Happy MLK day.

Phew, I really needed that day off.

I've been dealing with bouts of depression here and there, as we are apt to do, but nothing extended.  There are the times when the illusions of daily life peel back and the soul-crushing loneliness of the human condition peeks out from behind, but also there are simply the times when my mind is locked in its inexorable struggle between trying to "relax" and forcing itself to continue working despite a lack of motivation.  Of course there is no "right" answer in these scenarios; often some of my most productive days have been due to this "default" inclination to simply "work a little more" before taking it easy.  But of course, there is such a thing as too much of that.  It's important also to remember our own needs.

The days when I'm feeling exhausted, sad, busy, or just plain bad are actually a little simpler to deal with.  Those feelings give me free license to focus on caring for my mental self, just as having a cold gives you all the reason you need to stay home and lie in bed most of the day.  It's the other days that are trickier, especially when the tasks to be done are intimidating.  As always, I manage to triumph, because I am both consistent, determined, and understand the strategies for breaking that intimidation down into something more manageable.  But those times when I sit down and wonder what to do with myself -- whether to throw myself into another day of productivity, or a day of hedonism, given that I don't "need" either...those days are tricky.  I am pulled in both directions, and yet not pulled at all.  An equilibrium state that makes me wonder what my end goal is.

But this is not necessarily a "problem to be solved".  When we are caught in a bad situation, sometimes you just flip your hand down and fork over the chips.  If there is one thing that the past year has done for us all it has given us the excuse of a lifetime to not feel good.  I don't think 2020 correctly deserves to be a "scapegoat" for all of the mental health problems that are attributed to it, but if there needs to be a scapegoat for it all, then I think that's fine.

Anyways, today has been better, actually quite a nice combo of things that I did with my day today.  Did an ALTTPR run, started some artwork in the morning, finished it later in the evening, made dinner for myself.  If I hadn't finished that art piece this weekend, I wonder if I would still be feeling rather stressed about "not having done enough" right now.  That, despite having accomplished other things this weekend -- made a bunch of tonkotsu broth, cooked a fair share of meals, did some knife sharpening, updated our game, and sent out two letters as well.  But who can really blame me?  The relentless drive for consistent forward motion has led me to where I am today.  Making one piece of artwork each month is only "par" for the course -- in fact, it's behind where I need to be, as it'll mean I never have artworks for any of my other non-monthly releases.

I think you can perhaps see now why work/life balance has always been an interesting issue for me.  There is no company that I can sell my soul to because I already sold my soul to my own pursuits.  A new song every week, a new art piece every month, and a new game every 6 months.  Let me remind you, that's just the baseline.

So much of the media I consume nowadays is simply borne out of a whim of following up on a memory from the past.  Remembering a feminist comic I saw once, I decided to purchase "The Mental Load" as a short read-through.  The comic in question was the "You Should've Asked" one, from a few (?) years ago.  Reading these sorts of writings just makes me reflect on how we spend our whole childhood and young adult lives essentially being lied to and have only our selves and (possibly) our social networks to figure out the real truths of being decent human beings (and the latter one is...shall we say, inconsistent, at best).

It makes me feel like I really understand people who go out of their way in an attempt to educate others.  There is a feeling of "wow, they screwed up so bad when they were trying to educate us about society." and I guess I sympathize with the gung-ho attitude of wanting to provide others that hard-earned insight.  Because who else is going to tell them, right?

Unfortunately it seems that many of these people who have their hearts in the right place also seem to be closed-minded zealots who parrot what they claim to be universal truths.  They don't seem to understand that each generation is different, that times change and we become wiser.  Which is ironic, because that is probably the very same thing they encountered while growing up in the first place.  At least, that's been my personal experience.

To give a mock example, I feel like at some point "the company" used to be your ally in the previous generations.  That's just not true anymore.  But we have all these boomer parents still telling their millenial kids that they need to prove their worth to the company so that they can get rewarded.  As someone with ties to both the video game and software dev industries, let me tell you, the only thing your "blind company loyalty" is going to buy you is a fast-track to getting exploited.  Actually, it'll lead to all of your co-workers being exploited as well.  Companies are just better at exploiting employees now, I feel like (?).  And why shouldn't they be?  Capitalism...

Luckily, the current generation(s) have access to all sorts of internet discourse, which can provide them with a wealth of varied information and opinions on all sorts of things.  Unfortunately, "a wealth of varied information and opinions on all sorts of things" can be pretty bad, too.

...anyways, enough with that.

Continuing to read through the Animorphs books (just read Visser as well as #35, I think).  I'm also following along with the "re-read critiques" from "The Library Ladies" blog, which has been neat since it provides the perspective of another (re)reader for me to compare and contrast against.  There were certain books that we really agreed on and others which we didn't quite agree on.  Reading these makes me reaffirm a bit, my desire to practice writing critiques of the media I consume.  After all, I feel like the only way to become better at art discourse is to practice doingit.

Progress on Caesar 3 continues!  I forget if I mentioned it before, but I've been playing through using the "Augustus" open-source port/mod, which optionally adds some nice gameplay features into the mix such as roadblocks, as well as some other difficulty-changing features such as enabling a global labor pool instead of forcing you to always have employment walkers encounter a house of some sort in order to have labor access.  I'm not using that particular feature as I feel like it's an interesting challenge to try and lay out your housing in a way that allows your industries to gain access to workers.  I do sometimes resort to having one or two small worker tents here and there, especially when it comes to military towers, or small islands for farming or fishing, but I try not to have too much of that going on.

I've really learned my way around planning the cities in a functional way (which is no small feat sometimes) and it felt pretty satisfying to establish an nice city and get things rolling.  I've been playing through all of the military-based missions first as I suspect that they will be easier than the peaceful missions, as their rating requirements are lower.  I'll go back and do the peaceful missions later, and then maybe move on to playing Pharaoh / Cleopatra.