March 30, 2025 - bloghan 40
This week felt like two. How did so much happen? It's late Sunday night when I write this sentence you're reading (the stuff in these parentheses though? also written on Sunday!), but reading back on what I did on Monday and Tuesday... that was this week?? Well, I guess we'll find out together what I did this week:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: 'Balatro' difficulty stakes. You'll see why I'm rating these if you read the entire bloghan, but essentially, each stake is a difficulty level you can apply on your runs. The order is white (base) -> red -> green -> black -> blue -> purple -> orange -> gold. Each stake applies it's own debuff to your run, with the white stake not doing any modification. In addition, each stake also applies the debuff of the stakes below it (so gold stake involves the new debuff from gold stake and all the debuffs of every other one). Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. This is sorted on how interesting and fair-feeling each stake's debuff feels, and can I just say: I'm so glad the developer is changing blue stake. It just feels so needlessly punishing at such a low level, and it's so boring too. I mean, "-1 discard" when we have the concept of eternal jokers and perishable jokers? I will say that purple and gold feel a bit boring too since they just feel like repeats of prior stakes' debuffs (one is literalyl the same, the other is just an econ drain that's fine, I guess). I don't like red stake as much simply because I think it's a bit too low. Messing with a player's econ should probably comes a bit later in the process in my opinion. White stake is fine and all, but all the sense of achievement comes from literally any other stake, so it's just kinda "meh" for me.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
Monday was a rainy morning, but that didn't make the day sad or anything, just kinda... boring? When I walk in I talk with the compatriot about the 'Love Live!' thing, and I see that someone's written down some Thursday plans involving 'Jeopardy!' That's strange... I don't have it fully written or tested yet. Also, Thursday? What happened to the plan of Tuesday? After this initial confusion, I figure that someone will eventually explain it to me later, and I head back to my desk to start of this boring day. No one really talked to me all that much, only a visit from my predecessor who came to catch me up on what we both did on the weekend, and about the tasks we've been getting from my work rival's manager. My work rival asked me about those tasks too, one he came in. The focus of the morning was getting one of those nine runs going with updated files going into them, and it seemed to work out not too badly. There was an email that went out telling employees that in September, the higher ups would be getting rid of work from home days entirely. My work rival's manager sent it right back to him, with the additional text "FYI." Sure, she sent it to his entire team, but I like to think that was just to make him feel less bad about it. While I waited for some things to run and for ideas of what to do next with work, I ended up reading another volume of 'One Piece,' before lunch came by. Right before lunch, the calbe guy let me know more detials about what would be happening this lunch: there would be some cake and then a dinner quite late. He thought I had put 'Jeopardy!' on the agenda but I didn't (my work rival was very good at avoiding eye contact in this moment). I'm probably going to turn down hosting 'Jeopardy!' this week, and with that I head downstairs. At lunch, I spend all of it talking to someone from my home city. Now, he's in the same boat as me where we're both going back in August, but he works on a different floor doing slightly different things. His role is closer to Steve's than it is to mine, I guess. We talk about how our work is going, and about our courses when we come back, about the industry we're in and where we want to end up, and just talking about the things we do. I talk about my Switzerland experience (and the torture I underwent in Italy), and he talks about his experience with travel too. My equivalent wants to talk to me but my pre-existing conversation just kinda runs over him and he eventually forgets his point. I feel a bit bad, but that's a sign of weakness or something, isn't it? With lunch over, I head back upstairs. Back at my desk, I decide to get read to submit a bunch of my Absconder stuff - or more accurately, some fixes and updates to the stuff I've already submitted. While I tested them or figured out which changes I needed, I ended up finishing the 'Whole Cake Island' arc of 'One Piece.' It was just as good as a lot of other arcs, though I don't know how Oda basically got me to re-read the 'Enies Lobby' arc but with a different set of circumstances and a different Straw Hat to rescue. The worldbuilding was super on point with this one too, as was the character work with the Charlottes, Fire Tank pirates, and Vinsmokes (as usual), though I do think that my personal problem of how it's hard to keep up with what's actually going on in fight scenes is cropping up again. I didn't have that problem with 'Jujutsu Kaisen' because Akutami's fight choreography felt pretty natural and was cleary illustrated, though I guess the combat in 'One Piece' is anything but natural. This arc's whole theme focused around family once again, but I found that Oda's additional tie-in theme of loyalty between family to be even more interesting, and a great extension of a theme he's been examining pretty often. That conncludes my main thoughts on this arc, but I didn't read it all in one shot: I did it in breaks between working through submitting my Absconder, asking my predecessor for help when I ran into an error with one of the checks in place (it turns out I just didn't have stuff as updated as it needed to be, as usual), and starting on more documentation for them too. Honestly, most of this day was spent looking at screens, but right before my work rival left, something a little magical happened. I brought up the whole thing about needing a Japanese phone number to even sign up for the foreigner's lottery for Aqours' final live, and my Japanese coworker overheard us. He immediately offered his phone number, and I was a little surprised that he just did that so willingly. I asked if he was sure, and he said yes! From 0 to 0.0003%! After another hour spent at work doing that documentation, I headed home quickly, picking up a jar of tomato-based pasta sauce from a cheap store on the way. I wanted to be on top of the writing I had to do tonight, so after my regular post-work shower, I would do a lot! A lot which I... ended up barely doing. I instead avoided any writing for several hours, just eating snacks and watching videos, doing absolutely nothing of use. I didn't do any bloghan at work, but once I got over myself (late at night), I climbed into my bed to type the majority of it, still saving a lot of it for later, but only finishing around midnight. I made some food, but my drive to do a lot of things had disappeared with my tiredness. I'm just so frustrated with myself. I should be able to do more. I need to do more. The "more" that I ended up doing was finishing off the next 'Jeopardy!' board, and definitively deciding that I would not be running it on Thursday. I went to bed, hoping that tomorrow I would do better.
Waking up on Tuesday wasn't the hard part. What was hard was that the bus wasn't going to be late today, and I ended up having to run to catch it. It was yet another rainy day, with it swtiching back and forth between snow and rain. In the morning, after hearing Steve rant about the types of work he's been doing (the same stuff over and over again), I put my effort into finalizing my fixes from yesterday's submission. I realized I had made a minor spelling mistake that was sure to break things if left alone for too long, so I had to act right away. Once that was done, I focused back on documentation, making sure it was completely updated for the things I had already written. I had to add new text when I'm asked to write new features, or when I realize that something I wrote months ago actually had a deeper meaning, and that it's not clear at all. Both cases happened, and both caused more additions to the same document. The whole time I had 'Dreams of an Absolution' playing, so no one bothered me. Incidentally, this made it so no one collected me for lunch, so once I finished my documentation, I just ate at my desk, staring at my phone. Even after I finished my lunch, I really didn't feel like doing much other work. It's just documentation or watching things run, and while writing documentation is fine, starting up a brand new piece because you just finished the last one is a little daunting. Starting is always the hardest part in writing... ugh. At some point, my work rival's manager asked how those 9 runs were going, now that I had all the updated files for them, and she was surprised to hear that I was only able to do one. Well, of course, half of the stuff you said you would give me, you never did! After some quick chats, an apology from her for assuming I was in a group chat that I never was (why does this keep HAPPENING TO ME???), and a quick call to make sure we were on the same page,I got the files and was able to get the first three of the 9 running. Would they pass? Would they fail? They're probably going to fail to be honest, I have no faith in this process. Only after another long set of idling on my phone did I end up doing something of use: bloghan. As I type it out, I realize just how little of anything I've been doing recently. I wanted to do a lot more, but I just can't find the energy. What happened to the momentum from before? I just feel terrible all the time. It's probably the weather, right? Must be it. After some more wandering, yearning, boredom, looking at things on my phone until my app timers ran out, and maladaptive daydreaming, I decided to just eat some chips, wash my hands, and have a long conversation with the crossword cubicle about ethics and courses. After more discussion about the plans for Thursday and the people who dropped it (even though we rescheduled to have more people attend), I just went back. I kinda do regret making friends with these people, to some extent. If I could go back in time to redo this position, I think I would've stayed more to myself during my experience over here. It just feels so needlessly dramatic, too exclusive and too inclusive at the same time somehow. Except for Steve and my Japanese coworker of course, those guys are fine. Maybe my equivalent and the cable guy too. And of course, my predecessor. The last hour of work felt a lot better. Maybe it was the salt content of the chips, maybe it was the rain turning into snow outside. I finally got started on the next batch of documentation, listening to some recent SiIvaGunner rips while doing it. I should've done more I think, but I did more than on Monday, so I guess it's alright. I hurried home afterwards, and this time I didn't immediately squander my time, catching up bloghan pretty quickly. Maybe it's because not as much happened today? Or maybe I'm just tired. After setting up the document for the next big assignment, and cooking myself dinner, I deicded to do a couple 'Balatro' runs, finally winning one after a streak of losing 5. It may be the easiest difficulty, but I finally got one! It's about time. Once I do it, I decide to go to bed a little earlier than I've been recently. Perhaps the crabby and tired mood is caused by the rain, but maybe getting a bit more sleep might help a little with it.
Wednesday morning marked the return of the sunshine and the azure sky which seemingly changes my behaviour drastically. The bus was going to be late too, so I could relax a little... that is, until I no longer could relax and had to sprint for the bus. Luckily, the bus driver (another new face) was kind enough to wait for me, since my sprint speed sucks. Once I was at work, I was mostly trying to do my documentation for the next Absconder task, but my manager wanted to know if I had done that thing from last week. The thing he asked me to do on Wednesday, the mapping thing, the mapping thing he asked me to do on Wednesday, which I finished on Friday, and sent to him on Friday. That mapping thing? Yes, that mapping thing. I just replied to my old message and he found it pretty quick, saying it was exactly what he needed. That's great! Now I can go back to- wait what's that email that just came in? A new task from my manager, based on the mapping task I gave him... The info in that told him it was safe to bring in another team's project into our own, and I was in charge of doing that. Oh, goody. How great. Wonderful even. I shifted my attention over to that as I engaged in other distracting activities: pulling a prank on Steve with the help of my work rival and the baseball on Steve's desk, some help from my predecessor about the task I just got and with the the one from my work rival's manager, a chat with my co-DM about how she suddenly couldn't make it to D&D tonight and our plans for the session, and a little bit about school with Steve and my work rival. Eventually, the clouds came back to cover the sky for a bit and I lost all my motivation to do any work. Luckily, that was when we decided to go down for lunch, and that's what I did. The other 8 played 'President,' and to make sure that each player would have an even amount of cards, I decided to sit out. They would make me play if I told them that reason, but they didn't ask because they're kinda just used to it at this point. Lunch was spent on my phone for most of it, but I sparked up conversation with the guy I talked to on Monday, updating him on my course stuff, and giving him some info on the courses he wanted to take. After some shared stories of some teacher figures we both had, I went upstairs, way after the others on my floor went up. When I went back upstairs, I saw that the stuff I'm running for my work rival's manager failed, but my predecessor gives me a file he recently updated, and just like that, I have them up and running again. Hopefully this time, those tiny errors are gone so that the actually important ones can be found. The sun's out once again, and I find myself better able to work on figuring out how to bring in one project into ours. One of the steps in the guide I found is said to "just work." I should expect no errors when I do that step for this specific process I'm undergoing. That is not my experience. Why must I struggle so? To make matters worse, I receive a message from my go-to, in a new group chat, asking me to do the same with the projects of two other teams. AGGGH!!! Why is everyone coming after me to do this kind of thing now???? Why me?? I'm still trying to figure out the errors in the "bring in" task my manager gave me! When I decide to ask someone he starts asking me the about the details of that other team's project. I didn't know I was supposed to know exactly what it entails!! I'll run my new mapping thing I guess, se if there's any diffrence between bringing it in and not brining it in. I get a meeting invite for something, and I choose not to go to it. I feel like it's not meant for me to go, even though eveyr person I've messaged today is in that meeting. Surely if they need me there, someone will tell me. I run the Absconder mapping tool numerous times in the next hour or so, with different delving amounts each time, but it consistently tells me there's no difference. I get tea, and run it even deeper: no difference. What am I even doing at this point?? I report to the guy I needed help from that I can't find a difference and that I'm completely stuck, to which he gives: no reply. Cool. My work rival's manager now begins to ask about when we can expect results, and I quickly check. 2/3 of them failed right away, but one seems to have kept going. Thankfully, my predecessor's suggestion is at least doing something. She demands more details about how old my project files are, and after more questions from her and answers from me, I get a resolution of: no reply. Really cool. I ended up resolving to do that task from my go-to tomorrow, as I've got a D&D thing to do tonight, and I quickly go around and make sure everyone's available. They all are, except for my equivalent. He's not here? Well, I guess he does show up to the office quite late, but at this time, 30 minutes before we start? Usually he's here by now... I decide to write bloghan while we wait, catching up with basically the entire day before I eventually hear his voice down the hallway. We go right away, and after engaging in a short conversation about haircuts, we all head down for the session. It's a pretty event dense session, with the conclusion of one night's fruitful heist and fruitless search, the eventual return of an NPC they thought they wouldn't see again, and a catastrophe that gave them even more of an excuse to move on. They wanted a break in the middle of the sesison because they had been sitting for most of it, and I had had been standing and pacing around for more of it. Honestly, for a session without character sheets, things weren't too bad. The battle was easier than I thought without the sheets, and there wasn't much else they needed it for. Afterwards, as I collected a little feedback, I realized that I had accidentally skipped a page in the session plans, so I let them reach a point which they weren't supposed to yet. They were understanding and we agreed that next session we would continue from a point just before where we ended things. Since my co-DM wasn't present, I ended up doing what I did two weeks ago: walk to one bus (I almost got hit by a car that didn't see me cross the road, even though I was a foot away from it? It never bothered stopping too, so I had to take a couple tip-toe steps backwards), take that one bus (of course my phone is too big to hit the stop button), realize the next bus won't come for another 15 minutes, then walk the rest of the way for 12 minutes instead. At home, I spent a little too much time squandering it (it's late, so it's alright!), but I did get a little assignment work in (barely any, actually), but not before prioritizing bloghan. Once I finished my dinner, I dedicated myself to beating a red deck red stake run in 'Balatro,' resetting all the tempo I had with any improvements to my sleep schedule. Ah, such is gambling, such is gambling. After a bit of web browsing, I went to bed, a little regretful, but a little not regretful too.
Somehow, I woke up not feeling tired on Thursday morning, and early enough to shave too! This did mean that I had to wear a high-collared sweater to hide the blood that had gotten on my shirt collar, but I'm sure my coworkers would assume the best in me regardless. It was so sunny this morning, and the sky was even bluer than yesterday. this translated to having a pretty good time at work in the morning, I was having a great time just listening to some high-quality rips, bobbing my head as I engaged with Steve and my work rival. I was just working on the incorporating of other projects into ours, which was giving me errors in one step no mattter what I did. That didn't bother me so much right now though, because if no one was going to respond to my messages about it, then there's not really anything I can do about it. We went down for lunch after what felt like no time at all, and the trend repeated of me watching people on my floor play cards as I ate my sadnwich and looked at my phone, and then me ending up in conversation with the same guy from my home city about things upcoming. I don't mind it so much really, there's not much for me to do at lunch anyways. When I got back up though, I saw that I was finally being asked if I finished one of those "bring in" tasks (the one that involved bringing in two things at once). I had finished it this morning, but neglected to tell them. Oops! Well, it's fine, I can just tell them now. After a bit, I grant permission for a more experienced person to access my computer and do some needed changes, allowing me to proceed with the testing steps on my own. As I get those set up, I start re-asking my questions about the original "bring in" task I got from my manager, and I finally get a response from the original person I asked: according to my manager, I don't even need to run the step that was giving me errors. Wait... you're telling me I could've just asked my manager this entire time????? It took two days to get such a roundabout answer too... Come on. And what's this? That other "bring in" task has failing tests? Oh wonderful. I'm sure the expereicned guy cna just fix them right? When I bring them up with him, he tells me to ask my manager if I need to a manual merge. WHAT?? The whole point of this is to avoid manually merging the two projects, and now you're saying I'm going to have to?? I just want to do my Absconder task documentation man... The rest of my work day is spent trying to do these tasks, which really amounts to sending messages to other team members back and forth, and running and re-running tests while I wait for responses, of which I get none. My predecessor walks in at one point as I angrily gesture at the screen, which is a bit embarrassing for him to see, but we talk a bit about 'Balatro' and our tasks from my work rival's manager. She also reached out to me at one point today, asking if I had updated my project files recently. Apparently, there was a fix to something that should make my runs actually go to completion, but she seemed stunlocked by the fact that one of them was still running regardless, and she went back to her old habit of "leaving me on read." Honestly, I've been doing this more often, and then using reactions later once I actually act on their message. My hope is to have the team trained to think that just because I read the message doesn't mean I actually read the message until I react to it, which gives me an information advantage when deciding what to do. I work in this manner until it's about half an hour before I regularly leave. Steve tells me about how he's going to leave soon, which confuses me; isn't he staying for the dinner thing tonight? He looks at me with confusion, then with awe, then with great joy, as he says VERY LOUDLY about how he's going to the dinner tonight. He's very very excited about this: makes sense, given the amount of meetings he had today and his accidental erasure of some important logs in the morning. We're all ready to go (me, Japanese coworker, cable guy, compatriot, fanatic, Steve), but we're just waiting for the equivalent to finish up. I see them playing cards to pass the time, and when the round of whatever they were playing finishes, I take the deck and start up a table of 'Texas Hold'em Poker,' using licorice sticks that expired months ago as the chips (we only had enough for 2 chips each). My Japanese coworker kept going all-in right away but once we banned doing so until the flop was revealed, the game really came together. Honestly, it was a lot of fun, and I will now be looking for excuses and ways to start up poker games in our lunch breaks. We'll need a source of chips somewhere, but I'm not sure where, but maybe when I'm more free I can figure something out. Once we've had our fill, and Steve yells "RAISE!" and "FOLD! a little too loudly too many times, we check in on my equivalent: he's good to go, so we go too. The place is to go to a cake place to let my Japanese coworker and the cable guy pick out a cake, then go to some Japanese restaurant. On the walk, I'm a bit quiet, but I manage to hold limited conversation with my equivalent baout how he's using Absconder to save a lot of time on something his team runs quite often, but once it's over, I don't really talk much more. We get to the cake place, those two go in, and once they choose we walk back to the restaurant. It's a warm-seeming place, but its unironically playing anime music and has anime playing on the TVs. I recognize right away that the song playing as we walk in is 'Yume no Tobira' by μ's (this is after I filled out the lottery form for the Aqours live... is this some 'Love Live! good luck!?). My coworkers here tell me that the anime is 'Violet Evergarden...' ok, sure. I don't really care for it all that much, I don't really watch much anime. Most of the conversations we have at this table is about Japanese culture and about how a bunch of people on our teams are leaving and quitting over new policies. I end up ordering some sort of fried chicken donburi, but I keep myself pretty quiet and uninvolved in the conversation. I suddenly feel pretty muted and non-energetic, giving non-committal answers that lead to conversations dying. Why? It's not the food, it tastes good... I look out the window. Ah. The clouds have completely covered the sky. That checks out. The only times I perk up are when I recognize more songs, another μ's song and the opening to 'My Deer Friend Nokotan,' but I just eat and watch the others in silence until it's time to pay. A pretty good restaurant! I might be back? We'll see. Once the payment's all done, we all walk back to the office, rushed along by the sudden presence of smoke in the air and falling rain. I do have to leave soon to catch a bus, but everyone convinces me that they'll be quick. In the break room, they begin cutting the cake when I have 3 minutes to go before I have to rush out. I tell them not to worry about it, they should all just have more cake, but they shove a plate with a small cake wedge into my plate and send me off, telling me to eat it on the bus. I am not eating this on the bus. No way. I instead eat it on the stairs and let me tell you. I am SICK of my coworkers' cake choices. This is the first time I've ever seen them choose a cake that wasn't tiramisu, which itself was getting very tiring. But this? This cake is green all over and tastes like grass. That's not an exaggeration. Why does everyone have to be so bougie in this place? I'm grateful that I'm getting cake, don't get me wrong, but normal and classic cakes are normal and classic for a reason! Also... it may have to do something with how much of a sweet tooth I am. I manage to finish it as I walk down the stairs, even gulping it down through the taste really throwing me off, tossing out the empty plate within the building itself. I catch my first bus, but instead of waiting another 15 minutes for the next bus, I decide to just start walking to the next stop, until I reach a stop where I only have to wait 5 minutes. Clearly, it was a better use of my time, as I got to see there was just a random creek a short bus ride away that I had always missed on the way to work?? Getting back home was trivial at this point, and I ended up in my regular Thursday call with my friends from my home city only 15 minutes late. It started with one friend showing off the random goods she got from some sort of pop-up shop, but she had to leave pretty soon after, with a promise of being back in 20 minutes. Naturally, myself and the other guy in the call took this as an invitation to play 'Balatro,' even through the return of our third friend. She still showed us more of her recent purchases as we played, as I successfully beat red deck green stake on my second try! This got followed up with the testing of another 'Jeopardy!' board, and it was an uneven battle right up until one player fumbled a couple big ones in a row. The final round proved to be not too tricky and not too untricky, even though no one got it, so the winner came down to whoever bet more wisely. It was a very fun night, but I knew that this was really the calm before the storm. Next week, things would be just terrible with the giant report looming over the horizon. When we ended the call, it was pretty late for me. I decided that I would update bloghan, but not work on the assignment. Today was a tiring day, and I didn't want that tiredness to affect the critical thinking I'm meant to show on that report (you guys here though? you ONLY get the written results of me being tired!). Once I was caught up though, I decided to throw away a little more time with just another sneaky couple of 'Balatro' runs. I may have a problem...
I woke up right before I had to work, and while the birdsong was nice, I would've preferred clear skies to the cloudy ones that I got instead. Well, at least it wasn't raining! My landlord was in the garden doing gardening things, but I was on my work laptop not really doing much work. I was just looking at my messages in great confusion. I had asked my manager yesterday about what should be done about the errors for the bringing in of two projects, and he just told me (in essence) "yeah, here's the thing we need to do: [thing that we need to do]." Ok... so am I supposed to do that? Or is he telling me that someone else is on it? Well, I'm going to go make breakfast, and after some extremely burnt bacon (I done did it again) and an egg, and an empty cup of tea, I'm ready to tackle more things. But first, I've got to register for my courses. It's sad to think that very soon, all this will be over and I'll have to go back to my home city, but I do need to get prepared for that inevitability. I had a specific time to do it, as did everyone else, but I managed to get every course I wanted before the whole site got slowed down and gained a queue system. Turning my attention back to my work laptop, I work up the courage to ask my manager if he wants me to do that, or if someone else is, and he immediately responds to me with "go ahead, but be careful to not change things that our team doesn't touch." Right, sure, ok! A couple hours later, I'm just so lost. I've been looking at what that experienced guy on my team changed on my computer yesterday, and looking at the places where the error logs are saying there are errors, but I can't figure out which files are actually getting used, and which ones are being used for the error logs. Both that experienced guy and my manager have also gone out of office, and I have no one to ask. As such, I ended up just working on my Absconder documentation. It's probably not great to leave these "bring in" tasks for so late, but I think it's better than submitting something that doesn't work, and having to deal with that mess. Once the work day is done, I do a quick 'Balatro' run to beat red deck blue stake, then updated bloghan with the very little that happened today. After catching up on some chores and doing a short-lived red deck purple stake run, I finally decided to do something about this assignment. One of the things we have to do for it is to look at the comments from other people on that video we made, and talk about the learnings we gained from it. But when I look at all those comments, the majority of them seem to just repeat back what we said in the video. After a frustrating time trying to even glean something to learn from the few comments that actually have something new to say, I decide that I've already let it get late enough. Let's just make dinner (rotini and meatballs, with a tomato sauce including spinach and cheese), watch a video or two, then play more 'Balatro' (after lots of resets, I bested red deck purple stake! please send help). It'll probably be better for the amount of writing I need to do soon if I go to bed as early as possible, right now, and so I do. I need someone to take away 'Balatro' from me for now. It's so much worse than I thought. There's actually an itch I can't keep scratching, the call of "just one more run," even when a run dies early. At least tonight, I didn't reopen 'Balatro,' but I would be lying if I said that I went to bed like I said I would. No, I went through my social media apps one more time and realized that the true volunteer form for Dashcon 2 was finally up, and I took a good chunk of time to make a well-rounded application. That took about half an hour, mostly making sure all my experience was in line, and THEN I went to bed. Tomorrow, I would need to do a lot of work.
I couldn't get out of bed for 9 hours. Somehow, I had perfected the rolls of sheets around me, with warmth and softness fully surrounding me. I was semi-awake, but I couldn't bear the thought of getting out. I stayed there and fell asleep over and over again, only getting interrupted by my alarm. When I finally got up, I still wanted to sleep, but for once this week, I didn't feel as tired. I quickly made my breakfast, replied to an email about the Dashcon 2 volunteer form I filled out back in September (an apology for not getting back to me until now, but a promise that I would get priority on the new form), and wrote a bit of bloghan. I stepped outside to pick up my small order of groceries, and it started raining heavy very suddenly when I was about halfway through. I made a quick lunch and cleaned the gunk out of my air fryer, then grinded the skip tags collection in 'Balatro,' and did laundry. All this, just to avoid doing the assignment, but soon I had no choice. I really don't want to do this assignment. But I know that I'm going to have to be the one that puts in a lot of effort, and I'll never have to work with these people again. After dinner, grinding out that assignment keeps me up well into the night, and it's something I feel quite a lot on Sunday. Like yesterday, I had a hard time getting out of bed, but at least this time I didn't spend an extra hour or so. After a big breakfast, I can face the day... and by face the day I mean sit myself down and try to write. It's a rainy day today, so I don't feel so bad about not having gone out this weekend, but I really just can't afford to spend my time like that right now. Now this would be a fine argument to make... if I didn't give into temptation and grind out 'Balatro' multiple times through the day until I beat red deck's orange stake. I really need to do something about this 'Balatro' addiction that's forming. Beating the orange stake did make it cool down for a bit though, and I managed to get quite a lot written. Still not nearly close to finishing, but I think I can have it all ready for the deadline. My work and cardplay stretched late into the night, and I made dinner early so that I could have a little extra time to release this bloghan. The gentle rain of the morning had turned into a thunderstorm (with the lightning strikes apparently very close by!), but I really underestimated the walls and the door of my place, since I could barely hear how hard it was raining. Once I had bloghan all done, it was back to my assignment, closing out my weekend on a pretty boring and tiring note. I should've worked harder. I should've done more. I should've started earlier, done more at work and done less at home. I'm tired, and I'm also so tired of myself. I know I've already said so many times that I've got way too many "if only-s" in me, but - if only, if only! If only I was just a little stronger, a little more resilient, just a little better in every way. But unfortunately, I'm still me. I don't think I can not be me.
I guess there's a different question to ask then. How do I make up for the fact that it's me?
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans (can you guess how many of them I didn't do? It's more than you think!):
- Team assignment: why didn't I START SOONER?!?!! but I did start I guess
- 'Jeopardy!' board: finished and tested!
- Door: no progress
- Suction cup and sheet protector scheme: Still sitting on my side table, didn't put them up. At least this time I only showered once on Sunday
- 'Homestuck': Sorry John, not this week either either either
- D&D: no need for plans! we're in a calm belt where we can improv our way through effectively
- Japanese phone number: Thank you, FRIEND!! for letting me use it; we'll see if I can be no. 10 in person (probably not though...)
- Red deck white stake: uhhhhhhh I forgot that this was my goal and went all the way up to orange stake (1 away from the final stake of red deck).
This week, I'm setting the expectations low: I just need to finish that assignment. Nothing else matters. I don't know how many dinners I'll need to skip, or how much typing on my phone I'll have to do at work, but there's no excuse anymore for what I've become. Once it's done though, red deck gold stake in 'Balatro'!!! Agh! Forgive me this my virtue (of putting my all into things that don't matter).
Song of the week
'Dreams of an Absolution' (https://youtu.be/-DwfHOWovCQ) from 'Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)' is the song of the week. "Absolution" means forgiveness, a "formal release from guilt." I could really use that right now, just over being me. Best I can get is wondering how it could ever happen. Every night, I can't get away from myself. Every night, what I am lives with me. Every night, I still lay awake, just for a bit. Every night. Every night. Asleep, I dream. Awake, I dream. Yet none of the absolution I receive in dreams is ever real, is it? So I continue, to dream. I'm sure you can tell of what.
Until next time
Can I take it all back? I know I can't, but can I anyways? This week, last week's "Until next time," all of it? How much longer do I have to go through all this? All I am? Hmm...... it's gotten quite late. Maybe I should work on something else. See you later.
- bubbler