ascent", where normally the glorius ascension music plays (but didn't).  Even at the very end of the level when you slowly walk into the light, the normal music cue for it triggered, but the little staccato strings just kept on going...they only faded out at the very end when the ending cinematic started playing.

Besides that, I spent some time looking for cool spots to "flying meditation sit" in Paradise, as it's probably the best place for that -- if you do it at the edge of a sloped cliff, you can slide off of it and the freefall for a while or even slide off of other cliffs.  I remember having a particularly epic one some number of years back, but I don't know if the ones I had today really compared to that one.  Oh well.

 

In terms of my overall thoughts toward the journey, honestly I think the way it tied to my life is that I sort of had my own things that I wanted to prioritize, and when the issue came up of whether to prioritize continuing on with the other traveler that I met along the way, or just do my own thing, I chose to prioritize myself.  This is a lesson learned (the hard way) through my real life endeavors in recent years.  Perhaps in the past I would have felt more conflicted about it, but today it just seemed really clear to me what I wanted and how I should proceed.

Of course, that's sometimes easier said than done, it's not like I'm immune to struggling with this kind of stuff anymore.  But I've at least taken some steps toward not letting myself keep putting myself second all the time, or letting that be an excuse to avoid doing the right thing for myself. 

Viennese Ball 2026

Another ball came and went.  I've lost count of how many I've been to at this point, but the last post is here, to keep the chain going, I guess.

Apparently last year I wrote that the ball went by quicker than I expected, and that I needed to rest a lot after participating in the cross-step waltz contest.  That seems to be becoming more the norm, somehow.  I feel like a big part of the ball this year was doing one contest, being really tired, resting while watching another one, then doing a third one.  It's crazy how much energy I can expend in these things.

I think I'm getting a healthier and healthier attitude toward them in general, also.  Practice makes perfect, I guess?  After doing things enough times, they just don't really seem like they are as big of a deal anymore.  In most cases, for how I like to live life, that's a good thing.  Honestly, I'm just glad I survived the night; thanks to trying really hard in the contests and then also probably partly due to my suspenders being a bit too tight, I was really really sore and tired after it all, like more than normal.  One of my dance partners was also at limited physical capacity due to other extenuating circumstances, so I'm just glad everyone just made it through alright.

I'm also happy that the waltz contests had some great showings!  Thinking back to the days where I felt like we were completely showed up by what went down in the swing room, I am happy that the waltz crowd is showing up and stepping up as best they can.  As a more vernacular form of dance we will perhaps never have the infrastructure and history that the other dances have, but there is a reason it is still always my "home dance" even despite all that.

It was nice to have a buddy to go to the ball with!  Something that I feel like has really not been part of my regular experience before, and it makes a big difference, as you might expect.  Life's moments are usually nicer when they are shared, especially when it's events and such like these.

It felt like I had more people this year come up to me and talk to me about appreciating my performances this year.  Or maybe my memory of the past years is just foggy, but it really did feel like more (random) people came up to me this year.  That was a nice feeling!  It really validated why I keep participating in these things in the first place (and why I keep saying no when I'm asked to judge them).

I think there have been times in the past when I have been more stuck-up about my dancing, and had some sort of weird superiority complex where I really thought I was "all that".  To be fair, I'm sure with the number of years I've been to these things, there were =some= years where maybe that was true.  But I think I've had enough time to know that my dancing has weaknesses and pitfalls, too.  I don't just mean the fact that I don't lead dips, lifts, or aerials either, there are concrete things about my lines, my form, my control, even my stage presence, that are not really on par with the rest of my dancing.  Some of that has been stuff that I've thought about at times, others of them I have not really tried to even work on much, but most of doesn't really come naturally to me, so progress is always slow.  It was easier to focus on what I understood best, what I prioritized as being most important in my own dancing.  The things that I point out to people when I give them private lessons -- leading and following technique, continuity in patterns.  I guess musicality too, but that one is rarely covered in lessons, heh.

There are many things that I would consider "fundamental principles" that aren't really followed by people who don't know better.  When we think about the principles of connection and movement in West Coast Swing, there is a lot of emphasis on linear or lateral inertia, momentum, and tension and compression.  There are analogues to all of those things in a rotational dance as well.  There are proper ways to facilitate a change in rotation, much the same as there are proper ways to do a change of direction.  There is not only such thing as rotational inertia but also rotational elasticity.

That all said, I think part of what draws me to admire solo dancers is that their skillset epouses things that I lack in my own dancing, but put forth in a way that's, frankly, really awesome.  That is not to say that these things like posture, form, line, and body control are not important in partner dancing, but you can, to a large extent, be a successful partner dancing while neglecting a few, or even most of these things.  That is a reason that I'm always keen at observing people who come from a following background and then learn to lead -- not just because they are predominantly women and I think girls who lead are cool, but because experienced follows on some level gain experience (whether through intentional practice or intuition) about how to utilize their free arm, how to develop a curve, how to maintain a certain poise and balance that is required for all of the figures they move through.  As a leader you can certainly utilize a free arm in so far as it benefits the mechanics of your motion, but so rarely is it the focus of our attention.  Of course, different disciplines treat this kind of thing differently; ballroom dance for example puts more of an emphasis on this sort of thing.

Well, things to aspire to, I guess, or perhaps not.  There is only so much time I am willing to spend on betterment of my dancing.  These days I have almost zero improvement momentum in partner dance, and of course I'd probably rather see improvements in my solo dancing anyways.  Form, shape, and line.  I guess these are things that I ought to spend some minutes on every time I go out dancing.

I usually feel like I should be blogging before bed but somehow I've not been the best at getting to it, which I guess is slightly concerning.  Can probably give another go at making a before-bed ritual and getting to bed on time (sigh) but for now I'll just sit down and type out some stuff.  As I grow older there's definitely an increasing sense of "this stuff doesn't matter".  It's different for different things of course, like I stopped taking photos as often a long time ago because I realized I didn't really care about them and there was no way I was gonna go back years and years after and look back at them, unless they were particular memories that I wanted to keep or share.  I've hardly ever felt that way about blogging as a general practice, but I've certainly lost that aspect of "I need to jot down everything that happened" in my blog.  On the one hand, I think it's healthy to not have some sort of compulsion to have to actively deal with every single thing that happens in your life, but on the other hand, I know this kind of practice can in theory (and in practice?) be helpful for mental health, so I don't think it's really a good or a bad thing.

I've had one plant that I've kept, that I received from my best friend in June of 2021 (honestly it was farther back in my memory than that) -- an African violet that I keep in a pot on my windowsill.  I always thought it was really fitting with my general approach to life that I just had one that I kept over a long time.  Like with most things in my life, I don't really use a scheduled reminder or system to water it every few days, I just kind of just do it automatically, there's this "sense" in my head of how long its been since the last time, and I end up just doing it at regular intervals.

Late last year I wrote about how it had been too-long-overdue for a repotting and had been looking in bad shape because of it; I ended up not only repotting it but removing and trimming quite a lot of it, it was really a small wimpy looking thing after that and I honestly could have done a better job (and trusted my instincts more) when formulating the new potting mix.  But it got through that phase just fine, and has grown to a full plant again, with some very healthy blooming flowers starting to emerge.

I feel like there is a parallel to what has happened with my life too -- well, maybe not as dramatic as having blooming flowers and such, but at the very least, I went through a cycle of recovery and regrowth to reach the point where I am once again.  Things are not perfect -- the early spring blooms (onset by the random weird warm days we've had) have triggered an onset of allergies, and I skipped out on MCS yesterday because I was feeling exhausted and had somehow tweaked my shoulder.  It ended up being the right choice; I was just in no shape to even make it out there, I had slept too late the previous night, for no real good reason (just idly playing some Ravenswatch), oops.

But despite those things, life is overall positive right now, with some aspirations for growth here and there, which is always nice.  To go along with the whole recover and regrowth theme, I went to the head spa the other day for the first time since Sept 2024 (don't you just love how I have all these dates on hand?).  I haven't had any sort of body work done since that time I don't think, and honestly it's been too long.  Especially in the life that I lead right now, being cared for via physical touch is something that I just don't have access to, so I think I should think about making that more of a regular part of my self-love routine somehow.  "Quality time" and "acts of service" and "gift giving" are always the easier ones to think about when thinking about self-love I think; when it comes to physical touch it's easy to just think of it in a vulgar way, but there's really more to things than that and I think it's a need that I've just been assuming is impossible to meet without looking to actually address it in ways other than having some sort of lovey-dovey relationship where I'm hugging somebody all the time.  "Words of affirmation" is an interesting one too, but lower on my priority list at the moment (though it can really be important sometimes!), so not a huge deal.

I'm trying some new actives for my skincare routine as well, so we'll see how that goes and whether my skin ends up being happy or unhappy with them.  In a move that I'm sure dermatologists and skincare gurus would approve of, I'm also starting to wear sunscreen even on my indoor-only days, since my skin will be a little more sensitive to UV.

I finally posted a Rhythm Quest devlog on all the verified artist work that I've been doing.  It's been nice to only =imagine= what people in the Rhythm Quest discord might be saying and thinking about it rather than actually be subject to an immediate feedback loop for my work.  The practice of "just being able to do my stuff" is really nice!  For the record, I still have channels for people to direct feedback to, it's just not the same as when people are just open-voicing whatever thoughts they may have.  Hopefully I can keep up the good momentum working on the project; you might think that it's going at a slow pace since it took me until March to get out a single devlog post, but I actually feel like my rate of work is going alright!

As far as Ravenswatch goes, I completed my goal of hitting a Nightmare (hardest difficulty) clear with each of the characters, so that's a nice little flagpost of an achievement.  It's an interesting game for sure, fun and with some tricky/nuanced systems in place, but very bad IMHO at its onboarding experience and doesn't do a lot of handholding, which probably turns off a lot of players, or at least I'd expect it to.  I'm used to playing a lot of old games with rather-cryptic systems in place where ostensibly a small part of the joy is discovering and solutioning exactly what is going on and in what matter you should be playing, so I don't necessarily mind a ton, but I still find myself questioning whether some of the design choices could just be more elegant and still achieve the same goals.  Fortunately, it's a bunch of stuff that's =fine= once you get used to it (not the kind of stuff that's just constantly annoying no matter how you slice it), but was it really worth designing it this specific way?  I'm not so sure.  Anyhow, I'll still probably be playing here and there; I've got some characters to rank up and all.

ALTTPR is in an interesting spot as there is an individual in the weekly races who has a suspicious habit of hitting the right route and getting not only the top time but the lowest collection rates...?  I'm all for admitting that while I am a strong and knowledgeable player I'm nothing crazy compared to some of the other folks that play (we all have our own strengths and weaknesses I'm sure), but it was difficult for me to figure out whether I should take it as a sign that there's room for me to improve or just write it off.  After some time thinking about it I'm splitting the difference and not really making it a goal to take the first place spot, but thinking of it as an experience to consider different ways that I could play if I was trying to spike a fast time (which is not my normal goal).  It'll probably be a shorter-lived experiment and not a shift in my overall playstyle, but I'm trying to take it as a learning opportunity.

Going to Teance has been great as always -- I have been recently tipping my toes into wuyi rock oolongs, so I have been starting to order their Shui Xian instead of just getting white tea like always.  We have another letter writing club meeting this weekend, which should be nice -- I definitely have a few letters that I need to catch up on.  I think I've been falling back to only writing letters during letter-writing club since it's just a dedicated time for that, but honestly it's not enough time haha.

The dating app stuff is going just fine still, I think the tricky thing about those is that like, for these other social opportunities to meet people, the best ones are the ones where if you don't really meet anybody it doesn't really feel like a waste of time.  I always think back to that one event I went to where we volunteered at the food bank and I ended up really not being into meeting and socializing with the people there, but I was just volunteering at a food bank anyways, so I felt good about the whole thing anyways.  Dating apps are really low commitment since everyone is just swiping through them while they're going potty or whatever (lol) but I think there's more of that like, "maybe this is just a waste of time" if there's nothing else nourishing or satisfying that comes out of it.

VBall went pretty alright!  But this post is quite long already, so that'll probably be a different post... 

2026.02

https://ddrkirbyisq.bandcamp.com/album/monthlies-202602 

After more and more experience, my artworks are becoming a little more polished, a little more proficient. Maybe the same is true with myself as a person, too. Things that used to worry me, don't seem to be as big of a deal now.

Once you've done something over and over again, you start to feel much less intimidated by it. I was having a conversation with some friends recently about how my regular approach to writing music (once a week), and to some extent, artwork (once a month), has helped me come to grips with the natural peaks and valleys of creative output without letting them affect my sense of self-confidence.

The same is surely true of other things in life, too. Starting conversations with strangers. Expressing gratitude. Trying to be a little bit more friendly, encouraging, a little less stuck-up, self-centered.

The scary thing is that repetition can also desensitize you to things -- or worse. We become accustomed to having certain conveniences, we forget how to live without certain tools. We accept that things just are the way they are. Sure, there are many things that become easier with time, but if you keep on having negative experiences, it becomes that much easier to give up.

As the years go by, that sense of "fatigue" surfaces for me just a little bit more often. There's this little voice in the back of my head that says "it's pointless, I should just give up..."

As someone who tends to be risk averse and focuses on pragmatism, it's usually important to me to craft my dreams and ambitions out of what I know is reasonably within my grasp. But there are still vestiges of a yearning for something more, remnant feelings lingering like hope inside Pandora's box. They are few and far between, but it is always terrifying to look inside and see that one has faded and disappeared.