Things are going pretty ok -- I'm writing this at FNW before DJing, so I guess it'll be a bit of a scattered post, haha...it's still really warm in here =(  Thank goodness that killer heat wave died down a bit at least...

Busy weekend for me, with DJing, a friend's wedding, a birthday, etc.  Nothing super stressful, just a lot to keep track of in my mind, it feels like.
On Monday my contract gig becomes a fulltime thing, woo!  It's not a world of difference or anything, just means I know what I'll be doing past next month haha.

A bunch of things that I need to get done in the coming weeks...

- Two music commissions that I gotta finish in a month or so.
- Friendship game jam! (https://itch.io/jam/friendship-jam)  Organized by npckc, not sure if we will end up getting around to making something for it but it would be nice!  It's a super casual thing so we won't just work super hard like Ludum Dare, but it also goes until the end of the month, so we'll see if we manage something.  I've played some of npckc's works and they really made me smile, especially their more recent games...I don't know if I can really write and/or design something so wholesome but we can certainly try!  Maybe if we use our meowmie power...
- A few birthday letters to write and some other writing projects to do...
- Planning for JaSmix!  Still trying to get everything nailed down...might have to prep a workshop too!  And of course put together the setlist.
- Should probably upload All in a Day's Work 4 to NetEase...
- Have a bit of cleaning and such that I should probably do...

You know, now that I've written it out, that all doesn't actually seem like that much, especially not that much that needs to get done very soon.  So I guess it's mainly just this weekend that I need to get through, haha.

I feel...OK with my connect with the past right now.  I'm not feeling in pain with it, but not feeling super great about it either.  But I am writing to Kiki, and thought of her quite a few times this past week.  I talked with someone on Wednesday who really made me think of her a lot, actually.  Kiki seems really distant, perhaps even more distant than ever now that I don't just think of her regularly.  But I do still think of her, and that distance doesn't feel painful...

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DJing went well, though somehow ended up being a bit more stressful than I expected.  There are just a bunch of things to juggle between being paranoid about volume balance, announcing songs, and checking to make sure things are running on time.  I probably played more songs than anyone else has ever played at FNW -- a full 12 songs during each set -- so I knew I had to keep things moving along.  We made it in time, though!  Yet another thing that becomes possible when being vigilant about editing songs for length...

The foobar2000 live display worked just fine, though of course FNW doesn't really have a place to put it that would be super ideal, but people seemed to think it was cool and they did end up using it, so that's nice.  Really that was more of a test run though, now that I know it all works properly I can use that in case I ever get to use a projector to have it super obvious and visible to everyone.  I know there was a lot of feedback at the last JaSmix event to have setlists up and the live-updating playlist would be my solution of being able to do that yet also being able to change things up on the fly if needed.

I realized as we were going through my setlist that I could stand to pay better attention to tempos as I'm putting together the sets.  I think about tempos carefully as I'm editing individual songs but I noticed that I could have done a better job of making sure that the faster rotary waltzes were labeled as such and were in later sets.  It's something that's easy to take for granted as an experienced dancer but I think that sort of thing is still worth considering.