This past week was a bit of coming back down to earth after the unexpected greatness that was the week prior.  Nevertheless, the good energy from that week rolled over and made me feel ready to at least try my best to tackle whatever life tried to throw at me...

I've mentioned in the past how I dislike the "emotional sensation" of traveling or being driven, there is a weird feeling sometimes (not always) that I get in my heart / soul where I just feel that "this is wrong" when I am moving at high speeds, or in general when I am going "away" or simply just moving fast, or even staying still at somewhere that feels "far".  (Interestingly, I didn't feel that at all when I went on my weekend trip the other week...)  Often I prefer driving to being a passenger for this reason (among others).  However, today, for the first time, I felt a twinge of emotional discomfort even though I was the one in the driver's seat (driving toward home, no less).  I can't really say why, I just know that it happened.  Today was sort of a mix, really, of things; I had a bit too much caffeine, and later at night my stomach felt a bit off, too (anxiety?).  But overall things are OK.

I managed some good quality hours of work on Rhythm Quest this past weekend, including a new devlog post, which felt nice (especially on Friday).  Hopefully I'll be able to keep that up.

I have some various medical things (both for myself and for chicky) to try and take care of this week; hopefully it can go well or at the very least without too much incident.  It's been a year since chicky's last vet appointment so it's about time; I was feeling a bit concerned about her health and feet, but in all likelihood she's probably just fine.

I am...probably also just fine, but been having some leftover knee pain here and there when I exert myself, so hopefully I can get that checked out and see if there is anything I can do to remedy that.

I've been spending -lots- of time grinding Super Metroid Any% speedrunning -- I've dropped spazer and early ice (also crab supers) from my route in an attempt to save more time.  I managed to complete a run with the new route, but unfortunately I lost a ton of time in a few places, so it wasn't a PB.  I was actually on pace for a (somewhat disappointing) PB in my most recent attempt, but got hit by Mother Brain which ended the run.  Brutal!

There are a couple of really key sections that have been thorns in my side and losing me a ton of time -- getting the initial Draygon shinespark (and just the Draygon fight in general) has been one of them; I need to go and try to pick out concrete visual cues for all of my shinespark short charges, I realize, because I think I'm running into the issue where I try to rely on my muscle / timing memory and then it gets really thrown off because of the adrenaline (or sometimes even the lag frames).

It's been really fun finding strats that work (for my level) for all of these rooms, and get gradually better and more and more refined everywhere.  I'm tempted to start a new video series detailing my "beginner-intermediate" strats just because there are some rooms where I feel like there are some nice ways to approach them that offer a good compromise (not fully optimal, but something consistent, fast, and not too hard).  But we'll see.