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You wouldn't let it eat you wholе (WN29) 2025-08-19
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false week-notes/029

Doing

I'm backporting a bunch of content from my old blogs so I can finally stop maintaining WordPress blogs. Here are the posts that I've moved over:

Sorry for unintentional pings on my rss feed; also, be aware that a lot of these are very old (like, ten years) and don't necessarily reflect who I am as a person today! I'm trying to be better about preserving and sharing my writing, so I suppose that means I must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. Some of these pieces, while flawed, I am still fond of — particularly the Life is Strange one. I'm planning to do more and eventually close down the blog where they originally appeared (so I can stop maintaining a WordPress install).

I've continued my desk journey from last week, by which I mean I abandoned the Ergotron arm and ordered a Pixio PS1D instead. The Pixio arm feels cheaper in places, but the clamp is of reasonable size, and on the whole, it was leagues easier to set up than the Ergotron arm. The Ergotron comes pre-assembled, it's heavy, and you have to affix the monitors directly to the arms. The Pixio went together in pieces (with decent directions), which made it entirely feasible to do on one's own. You don't have to climb under your desk to clamp it down! There are detachable VESA plates so you can just slide your monitors right on! The clamp is a reasonable size! I'm still figuring out final positioning for the monitors themselves, but I'm really happy with how much it's cleaned up my desk setup.

Image showing a desk with monitors on an arm. It is very clean and cute.

This whole process was stressful, but the Pixio enabled me to use the steel plates I'd ordered, so I no longer have fears of my monitors crashing down on me one day. All's well that ends, I suppose.1

This week, I was on a podcast! I talked on The Worst Community Report with TK & co. about blogging and the indie web.2 Being on this makes me miss podcasting even more than I already had.

Over the weekend, Joe and I went to a wedding (fine3). On Sunday, a friend of mine and I started what we hope to be a weekly habit, which is an early morning long run. We did five miles today, and I think we want to work up to doing 10K distances (which I'm somewhat comfortable with, but this was only her second time going further than a 5K). Our pace is fairly slow, but I want to work on endurance more than pace — and we talk pretty much the whole time. I'm excited to have an accountability partner, as I haven't run much this summer, and to have scheduled time with her.4 I also went to a coworker's 40th birthday party (also fine). Mostly I'm just stressed about my college class, which starts tomorrow!

Reading

I haven't read much this week in terms of actual books, but I did feel challenged (in a good way) by "Stop Valorizing Introversion" on jackalope.city.

The response I hear, often, to this is: “Friendships shouldn’t be work!” Wrong. Anything worth having is work.

I wonder at this resistance to considering relationships worth the work. All of the strongest typical relationship types in United States society are characterized by work: The parents who dedicate their lives to raising a child, the domestic partnership and give-and-take of a spousal or domestic partnership arrangement, the best friend who always drives you to the airport, and even the necessary relationship of care you have with your pets. The work you put into the relationship is not the cost of the relationship. The work is the relationship.

I consider myself an introvert and it is hard to make friends as an adult, but I have more friends — and friends who I see often and make an effort to spend time with — now as an adult than I ever have in my life. I think, like with other kinds of work, it gets easier as you do it more.

Watching

Joe and I are almost done with Survivor: Caramoan, and we're keeping up with Austin Walker's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II Let's Play.

Playing

I'm still playing Fields of Mistria, although I have had a few mid-day game crashes this week. The game is in early access, so I can't complain too much, but it's the first time it's happened to me. It's frustrating to lose progress, but I suppose I should get into the habit of saving a few times throughout the day.5 I looked around the game's subreddit and it seems to be an issue for a lot of folks after the latest update, so maybe I just need to wait until they roll out a patch.

I also played a little bit more of Baldur's Gate 3. I'm still very frustrated with it and kind of want to just be done. It's a bummer because I was really in love with the game in Act I and parts of Act II. I was excited for Act III because actually reaching Baldur's Gate the place seemed thrilling — there are many story threads intersecting there! But practically, this means I'm walking ten feet into the city to trigger a scene for one companion's quest then switching in another companion for their scene. I'm still save-scumming constantly, which means I'm spending a hell of a lot of time staring at loading screens.

I enjoyed the combat in the game at one point, but I did the fight with Lorroakan this week and tried to cast Silence on him to stop Elemental Retort. For no explicable reason, that doesn't work — despite it being a spell that he says out loud. Maybe it's a bug or an oversight, but I never feel like the abilities and spells that negate or create conditions every work for me. It seems like most fights can be won by just brute-forcing. I don't want to do that, but when I try to be tactical and clever, it so rarely works out.

I know I should probably just take a break from the game and come back to it one day, but I know I'll forget what's happening in the story if I leave it for too long. I think I just need to finish it, but I'm not having fun while playing it.

Listening

I listened to SUCK UP ALL THE OXYGEN by Hutch Harris because I saw the cover on Bandcamp and thought it was funny. The album was fine but not for me. There was a time in my life when I probably would have been really into this, but it's not now.

I picked up my All We Know is Falling listen from last week, too.

  1. Never Let This Go - a nice build and pleasant to listen to, but it blends in with a lot of the rest of the album (yet fails to stand out).
  2. Whoa - I always loved this one; great energy that lets me overlook the silly lyrics.
  3. Conspiracy - forgettable
  4. Franklin - I was so surprised by how fond of this song I still am. It's sweet; the backing vocals are a bit distracting — I'd rather they were just Hayley, but I understand that they were going for a duet.
  5. My Heart - I was listening to a decent rip of this album but this song still somehow sounds like a super compressed 96kbps MP3. The screaming in this song is also so atonal — it feels like a studio note given what was "in" at the time.
  6. Oh Star - another forgettable one for me; I don't really like slow songs in general I think and especially not when Paramore does them.

I went back to fishmonger by underscores. I really love this album (still). I love just about every song on it, but "Del mar county fair (2008)" is hitting for me in particular lately.

Podcast-wise, I listened to the first episode of Leaving the Party, mostly while mowing my law. I don't think I'd ever come across Lovely Lady RPG in my normal travels — visual novels have never held appeal for me — so it's cool to have a show introduce me to games and a perspective that are not ordinarily in my milieu. I also really enjoyed this week's episode of Wavelengths, where Brendon Bigley and AJ Fillari talked about, well, talking. It was a great listen and, again, made me really want to go back to podcasting.

  1. I still have the Ergotron arm. I'm hoping to sell it locally on Facebook Marketplace to get some of my money back, so things aren't over just yet. ↩︎

  2. It feels very cool and meta to now talk about this on my blog. ↩︎

  3. I don't drink and I don't (generally) dance (are the two related? discuss), so weddings are a dull affair for me. ↩︎

  4. I genuinely adore this friend and love talking to her. ↩︎

  5. Mistria gives you this option; Stardew does not... but I've never had a mid-day crash in Stardew. ↩︎