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...