Have you ever waited for something so long, you thought it would never happen?

I'm not sure how to explain how I feel right now, but that this is both an end, but also not an end.  A beginning, too.  I guess, it wouldn't even matter how it happened, to be honest.  Only that it did.  That it happened at all, is a miracle.  That, by itself, is...

Oh, how time has passed.  And if I could, I might give you that time back.  But perhaps, it's better to look forward, and not back.  I always looked back, hoping I could find you.  But just maybe, if I turn around, I would catch a glimpse of you in the road ahead.  I don't know if I would ever meet you.  Perhaps I wouldn't.  But that would never stop me from calling out.  Even if I knew you wouldn't hear.

I told you once, that there's no meaning in a letter not read.  But that's not true.  Not true at all...

What have I even been doing all my life?  I should just listen to downtempo ambient chill music, emotionally evocative soundscapes and soundtracks.  Why do I produce music that is catchy if it doesn't truly mean something?

...overexaggerating quite a bit here, but seriously though.  Sometimes I wonder why it's such a dichotomy, that sometimes it seems like I like things that are not really in line with my personality.  But then...I remember that my personality is never so one-dimensional as that.  I am not just one type of person, neither is anyone else.

Christmas letters are at 11 done so far.  I have to do some birthday stuff as well.  Slightly worried about gifts, but...that's actually a very small worry compared to some other stuff my body seems to be stressing out about.  Annoying.

https://soundcloud.com/robot-heart/above-and-beyond-robot-heart-burning-man-2014-yoga

There's a SF3:Third Strike arcade machine at work so I've been trying to take that up and get slightly decent at it.  SF is hard and learning to do motions on the joystick is also a challenge, but it's not impossible and it's actually fun to play against other people once in a while.  I'm mainly using Ryu right now since he makes the most "sense" to me intuitively, but Ken and Chun Li are options as well, though I don't have a solid handle on all of their stuff yet.  I think I just realized today that I can probably get a lot better execution if I just try to slow down all of my inputs and take my time.  Especially when I'm doing stuff like DPs, you actually get quite a large timing window in which to input the command (I was testing), but in the heat of the battle I tend to rush it and then screw it up.  Of course sometimes you actually do need to do it fast, for reaction timing or in a chain, but probably better to err on the side of slow and consistent.

Been starting to do small experiments on redoing my writing grip to a more standard tripod grip.  I still have very little precision with it but I can at least write legibly? (if messy)  I'm sure it will take a lot more practice before I'm used to it...but I can revisit my handwriting at the same time and try out some different styles as well.

Christmas letters: 7 down, ...some number more to go!  Maybe 30 is the number to aim for this year?  I have ~37 days left until Christmas anyways, I shouldn't push myself too hard and go for 40.  We'll see how it all turns out.

I actually feel like I am really gaining momentum with these xanga blog postings!  Don't mind doing more than one a day--that used to be common practice back in the xanga days anyway!  Maybe now that we're crossposting to G+, I just feel more compelled to use blogspot rather than a FB status update of some sort.  Which is...very nice, in a way.  Something about making an actual blog post as opposed to an ephemeral status update is just...satisfying.

Just a dummy post to test a twitterfeed booboo, as well as G+ crossposting.

Sometimes, I almost feel like posting over at Love Everlasting, my wordpress archive of my now-lost xanga site.  I don't know, just because of the history of it all, you know?  It takes time to settle into a new home.  I still consider just paying the $48/years for xanga premium sometimes.  I know it wouldn't be the same though, and blogspot is surely a more convenient option now anyways.  It was a good move.  But the history will still always remain.  I still have flashbacks to thoughts, things that I wrote about, and "the way that I was".  But...of course.  We all have thoughts like that sometimes, memories of the past, don't we?  Maybe I do a little bit more often than most, or maybe not.  I'm a little less hung up on it now.  I'm still just as sentimental about the past, but I also value the here and now just as much, and even the future too.  Because eventually, all of these things will be past.  And they are all worth treasuring.  Even if this blogger site doesn't feel like it carries history now, surely it might, someday.  In fact...I do feel like I've made enough writings on here, that it's important to me too.  A lot of those writings were lost, confused, and searching for what I should do, but I won't deny that part of my history, just as I won't deny the times when I just felt forever lonely, "in a rut".

Hah, just what got me out of "the rut" anyhow?  I think a lot about myself had to change in order for me to stop feeling that way.  It certainly was not that I wasn't trying hard enough...I know for sure that back then, I "worked" harder for friendship than I do now.  I tried very hard...I wrote many letters, made many calls.  Started many chat windows.  I almost wonder, if things would have gone better if I had not had that determination to try so hard?  Because in the end, I just needed to change.  To value different things, to value different people.  And also, to reconsider what it truly means, to be a good friend to someone.  Hard work...is not enough.  I guess it was a bit futile, in the end.  But I wouldn't ever, ever deny or regret those things that I did.  Even if they were futile or misguided, the "past me" is very very dear to me.  Even if he is not a person I would even like if I met him today, I am thankful that he existed, and will always remember it fondly.  Back then...I was more loud, for certain.  I'm actually happy, that I'm a bit quieter now.  I wonder if he would approve, too?  I think...he might.

Speaking of moving on, and things of new...I have a new job now, at Machine Zone, since us folks at Quark have gotten gobbled up and acquired by them.  Of course, I can't say much about it, not only because I shouldn't, but also because I've only spent a day there so far.  But...I'm sure that it will take time to settle into this, as well.

Can't sleep =/  First it was because I was just feeling emotional, so I went to draw using charcoal.  Then it was because my mind was too busy imagining that I was waltzing, doing waltz competitions at VBall, and doing waltz lifts.  Then I started thinking about food and ended up looking up some cooking stuff...I've actually been trying to learn a whole bunch of random crap to educate myself about things like cooking science, broiling fish, different theories on cooking steaks, spices and herbs, and cheeses...then I got hungry and I just made myself a sandwich...

I also discovered to my chagrin that the spinach dip that I bought has water chestnuts in it.  Water chestnuts!  Seriously?  People do this?  Water chestnuts?  Ugh!  Mixing crunchy bits into creamy chewy spinach dip...forget the fact that I don't care for the taste of water chestnuts much (thank goodness they at least are not real nuts), but I think the mixing of different textures like that is something that I universally dislike in my food...ugh.

Water chestnuts!?!?  Come on...