Since the surgery I've had some ups and downs with my anxiety as you know. I saw my doctor on Friday for my annual physical and I'm in perfect health at a glance. Still waiting on bloodwork to come back, but generally speaking I'm living more or less healthily and have been for a while it seems.

Afterwards I went out with my bestie and pigged out on some sushi at this cute little conveyor belt place up by the mall, then we did the mallrat thing for a bit. Fucked around on the claw machines, got myself some prizes.

Went to a goth night that was more on the kink/fetish side, saw some folks I knew, had a really good conversation with my hair stylist and their partner. Learned the word "limerence" from them. Very useful word in my world.

Spent the next morning at a local arts fest with my bestie again. There's a lot of those in this area. I found someone who made some really cool barbarian art, which you know is my jam.

Spent the afternoon with a friend making Gundam models and talking about disastrous dates we've had. Finished constructing my Gundam after several months of going at it a little at a time. Next I apply the panel lining which I've never done before but I hear can be meditative.

Went to another goth night, one of the regular ones. Met a few cute people, had some lovely conversations. Met some folks who were interested in LARP and one knows classic horror lit better than I do. I don't encounter that very often.

Woke up on Sunday to some melancholy though. Which makes sense, a couple days of constant fun was just begging for a dopamine drop. Went for a long run, I can do 3 miles again without much issue. I'd kinda given up on ever being able to do that again, but it suddenly came back to me when I wasn't noticing.

Took my Mom out, she wasn't super unbearable but I found myself quickly bleeding patience. Laid down and slept around 7pm after a minimum of miniature work.

Scheduled some guitar lessons. I've hit a wall with my self-learning and I can't figure out how to advance. I've decided to just get some help to move forward if I ever want to be able to thrash even in a shitty venue.

Hurt my shoulder a couple weeks back while doing bench presses. Got a little antsy it might've been serious but the doc said it was just a little sore and some ibuprofen and a few weeks off of it and it'll be good as new. It's already feeling better.

Started boxing. It's a majorly male space which makes me a tad uncomfortable but folks there seem cool and I'm not too far behind the guys who are roughly half my age. Learning to scrap has been a workout the likes of which I've never had before. Glad I'm in such good shape, couldn't imagine how I'd do this in other times of my life.

Miniature work has continued. Doing the second half of the Khorne army. Have this really cool idea for a new general that's going to utilize some parts I've had sitting around for a while that I've been saving for a very special project. Hope I am up to it, 'cause it'll actually require some technical skill, though I'm better with sculpting now than I used to be so a little faith in myself might be called for.

I'm def not in the prime headspace I usually am at this time of the year. A little more tired than I expected to be, a little bogged down by depression than I've been in a while. But still, there's more things to try out.

Been thinking about pinball a lot. My Dad was really good at pinball when I was a kid, frequently getting the high score on Midway's World Cup Soccer (1994). I spent some time in middle school mastering Willaims' Medieval Madness (1997) and got pretty close to sieging all six castles before I moved to Stockton.

Now and again I try pinball again. If you have decent eye and hand coordination, the trick is all in learning how to consistently hit the high scores and fulfill the goals of the game.

Still, the barcade near my house has a few machines, but none of the ones I grew up with. They've got the new Black Knight but that's a difficult one for me. And it's a buck per game these days which is a tad pricey for me. So I've been looking into Visual Pinball, which is an open source project that recreates many classic games as close to accurately as possible on the computer. I've heard it can be useful for learning the layout of certain machines.

Of course I hesitate because I've already got a large computer project on my backburner. I've gotta convert my heavy duty desktop computer from Windows 10 to Ubuntu. And that means backing up all my old pics and music and etc and that's already asking me for a lot.

I suppose I could probably find some time for it between everything else. I ordered some undead minis to be able to do my next miniature project so long as my interest holds out. LARP has been a fun thing, my dude's been demonstrating his incredible ability to survive political fallouts repeatedly and it does remind me that I probably would have done fine if I had gone into the real thing, even though I certainly would not want to be under that kind of stress constantly.

My boss is out this week, so I've got the server room to myself. Might catch up on my napping. Gotta clean my workbench though, it's absolutely become more cluttered than I like.

This week I hit an open mic night run by a friend. Caitlin listened to me do the one song I can do on the guitar and suggested I just go for it. It's a little scary, so I've gotta do it, y'know?

I wonder when I'll face my others fears. I feel like the version of myself that wasted away so many of my days in Tucson, waiting for the past to somehow catch up with my present.

But I'm not that foolish anymore. The way forward is the way forward. New things and new risks and new hopes are the only way I can catch that elusive rabbit known as happiness.

But I do think a few nights of extra sleep are in order. It was a busy morningbut it's slowed down so I might string some chairs together and catch some light z's in this corporate mausoleum I'm stuck in.