Feels like it's been forever, but really it's been about a week and a half?  It always feels longer than it should...probably because it is.

I'm on vacation this week (though I may end up trying to get some stuff done here as well).  Always feels nice making a home away from home.  I had the luxury of staying in the exact same place that I did during a previous trip, so the space was already quite familiar to me and the first thing I did was organize all of my belonging into the space and rearrange things as I saw fit.

It was a good start to the trip, with a flight that had lots of extra empty seats, and already a bunch of nice food, including my first homecooked meal here -- pasta carbonara (a sauce made with eggs and parmesan cheese) with bacon bits and diced mushroom, along with a haddock fillet which I pan-seared and seasoned simply with some salt, pepper and smoked paprika.  Plus some raw cherry tomatoes for extra veg.  The haddock turned out great, I'll have to remember to get this fish again if I see it in the markets.

I started playing Omori, which has been interesting so far.  Really reminiscent of what I've seen out of Deltarune so far, but it's hard to really tell since for both stories I'm not deep in enough to know exactly what they have to say or what they are "all about".  The battle system is interesting in an odd way, it's got some nuance to it but I'm not entirely sure I'm really appreciating it as the theoretically "rps"-based emotion system with its pros and cons to each seems awkward to utilize effectively.  On the plus side, I guess that means there is a sort of depth to the battle system, in that the options are open enough that you can formulate your own sort of strategy.  On the other hand, it's also tempting to just ignore all of it entirely.  Maybe it's the sort of thing that will grow on me as I put more thought and time into it.  It does seem a little "heavy" in that it's not really the most accessible thing...I can see someone who is new to games having a lot of trouble wrapping their head around it since so many concepts are introduced all at once, so this game is necessarily making the assumption that you've already got a handle on how JRPG combat works, I guess.  Anyways, besides all that, I'm intrigued so far, and we'll have to see what comes out of it.

Oh!  That's right, speaking of games, I finished up Chicory.  I don't really know that the ending of Chicory itself really left me satisfied, but the conflicts it brought up were poignant and in general there were definitely moments where I felt strong emotions.  Some of it is a bit reminiscent of Celeste in the general theme of confronting your own doubts and darkness.  I think that this throughline in Celeste was a bit more satisfying in its conclusion, but I think that the conflict in Chicory felt more poignant.  I don't think that the conclusion in Chicory lived up to the questions that it posed, which makes me wonder about what sort of ending =would= have settled / answered those conflicts.  That is something that I'll have to ponder for myself.

I took a short break from my relationship with "the world" at large.  Honestly I just felt a bit sick and tired of it.  I don't really think that relationships are black and white enough to the point where you can call people "givers" and "takers", but you can certainly feel like you're too far on one side of that divide from time to time.  The interesting thing is that I used to blame others for some of the things that they did or did not do with regards to my presence in their life, but honestly looking back on it, I can't really blame them, which is sad in its own way.  I was trying so hard, yet at the same time I could still see how it would be justified, the way I was essentially snubbed.

I learned that perhaps the only positive thing to do for yourself with this would be to help others to help you, but I recognized that there are times when that is simply not something you feel like doing.  So, I didn't.

A content creator I vaguely follow posted something recently, and I excerpt:

"Trying to form a meaningful and long lasting bond with any human being on the planet feels like an impossible herculean task. If you're a child all your close friends will inevitably move to a different town. If you're lucky enough to still have them, your friendship will just slowly wither away as you get older and grow apart. The only thing that's left to replace the true connections you once had are some shallow workplace relationships where you kind of get along with someone 15 years older than you. [...] It feels nearly impossible to have an in-depth fulfilling conversation with anyone. Nobody even wants to anymore, people are just satisfied with shutting themselves in and relying on escapism rather than developing genuine connections. It's like humanity all collectively decided to settle for mediocrity."

"To me, the relationship process is simple. You try your best to learn everything you can about someone's personality, interests, and motives in the limited timeframe you have to figure whether or not you will be compatible long term. If it's going well, then you try to establish common ground and build off of each other comedically and conversationally. It's very interesting. Unfortunately many people prefer small talk texting where one of you will just eventually ghost because nothing is really going on. I hate texting. It's just a watered down version of calling, which is a watered down version of real life communication."

And you couldn't really fault anyone for feeling this way, pandemic or no pandemic.  We can wish that other people would just step into our lives the way we want to, but most of the time it doesn't work that way.  More often, dealing with other people can feel like dealing with animals or pets -- they're kind of set in their ways and you often can't really depend on them taking the initiative; you sort of have to just show them how if you want them to try and do something specific.  Imagine trying to care for a pet that lives in a different household; it feels like it would be exhausting.  In the same way, it's tough for others to venture out of their own way to cater to your needs unless you are already part of their daily routine.

This is I think why the idea of "being needed" can be so alluring.  If life has already proven to you that you won't be a part of others' lives by default, then being needed in someone else's life would have them inevitably form a connection with you, wouldn't it?  The problem with this thinking is that you cannot "force yourself to be needed" by someone.  Just because you are a reliable, dependable, great, smart, funny, charming person who may have all the positive traits in the world, doesn't mean that you would be needed by someone, or frankly, by anyone.

I really don't know what I'd tell myself from 15 years ago about all this because honestly, I don't think I have any constructive advice that I can come up with.