Every time I browse social media it reminds me that it's important (personally) for me to post and interact in the ways that I believe in.  You know how people will do things like take breaks from using their phones or using social media or whatever?  So I don't really do that because I personally don't believe technology, phones, or social media are really problems, it's the things that they are used for, and the things that "we" use them for.  So instead of that I will just remind myself of what are the terms which =I= would like to interact online on.  How would I like to carry myself and if other people were to follow my example, would that be an online space which I would like to engage with?

I've noticed a definite increase in self-consciousness in my language over the years.  I don't think it's a bad thing.  I think it used to be an assumption as plain as day that whatever I said didn't need to be qualified as being "in my opinion" or "personally for me".  I would just say it how it is, and call it as I see it.  "This is stupid."  "Things should be this way."  While I think there is something to be said about tendencies to preemptively overcorrect one's self in a self-deprecating way, I think for me this has been more about understanding that there is in fact more than one valid way to view things.  That's not something that I was able to learn earlier in life simply because I never really connected with anyone else on a level in which I was able to learn from their (different) point of view.  That's not necessarily a fault of my own or anyone else's, just simply the way things turned out.

I've been packaging up all of my xmas stuff and getting it ready to deliver and send out.  I still need to work out a few more presents and such, but we're very much on pace for where I need to be, so that's great.

I concretely identified Hide and Seek as a source of stress, along with a bunch of other things that are on the ever-present to-do list.  As always, awareness is the first step to learning to process something a little more healthily.

Although this month overall has been quite relaxing compared to last month, there have definitely still been days here and there where I have not felt so good.  Some of those were simply circumstantial, but I think the others were simply thinking about things that I "need" to get done.  But I mean, what else is new, right?

I've been playing through Virtue's Last Reward, which has been enjoyable so far!  I've gone down maybe 2/3rds of the branching paths so far, though a majority of them are "locked" for now.  I've only gotten one non "bad" end.

Got a second pressure cooker, so making ramen broth (of the creamy opaque pork variety) has doubled in efficiency now as I can just split 7-8 lbs of pork bones across the two and get double the yield as before for roughly the same amount of time investment.  So I've got quite a lot of rich pork broth in my fridge now!  In addition to the spicy miso tare that I made last time, I also have some simple shoyu tare that I'm prepping.  And then I'll be making a bunch more chashu.  Hey, I said I was gonna really try to get into ramen this winter, and I am definitely following through on it!

Speaking of cooking, made smashburgers again which was yummy of course.  Tomorrow and maybe again on Thursday I'm gonna make a stab at sichuan shui zhu style spicy beef, with pork blood (!) and tripe.  It's been a while since I've attempted one of these soups but I think I've studied enough that it should come out pretty decent, I hope!

Smash Summit 10 (online) was this past weekend so there have been a lot of high-level melee matches to idly watch through, especially as I eat meals or whatever.  It's nice having something to watch and I think even if we are not at the peak era of "excitement" when it comes to top 8s in tournaments, you can't argue that good melee isn't still happening.

There's a debacle of sorts going on with the Smash scene (#freemelee), the tl;dr of which is that Nintendo doesn't give a rat's @$$ about the smash (particularly the melee) scene and chooses to avoid supporting despite the fact that not only are they in bad "moral" faith but it also simply doesn't make sense for them as a capitalistic money-making decision.  But I mean, I guess they aren't really the only company/industry that are still entirely backwards in their dogmatic decisions.  Case in point, the music industry hitting Twitch with the whole DMCA fiasco about music used in twitch streams/clips, which seems to be done out of a misguided understanding that "control = profit" when it comes to music.

Anyways, both of those two issues are too complicated for me to explain here, so go look it up if you must.  But it really surprises me at how many people I see backlashing =against= the #freemelee movement.  I think it's because as someone who is well-informed about both the history of the scene as well as the people in it and the actual problem at hand, it is very clear to me who is in the "right" here.  But you have to realize that as some Joe Schmoe nobody who doesn't know any of the facts nor any of the context around the issue, they are more likely to misconstrue everything and come away with a knee-jerk judgement simply because "why the hell is this such a big deal, just get over it".  Which of course is akin to a sort of victim-blaming...but you know, that's the sort of thing that runs rampant on these online spaces.  What would Hiiragi-sensei think? :(

Since I've been doing a lot of both housework, cooking, and packaging stuff lately, I've been having a lot of HealthyGamerGG playing in the background as something to listen to as I do these tasks.  Since I first discovered these videos thanks to Scar (from the Melee scene! #freemelee) I really have to say they have made a positive impact on my mental health practices and understanding of how to cope with mental health issues in my daily life -- which is not only important to life in the covid era but also just important to life in general.  There is a really weird effect in that watching someone explain and understand another human being also helps you in turn understand your own self.  Really useful stuff, especially since mental health and mindfulness practices aren't really "taught" commonplace.