Today was a little bit better than yesterday.

Things seem to be working out well with my new therapist!  I find that I'm able to access my intuition well, which is great.

Unfortunately, my ALTTPR run today was a little disappointing; I didn't play terrible but made some mistakes, and got quite unlucky, so that never feels good.  Eh, better luck next time.

However, I did work on a new art piece; that's always a good way to make sure I feel good about myself for the day.  I'll probably give it another rough pass, but I think it's mostly done.

I had to take a nap in the afternoon...I didn't catch enough sleep on Sunday night and since then I've been playing catch-up.  Tomorrow morning is my last wake-up-early day of the week, hopefully that will help.

How do I make sure that I'm getting into the right mode of living?  How do I make sure that I'm working, comfortably, but also learning how to grow?

Interesting...

I've never really written too much about attachment theory/styles here, it's something I've never explored at depth within myself, even though of course I already know what points I resonate with from attachment theory.  I think perhaps more interesting is how that has changed over the past 5 or so years, especially after certain key junctures of my life where things changed, or I suffered pain in a way that caused me to critically reject certain parts of being.

When I said that I'm fundamentally different than everyone else and like that I used to think the world sucks and all that, it's like...I wasn't =wrong=, per se, I think that the world isn't all that it could be cracked up to be, but at the same time my visions of what things "ought to" (?) be like are of course unattainable in some regards too.  I think there is some merit in my disdain of why things aren't "better" than they are, but at the same time the path toward "better" is probably not the one that I'm hoping for.  There are many paths, some just less appealing than others, but some are still open.

I still have some projects to take care of.  I'm not really sure honestly whether today was a good day or not a good day.  I didn't really do that much, but I cooked my two meals for the house and I got a new PB in Super Metroid, so it's hard to call it a failure of a day, really.  I did spend a lot of time doing not really that much though, and my sleep is all whack again...

Oh, that's right, my Cycle7 PCB replacement came in, so that keyboard is working now, but at this point I feel like I'm so sold on just using the Neo80 that the cycle7 has so little chance of becoming my main board.  I just learned that the upcoming Cycle8 doesn't necessarily have to have the god-awful ugly slot on the right-hand side, so if anything THAT's the more interesting board for me, but.....I think I've really gotta cool it on the purchases for now; there is =nothing= wrong with the Neo80 for me, so I'm happy to just work with what I have.  Not really sure how I'm going to be setting up the Cycle7 in general though, maybe I take the Cinnamoroll keycaps off of the WK870 and put them on there?  I dunno...

To the surprise of....um, pretty much everyone actually, I ordered a new speedcube.  Really surprised me, but spurred on by some good speedcubing content (really fascinating how much more knowledge is out there these days compared to 10 years ago) I've been messing around a lot, mostly with F2L, learning a much more modern and efficient approach to it, and that has been fun.  Of course almost all of my PLL and OLL algs are basically out the window for me after years and years, but that doesn't really matter too much because all of the newfangled algs are probably better anyways.

Anyhow I decided it might be fun to try out one of these modern cubes and see how it can feel to drive one of them on a regular basis.  I ordered one that was known for being a bit lower-pitched and quiet, it should be very interesting to get accustomed to it and pick things up again.  I really never thought I'd be doing it again, I really intentionally hung up that hobby after I felt like I got to a skill level that I was satisfied with and was very uninterested in engaging with anyone from that community, and didn't appreciate being known for being into it either.  It's really so unexpected.

But I have 13-hr flights coming up in a few weeks and you know, relearning a bunch of cubing stuff in between rando sessions and such really doesn't sound like a bad way to while away those hours at all!  So that might work out as good timing, anyways.

When I was in high school I used to think that I was just fundamentally different.  I guess, most of the time, I thought I was better than everyone else.  But there were plenty of times when I thought that something must be wrong with me, too.  Maybe it's not an uncommon feeling.  People have myriad different experiences and ways of living life and all of our parenting, schooling, and social structures were trying to stubbornly reinforce narrow-minded views on success.

I guess I don't really think that way anymore.  Well...no.  Maybe that's a lie.  Sometimes...it does still feel that I am just different than everyone else.  Everyone...just ships sailing by in the night sea.  I can't tell which is more sad.  If you all are the broken ones, or if it's just me.

But even as I lay "broken", I find that I cannot deny what I believe in.  Even when the world tries to tell me again and again that what I am searching for does not exist, it doesn't matter.  Even when I have lost "faith", it still doesn't mean that I gave up.  Because it's too sad otherwise.

I wonder if someday you might understand, too.  How sad your world is.  Maybe it's just normal to you, because it's the only way you've seen things be.  But it shouldn't be this way.  It just shouldn't.

You always win some and lose some!  I've had some periods where I feel like I'm just succumbing to being really lazy and binging on videos or whatever, but then on the flipside I had an hour to kill while waiting for a call and I cleaned up some stuff in my room and vacuumed the floor and felt great.

I didn't really do a ton today but on the other hand I was out so I wasn't really supposed to?  And then I also got my monthly pixel art done, so maybe it's fine?

Something really silly and random that I'm going to try and do is close to keep my closet door closed.  It's a really silly and small thing but I =know= that if I do it it's actually going to like tangibly improve my daily well-being.  We'll see how that works out.  On the plus side, I realized that I actually had a free USB port open on my hub, so I swapped out the cable connector for my Neo80 keyboard with the wireless 2.4ghz dongle, so there's one less cable on my desk now!  My mouse still has a cable, I could look into getting a wireless one, but I'm quite fond of the feel of my pink razer basilisk and there's no wireless version of that =/  I'd have to switch to a different model; wouldn't be the end of the world and would certainly help on the odd days when I need to carry my mouse elsewhere (like today) but eh.

The bigger problem is my SNES controller which has a really long cable (at least I have it tied up).  I don't really want that to be wireless though, so I don't really have a choice there unless I want to do like I tried to before and run cabling under my desk, but that has its own set of issues.  Hmm...now that I think of it, I can just disconnect it at the adapter portion, so what I can do is have the longer usb mini cable connected directly to my tower and then running somewhere under my desk, and then plug into that, and then when I need to travel with it I can just get a shorter usb mini cable to use for it.  Okay, that might be the way to go...

I wanted to try and work on my Ice Palace routing video but I looked through what I had recorded so far and I felt like I was talking at too much length about it.  I'm going to just try and start over, rearrange some sections, and try to get through the content faster, hopefully it'll lead to a better video (and hopefully I can finish it...).

Bon Bon Ball actually went quite well, it was also pretty crowded!  I didn't really feel that sense of unease that I did at Jammix except for the one dance, but for that it was actually normal. I really don't know what was going on last week.  I guess I'm up to an above average amount of interfacing with the social dance kids lately because of all these events, but it's an okay cadence for me I guess.  I have to make a silly little detour on the way to Viennese Ball in 2 weeks that will make things a lot more hassle for me, but hopefully traffic won't be too bad and I can just listen to something nice on the way.  Probably just change when I'm over there.  I have a couple of things I need to do for my outfit actually, need to handwash a piece and then I realized that I'm.........too skinny for one of my base petticoat layers to use it while dancing......so I'll need to fix that up, sigh.  I better get on both of those before time flies by.

I mailed out a letter last Friday, so that was a small victory I guess.  Only one. though...

Well, tomorrow is another day.  Let's see how I can manage to get through it.  If nothing else, I have a short work week ahead of me, so that's good.  Sigh, thinking about Rhythm Quest work and all of these other responsibilities makes me feel weary, so let's not right now.

Things are actually cruising along alright!

Dance - Somehow we had Jammix last Friday but also Bon Bon Ball on Saturday, wut?  Jammix went pretty well despite being a little bit late to it, but on the other hand, I felt a weird sort of unease while dancing.  Like I felt some sort of internal pressure to perform, a weird nervousness that I couldn't understand because, why?  Very mysterious.  Well, we'll see what happens on Saturday.

Life stuff - It's been not a bad couple of days, to be honest.  I've been doing my best to get a bunch of different things done.  I'm doing well with cooking -- mapo tofu, sichuan eggplant, hot pot, dry fried green beans, etc -- but I'm also doing good work in the "adulting" category.  Closed some accounts that I had been meaning to, and I've finished my primary election ballot ahead of schedule.  I even moved onto filling out my taxes, which somehow I feel like I have a handle on despite all the complications that I have this year (famous last words...?).  I have a new therapist too which seems to so far be working out for me.  The weather at least seems to approve, it was really beautiful outside today.  Something for myself to remember is to recall the feeling of cozy peaceful working -- in my room, with some water or tea, with nice warm lighting, bouncing between playing some games and working on rhythm quest or writing letters...honestly, I didn't do half bad with that tonight.

Letters, though, that's something I've really been neglecting.  The ghost of that activity is starting to actively haunt me; I know it's something I haven't been motivated to do very much at all.  Granted, I always take a bit of a break in January or so, but it's no good right now.  Now that I've done a good job taking care of some of this other stuff, letters is probably next on the docket.  Well, there are a few other things hanging around in that space too, but letters is the most pressing one.

Keyboard stuff - I spent some work meetings idly working on my Neo80 keyboard, which now has the PCB standoffs so I can do the o-ring mount method.  I also ended up putting all of the foams in right now, so it's the most "deep" sounding that it can be at the moment (with these switches and keycaps anyways), which has been pretty pleasing.  Of course, having the clacky sound isn't necessarily bad either.  But right now I'm liking this at the moment.  I retuned the stabilizers (getting better at balancing the wires...) but honestly the main thing to fix the ticking there was just to continue adding more and more lube haha.  Anyways, I've been really enjoying typing on this board!  I actually gave away my old one, just because I felt like I was accumulating way too many.  The other cheaper aluminum build came in (very late...) and it's not too shabby; the one thing is that the RGB isn't actually up to snuff with my old board, and there's an issue where the shine-through keycaps I got for it don't really work super-well because it has south-facing LED slots, not north-facing (oops).  No matter; I ended up putting my Cinnamoroll keycaps on there instead, which works just fine because the keyboard that those were on before has a nonfunctional key (maybe that socket is just broken, meh).

Rhythm Quest - One thing led to another and I've been spending a couple of days wrestling with every gamedev's favorite thing to do - fight game engines and plugins just to get things working.  (sigh)  So, I discovered that in later versions of Sonoma on Mac, Unity games become unresponsive to input due to some weird interaction with the way that window sizes are queried, which changed in the OS update.  There's a fix, but of course, I had to update my Unity version to fix that.  Sooo, queue a bunch of huge Unity editor downloads (don't forget the iOS/Android/WebGL build support!), plus an updated version of the Nintendo Switch SDK, etc.  Then test the project to make sure it still worked okay and it didn't introduce a million different bugs, except...what's this?  Issues with the native/managed plugins, including the one I was using for file dialogs, the steam integration, and the discord one as well...sigh.  Anyways, I'm finally at the point where I think I have at least all of the demo platforms working again (still need to test iOS + Android + Switch...).

Risk of Rain Returns - For a while I had just been getting Judgement clears with all of the different survivors.  I was stuck for quite a while on both Enforcer and Miner (both are pretty hard) but finally managed clears on those two as well.  Thinking on it more, I had completely forgotten that you can store an equipment in the main game and then use it in the Judgment trials, that would have probably helped out a bit.  Ah, no matter.  Anyways, now I'm finally back to playing the main game and unlocking random artifacts and skills, but here and there I also want to try to get more golds on the providence trials since there's an unlock for getting 15 of those I think.

Oh I guess tomorrow is Valentine's Day?  Am I supposed to write something about love or something?  I dunno.  I already talked to a bunch of people about my general feelings about that sort of stuff, maybe it's not really worth writing here.  Right now I don't really have someone to place up on a pedestal.  I mean, maybe that's sort of fine, like realistically any sort of down-to-earth two-way human connection shouldn't be founded on something like that, where one person tries to think of the other as being perfect.  But I guess, like, without anything like that in your life, what is there to illuminate your world and inspire you toward something like love?

I got a little scared when I couldn't remember the title of a piece by Leigh Alexander that really stuck with me, but I was able to dig it up without too much of a fuss.  It's called "The Future We Wanted".  Something I hope to read through again sometime in the next few days.

"Pure Heart"

straight on this long, continuing road
there is surely something to believe in

like a traveler in the midst of the wind
I have my eyes on the northern sky

the passionate feelings that were beginning to vanish
once again sway in radiance in my chest

I don't want the tears to spill
as so not to lose to my weaker self

in eyes holding only an unadorned spirit
there are great, unseen wings

I open my arms while singing
to embrace the perpetuity of time
to be tied to life

straight on this long, continuing road
there is surely something to believe in

I'm not feeling the best, so I guess I should try to write a little more, right?

I had a nice trip, but am feeling a bit "empty" since coming back.  I think that just means it's time for me to find the excitement in life -- the things to look forward to -- as well as just making sure I have a good mix of the things that are good for me in the day to day -- healthy food, getting small things accomplished, plus treating myself.

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow to look at that tooth that I managed to hurt, so that's fun =/  Why can't my dentist appointments just be relegated to regular cleanings...?

Anyways, I put on the PE sheet for my Neo80 and took out the plate foam and it's pretty nice!  Maybe I should have done just one and not the other, but eh, whatever.  I'm going to have to take all of the switches off (again...) not just to try out the plate foam again, but because I forgot to install the standoffs on the PCB in order to try the o-ring mount.  And then I =thought= I had the stabilizers tuned well, but there's still a little bit of a tick on the spacebar (better than before, for sure), and then I realized the other stab bars might need balancing too.

The stabilizers on the Cycle7 seem better, but unfortunately, the PCB itself seems to be....nonfunctional.  Apparently this has not been a rare occurrence for the Cycle7, maybe they cut costs on the PCB in order to get the low price point.  Anyways, the good news is that it was pretty easy to get in touch with support and have them ship me a replacement; now I'll just have to see if that ends up working or not...

What else?  Um, I dunno.  I'm still a little behind on some of the things I should be doing, I guess, but I mean, that is all to be expected.  Right now the things that I can look forward to most is maybe like...keyboards and rando?

Oh, right.  I was going to write a little bit about Momodora: Moonlit Farewell.  It's been too long since I played Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight so I'm unfortunately not sure I can give a good comparison, but Moonlit Farewell was............okay, I guess.  I guess I can't judge it too harshly because I see that a lot of effort was put into it, it just feels like...it sort of misses the mark for me, and maybe others too.  The plot is rather unmemorable, there are some minor pacing issues in general, but probably the part that felt the most unsatisfying was the combat, which is a real shame because that's really a lot of what you end up doing in the game.  I feel like it is really trying to be something where you can use the dodge roll effectively to dodge (well-telegraphed) attacks, and your player attack combo is enough of a commitment that you shouldn't mindlessly spam it.  But there is just so much hitfreeze on the attacks, especially on the multi-hit part of the combo, it really messes up the whole flow of it for me.  That combined with all of the visual FX make it really hard for me to decipher exactly what is going on and get a good feel for the timing.  I was watching some video footage of Reverie Under the Moonlight and that seemed better / not as bad in this regard.  So in the end I feel like you just end up spamming attack a lot of the time and then guessing at when you need to dodge here and there.  This was exacerbated on the last boss(es) when you have your "awakened" form available and it really just did become a matter of spamming the attack combo for the highest DPS possible.  Which is really like the opposite of what the good final boss battles ought to be like, right?  I dunno, overall that was a really not-so-well-designed part of the game for me, which is a problem since there was so much of it.  The rest of the game was just fine, obviously the visuals are very pretty, but at the same time I also found some of them less readable than I'd like in terms of actual combat gameplay.  Sigh.

Well, that's it for now I guess.

It's weird, I feel like I've been overall doing a pretty good job of things, but on the other hand there's things that I haven't been completing.  I still have that Shiori writeup to do, but I also recorded a bunch of footage for an extensive Ice Palace routing guide that I have like a third of the way done.  Well, I guess there have been various factors at work...

On the plus side, yesterday I spent a bunch of time with the chickens, which was nice.  Their coop door doesn't get closed at night anymore, but they've been fine with that.  White Chicky still doesn't really come out at all, but she seems happy and normal enough otherwise.  She needs more nail trims, but at least I gave her a foot soak yesterday.  I'll have to make sure their food and water and everything is all stocked up, because I'm leaving for a trip this weekend.

Besides that, yesterday I did a bit of good work on Rhythm Quest and today I was actually doing good work toward my job, not to mention taking care of some kitchen chores.  I've actually been cooking a little healthier / lighter lately, I know there was a point a week or two ago when I just started getting worried that I was starting to feel a little lethargic.  Like, that wasn't necessarily food-related, might have been a dopamine thing or a sleep thing or mild depression or I-don't-really-know-what, but I feel like eating light and healthy can help with that regardless.

I'm now the proud and happy owner of a new Neo80 keyboard!  I spent a good bit today putting it all together and I've been happily typing away at it and enjoying the experience so far.  There's still a bunch of stuff that I am going to have to poke around at with this keyboard, including for one, tuning the spacebar (might need to balance the metal bar itself, or might just need to apply more lube, or in the worst case just order some better stabilizers), but also just going through all of the different possible configurations -- more foam, less foam, different mounting styles, PE sheet vs no PE sheet, etc.  So far I've been both very pleased at the fact that taking the PCB out is soooooo easy (ball-catch latch system plus magnetic connector / no ribbon cables) and also pleasantly surprised that the different mounting styles actually...kinda feel and sound different!  I mean, of course, they are supposed to, but honestly from the talk and videos around them I was expecting the differences to be quite insubstantial.  I mean, don't get me wrong, some of them are subtle, but they're noticeable, which is cool!  They're often hard to pin down, but I'm looking forward to just getting to know the keyboard better and finding an ideal configuration that I'm happy with.  And then of course there's the matter of like, do I want to put different switches in there, or maybe those ceramic keycaps will restock, and then what do I want to do once my Cycle7 gets here??  Well, that is all stuff I can look forward to!

The other thing I can try to look forward to is my upcoming trip!  Honestly it really snuck up on me; earlier toward the beginning/end of the year when I first planned it I was sort of like "I wish it would come sooner..." but somehow the last couple weeks kind of just...went by, and now I feel like it kind of arrived without me really paying attention to it.  But I'm sure it will be a nice visit and a nice change of pace.

A friend of mine was interested in giving Baldur's Gate 3 a try together so I joined in and rolled (okay, "rolled" is technically not accurate since there are no attribute rolls in character creation anymore) a paladin so I can go big on divine smites and just throw around big numbers, while keeping mostly quiet on the decision-making since of course I've already played through a large swath of stuff during my previous playthrough(s) of the game.  We'll see how it goes, I feel like it's been kind of fun on the one hand, but I'm not honestly sure they will remain into it and I think the pacing of the game is such that it might not be the right fit.

Playing with another person sort of leading the way did really make me think about what the "average person's" experience with BG3 (and I guess other games, but mostly BG3) is.  And like, when I say that I'm not talking about what decisions do they make in their dialogues or how do they choose to tackle various situations, or even like how they handle combat (though I guess a little bit of that), but more like...how much of the game do they even interact with, how many key NPCs do they just walk by (I definitely ignored a bunch on my first time through), how many interface options get left unused.  Like, how much of the game does the average person even know to play and how do people engage and enjoy the content in the game?  BG3 is fascinating in the way it has a bunch of good stuff but also just kind of fails to organize it in a very tight and cohesive way.  Of course you could argue that that's sort of the point; it's setup so that you can have these moments where you just discover random things in various nooks and crannies.  But it's just wild to me how scattered all of the content is and how much "extra stuff" is all over the place, whether it be random trash loot, books that don't have much relevance, characters with one or two lines of unremarkable dialogue, or simply slow walking between point A to point B.  It's a weird game because I feel like there's a little something for everyone there -- some roleplaying and decision scenario antics if you like the D&D aspects, some storytelling and narrative arcs if you're into the characters, some combat strategy if you're into tactics, some inventory hoarding if you like being the RPG klepto, and even a healthy dose of build variety if you want to just theorycraft and minmax.  But for every one of those different aspects there's A+ content mixed with what I'd call C- content.  Like there are some really interesting narrative decisions that you get to make over the course of the game, but then at one point you get to a telescope and you have this incredibly clunky dialogue sequence of choosing "move the telescope left / right" where the game gets to tell you "the telescope now points to the left."  And for all of the enjoyment of the core tactical combat system there are those moments when the enemies are like on the inside of a building while you're on the roof and you're trying to fight the camera, the UI, and also your movement abilities in order to just get into proper combat with them.  And for all of the cool feelings you get when you are able to really wrap you head around your characters' abilities and spells and use them to great effect, there are the remaining 30 abilities that you never really bother to use because there are just so many random unremarkable or mediocre things you can do.  Like yes, I get it, it's kind of clever that you can carry around a candle in your inventory and the place it on the ground and dip your club into it to make your club do some extra fire damage.  But the sheer tedium of doing that defeats the entire purpose.  Was it really worth cramming all of these extra features and dialogues and NPCs and houses into the game if most people really wouldn't miss them?  Would it not make for a better experience if you trimmed all of the "fat" so we could just get to the stuff that actually matters?

I will say that playing the game with a controller has been a surprisingly pleasant experience; in a lot of ways it really works better than the base controls, though I imagine the WASD-movement mod strikes a good balance.

Anyways...tomorrow I guess will just be about me trying to square away everything I need to; checking in for my flight, finishing up my work if I can, making sure the chickies can survive while I'm gone, doing OHC, and recording a patreon video, plus of course packing.  If I have some extra time I'd love to stream some rando, but we'll see about that.