My roof was mostly replaced today. There is a bit, the only stretch of roof actually visible to me, that remains only partly finished. It seems such a small thing to be left incomplete, like an afterthought or something forgotten rather than work deliberately left until later, but I am not privvy to the minds of these roofers. I could only begin to guess why anything happened the way it did today, and it would all be me grasping at figments of my imagination and incidental observations. I did not speak to them. They did not speak to me. I barely even observed their work, instead measuring their progress in the tromp of feet above me, the grinding hum of an air compressor somewhere out of sight, the staccato five-beat pattern of their nail guns, and the occasional appearance of a worker using my balcony as a staging ground for moving materials from the ground to the roof. This happened twice–my day interrupted by the expected knock at the door and an apologetic smile from a man who probably would have felt more comfortable climbing a ladder to use my balcony rather than being told to move through the apartment building, and I still do not understand why it had to happen this way. I didn’t mind the interruption. It wasn’t like I was doing any deep or focused work, distracted as I was by the constant noise of their activity and the rattle of my apartment building as an unknown number of men walked across my roof. It was just odd, this strange set of circumstances that led to me being home all day and my brief, wordless interactions with this poor, uncomfortable roofer. None of my neighbors interracted with the roofers at all. Only me. And even then, all I did was open a door for the roofer and then lock it behind him once he was finished passing sheets of plywood up to his coworkers. It was as distant a remove as could be possible when your roof is being replaced and your balcony is needed as a halfway point for passing materials up.
Continue readingMixed Emotions About Doing Different Activities Instead Of Final Fantasy 14
Not playing Final Fantasy 14 for a few days has been a weird experience. I wrote Monday’s post about taking a break from FF14 before I actually put it into effect. I stayed up pretty late on Sunday night to wrap up the Dawntrail expansion and solidified my decision to take a break betwen then and writing my blog post the following day during breaks at work. Then I left work early so I could participate in my Monday night Ultimate raid practice, spent a few hours making alternate characters on my now-open server to combat my anxiety, spent a few hours last night working on the final raid in the Alexander Savage raid series my group is doing, and then spent another hour and a half after that hanging out online and unlocking an activity that I was planning to do tonight. I haven’t really played all that much less than normal, at least looking at it on the basis of daily participation. I did, however, stop playing FF14 every night with time enough to still do other things before bed, which I didn’t used to do. And tonight I’m not actually doing the activity I unlocked because I was at work until my personal cut-off time (8:30pm, a time I will not work past except in the case of emergencies) and had to do my grocery shopping after that because my car is going to be trapped in my apartment’s underground garage for a few days while the parking lot is filled up by the roofing company that will be spending the next few days replacing the rooves of my apartment building and the one next door that shares a parking lot. So I got home super late, ate dinner late, showered late, and was too miserable and tired to want to hop online for thirty minutes or whatever. So I’m writing this instead.
Continue readingDonkey Kong Bananza Has A Lot Of Post-Game Appeal
I do not think I’ve ever played a game where I’ve been faked out about the actual end of the game as many times as Donkey Kong Banaza has done to me. There was the ending the game told me was coming from the very beginning, there was the ending I expected from not long after the start of the game, there was the ending after that which I didn’t really expect but thought was kind of fun, there was the ending immediately after that which was exciting and a little over-the-top (in a fun way that very much fit with the game up to that point) and now there’s a new ending I’ve yet to reach that might just be setup for the DLC? I don’t know. It’s impossible to tell what this ending might be other than a pretense in order to let you continue playing the game [this is exactly what it was]. I don’t really know. I’ve got more game left to play, after all, and the story for this part is thinner than ever so I can’t really guess at anything beyond the clearly stated reason everything is continuing to happen. It’s a wild, silly experience that hasn’t damped my fun at any point. The entire series of sequential endings was a joy. The only downside to all that was how much more time I spent playing the game before I finally went to bed. I did expect to be done with the game after a single night, though, so now I’ve clearly got at least a couple more nights of it to go yet. Then I can do the Kirby DLC and, after that, finally start Final Fantasy Tactics. Or whatever other game has come out that feels more urgent.
Continue readingWeird Anxiety Spikes Are Still Less Trouble Than My Depression Was
Two months into my current dose of antidepressants and I’m pleased to say that my old misery/constant depression has stayed consistently gone. I’ve had my ups and downs during this period, my sleepless weeks that make the whole world seem darker, but it has been a weight off my shoulders to not have to fight myself every step of the way. Well, mostly. I’m still fighting myself occasionally, in ways that I was only sort of prepared for, and that by only one weirdly intense interaction with someone and the constant refrain of people complaining about weird increases in anxiety. Turns out, one of the side effects I’m experiencing is irregular but intense anxiety spikes. My brain will pick one specific thing and get incredibly bent out of shape about it no matter what that that thing is or what I tell myself. The first one was about a weird experience I had in a discord server and how I should have responded, where I worked myself up like I haven’t in a decade despite my best efforts to calm down and work through it myself. The second one was about my birthday, though I didn’t recognize it for a strange anxiety spike given how negatively I normally feel about contemplating my birthday. Currently, I’m struggling to contain the anxiety I feel about knowing that the world population status on Final Fantasy 14 has changed as part of today’s update (the day I wrote this) and the intense feeling that I need to take this time to make alternate characters because there’s no telling when the world will close again or how long it will be until it opens up again in the future. I’ve had a couple other spikes here or there, but they were all easier to work through: things that took a few calming breathes or waiting a few minutes for my mind to calm down rather than the day or days that these other ones are taking.
Continue readingTime To Mix Things Up A Bit And Play Less Final Fantasy 14 Before I Burn Out Completely
Well, I did it. I finished the base expansion of Dawntrail in Final Fantasy 14. I’ve got a few patches worth of Main Scenario Quests to do yet (twenty-five quests, according to the wiki that has a little quest progress bar on it) and plenty of other content on my immediate to-do list (some big “Alliance” raids, various exploration zones, whatever it is you do to get good gear once you’re basically “current,” and tons of crafting stuff), but I think now is the time for me to take a break. I’m very tired, if I’m going to be honest. Not of Final Fantasy 14, just in general. I have had a lot of fun and continue to have tons of fun, but I need something without the sense of urgency that comes with most Final Fantasy 14 stuff. I’m not going to forbid myself from playing it or anything like that, I’m just going to give myself a nudge to do other things instead of constantly pushing myself towards Final Fantasy 14. Part of me wants to take a complete break–stop playing altogether–but I don’t want to bail on the people who’re depending on me for various group activities. Sure, static groups sometimes need to replace people temporarily, but things rarely go as well when they do and it would just be temporary. I doubt it would last more than two weeks before I felt the urge to log on for one reason or another. Plus, I actually want to keep doing that stuff, even if it isn’t the most fun or the most rewarding and is, perhaps, the most tiring stuff I do in the game. I want to do it. I am just also very tired.
Continue readingEye Have A Problem Once Again
I have been back at work, doing my usual overtime, for a week and I’m already worn out again. This time, it’s not just the usual burnout stuff (though I’m sure that hasn’t helped any). This time, a significant part of why I feel so worn out and tired is because my eye problems are flaring up again. Or maybe it’s “eyes” problem. It’s the same problem, but this time it’s flaring up in both eyes at the same time. The old familiar irritation, sensitivity, itchiness, and inability to resolve any of those in a quick manner has left me feeling drop-dead exhausted from the constant sensation that is having eyes right now. Each of them itches like I’ve got gunk in the corner of my eyes that needs cleaning out and every time I blink I feel like there’s something trapped underneath my eyelid. It’s a frustrating pair of ghost sensations that won’t stop no matter what I do because there’s no gunk and nothing in my eye other than the irritation (and maybe some ulceration, but if I see that, then it’s time to call my eye doctor and get them checked out again rather than just treat it at home with extra drops). It’s wearing me down completely, this inescapable, unignoreable set of sensations, and I’m ready for it to stop. The only relief I get from them is when I’m sleeping, so I’m very hopeful that the double-vaccination I’m getting today (flu and COVID) will knock me on my ass for a couple days while my body recovers from the vaccinations and my eyes recover from their current irritation.
Continue readingOne Year After Cohost Closed Down
Bluesky is in the middle of speedrunning the entire existence of twitter, up to and including the CEO contracting poster’s madness. After they (the moderators and executives of Bluesky) noticeably didn’t enforce their terms of sevice against noted transphobe and alt-right provocateur Jesse Singal the instant he showed up and started shit with the established userbase, people have periodically called on them to address their hypocrisy in any kind of meaningful way. This often happens more frequently following moments when Bluesky selectively enforces their terms of service against monorities or victims of various trolls and bullies the instant they dare to stand up for themselves or do something so horrible and disgusting as to comment positively on the death of a noted gun-rights activist who said that mass shootings were a worthwhile price to pay for continued access to tools of murder while also conveniently pointing his followers at people whose opinions he disagreed with in ways that undoubtedly ruined those people’s lives. Which means that, right now, Bluesky’s executives, who often use the platform to chat or interact with each other as standard users might, are in the middle of getting shellacked every time they make statements about their social media site. For good reasons! Their hypocrisy is genuinely sickening and it’s annoying to see them answer serious questions with jokes (including one that rapidly became a new alt-right dogwhistle), silence, or attempts at baseless refutation that amounts to them shoutinging “nuh-uh!” while sticking their fingers in their ears.
Continue readingHitting Level 100 In Final Fantasy 14
After putting it off for about two months, I finally got my first job to Level 100 (the current level cap) in Final Fantasy 14. I also got three more to level 100 in rapid succession (one each day since then) [for a total of seven by the time I’m editing this the day before it gets posted], as I’ve shifted gears back to focusing on progressing the Main Scenario Quests of Dawntrail and needed to get one of each of the job types to level 100 for the Role Quests. With all that done, I can now focus entirely on the MSQ and getting as far as I can in whatever play time I’ve got most days. Everything else, for at least the next four evenings after I write this, will sit on hold [it did not, in fact, sit on hold, and I wound up doing a lot of side work] as I try my hand at getting through the main portion of Dawntrail in time for the new Deep Dungeon coming out the day before this gets posted (the day after this gets posted is the day there’s a group of people in my Free Company getting together to do said dungeon [but I will not be joining them because I’m taking a break]). I’m not going to skimp on sleep or avoid doing my weekly chores and whatnot around my apartment (nor am I going to cancel my D&D session for this reason, but it IS looking like I’ll be cancelling it for other reasons), but I did clear as much of my weekend as I could because I’m getting the good ol’ double-vax Flu-And-COVID combo on Friday. I am giving myself the space to crash super hard if I need it, but I have typically dealt with the double-shot combo without too much trouble in the past, so I’m hoping to see how much Dawntrail I can get through.
Continue readingAll Of This To Say…
Growing up, in the simplified lessons of conservative Catholicism and childhood emotional grow, I was taught that love and hate are opposites. That they’re so opposed they cannot exist together such that, should you feel love for something, you are incapable of actually hating it, or if you burn with hatred for something, you are incapable of loving it. This was taught to me again and again as I dealt with my abusive elder brother and neglectful parents, alongside the lesson that of course I loved my family since anything less would be some kind of sin or moral failing on my part (these are equivalent in the version of Catholicism I was taught as a child), and since I had little access to people outside of my family thanks to being homeschooled, I didn’t learn any different until high school when I finally got out from under my parents’ teaching and learned from people who had different ideas and understandings of the world around us. There, as I began to develop emotionally and learn things about myself and others, I learned that the opposite of love wasn’t hate but a lack of care or concern. In fact, love and hate were two sides of the same coin, emotions so intense that they couldn’t help but overlap in ways big and small that could not only lead to some incredible opportunities for change and grace (since this was still a Catholic high school and everything was taught as close to a religious framing as possible) but also to some of the most toxic and horrible relationships that humanity had to offer (I was, after all, finally learning enough to know that my life at home was not normal or good). This mixture of emotions contributes to codependent relationships, manipulation, many different forms of abuse, and an inability to escape these things because, culturally, US society places a huge degree of importance on the power of love to overcome and redeem those who ahve hurt us.
Continue readingThe Rotten Labyrinth Returns To Life Just In Time To Spring My First Trap
Part of creating this massive labyrinth has been coming up with a variety of encounters for the characters (and players) exploring the labyrinth. Some of this is basic traps, random monster encounters, and bits of loot spread around the labyrinth in as close to a haphazard manner as I can manage while still making use of the space properly. Other stuff is what I like to think of as “The Big Deals:” things that could have significant impacts on the group or that change locations as time passes (and, usually, could still have significant impacts on the group). So far, the party has run into one Big Deal of each type, but they only just achieved that in our most recent session when they found a trap that had the potential to slowly kill them while also giving them a chance to learn huge, significant, and important details about the world as a whole. It was a difficult trap to avoid once they (literally) stepped into it, but it was one with a bunch of red flags raised around it, there to warn my players about what they were going to find, so they would be in a position to choose whether or not to step in the trap. Like players everywhere, they still chose to step in the trap so I got to share some information about the world around them and they still managed to get out with only a single level of exhaustion rather than their entire life force drained away. All-in-all, I think it was a pretty successful session and an all-but-perfect deployment of the first of many Big Deal traps (though I suppose there is another Big Deal trap out there that they already tripped, but it only became a Big Deal Trap once they chose to interact with what was supposed to be a mixture of set dressing and world lore). Coincidentally, it was also the first Big Deal anything that I made when designing this labyrinth.
Continue reading