Heyo Stupid O'Clock Ho!

Well well well... it's stupid o'clock. Has it really been this long since a stupid o'clock post?

I don't know... you tell me.

We are way past the halfway mark of 2022, and are rapidly heading towards its end and eventual start of 2023. I'm not really the type to do a mid-year review of the goings-on, but a stupid o'clock post has little holds barred.

Anyway, let's go back to some old topics: writing as catharsis.

I enjoy writing. Some see writing as a creative outlet, but I find that writing serves its purpose as a means for me to do a mental purge. Anything, be they related to work or personal issues, once committed to the metaphorical paper, becomes something that I have removed from the immediate working memory of my mind. Because of this phenomenon, I have a tendency to take indexing of my written items a little more seriously than most---if I do not index something, it will be lost to the ages.

Fiction is a little bit different in that there is an attempt to perform a reframing of something that I had experienced/read about into a situation where that said experience (vicarious or otherwise) can be somehow applied, while retaining the overall make-believe nature that is demanded of fictional works.

Strangely though, I find that I am preferring prose over poetry these days. Not sure why. Maybe it is connected to the whole lowered affect that I have about things? Poems have a tendency to relate more strongly towards that of song/music, and are usually powered/inspired by emotive moments.

These days, the only emotion I feel is just... is ``tired'' an emotion? Maybe the closest word is ``ennui'', though that ``dissatisfaction'' bit seems to be less apt in describing my true inner state. I want to claim that I am at peace with the world, but that isn't right---I still get riled up by some of the more blatant but obviously stupid things that I observe. Thoughts of death have come by at a much reduced frequency now, and I suspect that part of it is due to me being ``tricked'' into having responsibilities in the form of holding a job.

Speaking of jobs, hiring of extra help is always painful. Let's see what God wills for us. Many strange things are afoot, and I am not a liberty to discuss them anywhere. Needless to say, I am still preparing for the worst case scenario of having to tank everything, and that over-sized task is daunting, to say the least. If it does reach that point, there is a pretty large chance that I will just leave my current role when things go beyond what I can comfortably bear.

Let's hope it doesn't get to that point.

Emotions... I had an epiphany recently. I started cutting off more people whom I think are better to leave out of whatever is left of my sad life. Most of them, I've not spoken to in a decade; their lives have diverged greatly from mine, and being sober enough to realise that apart from that one very forced meet up, neither they nor I have bothered to keep in contact.

So I just felt it best to cut them off. They don't need to know what I am doing, and I don't care about how their children are growing up.

Then there are those who are loosely acquainted to me only through her. It's her social circle, not mine---without her as a catalyst, any relationship that I might have with them will not stand up to anything. No need to let them worry about any potential awkwardness---I didn't exist in their lives before she introduced them, and even after introduction I played little to no part in their lives thereafter.

So I just felt it best to cut them off. It's not like they would care about me anyway.

I picked up my dizi and played a little on it today. It was nothing serious, just a little noodling on a beidadi that required stretching of the fingers, even for someone like me. I guess that's an improvement over the whole sentiment of quitting music altogether. I did sort through my overly thick ``practice'' music folder to reduce its weight through careful selection of pieces that I wanted to work on, so that's also a great restart.

I finally completed AI: The Somnium Files, not-so-accidentally 100-percenting it. The story was a little more complex than any of the Zero Escape games, and the later puzzles could get frustrating at times, but I like the character development for the most part. A fun game.

Will I start on AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES---nirvanA Initiative? Eh, maybe not so soon. I feel a little gamed-out on the adventure visual novel puzzle genre of games. I might try to complete A Hat in Time (not 100-percenting it for sure), and get back to What the Golf? (unsure if I want to 100-percent it), with splatterings of rogue-likes in between (I'm staring at you, Jupiter Hell, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, FTL, and Enter the Breach).

The weather for the past week has been unusually nice---lots of rain, not a lot of mugginess despite the humidity, and not a lot of crazy sunshine. Such weather conditions aren't likely to last anyway due to the whole convectional rain that SIN city has a tendency to undergo. Ah well.

I think that's enough of a brain dump for a stupid o'clock post. Till the next update then.