It's time for yet another update...

Dance
Couple of upcoming events:

This Friday (1/24) - I DJ at Friday Night Waltz.  This conflicts with a "mini unjammix" night, but alas, that's how it is.  I've just finished the final changes to the setlist and will be posting that at some point in the coming few days.  As usual, I've hand-edited over 50% of the songs...

February 1st - Viennese Ball.  The usual, I guess.

February 21st - I'll be hosting an event at the GCC.  Exact details TBD, but I might host some private lessons beforehand.  It's been a while since I did any, and I don't know if I care to prepare a full workshop for this.

April 11th (?) - JaSmix.  Get hyped?

Dance has been..."interesting" in the recent months, but I actually had quite a lot of fun at Bon Bon Ball this past Friday, which was very nice.  I can't say that that was really because of any of the things I've been thinking about with regards to dance, but rather I think I just happened to be in a better mood that night and was not feeling very overwhelmed.  I was also really excited that it was the weekend, so I'm sure that helped.

Poi
I haven't practiced a ton, but have practiced a bit!  I've gotten down a tuck turn sequence that feels really cool and satisfying, so that has been great!  Not really sure what I'll be working on next, though.

Randomizer
I still haven't gotten into doing actual legit runs, but I did a session where I just ran through Super Metroid Randomizer and save/loaded state a bunch to practice various things.  I've gotten a lot better handle on some various rooms now, or at least have a better idea of how to execute them in theory.  My Phantoon fight is still really bleh, but on the plus side, I can actually do the 2-tap/3-tap shinespark charges in Draygon's room now, so that's awesome.  I also spent a while learning how to do Baby Metroid Skip, which is still quite hard for me to get consistently, but I =have= been able to do it a few times, and I basically "get it", which feels great.  I spent some more time working on Zebetite Skip too, which I always found really hard to do.

Next I'd like to do basically the same thing but for a LttP rando seed.

TGM
I actually whipped out the old arcade stick and played some games of TAP (Tetris, for those of you who don't speak obscure acronyms) and it felt great.  Even after playing SRS Tetris games a whole bunch, I've found that my ARS instincts and learned intuition really haven't dulled that much at all.  Handling Death 300 speeds is a bit out of comfortable reach for now though -- I think I'll have to really really grind if I want to get my shot at Death GM again.  Ah, well, there's always the "Carnival of Death" to look forward to at the end of March...

Puyo Puyo
I think I've gotten to the point where I need to start watching some videos and such to get new ideas.  I think I've practiced enough that I know of certain situations that I have a pretty hard time of, so it's time to figure out what to really do with them by watching other players and learning from their ideas and experience.

Space Alert
We had a surprisingly--no, =amazingly= successful session, with me captaining (as usual) with two fellow crew members -- one a veteran who I've often taken into the Deep, and a rookie that I trained myself what seems like not too long ago.  After getting not one but two perfect missions (minus some harmless-yet-concerning tripping), we decided to take a higher pay grade mission into one of the slightly more dangerous areas of the Deep.  It was still nothing compared to the stories I've heard of the Red sectors, but halfway between our usual area and the "Yellow" zone, so we encountered some phasing threats, as well as the dreaded "Ninja" that boarded our ships and made our lives difficult.  Luckily, our crew was calm and I was able to take control of the situation relatively well.  Our various expertise was really starting to show its utility in these missions -- my experience as mechanic often provided us with just the right amount of extra punch in the laser cannons to take out a ship, and Kotz at one point seemed to be able to simply meditate for all of 20 seconds before calmly punching some frequencies into the laser console, bypassing the failsafes to squeeze just the right amount of extra joules out of the reactor.  It was...thrilling.

Life (let's face it, probably the only section that you care about)
Hmm, it's difficult to really sum things up.  Let's give some various points:

- Last week was a really long week for me.  I felt a feeling of stress and anxiety towards the end of the week.  Fortunately that went away with the weekend, which went off to quite a great start.
- I dug up some negative emotional weight that I've been carrying around with me for quite a long time, and started to bring it out into the open.  This was something that I guess was a lot more important than I gave it credit for, because I started crying after thinking about it a lot more.  That's really good though, it means that I am at a point where I feel like I actually have the strength to confront it and face it.  I'm very glad.
- The feeling of anxiety seems to have resurfaced a bit, which concerns me.  I will try to get a good night's sleep tonight, and be honest with myself about anything that feels "scary".  I have some guesses right off the bat, namely both work and dance organization -- not that either of them is bad, but rather that they involve stressors.
- This doesn't really "need" to be said, it should be a given, but I have been feeling very grateful for my close relationships.  I guess what I actually mean to say is that they have been going very well and I feel like despite whatever hardship I am going through, I am able to draw a lot of strength from them.

Until next time...