I mean, I dunno....yeah, I dunno.

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Okay, so my new keyboard arrived -- a Gamakay K87 with a TKL layout and beautiful RGB lighting.  It doesn't quite have the nice "pastel pink" aesthetic as my previous board, but it's much nicer overall -- hotswappable switches, looks a bit fancier overall with its acrylic case, and of course the RGB which is one of the main reasons I got it; I felt like it would go pretty nicely with my pastel pom jelly keycaps.

Surprisingly I'm torn as to whether I prefer linear or tactile switches in this board.  I had ordered a set of gazzew U4Txs, which are certainly much more tactile / "snappy" / firm than those old cherry brown switches in my old board, but I also ordered the new board stock with gateron reds and I sort of like the feel of those two (who knew?).  That said, I like the sound of the U4Txs, that sort of nice thocky typing sound is kind of nice, though maybe it's edging on being a bit too tiring on my fingers.  For now I have the tactiles installed so I can really get a nice feel for them, but I'm going to swap them out for the gateron reds again in the next couple of days and compare to see which one I truly like more.  My initial guess is that it's going to be the linears, but I'm not 100% sure, which is why I'm test driving both.

The stabilizers took a lot of fiddling around with, and I think I can still make them a little bit better -- though they already are worlds better than they were stock.  There's still a little bit of ticking for some of them; I may have to see if the wires are properly balanced, or just add some additional tape / do some more modding.  I was tearing my hair out trying to get the spacebar working -- it was getting stuck down when I depressed it, and I was trying to debug my stabilizer mods / tape / etc. to no avail, until I realized the real issue, which was the pom jelly keycap!  It was slighly bent out of shape, which was enough to put force on the stabilizer stems and cause enough friction to get the key stuck, especially with the U4Txs that have the (silent) bump on the upstroke.  I was able to fix that up with some hot water, thankfully, but the space bar still feels a little "heavy" or sticky coming up, probably again due to the keycap not being quiiite big enough.  I suspect that's another thing that will be a little better with the gateron reds.

Something else that I also noticed on the U4Txs is a very slight "squeak".  I fiddled around a bit and realized just recently while typing this that this isn't actually due to the keycap or even the internals of the switch, but rather the switch squeaking against the board / socket!  I was able to fix one of them with some light lube on the socket itself, but I probably won't bother doing that in general unless I actually decide to go with these U4Txs in the end, no point in worrying about it if I'm just going to use the reds anyways (which don't have this issue).

Anyways, it's been fun.  Certainly worth the wait.

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Upgrading my station isn't over yet, either, as I decided to pull the trigger on buying my first new monitor in.....I can't even remember how long, probably 10 years?  I'm still using my two trusty 19" 1280x1024 screens, and wasn't planning on changing that, but now that I'm getting a new laptop for work, I was thinking about KVM switches or something, and wondering if I should upgrade to something that actually has HDMI input, etc etc.  After checking out a few options I stumbled upon the LG "Dualup" monitor which is actually 2880x2560 and 28"...at 18:16, that's even more square than my current 5:4 screens!  The Dualup is designed to be used in portrait mode, which looks really funny to me (I guess it would make sense if you have two of them...?), but I'll use mine in landscape mode as a primary monitor, probably with one (two?) of my other monitors on the side.  Besides the obvious increase in screen realestate (without compromising my nice aspect ratio), something else that's nice is the built-in KVM functionality, which should in theory be good for switching between two machines.

Of course, I got a desk from IKEA (along with building my own monitor stand) specifically to accommodate my current two screens, so before I pulled the trigger I needed to see if I could actually manage to get it to fit with my current setup somehow.  I ended up adding another small table off to the side of my desk and putting one of my two (huge) speakers there, which seems like it'll do quite nicely.  I had to move some other things around in my room to accommodate the change, but honestly I liked those other changes too; overall I think this is how my room should have been to begin with.  While I was moving things around I tried to do some closet organization too, trying to push some things more into compact storage and free up room for slightly-more-organized storage.  There's still more stuff that could be pushed around and moved around to make my displays and such nicer, but one step at a time, eh?

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So, all that has been good, I guess.  There's been some not-as-good too.  My ALTTPR mentee can't seem to catch a break, which makes me sad to see.  And then there's the social dance stuff.  I realized recently that I haven't actually been having much fun at the dance stuff.  It's been a bit enlightening, admittedly, so I am thankful for that.  I think before whenever I didn't have fun at dance I had always assumed it was sort of my "fault", that I could just try harder, or be in a better mood, or whatever.  But there's this realization that I started to have, that I really shouldn't have to force myself to do anything, least of all something that doesn't make me happy or that I don't want to do.

There's all these thoughts that I've had over the years about asking people (or not asking people) to dance at these social dance events.  I think there's always been this base assumption that asking people to dance would make me happy, but sometimes I really didn't feel like it, I either had to sit with it and make peace with that, or just push and force myself to do it.  But I think more recently I've become conscious of the fact that sometimes, it's not actually going to make me happy if I ask people to dance.  Again, why force myself to do something that isn't actually going to bring me joy?  Yes, of course, there is something to be said for sticking to what I've always done in the past, and giving things a second chance.  But I think, for both asking people to dance, and also socializing with people, I began to realize that maybe I was making a bigger deal out of it than it deserved to be.  Maybe this wasn't actually important in my life after all.

I mean, I guess that probably reads pretty terribly, but I don't mean to say that I hate dance or anything, more just that I'm finding my own balance and peace.  Lord knows I've already outlasted countless other people who left the scene at the first sign that things were not fun for them, I think at this point I deserve to be cut some slack for not going at it 100%, okay?

I had been stressing out a bit over what I'm going to teach in my JaSmix workshop, until I realized that it's my own event, I can do whatever I want, including =not= teaching a workshop.  Like I had discovered above, there's no sense in forcing myself to do something if I'm not truly going to enjoy it, right?  Maybe if something comes to me and I feel like it, then sure, but I've got my hands full enough trying to pull teeth getting the room reservation to happen...I should just focus on balance and make sure that I'm not burning myself out.  At worst, it's egotistical to think that I have some "responsibility" to uphold in order to teach the community at large.  At best, it's simply not necessary.

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I played a bunch of unranked melee today.  That was a mistake, haha, it definitely didn't bring me as much happiness as it was worth.  But I had just finished cleaning up my room and such, and felt like just chillaxing with something easy.  Next time I had better just run some ALTTPR or play some Caesar 3 instead or whatever.