Things are good.  Better, certainly, than when I wrote the last post.

I have some new friends to hang out with in the South Bay, it seems like...that should be nice.

It's been a mix of relatively good things lately, I think.  I continue to try my best to get things done here and there.  A music commission piece done, another one mostly done.  Pixel art done for the month.  MA set of Rhythm Quest animations.  Another devlog post.  Groceries and cooking.  Monthly album release.  Another Christmas letter here and there. ...  Tomorrow is going to be trying to pick out some new glasses, maybe sharpening the knives, and god willing, maybe even starting on another Rhythm Quest level...

I tackled another Caesar 3 mission (Mediolanum).  My modified housing block seems to be working pretty well -- and I might even be able to compact it in the future since it seems like the 10x small temples might actually be overkill.  I might be able to swing the lever back in favor of more (potential) housing in each block.  Still, this mission was quite challenging, mostly in terms of keeping my finances afloat.  I am going to have to experiment in the future with spending more employment on raising city sentiment (entertainment, food types, desirability) and then raising taxes past 7% to supplement income more.

The next mission is Carthago which is annoying for two reasons: it's in the desert (fire risk up), and you start with a half-assed city being ransacked by natives.  On the plus side, said natives trade with you eventually, so I think money probably isn't an issue here once you really get the city rolling.  We'll see...

Existential Loneliness

There have been times, sleeping in the same bed as a companion, when I would be kept awake by my troubled thoughts.  By thoughts of being unloved, by thoughts of not being good enough, and by thoughts of having being left behind, and of losing what I once had.  And during some of those times, these thoughts lasted so long, were so painful, that I left the room, and lay down in the hallway, on the floor, feeling alone.

During one of those times, I did not leave to go to the hallway, but instead quietly lay down on the floor in the same room.  I remember putting in my earbuds, and listening to songs by Leigh Nash, the vocalist I am a fan of.  It was, 4AM, perhaps -- who knows, really -- and a song came up that I had not listened to in quite some time.  The name of the song is "Nervous in the Light of Dawn".  The lyrics start like this:

Dreamed I was in the desert
Without any love
Storm gray clouds
Hovering above

Silence all around me I was wandering alone
And I realized there is nothing anyone can really own

And I wished for guidance
And I wished for peace
I could see the lightning
Somewhere in the East
And I wished for affection
And I wished for calm
As I lay there
Nervous in the light of dawn

Of course, there have been other times in my life -- too many, probably -- when I have felt lonely and unloved.  Nights when I would wonder what was wrong with me, or why things were this way, and why it didn't seem to matter "how hard I tried", that I could not find the type of connection that I was looking for (I would come to learn more about the answers to this question, much later).  But these times, lying on the hard floor, not 10 feet away from a warm bed with a companion -- these are times that stick out in my memory.

The feelings that I had -- have, really -- are perhaps not easily captured in a short phrase, but I have referred to the experience at times as "existential loneliness".  That may be a bit of a misnomer, as I think when we say "existential loneliness" we often tend to think about how no one can truly know one another, and about the human condition, or perhaps about a lack of purpose or meaning.  I think for me this experience is a little more like a shattering of the illusion of comfort.  It's the realization that you =will= be alone, that you can never be loved always and forever, that you can feel the cold hard floor beneath you even with the warm bed within arm's reach.

And I think that is why I think of it as "existential" in nature, because it doesn't appear -- at the time, at least -- to have a solution.  To not have anyone to love, to love you, is one thing, but to have that in your life and realize that you are still at the mercy of inadequacy, of transience, of pain, is something that cuts deeper.  At least when you are alone, you know what the problem is.  But nothing can ever bring comfort forever.  You =will= be alone, and there is no one, nothing in this world that can ever fully save you from it.

Sometimes, something that can help with existential crises is to reconnect yourself with the present.  But I remain too firmly attached to the things I lost from my past in order to do that.  I would not be having this problem in the first place if I was not living with my head stuck in the ground.  Taking me somewhere new will not solve anything, for I will still look back and grieve.  Grieve everything that I have lost, and all of the sins that I have committed along the way.  How would I ever forgive myself?  Surely, my loss must be due to my sins.  And these sins are not ones where I could ask God for forgiveness.

Choosing to let go, to move on, and to seek happiness elsewhere, is the same as consigning yourself to experience the same thing, again and again.  To say that the solution is to move forward is to say that you will continue to be alone, next time too.  That is why this feeling causes my breath to quicken, and for me to feel hopeless and hapless, to feel despair and depression.  Because there is no way out.

Mmm, yeah, things are doing alright.

I used my epipen for the first time yesterday, so that wasn't super fun =(  My food allergies aren't life-threatening, so I was taking a risk, one that I've taken before in the past, but apparently this was my unlucky day, and I figured relatively quickly that it was probably going to be better to get stabbed by the autoinjector than to deal with the negative effects.  It was a little more painful than purported, maybe I wasn't fully relaxed or perhaps it was a little misplaced.  My leg was sore, but it did its job...

Anyways, that was not the most ideal start to the first meal of the day.  That was quite draining for me so I ended up spending the rest of the day in bed, which kind of threw me for a loop.  After "dinner" I began my "day" in earnest and stayed up quite late (as expected), managing to do a really good bout of work on Rhythm Quest (mainly a bunch of localization-related tasks).  As messed up as the rhythm of my day was, it felt great being able to just sit down and be productive in that way.

As always, I'm trying to figure out how to make life better for the chickies.  Whitechicky is still growing back her feathers after a very thorough molt, so she's very unhappy at being picked up (or bullied), I feel bad for her and hope she feathers out soon.  I've tried setting up a divider to stop dumbchicky from bullying her, in the end I might just have to end up setting up the second coop to have them live their best life.

A challenge with balancing my 3-days-a-week job and Rhythm Quest is going to be that when you have 2 weekdays off work, it's really tempting to just occupy those days with all of the miscellaneous stuff that you never got to during the other parts of the week -- vacuuming, organization, grocery shopping, chicky chores, that kind of thing.  Not to mention the million other things that I always have spinning around in my life -- music commissions, Christmas and birthday letters, producing content for ALTTPR, filling out my ballot, etc.  Given that, I feel like these past two days have been a great step in the right direction, as I've managed to put some good progress toward concrete tasks for Rhythm Quest.  Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come...

Speaking of my ballot, I mailed mine in already...I'm ahead of schedule as I tend to be.  That is just what happens when you just steadily allocate time to these things bit by bit.  I was pleasantly surprised with the measures on the ballot for my city; besides a few egregious offenders they actually mostly seemed reasonable.

I'm thankful that last night went well, working late at night.  I know there's a world in which instead of getting absorbed in productivity I simply felt lonely.  There are two sides to those late nights...the freedom of being alone, and the pain of being alone.  Sometimes I'm not really sure which one I'll get.

Today, has been pretty okay too.

But perhaps, the reason that I so vehemently wished to offer myself up, to self-sacrifice in the so-called name of others, is because I wished to believe that this was a world where that kind of person =did= exist.  That one could find someone who would give without receiving, who would stay by your side forever.  The kind of person who would extoll the virtues that everyone says they admire but no one actually wants.

Use me, abuse me, walk all over me, as long as you don't leave me.

Silence, I think, is problematic in a relationship.  But it is an ideal at the same time.  It is the easier path, to be mature, to speak your mind, to get on the same page.  It's not as simple, to communicate through silence.  And yet, I can't help but think to myself, that I've spoken too, too many words in these years.

Who, in the end, would receive my silence?

Who...would be the one to fold their wings around me?  To lift me gently from the stream?

I am alone here, maybe have always been.  But there are lights in the darkness.

Of course, there is freedom in being able to say whatever comes to your mind.

But there is also a freedom in being at peace with saying nothing at all.

Things are okay -- I'm on vacation!

This vacation has been a very restful one, which is a welcome treat after dealing with all the effort involved with moving and getting rid of my old stuff.  It's been nice to just spend a lot of time sleeping and lazing about, doing not that much of all.  I can tell that it's left me a bit refreshed and ready to tackle all of the normal day to day things in my life.

I felt like playing through something new on the airplane, so I decided to play through Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow for the GBA.  The game as a whole feels very familiar after Symphony of the Night, though a little less enjoyable; perhaps simply due to being a GBA game instead of a playstation game, perhaps simply because it wasn't as novel an experience, and perhaps because it simply wasn't as large of a game (?).  It was nevertheless enjoyable while it lasted; and the ability to equip different "souls" was a nice little addition.

I held a livestream event for my indie game, Rhythm Quest!  This was part of Steam's "Next Fest" event, which apparently is something for highlighting upcoming games with free demos and livestreams.  The livestream itself went ok (besides the fact that I put in the wrong date for the schedule, whoops), though honestly it felt like most of the audience were already invested in the game.  Still, a lot more people seem to have found the game through Next Fest itself (separate from the livestream), which is great; this is the biggest uptick in wishlist count that I've seen since putting the game onto Steam, so yay.  I'm lamenting my lack of concrete and regular progress on the game over the past month+, but I'll be back at it in time (and if I'm not, then more drastic measures will have to be implemented).

I realized midway through my vacation that October is already a third of the way over and I had forgotten to start work on my Christmas letters for the year =(.  It's probably just as well though, I think this ended up being a good timing to start work on them.  I'll probably just extend my deadline past Oct 31 for this year while still making sure to keep on top of them as best as I can.

I'm obviously playing rando a lot less often than when I was competing in the GMP mentor tourney, but I still play here and there, trying to keep my skills fresh as well as just having fun with seeds here and there.  I've been trying my hand at more SMZ3 seeds, but doing SM hard logic has been a pain in the butt for me lately, requiring silly hell runs through upper norfair and getting me into bad scenarios where I repeatedly die in SM.  There's probably just a few specific things I'm really going to have to grind (Norfair hell runs, avoiding some softlocks, and of course Phantoon)...

In the meantime, I've started a playthrough of Caesar 3 on Very Hard difficulty, this time using the newest version of the "Augustus" mod.  I'm only on mission 4 so far and things are already getting quite tough!  I feel like Very Hard really stresses things more than Hard from what I remember of my last playthrough; you need more temples to appease the gods, the citizens are seemingly always unhappy, desirability and entertainment requirements for housing development are higher, and money is tighter than ever.  Thankfully, the military attacks don't seem to pose too much of a threat so far, since I have my hands full trying to plan out my city blocks well.  Unemployment in particular seems to be a nasty thorn in my side at later stages of the mission, so I'm going to have a go at trying to design housing blocks with either more services (doubling up on temples?) or less houses, or both.  Of course, all of those workers also demand wages, so managing the economy is going to be crucial -- trade exports make up almost all of your income in the early stages, but those are limited per year, so I'm going to have to make sure to build up a good cash buffer in order to transition towards using taxes as the main income sustaining cashflow source....we'll see how it all works out!

Like I said in the beginning, I'm feeling relatively good about things -- excited about both work and play.  It's a nice feeling to have.