So I just had my birthday. It was grand, as per usual, all my friends coming out of the woodwork and reminding me I'm loved and all that good stuff that's hard to feel internalized on a monday morning.

I get some fairly significant dopamine drops after big events these days. I didn't used to get an increase of depression and anxiety after hanging out with all my friends, but sometime during the lockdowns I guess the dopamine drip became a little less dependable.

So during what ended up becoming my birthday week, I ended up doing a lot of really fun things, but ultimately I still end up kinda laying around at the end reminding myself that good days will keep coming and the best is yet to come.

I hope that's true, anyway.

I've spent a lot of time lately just thinking. About the past, about the future. Missing people, like usual. I've spent my entire adult life missing something. For a while it was my hometown, and then it was my friends, and it just seemed to keep building up until it feels like I miss an entire reality that just isn't there anymore, and perhaps never will be again.

When the weather is changing like this though, I feel that old reality trying to creep in here and there: a stray beam of light that brings enough comfort that the moment in now is as good as the moment back then. It's difficult to explain, just sometimes for short periods of time life feels like I'm on the right page of an old story I'm happy to be in.

Last night I spent most of the evening listening to the rain and the thunder while playing a game that made me feel a kind of wistful melancholy that I think I feel pretty much all the time.

A few days ago I was reminded of one of my favorite games of all time, Shining Force. It's a turn based strategy game for the Sega Genesis originally released in 1992. I discovered it on the Sega Channel service in the mid 90s and fell in love with the charmingly depicted characters.

The game is extremely cliche, with its sequel leaning even harder into generic fantasy tropes. The art style is endearing, even if it is fairly plain, but the game never really had room for its many many many characters to have more than a couple lines of dialog.

I think that the game having little in the way of character content allowed for players to create headcanons in how the team worked together and has contributed to its longevity.

But I wasn't playing Shining Force last night, I was playing its remake: Shining Force the Resurrection of the Dark Dragon from 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. It updated the game with new graphics, fixed bugs, and lots and lots of additional character moments and story additions, without getting in the way of the largely blank slate that allows players to be charmed by the characters. It's everything a game remake should be, keeping the core of the game, and changing only things as they needed to be, while adding what players wished for.

It struck me as weirdly sad that I would be playing it now, I remember being excited for it to come out, yet when I did play it I could not really get into it. I understand now it was probably the depression, but at the time it felt like it wasn't exactly the same as it was in the 90s so it was a disappointment.

That is definitely not the case currently. I'm enjoying going through it again, and it feels a bit new again with all the improvements and additions. But it does sadden me a bit, to be playing this new and improved version of an old classic that itself is now an old classic gathering dust and mostly forgotten next to the original which has had many a rerelease while the remake is mostly ignored by Sega, who has a habit of forgetting any of its properties without hedgehogs in them.

It reminded me for a bit, just for a bit, about the rainy nights in my shitty moldy house growing up, playing Shining Force and agonizing over levelgrinding all my favorite characters while getting slaughtered by monster puppets in some psycho circus.

In other news, I feel like a steamroller in vampire larp, playing a character I am having a lot of fun with and having some success both in making an interesting story and securing petty political victories. Emphasis on petty.

When I started I didn't imagine myself ever being cool with playing the game over discord especially during not-game hours. I was annoyed by some people reaching out just to have short in character convos over text.

But now my dude can often be found in the discord channel representing the tunnels of the nosferatu, manically rambling about nos supremacy to their nonplussed companions.

I made a character that both allowed me to put to use some of my political education and have fun as a dark mysterious madman; it's helped me find a center in my brain.

Asking the question of who am I when the answer is for a silly character at make-believe can be extremely useful for finding out what we need from ourselves.

And I guess I am getting back into swing dancing. There's a group here that one of my closest friends has been bringing me to and it is actually a fairly lowkey thing that is helping with my current touch-starved lifestyle.

While I was living a half life in alcoholism, I got out of the habit of meeting people. A lot of that was the lockdowns, but I did allow myself to develop a lot of rustiness in my social skills and the search for human connection continues. I'm grateful that I meet a lot of nice people these days and that I am a lot more stable in my self.

My Mom is doing alright for once. I have to get her greencard renewed which is a little bit anxiety-inducing in the current climate. Some of the shingles on her roof were destroyed by some recent heavy wind, so I will have to repair that.

My back has had pains the last couple weeks, but my knee is finally free of pain it feels like. The back pain seems to slowly be getting better, but I find myself annoyed by and maybe a little worried about chronic pain.

I've been told I am getting a significant pay increase in the next few weeks. I hope that things will be smooth, and of course I pray for the most elusive thing of all: enough.

So yeah, between now and a year ago, my life is generally much better. I wonder if I will say the same a year hence.