Love Languages

I talked about love languages in my last post and how when we see them in a more mature and nuanced lens we begin to see things like how "gift giving" doesn't necessarily have to be something really shallow and transactional and how "words of affirmation" doesn't have to mean a bunch of trite compliments, but have you ever thought about how you can make positives out of the opposites of each of the love languages, too?

Maybe you like physical touch, but sometimes you might like having physical space, too.  Acts of service are nice, but what about letting someone be independent?  Quality time spent together, alone, doing nothing else -- maybe sometimes you just need people who will be open to running errands together or just working side by side on completely different things.  And instead of words of affirmation, we can be realistic and frank with people, or even just enjoy silence together with them.  Maybe gift-giving is the least obvious one since the "opposite" of giving a gift is...not giving a gift?  Receiving a gift?

But I think it's easy for all of us to imagine twisted overdone versions of all of the love languages, right?  Too much gift-giving.  Too many acts of service.  Too much physical touch.  Too many words of affirmation.  And yeah, even too much "quality" time spent together.  And this applies regardless of whether you are imagining the giver or the receiver of love.  (What's worse, someone who is overbearing with their gift-giving or someone who incessantly needs to receive gifts?)

Love is...complicated.  Giving it and receiving it.  That's why it's a good thing that it's often so vital and powerful, it motivates us to discover the messy nuances of connecting with other human beings. 

Cooking

Cooking, is, of course, a craft, and a skill.  When I'm really enjoying the process of cooking I get a similar enjoyment out of it as I do when I'm playing a videogame, or making music.

But it's more than that, too.  Cooking is a way that we can connect with other people.  To help bring them happiness.  I mean, sure, videogames and music can do that too, just...it's in different ways.

Sometimes when I watch these cooking videos and content I get this smile on my face from knowing that there is this shared understanding of craft.  Seeing someone that "gets it", someone who you feel aligned with in terms of your process, always feels satisfying, like you're a little less alone in the world because somebody else has this shared understanding with you, even if you've never met them.

But there's other cooking content that makes you appreciate that you can really create something beautiful out of cooking.  When people think of "gift giving" or "acts of service" as a love language I think there is an impulse to think of them as really impersonal, but of course when you really think about the great examples of this kind of love expression they are anything but that.  That special hand-made thing that you always treasured, or that surprise party that your friend helped organize for you.  Cooking is the same way, like, cooking can be "sustenance for life" in that it can just be this necessary aspect for physical health and survival, but it can also be "sustenance for life" in that it can remind us of joy, remind us to connect with our bodies, remind us to connect with other people.  I think this is why presentation is important when it comes to food, as much as I often neglect it (efficiency is also important to me...).  It can help to create a moment, as much as the packaging on a gift, or the hand-written note that goes alongside of it.

Seeing someone really express their happiness when you cook for them is a really special feeling, I guess it is similar to seeing someone express their happiness and gratitude when you give them something special that isn't food.  Thinking about it makes me a little emotional for some reason.  I think it's because the desire to be loved and appreciated is such a core desire -- if not for all people, then at least for people like me.  Of course, there is also the desire to be respected and acknowledged -- that can be really important too -- but cooking is perhaps a little unique in that it's a craft that can connect with people on a more personal level.

I want to become better at cooking.  I want to be able to bring more moments of joy to the people around me.  But thinking about this, also makes me think about how I struggle, too.  Not with creating a meal, but with being on the other side -- with expressing my appreciation for others.  How can I seek connection with others through this "love language" if I am so reluctant to connect with them in the first place (or in the "second place"?).  Do I "deserve" to hear words affirming my effort if I have not yet learned to give those same words back?  Why should people express thanks to me if I am so reticent?

Why is it so hard to express love, and to accept love?

...would be a nice place to end the post, but I think we kinda already know why it's hard to express love, and to accept love.  It's because sometimes love often comes bundled together with all of these other emotions and feelings and thoughts and memories.  Maybe to you love means control.  Maybe love is intermingled with lust.  Maybe jealousy.  Maybe when you tried to accept love you ended up accepting shame along with it.  "Fear of love" isn't really something we talk about, I guess maybe it is really not an apt phrase to describe it anyways, we dress it up in phrases like "avoidant attachment" or "rejection sensitivity" or whatever.  But there's a good reason it exists, right?  We all want to have those =good= experiences with love, but there have usually been so many bad experiences too, it's easy to forget how to let our guard down.  Love takes time.  And if we are to be open to it for ourselves, we have to also be open to it for others, too.

There's no rush, though.  There's no need to "fix" something that isn't "broken".  It's ok to not bring your whole self to every encounter.  You will, in your own time, when you are ready.

I mean, what is there to say???  ...is my first thought, but I figure I should write something anyways.  I've had a long day.

 

Empathy is important, we all know that, at least on a conceptual level, probably.  But maybe sometimes a calm head and being open to understanding and curiosity are part of it too.  Or maybe it's just the same thing but under a different name.  When people ask "Why?" or say "I don't understand" sometimes the other unsaid half of the sentence is "and I don't like it" or "I think it's wrong".  Starting from an assumption that there is a =mistake= in the world can predispose us to looking only for the answer that we want to see.

But usually things have a good reason that they are the way they are, or even a mediocre reason, at worst.  Sometimes we can shove aside the question of "why" and ignore it in our quest to figure out "how" to move forward with whatever we want, but sometimes maybe you really can get some good insight into "why" if you start by assuming that it is something that DOES make sense, given some sort of missing information that you are not taking into account.  If we give the benefit of the doubt, what are the possible reasonings we could try and derive -- or even contrive -- for "why"?

Why do you have to wait at a red light even when it's 3AM and you're the only car on the road?  We know there are often sensors that are used to detect whether cars are at intersections (and which lanes they're in -- this frequently affects left turn signals).  Why couldn't we use those same sensors to deduce that there is only one car at the intersection and that it should be let through immediately?

There are probably any number of reasons you could guess at here, but consider that pedestrians are probably too light to trip most of these inductive sensors (which are probably designed for cars, right?) and also take significantly longer to cross the road.  It wouldn't be a great situation if someone saw a green light and started to walk slowly across the road, only for cross-traffic to suddenly get switched on.

Of course, all of this applies to our selves too.  We get caught so often in the mistake of assuming that we are "wrong" for our unwanted behavior or that there's no reason for it.  But humans are astoundingly rational creatures, we really do most things for good, or at least important, or sensible, reasons.  You can call your behavior "maladaptive" all you want but there's a reason for those to exist too, right?  Sticking to something that worked in the past is an effective life strategy, it =should= take conscious recalibration and effort to change our working patterns.

 

Anyways, I guess I get at least some credit for today.  I did some work, wrote a letter, came up with a pretty good last-minute birthday gift, scheduled a vet appointment, got some JaSmix stuff resolved even.  This week I decided to break down a whole chicken so that I could have richer parts leftover for some soup, in addition to simply saving some more money.  Cooked two pretty decent meals.  I have a bunch of various things in the fridge that I'll need to try my best to use up before my next trip, I think it should mostly be okay, though.  Have the laundry going...

Failed in delivering a Rhythm Quest devlog this month again, but that's okay, right? ...ehh...

I've got some stuff to do tomorrow, I guess.  More writing, one hour compo, an album release, maybe thinking about anything else that needs to be squared away.  A nail trim.

Perhaps the biggest thing I should be proud about today is releasing some of the tension in my back.  Was sort of nagging at me the entire day, but I've just realized that it's gotten a lot better now.  I always had the inkling that when I get back pain it's a combination of physical soreness and stressors manifesting in pain (previous experiences with psychosomatic issues cluing me in), but this past week perhaps more than other times have convinced me of the existence of the psychosomatic portion of it (thanks therapist!).

Despite everything I may or may not say and write about, I'm doing pretty good.  I got this random comment that I might be having a rough time.  Probably not very informed, but even if it was, probably not an unreasonable conclusion to reach given the energy and mood that my posts these days often have.  There's this constant feeling of "well, life goes on, for now", I basically wrote that in like 3 of my more recent posts?  Well, I mean, it's =true=, though.  I'm not really one to hop and skip my way along, but also not one to dig in my heels or start kicking and screaming, am I?  At my worst maybe I'm slowly plodding, at my best, my steps are probably a little lighter, but we like to try our best to go at a steady pace.  Nothing more, nothing less is needed.  Just what we've always done.

Time for another update...

 

I'm doing okay.?  Feel like time is flying by since I've got all these various things that I'm dealing with, but I'm managing somehow, amidst all of it.

 

We've just wrapped up with the first half of our annual ALTTPR mentor tournament!  I put in my time and mentored for 13 races this year (last year I did 15).  Last year that resulted in 9 wins, 5 losses (we're not counting the cheating fiasco...), this year I got 10 wins, 3 losses, which is fantastic!  An improvement from going 2-5 in 2023, ha ha.  I guess my lifetime record is 21-13, a win rate of 62% or so.

Of course, my "mentor skills" are only really half the story there, I mean at the end of the day the mentees are the ones running the seeds, we're along to do the best we can and try to pilot these mentees into good routes and decisions and remind them of little things as they improve.  It's been satisfying, as it always is, but I think this year in particular I finally managed to really brush off the impostor syndrome that I felt two years ago.  The hard work that I've put into understanding the game and analyzing things in my own way comes through when I'm able to chime into discussions and give my thoughts on decision making in a structured and informed way (or at least I think so).

People have a funny way of thinking about things sometimes (I'm not talking about people making bad routing decisions).  I overheard in an opposing mentor/mentee video once about them discussing a little bit of what they knew about my routing style, and I was really taken aback because like...how would you know?  This person probably popped into my stream maybe once or twice, is that really enough to determine how I do things?  It's not like I play in tournament matches or anything like that, it's odd (I also don't know that their conclusion was on point).

But probably the stranger/more interesting one was a mentee who talked about how like, they knew DDRKirby(ISQ) would sniff out ___ item that was at ___ location.  And it's like...I donno.  Sometimes there is this weird ethos about experienced runners being able to like see The Matrix or whatever and trace through chains of logic and progression and predict where items are likely to be and it's like...okay, there is some small element of conditional probabilities, but really, we just try to be faster and more efficient than our opponents and try to estimate the risk/reward of each decision point.  This applies to me even more so given that I consider check efficiency to be king over almost anything else, I am probably the last person who is going to "sniff out the logic" pointing toward something specific unless I'm using it as a tiebreaker.

I felt really validated when one of the top runners said as much, that no, the experienced players don't just magically find the right path, they're just efficient and open more chests faster.  But I dunno, maybe people have this weird fascination with trying to "make the right predictions" instead of just putting in the work to just continually optimize things.  I still get baffled when people basically call out recency bias as a reasoning for their decisions rather than just going by the odds of something happening in a vacuum.  Like, in any sort of competitive TCG or poker or whatever you'd be crazy to use this sort of thing as a reason, right?  Bleh.  But maybe it's just like me to just be like "yea it's just all the unglorious improvement that's really important".  I wonder if sometimes people think in real life I have this magical ability to just get things done really fast but no, it's not magic, I just learn to do things quickly and try to cut out everything else that's unnecessary.  It's.......the same thing that I do in randomizer, lol.

 

JaSmix planning continues, hopefully I can put out the event announcement this coming week and then start working on the setlist and private lesson signups and all.  Unlike in previous years I'll probably just have everything in one room; I can just do my private lessons and then have our three workshops all in the same place afterwards.  Less efficient in terms of time, but it's fine; I'll just be able to hang out and relax as the workshops go on, and actually watch them as opposed to last time when I was busy running around doing other stuff and worrying about reparking my car and all.

Had another go at Master of Orion 2, haha.  Had a win on an Impossible game (woo!) using a standard UniTolProd+1 race.  Think I've gotten to understand a little bit more how the early game should look, prioritizing colony bases a lot earlier (and scrapping your initial starbase) and stuff.  I've not had any luck winning with a Repulsive race, I think it gives you too little time to set up before people start coming after you.  And no luck with a research-oriented race either.  Game is hard.

Had a lot of tea this past week, including a white tea that I really "needed" at that time.  Felt like it was reminding me of how to try and be at peace instead of just worrying about stuff like I was at the time.  I still struggled a bit with it afterwards, but it helped to set me on the right direction, I guess.

I watched this video a while back (or maybe not that long ago in the grand scheme of things) that basically was emphasizing how I shouldn't ignore my inner experience of things.  And it's like, I never felt like I was super out of touch with my thoughts and feelings or anything like that.  But I think I'm starting to reach an understanding that "acknowledging my feelings and then proceeding to ignore and not do anything about them" perhaps doesn't necessarily really count as being in touch with them either.

But I mean these things are hard sometimes.  That's how we get into trouble, sometimes there just isn't anywhere for our inner thoughts and experiences to be "received", whether that be because you don't have the time, or you don't have the friends, or you don't have the love, or you don't have the capacity to receive them by yourself.  And then maybe they start to leak out because I mean, thoughts and feelings usually have to go somewhere, right?  That's what lead me to my run-in with psychosomatic pain and all.  I recall that as I feel this weird suspicion about my back being sore over the past couple of days and wonder whether that is related, whether that is somewhere where I'm carrying some unresolved emotional energy.

 

Feeling happy about the artwork that I've been putting out; last month's was a big success and I was happy with this month's too.  I worked on that instead of Rhythm Quest this past week, but I mean...work is work, right?  There's always a million different things, but somehow it seems ok if you just take it one piece at a time and resolve to slow progress.

 

The chickies are doing ok maybe.  Maybe?  Not sure whether dumbchicky has figured out the treadle feeder, I'll have to do some more testing on that when I have the energy to do so.  Never seem to have a ton of energy and motivation for these extra chicky tasks =/  I really ought to replace their bedding inside, and honestly their outside could use some help so it's not so rocky.  And trim their nails / soak their feet... at least I managed to get them some supplement for their calcium, and I've been hand-feeding dumbchicky and letting them out.  They seem to be really enjoying dirt bathing outside, so at least they are happy about that.  Somehow feels like as time goes on I'm being less and less of a good chicky parent.  Don't know that I'll ever have ducky again at this rate.

Weather continues to be really cool and cloudy here and I'm all for it; this has been the best late july weather ever, haha.  I'm sure we'll have some additional heat at some point, but I really don't mind this at all.  It's at least one thing to help give me some extra energy.  And hey, the mentor tournament is over, so that's one less thing for me to have on my plate, right?  (swap in JaSmix stuff, lol)

 

I've got yet another trip coming up, so this is again my week to try and see if I can get one or two things taken care of before that happens.  I missed a Rhythm Quest update this month, bleh.  I keep meaning to go out to dance again, and also to play some DDR, but it's been hard to fit it in with everything else happening lately. 

 

But yeah, yeah.  Sympathy for myself and all.  It's not like I feel like I've been lazy or not performing well or anything.  Life continues, for now.

Okay, yeah!  It's been a while...let's see where things are at.

 

The rest of my trip went okay!  I felt really exhausted toward the end, in like, every way -- honestly think a big part of it was the heat getting to me since I spent a little extra time outdoors.  It honestly felt super surreal coming back, the weather was a complete 180 and I came back home from sunny + dry to a dark, damp, foggy night.  I'm all settled back in now, but that first 24 hours or so was a little weird...

 

That tea place that I mentioned ended up redeeming itself -- the bai mu dan that I had the first time just was really....not it.  Rather than try their king's grade peony or whatever I actually just ended up going for their pressed white tea cakes and those fared much better for me, there were two that I ended up enjoying, I think maybe the last one wasn't as great but eh, I'll take it.  I had some good times there, including one afternoon where I just sat there and felt really productive. 

 

Ended up bringing a knife home, as I was hoping to.  Yeah, I...didn't really need another knife, but I wanted to have something nice to bring home, and I've been using it and enjoying it so far!  Not replacing my favorite knife, but it's nice to use and even made of the same powdered R2/SG2 steel, which I've had great impressions of so far.  Also ended up ordering myself a diamond sharpening stone, I'll have to see whether I like that one better or worse than the traditional water stone experience.  I think it's a little less meditative, but also like....less hassle, and potentially faster?  I'm afraid to use it on my more precious knives, but I'll have to just give it more experience and see what the difference is when I use the different stones.  I'm experimenting with some new techniques too. 

 

I promise you もう迷わない

強くなる…あなたに証すよ

逃げないで　向き合っていく

姿を見せてくれた　to heart

It's a song that I'm pretty sure Kiki sent to me a long long time ago.  I don't think I ever really associated it strongly with her though, it's just a song that I just kinda had and remembered.  Can't help but think of it a little differently now, though, I guess.

The mentor tournament has been continuing on -- the mentees are on week 5 now and there's only one week of mentoring left!  I coached two races this week -- both victories -- and I have two mentees signed up with me for next week as well.  One of the victories this time seemed like it was going to be a heartbreaker as a hardware issue caused us to lose 22 minutes (!) of progress, but somehow we managed to pull it all together and figure out what plays to make to keep us in it.  Definitely one for the books, sheesh, what a wild ride (was on restream, too...).  Sitting at 8-2 now in my mentor-coached races, which is...incredible actually, haha.

I'm continuing to do some additional work here and there on my ALTTPR site.  Currently doing some of the first few rooms in the GT climb (complicated rooms...).  Once we're at the end of the swiss rounds next week I am considering whether I want to put together a tips/tricks video covering common themes or areas of improvement that I've seen throughout various mentees, but...I'll have to see if I have time to edit that all together.

 

Ended up finally putting another Rhythm Quest release out, including a ton of minor improvements and restructuring that I've been doing over the past month(s).  As usual there are still other bugs and stuff related to the new functionality and changes that I'll need to go back to address.  The work just continues like this...

 

I think we have a date for JaSmix!  Assuming everything can go through, of course.  I'm planning to have the event on August 16th.  I actually could have one more workshop in my schedule, but I...don't think I'm up to the task of teaching it.  Maybe if I think of something fun and simple that I could do, but I just don't think I want to dedicate the bandwidth to it; may as well just let the others do their job and teach some cool stuff and I can just sit back and handle the rest of the night, do some privates, etc.  At this point I'll just be happy if the event goes through and runs smoothly.  It's a little too much to ask for me to also put in a workshop...

There's been a bunch of other life learnings too, I don't know if this is the right place or time to really detail them, but there's been stuff about attachment styles and how I work and stumbling blocks or blind spots that I have been carrying in certain situations and all that.  That stuff is still a work in progress, but then again, we all are, right?

 

I received the news that Andrea Gibson -- a poet whose works I'm acquainted with -- passed away recently.  Was a weird coincidence that I had just recorded a one hour compo piece where I had recited one of their poems.  I never knew them on a personal level and I had only ever attended one of their poetry readings, but they have some really cool works and every once in a long while when I'm not busy thinking that I should be digging into my past I end up reaching for some poetry and, them being one of the few poets whose works I'm acquainted with -- more often than not it's their work that I pull out of my friend's bookshelf and see whether I can glean any feelings from.  Like I said, I don't feel like I really =know= them, but they seemed to....I don't know, like, have lived a really special life?  Full of hardships I'm sure, but also full of strength, connection, crazy experiences and life lessons, and all of that.  I guess I don't want to assume too much, I mean on some level you have to think, somebody who wrote all these grand (or not even grand, just like, heartful?) words about their life experience, surely had to have lived such a full life.  But it's not just like, that their poems are all dramatic or whatever, it's more like...wow, this person went through some stuff, but not only that, they came out the other side, and they did even more.  I dunno.  I guess it just felt like this was a pretty cool person to exist. 

Going to be going back down south a bit this weekend, which should be good, since it's been so long.  Not sure if I'll stay an extra day and stop by Dancebreak or whatever (I've been so MIA at dance stuff...), but either way it should be good.  I'm planning to stop by Teance again finally tomorrow, really looking forward to hanging out there.  (actually reminded me to sign up for the next upcoming tea social...)

 

What else...it's getting toward the latter part of the month so it'll be time for me to start working on another pixel art piece soon.  Looking forward to that, hopefully it'll turn out okay?  I watched The Colors Within / Kimi no Iro, really enjoyed it!  Fun, joyful, kind of touching, not too heavyhanded, pretty, all things that I really appreciated.  Keyboard-wise, I had been using my usual two boards for awhile (and will probably go back to them), but the past couple of days I actually pulled out the Evo80 for a change of pace.  Variety is nice!

 

Chicky stuff continues to be interesting; the "training setting" is now off on the treadle feeder and I'm notttttttt 100% sure dumbchicky has managed to figure out how to get her food out of it, but I know at least white chicky has.  We're still having rodent issues; pretty sure the whole chicky food situation contributed quite a bit to it, but at least we're taking a bunch of the appropriate measures now, and we're learning more and more about how to keep everything safe.  Heh, just thinking about how if I ever have duckies again it'll just be even more learnings...guess the pet stuff never ends, really.

 

Been having this weiiiirddd funky combination of feeling like sometimes I'm super lazy and not really great about my normal rhythms, but also been being pretty productive at the same time?  It's a little weird, but I'm rolling with it for now.  Contrary to what you might think, I don't feel the need to always be on exactly the same rhythm as I normally am.  Progress is still progress, work is still work, fun is still fun.  I still manage best I can to take care of all the different things...

Showing up for yourself means understanding that you deserve love even when you don't think you do

Showing up for yourself means learning about what makes you undeserving of love, too

Showing up for yourself means dragging yourself outside even when you feel like hiding under a rock

Showing up for yourself means letting yourself stay home even when you feel like you should be dragging yourself outside

Showing up for yourself means taking care of your body, putting on your best even when nobody else can see it

Showing up for yourself also means staring at your hideous face in the mirror afterwards

and telling it "I love you"

even when you don't believe it.

You'd do the same for someone else

Wouldn't you?

And even if you wouldn't

that's okay too

 

Deep down, you'd want someone to do it for you

even if you feel like you don't deserve it

right?

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.

Words to Remove from the Dictionary (Part 1)

Good

Bad

 

Right

Wrong

 

Proper

Improper 

 

Defective

Maladaptive

Inadequate

Inferior

Insignificant

 

Hopeless

Worthless

Unlovable

Unforgivable

Coward

Stupid

Idiot

Broken

Pointless

Powerless

Meaningless

Useless

Impossible

Hate

Normal

Perfect

Never

Can people really change?  I mean, of course, people do change, but I wonder sometimes if that change is slow and hard-earned, or whether change is more like something that just "happens" to you.  Like how you can go to bed, but you can't actively "fall asleep", it's just something that "happens to you".  Maybe the difference is more semantic than anything, but thinking about the changes in my life and in other people's lives, it makes me think about how much of it was really under our control at all.

I've certainly become a little more comfortable talking and interacting with people in certain ways.  (Others...maybe still needs some work)  Was that really something that I did out of my own will and power?  Maybe.  I think it's weird because I'm used to looking at things like skills and techniques, like you know, my execution in ALTTPR, or knowing my way around cooking, or even the craft of making music?  These are all things where I can go like, "hey, yeah, I really worked on that, I put effort into both learning and practicing it, and it resulted in growth and progress".  But like, when it comes to the deeper stuff, like social skills or my personality or even the little componens that make up who I am, those are a lot harder to boil down.

Like, yeah, maybe I feel a little more secure than I used to, but like, I struggle to even feel like that's something that I really "worked out", it just feels like I was "lucky enough" to get through the right circumstances to make it happen.  I think some of the stuff about self-care, yeah, sure, that stuff I feel like I've put in work on, both myself and with my therapist, so that stuff makes sense, but the other stuff...it's harder for me to connect the dots, I guess.

The other weird thing is that change is something that traditionally I've just tried to avoid in the first place?  So like, maybe it makes sense after all that it's something that "happened to me" rather than something I really pursued.  But I donno, are there really good examples of how I've seen people change over time out of their own will?

Yeah...yeah, I guess there are.  But like I said, it is slow, and hard-earned.  I think that's why it's hard to imagine, because usually that sort of change takes many years, I guess, and usually starts so early on.  Like when I decided I would try my best to avoid having so many things that were half-done and never-finished.  I was so young when I tried to decide that, it really took many years before I could really go and say that this is something I'm not only good at but am known for.

I guess I see that in other people, too.  People have told me about how they had experiences that made them figure out that they wanted to be a certain way or wanted to learn how to be a different way than they were previously.  It's cool, I guess, seeing that people can actually make it happen.  That if you want to, you can grow, and shift.  I think it's more rare to see now, because people have settled more into their ways, but it doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.  Even someone who claims to want to stay the same as much as me, feels the shifts happening as I try to understand things in a different way.  Maybe I won't change as drastically as I did during some of my more formative years.  But it still happens, I guess.


I've still been feeling a little off, physically.  Headaches and fatigue and all that.  But I've been doing my best despite that.  Finished that Rhythm Quest devlog, did some mentoring, even squeezed in an ALTTPR run and got some voter outreach postcards started.  I'm overdue on some letters still, but that can come in time.  Everything in its time, one by one, steadily.  I can do it.

Been putting in some good work, recently.  The mentor tournament has been going well so far, I'm trying my best to route these mentees through the seeds, somehow they've managed 4-1.  I've learned one or two things along the way, so that's always a good thing, too.

Rhythm Quest work continues and I'm really putting a lot of time into the settings menu refactor, which feels really good.  I have a devlog drafted for all of the work I've done over the past two months, just need to capture all of the gifs for that tomorrow and hope to publish it.  I was going to work on that part of it today too, but instead I took care of some other things, including some household research and then also getting my package ready to mail out for Sakuradragon's stationery swap.  Nice to have those things checked off!

Chicky needs a nail trim as always; hopefully I'll be able to manage that tomorrow.  We seemed to have stopped one of the intruders but there's definitely still a problem, found one of them living in the food dispensers again =(  I ordered a treadle feeder to try and help, I'm not sure whether it will work out but I figure I might as well try, assuming I feel like it's safe for them to use (TBD).

Besides the Rhythm Quest work I have some letters to write (really haven't had too much writing time recently...).  I haven't been taking great care of the other normal household stuff (been keeping up with regular vacuuming at least, but haven't been managing the kitchen as well as I feel like I normally do), and I've had some uncharacteristic misses on my meals too, but I think that's just bound to happen sometimes.  It happens.

Weirdly enough I've been feeling some energy/dopamine problems near the end of the days, something feels a little off.  Maybe it's because I'm just exhausting my reserves earlier in the day, or maybe I just need a little more sleep, or whatever, but I've noticed that despite working really nicely and feeling good I've been hitting this point where my motivation kind of falls off a cliff, it's not just like the work motivation either, like the play motivation really peters off too.

I guess being in the summer months doesn't really help, though I don't think it's the heat sapping away my energy (otherwise it'd be worse in the afternoon...).  But it probably won't hurt to try and make sure that I'm taking care of myself in all of the usual ways, a little extra.  You know, eating a little healthier, trying to make sure I can get some good sleep, all that stuff.

I have another trip coming up, I'm looking forward to it!  I don't feel like I have a ton of stuff to take care of before then, just a few things that I think I'll be able to take care of okay.  My main question mark is whether I'll end up making time to head south before then, but I think either way is okay, honestly.