Fanime 2023, etc.

Fanime was this past weekend.  Last time around was 2022, the first time the event had returned since the pandemic times, and that was a relatively chill year for me.  This year continued that trend and was really quite low-stress as I had very few things that I really was set on doing.  I spent the majority of time there just "chilling" and hanging out with friends, taking it relatively easy, wandering around in my trusty Journey outfit of course.

It's been a while since I've seen any other Journey cosplays, but people still stop me for photos and are appreciative of the representation, which gives me a really warm feeling inside.  My outfit isn't as obvious as it could be since I don't have the full head mask and hood (next year I need to add a simple line on my face mask maybe?) but someone after asking me whether I was cosplaying as Journey just said "Oh--Thank you!" which was a rather unique response to seeing a cosplay.

I spent some time playing TGM3 (free play!), starting on a new account and getting to 500 Shirase (S5) as well as passing an S5 promotional exam in Master mode.  Always fun times getting to play TGM and meet up with the TGM folks as we inevitably find each other around that machine from time to time.

There was a bunch of stuff I =didn't= do this year -- didn't stop by swap meet, no B&W ball, didn't catch the PPT2 tourney, didn't bring my melee setup out of the car, etc. but it honestly felt fine.  I had a good time, that's really what matters right?  I guess Viennese Ball felt a little similar this year as well with respect to me not participating in as many things.  Well, Fanime was definitely more fun than VBall, though, due to a variety of factors.  A lot of positive experiences and times, honestly only one negative experience which stood out to me -- I saw an event organizer be a little bit berating to a particular participant, as well as unsympathetic to the participants in general for not quite grokking what they were trying to explain at the time.  I don't think either one of those two individuals was solely at fault but I saw it as a slight on the event staff person much more than the participant(s).  I just felt like there was no good reason to bring negativity into the equation, the situation could have been resolved so much better by showing some sympathy and cooperation without antagonistically drawing a line in the sand.  But who knows, maybe that person was just nervous and didn't have a cool head in the moment.  I remember distinctly a time that I had that happen to me -- I was leading a workshop and got caught up in the moment and said something that I shouldn't have, which I didn't really feel bad about until after the fact.  I never got to apologize to that person, and they are no longer someone I consider my friend.  It's possible that experience might have contributed to the distance between us, but I sort of doubt it to be honest.  Regardless, the whole thing just made me reaffirm to myself in my head how important it is to show sympathy toward others.

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Every once in a while I'll have an experience where...for lack of a better way of describing it, "everything kind of melts away".  I'm not sure exactly what other words to use.  Maybe in these moments I'm "truly living in the present", that's why everything else sort of just goes away.  I'm sure maybe there's some sort of mentally-altering substance that confers a similar effect.  Part of the feeling is a sense of...I guess, not being bogged down by all of the mundane day-to-day stuff, and suddenly having a sort of clarity of remembering what really truly feels important in life, like the big-picture stuff.  But, it's also really frightening, because there's nothing left to ground me.  In those times, I crave the feeling of safety, that someone could just hold me and, in the midst of my entire universe collapsing upon one point, remind me that I am here, and that existence doesn't have to be a scary thing.

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Every so often I've given an idle thought to maybe playing some Diablo 1?  I had fond memories of it at least, so I wondered if revisiting it would be fun.  After downloading and trying out a D1 mod, I think I'm maybe changing my mind on that -- maybe I can do without going through any more Diablo 1.  Sure, it's definitely got a certain charm to it, but would I =really= have more fun going through some sort of D1 experience compared to a D2 mod of some sort (Median...)...?  Eh...

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I've wanted to get into doing yakitori on an actual grill (not using the broiler)...initially I was thinking to invest in a convenient electric grill that I could use indoors, but somehow after doing a bunch of research I ended up with a charcoal-based grill instead O_o.  Working with charcoal was always something that I thought of as impractical and not worth the hassle, but it seems feasible (?), at least in this sort of limited capacity.  We'll see how it works out as I put it to the test -- hopefully keeping fire safety in mind xP

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There are some people in life that I went from thinking were absolute heinous villains, to later realizing that they were...probably still assholes, but maybe not as ill-intentioned as I had once thought.  And there are people who I thought were really good people with strong virtues, who I later came to think of as unscrupulous, or just plain mean-hearted.  Sometimes it's not like I got any new information about that person, it's just a matter of processing what they did and what really happened in relation between myself and them.  I think it's difficult, sometimes, to really tell how that will all play out, in the moment.  You just never know.

So I got told by someone I don't even really know that well that I need to learn how to ask for what I want from other people, in relationships, in friendships, in general.  Is that why I find myself feeling lonely or unfulfilled a lot of the time?  Is that why I feel like I "failed" a lot of my relations, starting from when I was less than 10 years old?

Somehow I feel like it kind of is that simple, but also not that simple at the same time.  Of course, communication is important.  We all have been told that countless times, though putting it into practice is a different story of course, especially when one has learned to dissociate from their wants and needs, and to be constantly on edge for fear of rejection and punishment.  But when I think back upon all those years when I felt really lonesome, I don't think asking would have made a difference, a lot of people would have just said no.

Maybe things are a little different now, though.  Once upon a time I made a promise to a girl that I would never run away from them again.  I don't think I ever really kept that promise, though.  It's hard to stop running unless you really feel safe.

There is this idea of exposure therapy, where supposedly if there's something you aren't capable of dealing with, you just have to subject yourself to it enough in order to become accustomed to it.  Actually, that's not quite how it works, though.  If I'm afraid of spiders, touching and seeing a whole bunch of spiders is probably going to make my fear worse, not better.  If I'm allergic to honey, drinking a cup of honey is probably going to make the allergy worse, as well.  I think the idea is that you're supposed to have positive interactions with the thing in a safe space.  You know, like if you're afraid of dogs, the idea is to first observe a dog playing at a distance, and not have anything bad happen.  Then maybe eventually you can pet the dog.

What does it look like to have a safe space to communicate your needs, and to fail?  I mean, yeah, I can think about it and come up with some ideas, but maybe it's revealing that my initial gut reaction to that is "that doesn't exist".

It's a weird feeling, waking up today.  I managed to wake up slightly (?) earlier yesterday, which lead to me being tired enough to actually fall asleep on time last night and get back on track (not sleeping at 5 in the morning...).

There are different types of feelings upon waking up, I think.  It feels different, depending on whether it's warm or cold.  Whether it's bright or dark.  There's a feeling of waking up early in the morning -- too early -- when it's still cold, and it reminds you of waking up for early flights, or hiking trips, or trips.  Something about waking up when it's bright out, feels different too.  I don't really know.

I wasn't sure whether to feel happy or sad on waking up.  There are days when I remember, after I wake up, that I should feel sad.  And there are also days when I remember that I should feel happy.  Today wasn't either of those types of days, really.  I didn't find myself dreading the week, nor did I find myself looking forward to it either.  I could wake up and start my day, or I could not.  I guess the best thing I can do is to move forward and try to surround myself with what is comfortable and fun.

My sleep schedule has been off ever since Big Dance, with no real sign of me getting back on track...unfortunate, but at least i don't have work in the morning, so that'll be alright.

Overall I'm doing...fine?  Despite what it may seem like.  I still haven't written any letters in a long while, maybe it's time to start.  I'm a little worried about the long nights I've been spending.  On the one hand I actually did some good work on Rhythm Quest over the past week or so, but on the other hand I've been "wasting" good chunks of time too.  But maybe that's fine, being a little hedonistic once in a while isn't the worst thing, as long as it doesn't spiral out of control.

I started thinking about planning for JaSmix -- now is about the right time to start mulling that over.  There's still time, as usually I have it in late July or early August (?), but these things take a lot of time to plan out properly.  It'll be a little challenging this year as I've got the ALTTPR mentor tourney going on, so I'll have to take that into account and make sure not to stretch myself too thin.

I'm wondering whether I'll actually change anything based on all the thinking that I did these past weeks, or whether I'll just go back to being the same as I was before.  Honestly, either way is probably okay.  Reverting back to a past form of myself, how could that be considered a bad thing?  But at the same time, there was a reason that I looked toward a change, too.

Big Dance 2023

It's been a while...the last one was in 2019.

This one, somehow, went really well for me.  Maybe it was due to someone really nice gracing me with their presence, but maybe it was because of the thinking I've been doing over the past week.  I think I felt more at ease in my own skin, somehow.  Talking to people, yet also being by myself.  Avoiding someone, yet also searching someone else out.  Being okay with meeting someone new, but also being okay with looking like a weirdo.  Sitting out some dances, but also working on my dancing.  I guess the nice thing about Big Dance was that there was enough time to do a little bit of everything.  I didn't have to just do one thing, or be a certain way.  I didn't participate in any of the light-hearted contests or games, but I enjoyed them anyways.  Sitting on the floor together with someone, talking about our personal experiences, and watching others have at it.  There were recent times when I was so worried about missing out on things, but in that moment I didn't feel that way at all.  I realize, thinking back upon it, that things are not black and white, nor are they a mix of gray, but rather, many different colors that cannot be put on a single spectrum.

I danced with Kiki once, in a memory that hardly seems real to me.  That traditional last song of Jammix, Erin Shore.  I don't remember anything about the way that she danced, only that I wanted to show her a tiny bit of myself, just a little.  Last night I instead got to dance with her other mirror.  Someone who is similar, yet very different at the same time.  I've never especially liked this song for dancing, but I guess I didn't quite have a problem with that.  Not everything is perfect, or needs to be special.  Things are just as they are.

I talked with various people last night, about various things, about things I've been thinking about.  I realized that I've been feeling more insecure in these past few weeks, about things that before I hadn't felt as insecure about.  I wondered to myself whether it was because I just had been feeling low self-worth, or whether it was because maybe I just cared more about what other people thought than I did before.

When you feel insecure about something I think it means that that is something that you care about.  You would have more indifference otherwise, right?  I think that insecurity means that you see something that you could admire, but you also realize that what you see is something that you don't have, because of where you are in life and because of the decisions you made.  You =could= be more popular, you =could= be a better dancer, you =could= be more beautiful, if only ______.  Sometimes it's something that you could control if you wanted to, other times it's something that you couldn't achieve no matter what.  But either way it's something that you covet on some level.  I've been told that it's because you see a little bit of yourself in the other person.  Again, that idea that you =could= be more like that, if, .....   Of course, the standard advice is simply to move toward that "____", but sometimes that's not necessarily the best thing for you.  Sometimes it's =right= for you to retreat, to define yourself not just by who you are and what you could be, but what you decided =not= to be.

I think these recent times have been hard for me because it felt like that idea of "I don't want to be ___" was challenged.  In the end I think both me and everyone else that I talked to all knew that that pillar could not and should not be removed in the end, it's too important and supports happiness for not just me but for any person.  But a lot of these thoughts came from that.  Something similar happened to me when I was first becoming genuinely close to another human being, where I began to question all of the things that I had decided I was not.  Haha, funnily enough, a lot of the things I questioned back then were some of the same things that I have been questioning recently.  Those questions did shift me, a bit, but it was a gradual and healthy change, one from within my comfort zone.  This time, I think I can see and think about everything a little more clearly.  I learned so much since back then.  I'm really grateful for that person.

I mean, things are fine, I guess.  I'm sleeping late, but half of that is pushing my sleep schedule further back than usual for Big Dance anyways.

I had some actual problem solving/coding work to do for Rhythm Quest, which was a little refreshing actually, to work on.  Been a while since I've been able to work on the technical side of that game rather than the creative and design side.

Pokemon Unite had a....somewhat questionable balance patch, not for the first time.  Sheesh, why do I feel like I like the meta less and less with every change?  At least things continue to change (though not quickly enough), and we've gone through periods of different things being dominant, which is good.  In the old days we had buddy barrier ruling all, early-game last-hitting being a little more simple, and stuff like that.  The buddy barrier nerfs really made everything feel much more fragile, and that was around the time when absol and gengar and co were dominating since everything was so squishy.  We had various phases where specific pokemon dominated (absol, mr mime, mew, sylveon, greedent, hoopa), but nothing compared to zacian.  At least now with the introduction of lapras as well as the trevenant buffs, etc, everything is much more tanky, so it's at least a departure from how things used to be.  I still can't help but feel like the gameplay when I was first starting to get into the game was a little cleaner though.  But hey, at least there's some pretty fun variety.

I haven't written any letters for a long while.  None of the dates have really come up and I just haven't felt super inclined to.  But you know me, I'll probably be back at it soon enough because of that.

You have to be careful, not to get burned out by being left on read.  That's something that I realized.  You have to give yourself a break every once in a while, when you're not feeling it.

Life rolls along.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking forward to.  There are a number of things coming up, but I wouldn't say I'm specifically excited about any of them.  They're just things that I'll do.  I guess the mentor tourney is the main thing that will probably be fun for me.

I think the perspective I gained over the past week has been really helpful.  It'll probably let me go to Big Dance with less questions in my head.  I still haven't quite figured out everything fully, but I've figured out "enough" about myself, and what really matters.

Honestly, I was probably just swept along that seemed tantalizing but in the end isn't good for me.  Kind of like how I'm always drawn to those types of people that are like Kiki, so free and so friendly and so popular, but of course really being with them would just never work out.  I've always had this sort of relationship with the idea of being social and popular, where I am both simultaneously entranced yet repulsed by it at the same time.  I think it's important for me to remember both.  There are times, of course, when I see different behavior in others, things that may be enviable, and still feel completely at peace with myself -- certain that I'm happy the way that I am, and I don't need anything else.  But then there are other times when I see things and I feel insecure, because maybe I really am worried about those things.  It's good to realize both feelings, I guess.  But rest assured that I can go at my own pace.  That I don't need to change to be worthwhile.  Even if I do, who is to say that the direction of the change should be forward and not backward?

How does Sayuri make friends?  It's something I never really thought about before.  When I was first drawing those little doodles for "Sayuri no Melody", she did have a bunch of friends, as I did in my life, too, but when I stop to really consider it, maybe Sayuri doesn't really have many friends, actually.  I always see her alone, after all.  Only a few times, in my memory, have I really remembered seeing her together with a close friend.  Maybe Kiki, maybe Meowmie too.  But not very often.  Maybe that's okay.

There's both happiness, and sadness, weirdly enough.  I'm in a strange in-between, where I see both the light and the darkness all at once.  It feels as if the seasons themselves were undecided.  I remember it was really warm recently, but I also remember that it was cloudy and raining.

During this time, I still find myself falling back on enduring habits.  Steady as ever, though so many things.  There are little changes, here and there, of course.  Course corrections, perhaps, or perhaps simply the effect of the winds.

I spent some time yesterday looking up what people's experiences were like when they tried to stop talking for an extended period of time, like a week, or even a year.  Vows of silence.  I wondered to myself what it would be like for me.  It feels a bit silly to call it a "vow" of silence, personally, because I feel like it just wouldn't be something I'd be desperate to break.  Of course, talking is something that is second-nature to me, so it might be a little weird to get used to, but it might honestly be an "excuse" to let sort of a true version of myself shine through.  Well, for a certain interesting definition of "true" at least.  Honestly, though, I feel like it would feel more liberating than constricting.  Is that funny?  I feel like being put in a situation where you are expected to talk, where you are forced to talk, is one of the worst things to be trapped in, sometimes.  What if you just, never =had= to talk?  That's really what I would be exploring.  But eh, it's not something in my near future, just due to practical reasons.  Maybe someday.  Or I could just do a variation where I meet up with various friends and spend time with them where neither of us talk with each other.  Haha.  But yeah, I wonder.  It's sort of like how wearing a mask can also sort of make me feel more "free" in that I don't have to worry about what my smile or mouth looks like.

I noticed for the past few days, that I had trouble with my appetite.  Thankfully, that seems to have gone back to normal now, which I think is an impressively good sign.  But it was honestly a bit....nostalgic?  To feel this sort of anxiety and stress, maybe even uncertainty and self-loathing (?), and to have it affect my eating.  I think when I had this before, I just never really noticed it as odd because....that just sort of felt normal to me.  But now, it really struck me how obvious it was.  I stopped midway through lunch and just realized that I wasn't hungry anymore.  And that it was so obvious that it was due to my mental and emotional state.  To think, that I went through so much of my life feeling this way...

Somehow I've been getting a little emotional while cooking.  I'm not entirely sure why.  I guess it just....feels good.  It makes me feel...proud?  Happy?  Maybe it just makes me feel useful.  Worthwhile.  There were a few days when I wasn't really excited about cooking at all...probably because the people who I enjoyed cooking for most were not there.  But now it's back to normal.  It's back to helping to sustain me.  And yeah, I noticed a little bit, that I was getting emotional.

Sadly, working out somewhat strenuously seems to have more of a negative emotional effect on me every once in a while.  This is related to my recent hardships, I feel like.  That feeling of not only inadequacy, but also just wanting to push yourself harder and harder, for no good reason.  Ah, I guess I mentioned this a week ago too.  I think it's that feeling that you =want= to make yourself feel bad.  They say sometimes that depression is anger turned toward the self.  I think probably the reason I feel this acute emotion sometimes is because treating myself poorly physically resolves a sort of cognitive dissonance -- if you think you deserve crap, that you're worthless, then treating yourself (or having yourself treated) that way will "make sense", in a way.  Fortunately, I'm a little more balanced in this feeling, so I don't currently have thoughts of self-harm, or even self-loathing.  But there is a bit of that sort of emotion, still, I think.

Where I Belong

Going to Dancebreak today, I think originally I had the impression that maybe I would experiment a little more with socializing given some of my recent thoughts about relations with other people.  However, arriving there I was confronted with a sense that I didn't feel like interacting with anyone.  Perhaps it's just that feeling of walking into a room of people and having to "acclimate", or maybe I just wasn't feeling it at that exact point in time.  Despite that, I feel like somehow I was actually more social than I usually am.

There was one point, however, during the night, when I stepped outside through a door to get some cool air.  Stepping outside of the noisy room, and into the open air of the night, staring at the grassy field in front of me, made me really feel something.  I felt not only at peace, but somehow as if I =belonged= there.  Not inside, with all of those other people, but outside, in the night, staring at that field of grass, listening to the quiet air.  From somewhere in a corner of my mind I had a thought to just go out there.  What would it be like?  If I forgot about dancing altogether, and just walked out there and sat down in that field of grass, by myself?

I didn't, though.  I knew that wasn't what I really wanted, not at this present time anyways.  I went back and I danced some more, talked some more.  But that short experience made me realize something about where I "belonged".  Of course, I can play the part, and have fun.  I don't always have to be in solitude, where I "belong".  But I think it helped me realize a bit about what is important to me, and what is "true" to me.

Someone told me today, that I should be true to myself and who I really am.  That person didn't know how complicated it is for me to think about being true to my "self", when I have multiple different senses of "selves".  But maybe it didn't quite matter.  Maybe this is what that meant.

I thought about the uncertainty I had been feeling recently, about how to interact with people.  How to care for people, or how to have people care for me.  But I also thought about how the second best friend I ever met at dance, was someone who I stood next to quietly without talking.  And I thought about how the best friend I ever met at dance, was someone who I once found standing outside of this same room, near the fountain of water.  Leaning against the stone, they had told me that the sound of the fountain was really beautiful.

I still hold a bit of that uncertainty in me.  Perhaps I still have not found my "true" answer to what to do about asking people to dance.  Maybe having no true answer, is also a form of answer in itself.  I'm not 100% sure.  But what I =am= certain about is that moment when I stepped outside of that world.  As if I had been transported by a magical portal to a completely different place, a place of solitude, peace, and tranquility.  =That= is something that I became certain about today.  That is something that I would not give up.  And that if I had to choose, I would always choose the empty field of grass under the night sky, over the dance floor full of people, every time.

Of course, I didn't have to choose.  That's why I decided to go back into the room tonight.  But it reminded me not to lose sight of what was actually important.  It reminded me that it is not just silence that is important to me, but solitude as well.  Perhaps someday that solitude maybe even become something to be shared, too.

There have been times in the past when I stepped outside because I felt distressed to be in a space with so many people, with so much energy.  I remember so distinctly, so many times in my life when I just wanted to run away and be alone.  To escape all of the stress, all of the pressure, all of the noise and phony people and expectations and conventions.  Today, though, I stepped outside not because I needed to run away, but simply because I wanted to be there.  Because somehow, that's where I belonged.

I worried a lot, about how maybe solitude and being alone has always been triggered out of a fear of being around people.  A way to run away from what might hurt me.  But it's not.  It's just something that feels "right" to me, is what I realized.

I may end up blogging more often now.  It seems like a good idea, anyways.

There is a little story arc in Grave of the Fireflies where the two main characters start to come into conflict with the society around them because they are, in my words, "unable to contribute value" to those around them.  They can't be part of the system, because they only know how to take, and not to how give.  Faced with this choice, the decision was not to integrate, but instead to distance -- to run away and face a life that abstained from the help of others.  You can probably guess from what you know of the movie that it maybe didn't end so well.

I've been having talks with different people, too, sometimes about a fear of being "unable to contribute".  Unable to "carry weight".  The thought of that phrase reminds me of Toph's little episode in Avatar: The Last Airbender when she doesn't see anything wrong with her being self-sufficient on her own instead of contributing to her newfound group.  There is a weird sort of push and pull that I feel when thinking about this aspect and attitude (maybe there are similarly-split attitudes on Toph as a character overall?), and about being a loner or a social outcast versus being part of the group, integrating into society, and pitching in as well as "pitching out" for lack of better word.

In the end of course I think perhaps both are necessary (this "both are needed" has become my new sort of "cop-out" answer for everything as of late).  But it sure is easier to run away and be the loner than to approach a societal unknown, especially when you fear rejection.  This was echoed in a visual novel that I just finished reading ("Dreamy Planet"), that had a line in it, "it was easier to act like a child than like as an adult".  I again have complicated and mixed feelings about this, because I tend to place a lot of importance on attempting to preserve this aspect of childhood (if you could call it that) -- the idea that if you are scared of something, you don't need to push yourself to do it.  You don't need to "grow up" and confront all of your fears, to do "what you should".  It's fine to just stay naive if that is what you feel comfortable with.  But of course, at the same time, there are ways in which growing up can help us, too.

At the end of the day we say that every human life carries value, that you should seek your own inherent self-worth.  But at the same time, that sequence from Grave of the Fireflies shows us that sometimes what you are capable of providing is not necessarily something that helps others, or is valued.  Through my high school and college life, I was "providing" quite a lot to others, but the way in which I was doing so was...misguided?  You can say, of course, that everyone's life is precious, but that does not mean that everyone is valued as a person in the same way.  Grave of Fireflies I think had me thinking about this as it showed the "beauty" of the two main characters in simply being children, of loving each other and seeking out their own little precious moments in life.  But this "beauty" wasn't something that was needed, or valued, in the world which they found theirselves in.  If they had buckled down, if they had learned to be adults, if they had bought into the system, maybe they would have managed to survive.  But in doing so they would have also lost something else, isn't that right?

Two close friends of mine recently attended a mini burning man-type event for the first time.  Hearing about their stories made me think about the nature of "giving" and "receiving", and how the concept of "being able to be self-reliant" seemed to prepare these people for being able to give and receive freely.  That when you are lacking something vital to you, the world becomes centered around needs and goods.  You think about what you can get in return for what you offer.  For things that feel vital, it can feel like a life and death situation.  Food, shelter, safety, resources -- these are vital, of course, too, but also love.  But perhaps it is when we have already managed to fill up our own bottles of water that we become not only able to more freely give our extra share, but also to freely receive that of others.

I'm not sure if it's related, but I've been thinking about how my answer to "how should I think about becoming more outgoing?" has been that I need to first be happy with not changing anything about who I am.  I need to be comfortable in my own skin, and then, and only then, can I start to grow.

Put another way, it is only from the =inside= of my comfort zone that I can expand it.  I cannot hope to expand it if I am already outside of it.

Perhaps this is what people mean by "loving one's self" or "working on yourself" (which is admittedly too vague of a term to begin with), or at least the way in which it applies and relates to me personally.  That somehow, ironically, the best way of moving forward is to first stop and stand completely still.  Of course, it's not always that simple.  But maybe sometimes it is?  I'm not sure yet, really.

Can't sleep.

Well, on the plus side, Rhythm Quest got some good progress this past week(s), with level 6-1 being finished.  I sometimes don't know how I continue to work on this, but I guess steadiness is just a habit of mine, ha ha.

I finished playing Metroid: Ascent.  Overall it was...fun, but not excellent.  There were some pretty cool ideas, some really neat rooms, some puzzles which I appreciated, some other puzzles which I ended up basically cheesing by using short charges / etc.  There was some stuff that was sort of a drag, like exploring zone 2 (the water-logged one) in the beginning felt really tedious, and it also felt weird that you could boostball to dash fast / jump high even without gravity.  Boss fights were sort of a letdown in terms of overall difficulty, but they were still a little fresh and not too bad for the most part.

Probably the biggest concrete issue I could point to was that there were just too many really big rooms.  I'm talking rooms the size of Cathedral or Amphitheater in vanilla SM, but they're just all over the place.  I think there is a time and place for big rooms (Cathedral I think is fine), but they should really be the exception rather than the rule.  There's simply no reason to explore every nook and cranny of a big room when all you're looking for is items.  If all the rooms have so much extra space in them, you're heavily incentivized to just stop caring half of the room's volume and only go straight from door to door, maybe pausing to check out an item if there is one.  I dunno, maybe it's also because it's a romhack, so I don't feel that sense of "explore everything" that I do when I'm playing a brand new game and I don't know what I could see, but that was something I really noticed.

I got through Lugdunum again!  I learned a couple more things this time around.  First off, the idea of just putting a bunch of mausoleums near the entrance of the map worked fantastically, though ideally you'd build those before upgrading your other housing too far, as you're stuck with tents in that area.  Second, it's really quite hard to carve out enough space for a luxury housing block.  I eventually made it work, but I'm now considering a different strategy where you use the large open space near the east side of the map (closer to the map exit) for the patricians.  Obviously getting food there is a lot harder, you'd have to rely on "getting" granaries, but in my limited testing that did actually work out.  That would be nice since you'd have plenty of room for warehouses and such to store goods.  You could even set up a marble industry there if you wanted?  But since you can only have 9 or so farms in that lower area, you probably can't really feed another full housing block off of that, it'll basically be only the villas, plus maybe a little more.

The other thing I ran into was disease -- which I guess in Augustus now increases steadily with city population.  The lesser-evolved houses on the plateau ended up getting infected a bunch after my city got large enough, so I guess the solution there is that they'll probably need access to bathhouses in addition to doctors and barbers.

Foregoing the initial weapons industry at the entry of the map seemed to work well too -- you can just go straight for trading with the natives from the start.

I did an ALTTPR ladder race for the first time in...probably a year?  Felt kind of exciting, but the seed ended up being a slog to get through, I last locationed stuff and ended up clearing out most of the world before ending up in go mode.  Somehow still won (by only 20 seconds!), which was quite surprising, but hey, we take those.

Life is...honestly pretty sad, no matter how it gets sliced.  There are good things, too, but....few and far between..  There's a constant struggle in my mind between hope and despair.  But like a lot of other things that I've thought about this past year, maybe those two are things that need to be held simultaneously.  An acknowledgement both of the things that could go well, but also of the things that you already know won't go well.

Gimme a break...

Well...?

My day started out on a low note, I guess, but got better from there.  In my last post I said I had a dream where I realized it was better to stay away -- now that I am thinking about it and remember it better, that wasn't actually quite right.  The real amazing part was that the dream was that the bad thing finally went away itself.  There was no more fuel for it to consume, so it burned out, and it wasn't even a choice that I had to make.  And at that point, I don't think I was sad that it ended.  10 years ago, sure, but not now.  Well, this new trauma is a bit of a different story, though.  We'll see.

Anyways, I decided to give Grave of the Fireflies a shot today.  It was as good of a day as any to get that over with.  It was really depressing, as I expected, but quite good as well, had some very poignant scenes.  It was both relatable in some ways yet extremely unrelatable in others.  In the end it was quite sad, but not soul-crushing like Princess Kaguya.  Well, I guess I know which movie really makes me the saddest of them all, now.

Parts of the film really made me think about days that I had over this past month.  The feeling of trying to do something happy, to keep living, somehow, even though you're waist-deep in hardship and suffering.  You aren't really doing things "for fun", it's more that you just do them because they are supposed to be fun things.  And even when they are truly fun, they have a different feeling when they're put against a backdrop of sadness.

I decided to start playing Super Metroid: Ascent, a romhack of Super Metroid.  It's been fun so far!  Almost feels like...a weird cross between Super Metroid and Axiom Verge, almost, somehow.  ...maybe better than Axiom Verge, to be honest.  It's not been a =100%= smooth experience; but overall I've been having a bunch of fun with it, it's certainly something to do while I procrastinate on trying to beat Lugdunum again...

I've been working my butt...well, literally.  I decided today that maybe I would start and diversifying my exercise, so I did a short core workout today.  Could probably use some strengthening of those muscles, for stamina purposes, anyways.

Every so often, though, as I'm exerting myself, I feel pain.  Not physical pain, but emotional pain.  Almost like a sort of anger, but not really.  Frustration, maybe?  It's that feeling where you just want to run faster and faster and you don't care about anything anymore.  Somehow the fatigue in your muscles just spurs you on, aggravates you into wanting to just throw yourself at something, anything.

Erm, right.  I was saying that my day got better.  Well, there were good things, too.  I've been surprisingly functional at work, given the circumstances, and I put together a nice dinner with some skirt steak and brussels sprouts that was a hit.  Cooking honestly is something else that I feel like I could try to actually work towards a little more -- actually learning my way around more cuisines and recipes.  But I have to be careful to only do it because I want to.  Not because I feel like crap or whatever.

I tried to repot my African Violet the other day / last week, which was quite stressful just as it was something new that I didn't really know exactly how to handle.  Didn't help that it was long overdue and it had become root-bound...  Well, it's in the new pot with plenty of room (too much??) to grow, and I'm hoping that it'll survive okay.  Poor little thing...I know change can be hard.  Being uprooted is never good, is it...?

There have been spots of light, too.  I received some letters and gifts.  I had a brief call with a friend that was really quite pleasant.  I'm trying, at least, to do some things.  To find out how to actually make life happy.  Not just "3 out of 5" all the time.

I stream while playing rando often, from time to time, but the other day I decided to just play while...talking to myself.  I guess I was sort of just bored and had stuff on my mind to process.  I talked to myself while thinking about relationships, about friendships, and about how it feels like my approaches to them...haven't worked.  I wondered out loud a lot about if I needed to change certain things, or at least try different things, since it seemed like I clearly wasn't happy in the way that I wanted.  Dr. K recently released a video talking about "loneliness", about how society is pushing more and more towards independence, and how there are so many problems that we can solve on our own now, but loneliness isn't one of them.  You can't solve loneliness without somebody else's help.

I've called into question a lot of things about myself lately.  Whether I should just "become normal".  Whether I need to swallow my "pride" and just do what seems to work for other people.  Or whether I'm right all along and none of that is good for me.  I've been thinking about what would actually make me happy, what even already makes me happy.  What I could do about it.  These kinds of things.  They are sometimes difficult to think about, because they tend to lead me down the path of thinking that nobody cares enough, that it's pointless.  But I'm sure there are still things I could change, regardless.

I guess...

Why??

It's interesting.  Maybe I finally got over one trauma and rolled on over to the next.  I remember I had a dream, somewhat recently, that I said no...that I turned around and knew that it was better for me to stay away.

Now it seems that I'm onto dreaming about something else instead.