I listened to Big Thief’s newest album, Double Infinity, and more or less liked it. I don’t think it was anything stellar, but I’m also not the type of person who can accurately break down what a band is doing sonically. Instead, it just raised a lot of wistful thoughts in me, or melancholic thoughts in me.

When I was listening to this song, I was thinking a lot about the type of person I am in a relationship, and maybe the type of person I wish I were or wish I could have been. I, for a long time, have had this sort of secret wish to be loved in this sort of poetic and profound way. It’s a secret wish because it’s not really fair to expect your non-poetic partners to suddenly express their very real love for you poetically and profoundly. Not everyone experiences the world that way, but that doesn’t mean they don’t experience you that way, even if they’re not capable of experiencing it.

Then, I started thinking about my part in that equation, and wondering if I ever expressed my love to someone poetically and profoundly. Which, like, yeah, I have, over and over again. It kind of hit me hard to think that maybe I had never considered that I express my love that way, that rather than wanting a partner to do that, I’m actually just the partner who does that.

I’ve been waiting for soooo long for this to come out, and played it so much that I had roguelike dreams. After beating Chronos twice, I took a break from it to focus on playing Final Fantasy Tactics instead.

The world is pretty scary lately. At least the American experience is scary. There are two parts to it: the general politics of authoritarianism that are slowly rising all around us, and the pressing passage of time that reshapes your desires, morphing them into new and difficult feelings.

Zach and I have talked a lot about how to have an adult relationship or what an adult relationship looks like. We’re trying to think of the life we want to build together: both the good parts and the bad. It’s strange to love someone for 5+ years. At least it is for me. When I was going to therapy, my therapist would ask me what I valued most about Zach, and I always struggled to articulate it clearly. But the line of “You reminded me of everything beautiful and true” seems to fit pretty nicely.

I’ve never played this before, but (as far as I know) 2/3rds of my partners have recommended it to me. I love every part of it, but it’s so fucking hard! It doesn’t help that they don’t explain that you can grind for EXP on the map, so I was throwing myself into the like 4th battle, wondering why I was losing every single time.

My 10-week writing course is officially over, and it was pretty good. I accomplished my main goal: write a new complete short story, which is something I haven’t done since college.

Realistically, I’ve mostly written complete short stories when I’ve felt intense moments of anxiety or depression or other emotions. As a result, they end up being way more autobiographical than I want. My goal for this class was specifically to not rely on the crutch of some manic episode to catapult my writing to completion. Truthfully, I’ve always been sort of afraid that my writing is intrinsically linked to my depression and that, by fixing (or handling) my depression, I wouldn’t be able to tap into the depth of emotion I needed to write something compelling.

So it helped that I was able to write this without that sword hanging over my head. Instead, I gave myself a goal, followed a structure, and wrote weekly with a purpose. And, I’m proud of the results. I only mentioned one past autobiographical point: the main character waking up to a room full of German shepherds in his past. It was a good meaning, and it felt real for the character to have experienced that sort of pack mentality. Plus, I think you should probably leave a little of yourself in every piece of work.

I don’t really care what people say about it. This season is boring as hell. I understand that this is a series and a season about all of the characters’ individual struggles against their selves. I get that everyone is fighting their traumas and trying to be the type of person they want to be: a hero. But, plot and structure-wise, nothing happens for like five episodes!

Seriously, the first half of the season is just the characters going back and forth from ARGUS HQ and Peacemaker’s house!

It took me a long while to start actually watching this. I had to run out of other shows first before starting this one. One note I’ll give is that it’s funny to watch The Gilded Age and then watch Downton Abbey. In the US show, the characters are all best friends with their employers, and in the British show, most of them actually get to express their hatred for their employers.