Things are not the best, but they are surprisingly okay?  Like, I feel like my spirits are quite good considering what they could be.  Despite the minor depression that I keep mentioning (it's going to be harder to say when it's "gone" compared to noticing that it was there in the first place), and the fact that I seem to have come down with some sort of cold, things are doing...pretty alright.  I felt the slight fatigue, both physically and mentally, yet somehow spent a really good chunk of time drilling down into Rhythm Quest stuff (more custom level implementation details...as always...).

I spent some time taking care of my chickies, which I think was really good for me; I know I've been feeling a bit worried about them especially since white chicky has been rather skittish and avoidant, I'm afraid that maybe she just doesn't like me anymore or is scared of me from too many times trying to pick her up or put her in her tub for foot soaking.  I finally trimmed her nails some, but her feet still need more attention, I think her old issues are maybe coming back so it looks I'm going to have to make an effort to make the foot bath thing a more regular thing.  Their bedding could probably do with a replacement as well, but one thing at a time, I guess.  She's also regrowing her feathers (not just her down feathers, but the main ones as well), so it's possible she could just be sensitive and irritated because of that, in which case she'll probably feel better after a while.

Anyways...while I'm taking my time getting through Kanon (2006), I took the chance to finish watching Initial D: Second Stage (the second season of the anime).  Sometimes it's easier to just watch something more "low stakes", especially since I just wanted to chill and relax and replace keycaps and key switches idly while watching something.

Second Stage was good!  The drawing and art style is rather unappealing and odd, honestly looking worse than the first season, but aside from that I think it was actually a really pleasant follow-up.  I said in a previous post that I was afraid that Takumi's "growth arc" would just consist of him becoming more invested and interested in racing and cars, and that he would lose some of his special-ness of being internally driven, but I was pleasantly surprised by how this was handled.  Takumi ends up growing more invested in racing, as I assumed, but I think the show does a good job of tying it together with very human threads of his interpersonal struggles, both with his love interest and with his father, and with his car (which may as well be his main love interest in this season).  I think the stakes are also higher, in a way, because it's not just about the excitement of Takumi trying to defeat really fast opponents, it's also about him trying to deal with life.

I dunno what else...I've been continuing to enjoy Rando, Super Metroid, Risk of Rain Returns, and all that.  Honestly I also had fun working on Rhythm Quest, too.  It's so strange how sometimes the mountain of work just seems so intimidating and it makes me not want to work on it at all, yet other times knowing exactly that it's not something that I can easily finish in a day somehow makes me excited to just dive into it headfirst.  Either way, I guess something I've been trying to remind myself to do is to recognize how objectively I'm doing an amazing job, despite how many unempathetic or unassuming people may grumble or wonder about how slow the visible progress is.  It's important for me to remember that these are not the people that I'm making my game for, and I don't owe them anything, this is my project to do in the way that I believe is best.