Well, let's see...

We were on a brief hiatus for.......reasons.......but we're back now.

So right, I was feeling pretty anxious and stressed, just generally not super OK.  I never figured out a specific trigger for all of it, but...well, to be honest, identified several triggers.  Doesn't really matter which was the needle that broke the proverbial camel's back, just, things weren't great.  Fortunately, I'm doing better now, and some of those issues have either gotten better or gotten resolved.

6 quails are now living in my office!  We have them in a big box and clean their poopies daily.  They are very cute and very dumb.  One of them has started to crow once in a while......that means they will probably be first on the chopping block to.....erm......get chopped.....and eaten :x  But not yet, they are still relatively young.

I realized today that for most of my life growing up I never once had a positive role model for human interaction.  That is not necessarily to say that all of the people I was around were necessarily =bad= at human interaction (though some certainly were), but the truth of the matter is that even if a certain interaction style works for somebody, there's no guarantee that it will work for you, or even be appreciated by you.  Truthfully, I think it was not until 2012 that I really got the chance to regularly be around somebody whose interaction style I really appreciated.

Sorry, that's not at all to mean that all of the friends I had before then had interaction styles that I hated -- but I was not really close enough to most of them, nor did I spent enough time with them regularly to really be able to model my behavior after them.  Reflecting upon some of my social habits nowadays, it's very clear to me that some of these are a byproduct of simply....not really having been exposed to other manners of being with other people.  Many of us are social chameleons to some extent or another -- often we fall into interacting with people in the same way that they interact with us, for better or worse.  But there are situations indeed, where I've realized that interacting with someone in the same ways that they interact with me, is not how I'd like to carry myself.  That is perhaps a habit that I'll need to catch myself on.

As I was growing older the easiest means of interaction was simply to avoid it altogether.  Simply not speaking at all was the healthiest way of proceeding through life, because the means through which I had been taught to speak out were not unhealthy or pleasant, in both their delivery and in their reception.  Sometimes I find that that is still true.

I finished watching all of Steven Universe!  What an interesting series that has been.  I definitely liked parts of it much more than others.  I think it was a show that was not super interesting in the beginning, but as it got deeper and delved into some real subject matter, I started to really appreciate it.  But at some point it reached a point where it started to really become something else, something....I don't exactly know how to describe it.  "mainstream" is surely not the word I would use, but I guess...more grandiose, and branching out away from its roots.  Which I don't think is a bad thing at all, but I just happened to not be a huge fan of some of those other directions.  But somehow in the end they wrapped it up in something that I appreciated anyways.  So I guess the long and short of it is that it was a rather up and down thing for me, but that is perhaps only inevitable with a show that is not really "one-note", as Steven Universe was not.  Perhaps the styles of stories are much alike to the styles in which we interact with others...

We've been hanging out on a Ragnarok Online private server!  (Nova RO) I've started posting again about those adventures, over at http://cs181ro.blogspot.com/, so feel free to check that out, though I imagine most of you will probably not find that particularly interesting.  There are lots of images though, at least ;P  Anyways, it's been me and just two other friends for the time being, not sure if I could find anybody else (though we of course would welcome anybody else!).  It's a nice way to hang out online and such, though of course I know everybody and their mothers (sometimes =literally=) are doing that via Animal Crossing at the moment.  Anyways, add that to the (somehow rather large) list of games that I've got on my plate at the moment, on top of LttP/SM randomizer runs, Illusion of Gaia, Tetris/Puyo Puyo practice, etc.

I've been doing Tai chi a little more regularly, which feels great.  I have my memory of the 24 form up to snuff, but I lost my memory of a lot of the 42 combined form, so I'm trying to get that back into my system again, which will be fun.  I have no hope of remembering either of the sword forms I used to know.....that'll probably be a while from now....

Poi has been an ongoing thing here and there, as it has been.  Taking a bit of a break from flower stuff to work on some other things like snakes and meltdowns and such.

Ordered a simple foam DDR pad to hopefully get into that again!  It's been probably 10 years since I played seriously, but I'm quite looking forward to that.

Ludum Dare results are out!  We did pretty well -- 24th overall, 52nd in fun, 48th in graphics, 3rd in audio, and even 42nd in humor.  That's pretty much in line with how we've been trending, no complaints there.  I'm personally pretty happy with our work too.  Hopefully you'll be hearing more about that once we're all done with the post-jam / mobile versions.

Work has been just fine -- I think I have been doing a good job of making sure to give myself some time and space for self-care especially since the past few weeks have been a little more challenging than usual.

Music is going slowly and steadily as usual (and as with everything in my life, it seems -- I mean, it is me after all).  I used the last two OHCs to work on soundtrack commission pieces and my client was happy with both of them, so that's great.

All in all, things are...fairly good at the moment.  Better than before, for sure.  I'm hovering around 3 or 4 out of 5 I guess?