I feel their silent judgment, the spite in their voices.  These are the kind of memories that leave scars, their mark on your psyche a cruel reminder of a thing that you wish hadn't happened.  In the past I think there was a part of me that craved escape, maybe vengeance, from these sorts of things, but never really understanding.  Even now, I feel that I am judged as "lesser" for that.

Sometimes, like today, I wonder if their judgment is right.  Before I can remember that words belie only their face value, they twisted around, making me question whether the light I glimpsed in the distance was real.

But there has always been something so comforting about standing in stillness on your own.  It is something that is paradoxically both lauded and frowned upon, but regardless of that, it is in these times that safety can be felt, that growth can manifest -- or not manifest.  It is true that we all grow, that we all constantly shift, that it is human nature to evolve.  But not every ledge crumbles, not every castle melts, not every grain of sand slips through our fingers -- not in the moments that we choose to remain.

There was a time when I think standing against the cruel grasp of time and loss was a sort of martyrdom, a contrarian attitude and victimhood for what I thought was to be left behind.  But beneath all of the anger there was also always truth in solitude.  Tranquility is a feeling that can be cultivated, and this is my way.  Maybe not your way, maybe not their way, but my way.

And when I find myself at the still lake once more, I can see through the world for what it is, see the wholeness in myself, see that you, and me, and all others only speak from our small little bubbles of localized truth around us.  I can understand that their judgment, just like the judgment that was passed on me before, and before that, too, comes from a certain set of values and principles.

It's not necessary for anyone to share or support your beliefs.  Yet, it is also not sufficient for you to simply carry them forward blindly.  I ultimately changed myself because of others, yes, but it was not because it was what others thought I should change.  It was...different than that.  My growth can only stem from a certain place; I'm sure it is the same for you, and them, and everyone else, too.

It is tempting to give up on dreams.  I think, in some respects, it is necessary.  But "giving up" maybe doesn't necessarily describe exactly how it ought to be.  We cannot strive for more when we are put in a situation where we are down on our backs.  "Shame" is a whip wielded by many masters, a poison found in many forms.  It is something I can walk away from.  I see the goodness in myself, even without the support of "her" shield.

But, thinking about her probably can't hurt either.  She has grown so much over the years, too, alongside me.  I've never thought about her as someone who was desirable, just simply someone who is strong.  Someone who was worthy of appreciation.  It is often easier to appreciate the positive traits of others than it is for yourself, after all, right?  But I know she would reflect those appreciations back at me, in her own way, if she could.

It's still going okay.  I have my 5th match coming up for ALTTPR and I've been trying to cram for that to make sure I'm prepared.  Fortunately, it'll be a morning match this time, so I won't be spending the whole day anxious about it like last time.  Obviously I want to do my best and win, but I'm trying to also remind myself that losing is a very real possibility and that I shouldn't really come in with set expectations here, no matter how tempting it is.

I got my first clear of Ravenswatch on Nightmare (the highest) difficulty, so that was nice and fun.  Felt good to check that off for one character, at least.  I kind of had a shaky week in general where I got thrown off by a number of things that happened, including my power and/or internet being cut at awkward times.  I dealt with a super annoying Rhythm Quest bug too, really frustrating to spend time on but at least I've ironed it out.

The dating app stuff continues to be something that I seem to have an ok attitude with.  These apps are in this weird space where everyone kinda just seems to have this presumption that they're this sort of necessary evil somehow?  I think that was a real turn-off for me I think, in line with the way I've viewed a lot of things in the past, actually.  Like, why should we settle for things that we don't really want in our lives?  That kind of feeling.  It's like when people talk about how "networking" is really important and maybe it pushes kids to go to "networking" events and also treat it as some sort of weird necessary evil.

Look, as I grew up as a child and a young adult I understood very well that sometimes you just need to work the system and play by the rules, but I think there are cases where sometimes people are so used to that mentality that they end up making new rules for themselves that don't actually need to be there in the first place.  Maybe frequently it's all because of falsely assumed shared values and a pigeonholed view of what everyone's aim should be.

I dunno what else there is, really.  Things are rolling along, as they do.  Somehow I haven't felt the terrible sort of existential or just acute loneliness in a while, which I'm grateful for.  I'm not actually sure why, probably just I'm doing enough healthy things to keep engaged with my life, either that or I'm just stuck on the treadmill enough to not really notice it.  But I guess I won't complain about it too much. 

Things are going okay.  I wrapped up a fun/busy weekend full of activities and am feeling thankful that Monday is a off-day for me to just chill and maybe work on Rhythm Quest a little, maybe play some ALTTPR or other stuff.

It had been a long long while, but I finally got around to making my own shoyu tonkotsu ramen again.  It turned out great!  Some components definitely could have stood to be slightly better, but the broth itself turned out excellent; bumping up the pork bone quantity definitely was a good call.  I've still got probably enough leftover for another 4 servings, this time I'll definitely make myself a simple miso tare because it's been way too long since I had a proper bowl of miso ramen.

The ALTTPR glitched mentor tournament continues and we've just finished week 4, where I became the only undefeated runner after a super jet seed that I finished in only a little over an hour (jeez...).  Although the seed itself was not super "rewarding" in terms of the fact that we only made one or two real decisions (and I don't think the would have mattered a ton in the end; I would mostly be on the right path thanks to general good routing principles and non-botched glitch execution regardless), it was satisfying to have yet another tourney seed turn out well, particularly after I had struggled with a lot of my practice seeds over the past week or so.  There are two more weeks left, so I'll still try to lock in for those, but at this point hopefully some of the pressure will be off (?).  It sucks because despite being completely prepared (more and more each week, even), I still struggled with a lot of anxiety.  Competing just isn't natural for me, I guess.

I'm finally back to development on Rhythm Quest, though again it took a little bit of a backseat over the past half week or so.  But it feels better not having any devlog posts since I don't have to worry about seeing people ask "when is the game going to be done" every couple weeks.  I'm finally working out the publishing / artist copyright flow, which is probably going to involve multiple big chunks of work, but at least I've started on some of them, including trying to set up a verified artist system and submission page for that, as well as in-game integration.  Another big part of that will be handling unverified artists where the user needs to provide their own audio, and that's a whole other can of UI worms, but I digress...

I played through an indie game the other day and it really strikes me how every time I go like "oh hey a game that was made by an indie dev" I get to the credits and actually there's like a team of people who helped out, plus often a whole bunch of kickstarter backers or whatever.  And in my mind when I think about the "credits" for Rhythm Quest it's more along the lines of "Hi everybody, thanks for playing the game, so this is usually where you'd put the names of everyone else who helped work on the game or make it possible but uh, it was literally just me (and a bunch of community translations I guess)".  Maybe Stardew Valley is that one exception that proves the rule...

I could talk about some of the other stuff but honestly nothing seems that interesting to me to recount or drill into.  I'm apparently headed to a short trip in MEX coming up so that should be interesting; at least it's less far than the other trips in the past if nothing else.  Bon Bon Ball and VBall are coming up; a TODO item for me is to make sure I have my makeup routine figured out since I got one or two new products I need to work in.  My hair care routine is actually kind of undergoing revision too, as a long while back I figured out that the shampoo bars I was using really weren't doing great things for my scalp, so I've been trying to find something else to settle on.

Besides ALTTPR I'm mainly just trying to achieve various challenges in Hades 2 and then here and there making some attempts at nightmare difficulty in Ravenswatch.  It's all been going just fine...it was good to have a break of a couple of days from the ALTTPR practice as well, since I was really grinding quite hard, but it'll be fun to get back at it this week too, I think.

I could talk about the dating apps stuff but there is nothing to really say about it.  It's about what you would expect, the main thing that's different is my attitude I think, in a good way.

But yeah.  Overall, I think I'm doing okay for myself...