I mean I think if I get really real with myself, I feel like I wronged myself.

I think sometimes that really stings because out of all the people in the world myself is the one who has really been through it all together with me.

Yeah, but...we're allowed to make mistakes.  We all do.  It happens.  And we keep on going, most of the time better than before, even if a little worn and battered.  Sayuri is "perfect", but she is not perfect, because no such thing exists.  She is only an idealization in that her traits carry her to success solely because she exists only in a framework where she can succeed.  Or even when she is in a situation when she "fails", it's still "admirable".

In the real world, she, too, would need to give herself compassion for the things that she could not do.  It wouldn't be her fault.

Performing surgery is always scary, especially when you're inexperienced with it.  I hope that everything will be alright, that things will take root, heal, and grow again.  Even if we end up staying in the exact same place that we were before, sometimes we still need to be repotted, to make sure that we are healthy and growing well.

There's a weird feeling of emptiness that I have right now.  I guess that, is better than anxiety, at least.  I think it's a combination of rolling the credits for Silksong and then just...not knowing whether beyond the door my path continues, or comes to an end.  It's weirdly ungrounding.  But!  The turmoil and struggle that I wrote about last time is past...

Tomorrow is the start of an odd week for me.  A week where I simultaneously try to relax, try to get stuff done, try to enjoy myself but be disciplined, try to be social yet spend time to myself, try to be hopeful yet pragmatic.  It's weird to try and know where to land in all of it.

But I guess, I will at the very least, start by doing laundry and vacuuming, I guess.  Past that, I'll drink my white tea.  Try to figure out lunch and dinner, which I don't actually have too much of a plan about, for once.  And write a letter, at least.

Feels nice to be done with my pixel art drawing for the month, I guess.  I should have probably tried to sleep earlier, but maybe I can at least wake up not too late tomorrow...?

My mind keeps on refusing to learn the lessons that my body so desperately tries to tell it, I guess.  So here I am at 4AM, anxious and sitting in the company of the doubts that I swatted away like those buzzing flies that kept me on edge even as I tried to do what I normally do.  It may not be "fair", but suffering rarely is.  But just because it is not "fair" doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't earned.  I may not "deserve" to feel this way, but I certainly earned it.

It's hard to look back at what I did to arrive at this place and trace the "mistakes" that led me here because it is difficult, simply put, to label anything as "mistake".  If I am acting in accordance to what I believe and what I think best, how could it be a mistake?  More often than not we are simply victims of the fact that we are set up for certain outcomes.  "Failure", you could call it, but that word has the same problematic connotation as "mistake".  I did many things that could be called "success", but is it really success if it leads to negative outcomes?  It it simply a matter of perspective, sometimes.

Emotional security is, perhaps, sometimes like financial security.  Well, not really, in many ways, but maybe in some ways.  It's unfortunate, but many times the easiest way to earn money is to already have money.  We don't have such thing as an emotional savings account, or (good lord) emotional mutual funds.  But the concept is the same; when you are living paycheck to paycheck (or worse), you can't really secure a future for yourself that doesn't carry some element of risk or instability.

Some people just work their way toward financial stability and security, others kinda just have it handed to them.  And of course sometimes disaster strikes and that can take so many forms.  "Invest in yourself" is maybe a saying that gets tossed around, but the thing is that investment requires capital.  You can also make something from nothing, but it's something that requires more work, and...oftentimes, a more frugal lifestyle.  In the worst case you might have to take out a loan.  But it's funny because in some of the best cases you end up taking on a mortgage and what is that but another type of loan?  In one case you might not really be considered to be financially independent, but in the other case you might be considered to be very financially independent?  There is probably some sort of analogy in terms of the emotional loans that we take on, too.  It's not that it's inherently bad to take on a loan, it just depends.

I'm always pretty vague in these posts so I guess I can spell it out more in plain English, too.  I'm pretty unhappy.  I had a long week and I'm suffering from the residual effects of it.  I have some aspects of myself that are pretty frustrated at the other parts because they have been trying to get me away from unhappiness but like, you know how it is.  We often ignore what our body is telling us, or ignore what our mind is telling us, one or the other usually.  I didn't take good care of myself this week, not at all, and it's all starting to hit me as an accumulation of debt that I guess I need to start paying back somehow.  It's kinda sucky.  I didn't really want this but I don't have anybody to really "blame" but myself.  I'm trying to be sympathetic and write all this stuff about how "mistakes" aren't really a thing but yeah, I mean I think if I get really real with myself, I feel like I wronged myself.

I think sometimes that really stings because out of all the people in the world myself is the one who has really been through it all together with me.

It is one thing to want something for so long and then to realize that you will never reach it.  It is another thing to come to the understanding that you will still keep trying despite knowing that you will never reach it.  And it is still yet another thing to realize that what you believed in was a lie all along.

When I first learned the story of Sayaka Miki I think it was difficult for me to resonate with her struggle keenly.  I understood the tragedy of her story, but I saw her as brash, naive, and stubborn.  However, I wrote in 2013 in that I realized some things that made me feel like I started to understand her struggle a bit more.  I think I had begun to understand the idea of believing in something flawed, and had a greater appreciation of that "stubbornness".  And I also realize now the feeling of being betrayed by an ideal.  You could argue that Sayaka's naivety makes her story more "human".  That this is a flaw in her character, one that makes it resonant.  I think that's true to some extent, but humans are not the only species that are naive.  Perhaps what makes her struggle truly human is her struggle to maintain her beliefs despite being proven wrong.  In a way you could say this is an attachment to the past -- a sort of sunk-cost fallacy, if you will.  But I think it's more than that, too.  The idea of choosing to spend effort on something that is known to ultimately be futile, I think is something that feels to me to be uniquely human.  Like most good stories, Sayaka's portrayal to me doesn't have a defined single message or "moral" -- indeed, her story resolves in different ways depending on the universe.  I think this is by nature, as you can't simply "fix" this struggle by finding an answer.  It is simply something to be experienced and to learn your way through.

--September 7, 2021

Alright well, I've actually not been doing well, not really.  I keep feeling tired and a little depressed, and uneasy, which probably means I've been burning out a bit or something, despite my attempts to try and relax and not worry about being so uptight?  It's some sort of weird feeling that something is wrong, that things are not going to work out, and that I can't screw up, or shouldn't show it, like Elsa or Rumi or whatever??  I keep on thinking to myself that I need to figure out what's wrong so I can fix everything, but maybe that's actually not the move and I'm "supposed to" stop trying to do whatever I'm "supposed to" do or whatever.

On the plus side, I'm feeling a lot better than I was a couple of hours ago!  Sure, the flamin' hot dill pickle cheetos probably weren't the healthiest thing to be eating, but they tasted good and I was happy eating them while having a laugh watching ShinyZeni play "Uptroid Down" (a romhack of Super Metroid that's mirrored vertically, apparently it's gotten some pretty impressive updates).  I'm having round 3 of the chicken soup that I made from leftover thigh bones, broccoli stems, and some leftover fennel, and it's nice and comforting.

I've been working really hard recently!  I sank a bunch of hours into Rhythm Quest work, including putting out a new devlog and getting one step closer to being rid of Discord woes by officially transitioning bug reports onto Github.  I finished a letter yesterday, scheduled a car interior service for tomorrow morning (should have gone to bed earlier, I guess...) -- something I've been meaning to do for ages -- did some good grocery shopping, did the laundry, ordered some more gift wrap online, and today I spent most of my day working on my monthly pixel art drawing.  It feels good to put a bunch of time into something and see it actually develop and pay off.  I was really concerned when I started because it seemed the drawing was kinda just off everywhere and I was kind of fighting a few parts to look okay, but somehow it's really turned the corner and it's looking pretty decent now.  Seems like I've been doing ONLY drawings of Sayuri for the past 4 months, but honestly, I'm here for it.  Might as well get more practice with something I kinda know how to draw, and see progress that way.  I can really feel some of the learnings coming in, which is a nice feeling.  There's still more work to be done on this piece, though, maybe tomorrow?

What way do I need to live to be relaxed, happy, tranquil?  Do I just need more quiet time, whether it be alone or shared?  Do I need to reconnect with my past and mourn what is gone?  Do I need to get away, or do I need to go closer?  What is it that the inner me wants?

So far what I've learned from the various mutterings about Silksong is that modern game discourse is "weird".  Weird, but not unexpected when you think about how we've gotten here.

It's less of a deal what people's thoughts actually are and more that they are constantly being framed against a backdrop of whatever the societal zeitgeist is perceived to be (by that particular person?).  Like, it's not a big deal if you think game X is hard or game Y is easy or you thought game Z was lame.  But there's this extra thing now where instead it's like "wow I've been hearing everyone say game X is hard but come on, this is what it is?" or some sort of presumed "how could 'they' make this game like this, developers are so out of touch" or "everyone should calm down and just play the game the way it was made".

Even the fact that Silksong was not provided to review critics far ahead of time is somehow this "notable" thing and like, yeah, I guess technically it is, but I think that just goes to show that there is such a strong expectation of "the way things should go".  Isn't it weird?  Maybe I'm just old-fashioned though and like, yeah, this is nothing new at all, of course everyone is just on social media or whatever and hearing about all this stuff and blahblahblah.

And I dunno, I guess it's normal, but as a game developer I feel a little sad because like, I feel like I'd just want people to play my game and think whatever they want without this thing where you're either in camp A or in camp B or in the "I'm not =IN= either of those camps, y'all are wrong" which is actually just camp C".

But I guess that's fine I mean when I release Rhythm Quest I'm probably going to be plugging my ears to whatever most of the world has to say

Things are ok!

The first half of this week hasn't been as productive for Rhythm Quest as last week was, but there's still time to remedy that.  I was quite happy with how I did last week, hopefully I can keep up that pace.  Of course, it's already midway through September, so I do need to keep balance in mind, since I have my monthly pixel artwork, a good handful of birthday letters to do, and getting a head start on Christmas writing...On the plus side, I'm doing good on the 200 voter postcards that I'm mailing out next month, so that'll be one thing safely marked off the checklist soon.

Playing rando has been fun, as always.  Tonight I played a casual boots seed and beat all 12 of the people who ran it, by a margin of like 8-9 minutes...that's with like a minute of stupid brainfart timeloss too.  It's always surprising because like, I thought the seed was super straightforward, but apparently nobody else routed it the way that I did.  People just think about the game differently, I guess.  This is why metrics are important...

I started playing Silksong, too!  I wasn't sure when I was going to get on with that, but it's been fun so far, though surprisingly there's a very tiny bit of nausea when I play for a while.  Maybe that happened with Hollow Knight too, I'm not really sure.  Maybe this is just part of getting old...anyways, I'm switching to playing in a window to see if it helps, but it's really slight to begin with, thankfully.  The game has been fun.  I definitely feel like (as claimed) the beginning of the game is more difficult than Hollow Knight's beginning was, not that that necessarily means anything about the rest of the game.  I mean, it's fine, it's just...I guess, a little surprising, I think.  But fun.

Despite all the stuff I wrote before about wanting to get better at cooking and all that, it's...actually been nice to step back from the kitchen and take it a bit easy.

DDR has been fun too, though unfortunately something seems to be up with my layered nails recently when I play, oops.  Still, I'm glad I've been making an effort to play, especially today since I was unexpectedly dealing with some anxiety (!) and such.  I guess that's what I get for not having healthy habits last night (eating unhealthy before bed...) and having a random nightmare in the morning...

There are things to look forward to in life and I'm making some forward progress.  Really, what more should you ask for...?

I mean, there is always more.  I can be doing more work.  I can be a better person.  I can be thinking about more.  Doing more.  Cleaning more.  Cooking more.  But like, I can't do infinity things at the same time either.  It's just one step at a time.  More will come, with time.  Thing will get better, with time.

Somehow I've ended up with all of these different projects that involve a nigh-infinite amount of work, it seems...

I've got Rhythm Quest, of course, which it's felt good to sink more time into.  I still have nothing exciting to show for it, but work is work.  I've been doing a bunch of performance improvements and refactors, among other things, which is all invisible work but it feels great seeing how the game runs at a solid smooth framerate on Switch now, even on the later levels, which it wasn't doing before.

Then I've got the ALTTPR site, which has a billion things of its own to dig into and work on.  You'd think that after doing all the pages in Eastern Palace I'd either start covering more of the other dungeons, or just continue my work on Ganon's Tower, but no...I'm back at working on Eastern Palace, lol.  Not only did I find some frame saves in the map chest room, but I'm starting to want to compile not only strats but organized timing data for each room in the dungeon, which I can =then= use to create concrete numbers and charts around dungeon efficiency and timings.  All stuff that will be super exciting to see, but of course it goes slowly when it's just all me doing everything myself...well, at least I managed to integrate a nice table plugin and a chart renderer.  It feels cool knowing that I can build a slick and well-crafted site by myself!

I sent off my Vote Forward letters (only did 40 so far) already, but I still have a whole lot of postcards to send out for Postcards to Swing States.  I slapped on about 100 stamps earlier today as I was hanging out with my housemates, but there's a lot more addressing to do there.

In less than a month I'm going to be hopefully starting on my annual Christmas letters, too.  I just looked it up and Ludum Dare is in a month, too, ha ha ha.  I've not really paid LD any attention for the past years, and it looks like this one is probably going to be no different just based on the timing, but at some point it would be nice to do another one of them again, maybe (?).

The good thing about all of it is that like, yeah, I'm really built for this kind of thing where you just have to keep on working steadily at the same stuff over and over again and accumulate efforts over long swaths of time.  That's supposed to be my biggest strength and all that.  And when I think about how I've also got a pixel artwork to do at some point in the month, and then some other letters to write, and stuff like that, somehow I'm still at the capacity where I'm like "yeah, ok, let's do this, let's go".  It's good. 

Today was kind of really what I needed.  Little things to remind me how to enjoy life.  I've been so busy working for myself and others that I forgot to spend enough effort on just having a good time.  "Healing" after all is only one part of care.

I didn't have the best sleep last night so I took a nap in the evening before having some "me time" as I did groceries.  It was a good trip!  Maybe even too good; we'll see how much of the food I end up using before this weekend, ha ha.  Perhaps despite my better judgment I'm actually going to be trying a few new things -- roast fennel, and some hasselback potato gratin.  I'm curious to see how those are going to turn out...

A caretaker pointed out some things for me; helped me see some of the signs that I needed some space, needed some care, but most of all just needed a break.  Not a long one, of course -- it's really rare that I need anything like that.  But a short one, just reminding myself of that so-called "live every day like it's a vacation" energy.  I'm not sure if I really need to live each day like a vacation, but I think envisioning it can remind me of some things that are more important than I perhaps have been giving them credit for. 

I played the weekly ALTTPR seed today, it was a pretty interesting one, fun to follow the journey through it as I got strung around.  I didn't really hit "the route" but did relatively well considering most people spent over two hours on it.  Perhaps the most satisfying part was taking a magnifying glass to how I've been handling Misery Mire, especially the cases where you get to just defeat Vitreous and leave behind 1 or 2 items in the rest of the dungeon (2 in this case).  Unfortunately my program to time and puzzle and average that out still needs a bunch of refactoring (someday...), but I managed to back-of-envelope estimate a bunch of it and reaffirm my conviction that it's generally a good idea to just leave if you have a good amount of other better checks available.  Timing-wise it's just like left side swamp (maybe like 60 seconds per item on average), a bit worse if you have only one item left (80+ seconds).

Like sure, if your options are just Pyramid Ledge, Catfish, Bombos Tablet, Magic Bat, and Spike Cave, then you'd better just go back in and get those two items because all of your checks are gonna take a minute anyways, and you do pay a cost of like 21 seconds if you leave and have to come back later.  But if you've got some good density left, it's not a bad skip I don't think.

I need to be careful not to be =too= greedy with my efficiency though, and sacrifice too much of my long-term full clear speeds.  60 seconds per item is slow, but it's not =that= slow.  Maybe I should be changing from "skip all the slow stuff" to "be a little more thorough" a little more readily after I've exhausted most of the efficient check strings available in a given seed.  It's always a tricky balance, of course.

Anyways...I'm feeling better!  Hopefully the rest of this week will treat me alright, too.  I'm looking forward to more of the fun things in life.  White tea, ALTTPR, cooking.  And some other important things, too.