Why do I do it?
Every time, why do I choose it?
Love made me ruthless
But every time
Why am I running back to you?
If dreaming is useless
Then why even do it?
Keep making excuses
Why am I running back to you?

Thinking about all the times that I blamed others for changing, and the times when people called me out on it.  What should they have done instead?  Should they have simply not let me into their life at all?  I'm sure some of them -- the less important ones, maybe even some of the more important ones -- certainly tried.

Maybe it's wrong of me to act like I'm all high and mighty, but certainly it couldn't be wrong for me to feel sadness.  Perhaps, it simply sometimes rubs the wrong way to act like a victim when thinking about these things.  What should they have done?

Hah, but even as I say it myself, I can feel my conviction rise up -- not only mine, but my past self's too.  No, this is not how it should be.  Everyone moves on too quickly and then complains that we are distant from each other.  There it is again, pointing the finger at everyone other than myself.

Do you not feel it?  The scars of time, the strings of the past pulling you back.  Have you already become numb to it in your endless pursuits?  The you of yesteryear is already dead, and you move forward with nary a mourning period.

 

...anyways, I'm also thinking about blame, and conflict, and these things.  About why we feel that we must change to make things better.  We learn to repress our emotions and then go to therapy so that we can rediscover them.  Who are you to decide that something is "better" than what you already knew to be true?  Perhaps your definition of "success" is too narrow if all it looks toward is growth.

 

But back to recounting the details of more mundane matters at hand.

Aside from being reminded (face it, it was bound to happen eventually...I depend on -- no, =welcome= -- being haunted by my past) of the existential problems of life, things have actually been quite alright recently.

As far as ALTTPR goes, I have to be a little bit careful that I'm not burning out, I think (maybe on more than ALTTPR, honestly), but it's been rewarding still.  I've spent time uploading some rebroadcasts of matches in the mentor tournament with my own commentary to highlight some of the stuff that the mentees have been doing.  Commentary is something that I was curious to dip my toes into, so I signed up for that role, but I found that (as usual?) I ended up just wanting to do my own thing with it instead, so I haven't been hopping on any of the official restreams.  Which is just as well...I've found a comfortable thing for myself, and it seems like it's appreciated by at least a handful of people.  Comfort...yeah, that is important to me, isn't it?

I did a bunch of programming efforts toward routing one of the ALTTPR dungeons.  Hopefully this framework will prove to be useful and extensible in figuring out how to route the other dungeons as well.  I'm happy to be able to finally have some results (though they...all just match my hypothesis to begin with...), but at the same time there is this kind of sense of dread at "okay, how in the world am I going to present this?".  I'm loathe to make a video that just says "Well I crunched all the numbers and this is the best thing" because part of the primary motivation behind my instructional ALTTPR videos was to provide video evidence backing all of my claims, but unfortunately routing Misery Mire is something that I just couldn't do simply.

Part of me wonders whether at some point I'll just take it upon myself to host my own organized wiki of sorts, with gif'ed versions of screen strats as well as documentation on strats.  It would certainly take a different sort of work than my current bite-sized rando series, and I think it would probably be less "easily digestible" (one of the other goals of the series), but there is a growing part of me that hates how ephemeral and scattered about all of the information is all over the place.  The Super Metroid folks have done a great job with this as their wiki literally has a separate page for every single screen in the game and they all connect to each other.  Great resource.

Then of course there's a part of me which hesitates to bite off way more than I can chew.  Again, solving one problem only to be confronted by larger issues, is something that can quickly lead to a feeling of burnout, I think.  So I'll be careful with this.

 

My idle speedcubing practice has continued to be a bit of a habit.  I have weird ambivalent feelings toward it, especially now that I'm of course reaching the same plateau point that I kind of was at before in terms of my knowledge and learnings.  But at the same time I got some new PBs the other day and that was actually surprising to see, like actually though, I'm quite a bit better now than I once was, which is kind of exciting.

Continuing to enjoy just hanging out and working at Teance.  Despite being someone who really prefers to work exclusively at home in my own room a good majority of the time, I can really kind of feel the appeal of working outside or at cafes now, for that sort of change of pace.  Of course, the tea itself is really a big part of it, though.  Far Leaves Tea just got a moonlight white tea in stock too, that was nice to have and just work there during that day when our power was out...

 

I'm itching to try more keyboard switches, lol.  Once this restock happens in the coming month I'm planning to just get a 10-pack of five different linears and just try them out to see.

 

Why is it that people are so quick to break the promises of their past selves?  Is it just that people's past selves are not someone who they have a close relationship with?  Do they feel like it's just a one-sided relationship?  Do people not think enough about their future selves when making commitments?

I have a relationship with the past you, too, don't you see?  And most of your relationship with me has been with the past me.  Why do so many people fail to follow through?  Why are the desires of your present self more important than what you once wanted?  Is that what it means to "live in the moment"?  To shove aside your responsibilities, break free of the "chains" of your past?

No...