IIIIII diddddd...literally nothing I said I would do yesterday. Instead I did a depression-spurned modded playthrough of one of my favorite Majesty scenarios (The Siege).

And then an equally depression-spurned TVTropes binge which led me with, genuinely, nearly 20 tabs I didn't have before, at the cost of finishing only one or two of the ones that I had before.

So, well, objectively speaking: bit of a failure there.

It wasn't exactly time poorly spent in my opinion though, because the time I spent still helped me a lot. It was reading the TVTropes page for The Defroster->every character page for My Next Life as a Villainness, which in many ways drew me in thanks to how it just...relates to me.

I would of course: love to be successful. All the ideas in my head, the world will be a lesser place for them not having been made. And for that I can only continue to apologize to everyone. I have so so many beautiful gorgeous ideas. And I genuinely cry knowing that they will never be seen by others. If I am lucky, yes, some will--but it is physically impossible for all of them to become real. There's not enough time in the world for that; when you make 2-3 new ideas a day and some ideas you forget critical details of, how could all of them come to the world? They can't so even IF I get the best case scenario of making my ideas real, it'll still only be some of them.

And for that, I need to apologize, not only to the people of this world for them not being able to see, to connect, with the ideas in my head, but also to the ideas in my head. Every character that I cannot bring to life, I cry for not having been able to do so because they are real. Their stories, their personalities, their interactions, they have genuine lives that I am the one and only person capable of telling. I am the one and only person who is capable of sharing their experiences to others and recording them and making them be seen, be experienced, for all of time.

So every time I don't do that, I have failed them. And it gives me great pain.

​But on the note of that great pain and the doom brought to others, back to why I needed the reading of the character pages for that series. It served as a good reminder of what I strive to be.

I will always hate myself for every perceived flaw, every perceived weakness, every perceived instance of having wronged others, every instance of having failed them. Every time I have someone that could be a friend, end up drifting away from me: I consider it a failure. I almost wrote a song about it yesterday in fact. (It'd have been called "The Lone Killer", basically Killer->Impostor->Impostor Syndrome and feeling alone. I was stopped by being short on time and by having positive reaffirmation that I desperately needed to hear.)

After all, as that not-written song would have said: it is easy to remember the wrongs, but hard to remember the rights. It is easy to see the good being gone, but hard to see the good that still is. Friendships require effort from both sides, and given that I put no effort into friendships, I am, arguably, more to blame for them not forming than anyone else.

Because how can someone really be my friend if the entirety of their friendship is just them showing up to help me? If I am just giving them nothing at all, obviously, the natural consequence of that is that over time, they just...gradually, do less and less. Because if I'm not maintaining the friendship, and I never do, then how could they when friendships are innately inherently draining?

But while I may not have any long-lasting success. Or any long-lasting friendships.

I still have a clear idea of what I really want.

I cannot stop hating myself for every instance of knowing I have caused harm, or even every instance of knowing "I could have done so much more to help than what I did". Every instance of apathy, every instance of thoughtlessness. Every time where I could have done something more supportive, but did not.

But I do have a goal in mind that I wish to continue to pursue.

I wish to live a long, happy, fulfilling life. I wish to spread kindness and empathy to the world. I despise myself, hate myself, for absolute failures on my part in these fields. Some quite recent, in fact. I had someone contact me about how I had hurt them and it made me realize how dangerously close I can be to falling into the worst part of my past self when I was, genuinely, a jerkass.

There was a time when I was a very nasty person.

So I am always, always, on guard for it, fearing the return of that part of me.

But while I have continued to fail.

I still wish to try.

Because it is, I believe, what I want the most in life now.

To live a long, happy, life where I give positivity and happiness to others.

I obviously don't want to place the happiness of others above myself--I know that's not healthy.

But I want to do everything in my power that is not detrimental to my own happiness to continue to spread that positivity to others, to be the beacon of light that the protagonist of that story is. I know I won't be able to succeed, because I just don't have the skills to maintain longterm relationships. But I still wish to do whatever I can.

​Anyway, I'm literally an hour late for bed because I'm a bit of a dumbass sometimes (another common trait) so will only be getting 5 hours of sleep, but for this blog? Worth it.

Trying to make excuses not to, trying to put it off.
This is, pretty obviously, not the blog about League. I can still try to make that later, though I have some slightly different thoughts there overall.

I admit, I don't know exactly where to begin with this.

Basically, this is something I've toyed around with blogging about before but never managed to form enough of a coherent thought on it and the more depressing aspects of it overwhelmed me anyway leading to my blogs being short ones where I noted I was feeling awful and couldn't blog, or something to that effect.

It does come from a bit of a morbid place; one of the things spurning on the urge for this blog was me thinking of "what if?" scenarios where I am about to die from diseases, and then more or less going, "why wait to be dieing to do that?".

I suppose I can start with this. I won't go into details to respect their privacy, but basically. My friend, who was my girlfriend for two and a half years, is dating the love of their life, and hearing about all the things their girlfriend does, it makes me realize how much of a failure I was as a girlfriend.

I definitely had the same love. My friend is never going to stop being the love of my life, painful as that is to me since I know I'll never be their girlfriend again. But what I did with the love, is where I more or less think the failure comes in--or rather. More or less. The lack of what I did, in that I didn't do anything. I never sent gifts. I never put real time and effort into figuring out a way to meet them in-person.

You might attribute that to differences in personality, of their current girlfriend just being that significantly different, but in many ways, from what I have heard, they have quite a number of similarities to me. They've done more to progress their relationship in less than two months, than I did in over two years.

On the one hand--that's amazing for them! That is awesome for them! That is really, really good, for the both of them. It is proof that the two of them were made for each other, more or less. They are really, really good for each other, they are better as a couple than I was as a couple with my friend. And because they are so good for each other, assuming that nothing catastrophic gets in the way of their relationship, I know that they will be tremendously happy together and that knowledge gives me a lot of happiness.

I do genuinely get happiness from seeing friends, especially this friend, happy. I want them, especially this friend, to be as happy as is humanly possible, and their current relationship gives them that more than I ever could, and I do genuinely think that is a good thing.

But, it does highlight my shortcomings. It does highlight all of the "what ifs", of things I could have done better, of things I could have done differently. Our relationship wouldn't have continued if I had done things better, if I had done things differently, mind you. The feelings they have are the feelings they have and the feelings they have are that their current girlfriend is the love of their life. Nothing I could've done differently would've done anything to change those feelings so they would still have ended up together regardless. (Which, again, I feel the need to reiterate--is overall a good thing! It sucks for me, but it is genuinely better for them and since it is genuinely better for them, is a good thing.)

So what I'm more or less getting at here, is. This is not regret of "if I did things differently, maybe we'd still be together".
No, this is more regret of, "seeing what their current girlfriend has done for them, it makes me realize what I missed out on", more or less.
I could have done so much better for them.
And I didn't--and as a result, I just feel like in comparison, I am a failure compared to what I could've done.

Basically, every time I hear what my friend's current girlfriend has done for them, I realize, it's something I didn't do for them when I was their girlfriend, which I could've very very very easily have done, but I didn't. I didn't even think of most of those sorts of things. I had the love, but I did almost nothing with it.

There were times where I considered doing more. But 'considered' isn't actually doing, and even those things I considered pale in comparison to what their current girlfriend actually has done.

And overall.

I just feel like.

Seeing the current relationship makes me realize why I suck.
I feel like a coward. Too scared to do anything. I feel like a failure. Not as a girlfriend, mind you, but more as a person, with the lens of my time as my friend's girlfriend just as a way of exposing the underlying fault I have as a person, if that makes sense.

To put it another way--I don't think I was actually a failure of a girlfriend and I doubt my friend would think I was, either. But I do think I was, and still am, a bit of a failure as a person, and it is realizing that I didn't really succeed as a girlfriend which helped expose this. (Again, to reiterate, nothing would've stopped the breakup; even if I had succeeded as a girlfriend, feelings be feelings be what they are. But that doesn't stop me from lamenting the lost opportunities that have passed me by, things that we could've done while girlfriends which we can't do as friends. I could've done so, so much more than what I did, but I didn't. And that's a failure on my part.)

Like I said.
This blog is really, really hard to compose properly.
I'm still not sure my thoughts, feelings, are being properly conveyed. I'm worried that they aren't. That the wrong message is being sent.
I feel like the part about thinking their current relationship is nothing but positive, is clear enough; I feel like the part about me knowing nothing would've stopped them from entering into their current relationship, is maybe clear enough, and as per above, that this is a good thing.

But I'm not sure I'm really getting my point across.
That I feel like looking back.
If I were less incompetent as a person, then on both ends, there would be more good memories from the relationship. More for them, more for me. (There's plenty of good memories, mind you. But I mean, so so much more than what I gave. To reiterate, their current girlfriend has given them higher-quality memories in two months, than I did in two years. And what I mean is, if I had been a better person, if I had thought to do more, then we'd have had much more, I guess is what I mean. I still feel like this is poor wording to get at the concept.)

I identified the main problem, at least I hope so. It's that I was way, way, way too passive. Just as a person. And I am still way, way, way too passive. I've more or less, just been...waiting and waiting, rather than controlling, planning. I feel like I am pathetic, that I am a coward, held back by my fears (no matter how justified or not they may be), always held back by an endless number of excuses, usually procrastinating endlessly.

Those things weren't specific to my relationship, but realizing what a better girlfriend I'd have been if not for those things is what I am getting at, basically. That's what I mean. By seeing the current relationship my friend has, it revealed to me that as a person, I am passive, a coward, too timid, too afraid, making excuses (I made so many trying to avoid this blog!), always endlessly procrastinating.

Lamenting the "what if I had those qualities" of the past for what that'd have meant, doesn't do me much good though. (It is what made me think of this blog in the first place, in tandem with the bucket list, but it is not productive to dwell on.)

But what it does give, more or less.
Is motivation.
It is reflecting on that which lets me see. "Bree, you didn't have those good qualities back then, and you have all these regrets now as a consequence...so why not make the changes now, so you don't have them in the future?", more or less.

Realizing a fault I had in the past which made life less rewarding than it could've been if not for the fault, basically. Serves as motivation to move forward in life trying to fix the fault, so that in the future I won't have regrets due to the fault. That with the fault fixed, I have no further regrets from the fault. (The regrets from, in hindsight, realizing I had the fault and what would've been better if not for it, will never go away, but having fixed it helps a lot.)

This fault will be very, very, very hard for me to fix.
It won't be an overnight improvement.
I will have to fight every. single. step. of the way to put it down--and worsening it is that the fault will fight back at every single stage.

Do you think having fears combined with excuses combined with procrastination, is a combination which lends itself to trying to correct itself? No, it's a combo which tries to reinforce itself, and every time I will be trying to push those traits away from myself, they will push hard in resistance.

I am always afraid. I am always a procrastinator. I always make excuses. I am so good, such a natural, at them. And every time in the past that I have tried to fight back, they have managed to reinforce one another as to keep me passive, keep me stable, keep me unchanging, keep me immobile, keep me rooted down, grounded, stuck, in place, not moving forward for stupid fear of being catapulted back.

In fear of losing it all, in fear of losing my life, I have lost (out on) things I easily could have not lost (out on) if I was less afraid, if I didn't put them off, if I didn't talk my way into taking the path of least resistance. Which is precisely why this is so. damn. hard. It is the path of least resistance to be passive. It is the path of least resistance to do nothing. It is the path of least resistance to do as little as is humanly possible and rely on others.

I am not happy with that.
Mind you, nothing really makes me happy right now, depression does that to you, but I am dissatisfied with the idea that I am not going to have any progress in my life.

I'm not going to proclaim something along the lines of. "That changes now!". Or "that won't happen anymore". Of overnight success, of overnight suddenly becoming somehow, mystically, magically, on track.

Like--I don't even know what I'm going to do yet, specifically, to get out of this funk. I have some very loose ideas (see below) which are progress, if I work on them, if I progress on them, but like. I don't have a plan here. I kinda wish I had one because I think it'd help me a lot, but one of the excuses I made for not trying this before was precisely that, not having a plan.

So screw a plan, I'm still going to try.

It's not much of an immediate change--but an eventual one? I am setting an absolute, hardest of hard, absolute LATEST deadline of January 23rd, 2023, for coming out as a girl publicly in real life. Everyone online has known for over six years. I don't want it to be over ten. More than that, I don't want to reach thirty years old and still be trapped in the living hell of my current life.

And to reiterate this--that's the latest point. Latest. As in. "No matter what. No excuses. Nothing. No amount of fear. No amount of backing out. No amount of cowardice, second thoughts, hesitation. No matter how awkward it will be, and it will be awkward, come out, period, end of discussion." That'll be very very tough to do, but I refuse to let myself not do it.

Preferably, I move that deadline up. Within a year, for instance. But this is a date which I felt was a good starter, because it gives plenty of time for my fatass of a dad's poor health habits to inevitably kill himself (after which I could immediately come out), while ensuring I don't wait 20 years for something to happen.

I am willing to wait two years to be myself. I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that it is very realistic that he could die in that time.
I am not willing to wait twenty years to be myself--while I feel like my dad's health is poor enough that he won't live that long, it is still a considerable chance that he could, especially if he (shock! gasp!) actually cleaned his habits up. (He won't, but if he did...)

So I am setting myself a decent deadline, so that I can actually hold myself accountable. I do have this more or less planned out. Day before, shopping for girl clothing, next day, wake up early to make the announcements publicly online on places where people in real life can see it, go to the Y and talk to them there, while there text my mom, come home with her, and face my family.

It is a plan which I can adjust closer to the time I do it.
I can do it at any time, too.

The main reason I'm not doing it sooner, I suppose.
Is.
I guess.
I want to exploit the safety for a bit longer.

I don't want to be passive with that safety.
But in a sense--I want to practice, so to speak, with that eventual outcome, by pushing myself now in other ways.

Granted, said practice could just be me failing, me not doing anything, in which case. Maybe I move the deadline up.

In fact, that actually sounds like a neat idea. I don't have any clue how to implement this. But a rule of more or less, "The more I fail to be less-passive now, the sooner I force the lack of passiveness". As in, the more I fail at my current endeavor, the more I push up the date of the coming out.

The less use I get out of my current life, the more I push towards changing my life.
Right now, I am not getting anything out of my current life--so if not for this being a change I'm making literally just today, I'd be pushing the deadline to be much much sooner.

Right now, my plan is to commit to trying to make something, screw the excuses.
I want to commit to making something.
Truly commit to it.
At work, I threw around two ideas. One being a webcomic as a safer/easier option.

The other was Phyrra and Cyrus.
I have made oh so MANY excuses to put off working on my pet project there. And some of them are probably valid. I don't have a wide enough voice range to voice every character so I would need voice actors, and I probably cannot animate things on my own (though I will be looking into that).

But a lot of the excuses, I just.
I'm sick of not doing what I want to do, because I have the thought of those things causing failure. I know it won't come out perfectly, but I want it to come out. I know that I could do this better with planning--but past a certain point, excessive planning which I can't complete, just...doesn't do me any good.

I have put it off, saying I need to plan more.
I have put it off, fearing that it'd fail.

I don't know how, exactly, I will manage to make it so that I don't.
But I am not going to succeed if I don't try and right now I'm not trying. Talk, no action.

I do have a very, very loose idea of maybe a way.
I have tools readily available at my disposal to help me.
I have had many many many times where I am watching streams and gone, "I want to watch this, but I want to do something else at the same time" where I was pseudo-bored--still invested in the stream and wanting to watch it, but wanting to do something in addition to the stream, and I did nothing or might as well have.

There's stupidly obvious things I could do.
I have boatloads of art supplies.
I have an endless supply of most things I would need to try, and if I am watching a stream I can open a tab to look at any artistic reference I want. I can draw.

Granted, yes. I have made a very strongly-standing excuse which I don't have a workaround on, not really anyway, of.
I can't scan my drawings into my desktop.
And even if I could--I don't have an art program beyond paint on the desktop.

But the thing is.
I don't need to put the art on the computer.

I just need to make the art, actually make it, stop talking about it, and do it, and then see where it takes me.

Do art while doing the stream. Concept art. Or storyboarding. Just. Working on it.

I have the tools. I have the skills, and if not, the ability to learn the skills. Like, one thing that I don't have is a video editing program or whatever would be needed to make the final version of Phyrra and Cyrus and even if I did I don't know how to use one--but these are things that a quick google search would fix.

I can literally solve one of those in less than thirty seconds, and the other can be found in the same amount of time (albeit, presumably, as a youtube video or something, taking time to watch, and practice, and such).

I made the excuse of not knowing it and it being something I won't be able to do.
Ignoring that it is something I could learn to do very easily.
And there's no excuse not to.
I've been lazy.
Not doing it when I could have.

I don't know what order I will be doing things.
I don't have a schedule, not a plan, not yet.
But I am getting started.

Because I feel like if I don't start trying to make something of my life.
There won't be anything in my life.
I was okay with not doing anything in my life when I felt like I could live a life of a nobody and be content--but I'm not happy with that anymore.
So why am I still doing what I was doing, when I was in that mindspace? Why am I still doing nothing, when doing nothing was a byproduct of a mindset that I am no longer in? Doing nothing was something I was fine with when doing nothing still allowed me to be happy, but right now I am not happy and doing nothing does nothing to make me happy.

I am sure I will invent a myriad of excuses in the future, so future self, screw you for being a self-sabotaging prick.
But right now.
I don't have those excuses.
So I am going to put in the work that I can.

It's actually been rather successful, but there's so. much. stuff. to do that it'll take me a while to get literally all of it done. I signed up for a secret santa event and today I finally started the project. It's...a little less than a third complete, but hey, before today, it was 0% complete! And I've still got five days to finish it, so if I work on it the next few days the same amount as today, should be done before the deadline.

I believe I caught up elsewhere on that site as well, for the most part. And in minecraft I knocked basically every single item off of my immediate to-do list. Some items will require a lot more resources to complete (eventually, I have the end goal of making the main pathway in my strip mine have smooth stone slabs as the path with railings on top and after I look at a tutorial on minecart railings, with the appropriate extras--this will take a lot; eventually, I have the end goal of making the main pathway in my strip mine have entirely stone brick surroundings, which will take a lot; eventually, I have the end goal of having every major point in my strip mine network be appropriately signed and marked by railings, which will take a ton of resources and time), so I still have those to do.

There was one project which I have the resources to do, I just need to spend time and pickaxe durability on actually doing, but which I didn't actually get done; another thing which I want to do is to stock up on emeralds which requires getting resources that the farmer in the nearby village will buy, which takes a ton of resources to get even close to a reasonable number of emeralds. (I think, for instance, it's something like 10 wheat for 1 emerald? And while I have a rather extensive wheat farm network, it aint extensive enough; I get like 2-3 stacks of 64 when ideally I'd get 9-10.)

Also, when I made my latest wheat farm I neglected to actually put the water into the central port so I need to stop being lazy and actually do that, but that's a small thing.

In TFT I completed a quest--I didn't really feel like playing TFT today (shocker! The girl who plays TFT nearly every day, actually had a day she didn't really want to? I know, right?), so the one game to complete the quest was all I did. (Surprisingly, it was a game where someone midgame stole my comp and I finished seventh as a direct consequence of them stealing my units. Incredibly tilting also was getting two Braums with giant's belts but for the whole game, not getting a single third Braum to make a T2 Braum with Warmogs. Incredibly tilting game where everything which could've gone wrong, did...and yet I didn't feel like playing another game? That never happens, I always feel like continuing until I get a game I'm satisfied with, but today I just...didn't want to play so completing the quest was satisfaction enough.)

​In League, I haven't played a match today yet so I still need my win of the day. And the ongoing event has three unfinished quests (which TFT games also count towards), which getting a win of the day helps with. There was also a new patch which went live, which was disappointing for TFT (remember when I said I was expecting the new lunar trait to either be nerfed or cause both electric and assassins to be nerfed? Yeah, well...Riot went with the latter rather than the former, and to add insult to injury, the lunar trait isn't live yet and won't be live this year from my understanding), and which vastly nerfed dragons and dragon souls in league.

Which, honestly, I am rather fine with. The only time I hold no accountability for drakes is when I'm a toplaner (where I'm instead accountable for rift), basically. (I mean that's not exactly true, toplaners can and do have an impact on drakes especially post-laning phase, but IN GENERAL, toplaners are mostly responsible for the top half of the map, not the bottom half. My friend if they are still into league at all could probably rant at me for my portrayal here and I'll just say, YES I KNOW, let me just talk it out a bit.)

WHAT I MEAN BY THIS, is.
I am a trash-tier player.
We almost never get drakes in games I play in, because I am meant to play a key part in securing them. Midlaner, botlaner, support, my job as any of them is to help out there, and that is something which I consistently fail to be anywhere remotely competent at helping with. If we go for a drake and come out behind, I am safely the one who bears the most blame. Yeah, maybe my teammates make mistakes as well, but their mistakes are compounded by my own and my own are usually worse than theirs.

So drakes being nerfed?

Helps me a lot because my team rarely if ever gets them due to my own incompetency, meaning the enemy team gets less from having secured them so easily.

So the patch helps me in league by virtue of me being the one who was getting more hard-crushed by drakes being secured. Which helps me play and will make me want to play more and which might mean my team flames me less often. 

Most of the catchup I need to do though is still videos. I did a fair amount...was it yesterday? It was either yesterday or Monday. But I need to do more today. I have at least six to watch, though probably no more than ten. Most of those videos average ~10 minutes each so that's about an hour minimum, though because one video is an average of 45 minutes (give or take 30, being as low as 15 and as high as an hour 15), that bumps my estimated total up to about two hours to get caught up there.

There's also still the art blog I want to make--I could make it now I guess, but while I have plenty of time to do so, this...is actually plenty long enough a blog for today? I mean, I can and have made blogs which were ridiculously long which switched subjects midway through and people probably end up missing the content as a consequence thinking it's entirely the one thing when it transitions to the other. (Trust me, I know this because it's happened to me; when searching my own blog for specific things, I had trouble finding them because I started reading an entry thinking it was the one thing, not realizing it transitioned into the actual thing I was looking for later.)

Heck, this blog itself while it is fairly coherent and mostly on the same sort of subject line (about my efforts to catch up on stuff with small quick updates) has already been like that a little, having mentions of things which would themselves normally be individual blog entries. So I don't really want to blog about it now, even though I realize there's the very real chance that I never end up blogging about it because when that happens I often never do.

In the eventual future I'll also need a real-life thing of signing up for a training, but that's more of a thing which can be done last-minute and the closer to the due date the better actually, within reason. (Basically there's a training I need to do for my job but I want to take it as close to the expiration of the original as is possible.)

So basically.

I'm kinda sorta actually staying on top of things?

Not as much as I'd prefer.
Not as much as is ideal.
And I'm really not doing much in my life at all (among other things I'm not doing, not really spending time with my friend and hanging out to do things like watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, One Piece episodes, have me play the third Danganronpa, and such, though that is at least partially due to how busy they are right now and also how they have others to spend time with than just me so they have not only their own real life to try and stay on top of but also others in their life they try to stay in contact with other than just me which I recognize eats up their time).

So it's obviously not the maximum optimal situation.
But.
​It's pretty darn close?

I mentioned that I'm playing Danganronpa 3 now, right?
Yes well...I am, so.
That's what we did on our date!

But if you'll excuse me.
​Dead tired, need sleep.

This time, with me finally finally finally starting to play the third Danganronpa game. It's long-overdue. Finished the prologue, but that took a ton of time, soooo. Gotta sleep now, too tired.

Never know, could always be cancelled, but we're planning one for later tonight.
In the mean time.

I guess I can talk about other stuff.

Not much new in League, still haven't played it. I mean, I guess I could, I just prefer to do things which allow me to multitask and that wouldn't allow me to multitask. I've played TFT already today and don't feel like playing more.

I guess I can talk about Minecraft some. Have I done that on this blog before? Well, my girlfriend got me into Minecraft, you see.

Right now I am working on various things.

I need to expand my farms so that I have enough wheat to instantly get to 64. This is both so that I can trade wheat at a nearby village (I believe there's a farmer there at all times and I believe he buys wheat so...free emeralds if I get the farm going), and also so that I can make bunches of haybales. (I like to leave signal fires whenever I go exploring on the surface. Eats up a lot of wheat.)

I recently had an unfortunate incident where I dropped into lava and lost everything--I THINK that I've replenished everything I lost, but I had diamond equipment which means I used up like half my diamonds to restock my diamond equipment and right now I really really really want to get those diamonds back. (Still have 28, but I had like 48 before.)

My mine has NUMEROUS areas which need to be explored. My mine was designed to take a sharp right turn, because moving forward would've taken it into a fullblown cave system--I am TRYING to explore that fullblown cave system, see if I can torch it up until there's nothing left unlit, but right now there's one area of it which opens up into an unexplored area that I can't get to without mining some blocks and the main cave splits off into two areas I haven't explored because I ran out of torches. (I use torches liberally--mostly so that I can actually SEE in the caves. Like, I know that you only need torches every, what, 14 blocks or so? That they can be widely spaced and not have mobs spawn. But like. My vision is junky enough where I need torches every like 3, 4 blocks or else I can't see a bloody thing. In a cave system, I can see a little better, but not much. It's still like every 8 blocks or so I need torches to see everything.)

In my mine, there is a ravine--this ravine has a lot of things which could be explored, but most of them involve going through an ocean's worth of water. (No, really. Water which goes dozens of blocks down and up with no end in sight, in the middle of a cave system.) This ravine also has an area which goes into a second ravine, and that second ravine I haven't explored much at all.

I recently expanded my mine a lot--and in doing so, I discovered what is probably one big gigantic cave system but which could in theory just be like. 3, 4, 5, or so, different smaller cave systems. These cave systems are marked by polished stones of various kinds (mostly polished diorite), although I've also taken to using polished diorite to seal off lava/water dead ends to passageways I mine (where lava/water begin flowing in and I need to quickly seal off the mine).

But I mean. I have a fairly good idea where most of these are, especially when the polished stones are beneath rather than in front. There's like, probably, a good few dozen lava source blocks. Not flowing lava blocks. Source lava blocks. Oh and on that note--I need eight obsidian to finish my netherportal. I spent a lot of time setting up my netherportal area, but while I have half the obsidian I need to make a netherportal, the other half I don't have.

I need to spend a little time on creating concrete (my material of choice for the area) to finish the aesthetics of the netherportal area (it is like 98% done if using one material, but still has 2% I didn't change), and also mentally map out which parts I want to keep as polished diorite.

At some point, I have no clue HOW I could do it, but if it's possible, I want to make an aquarium. Where I have glass blocks surrounding water, with fish and other non-hostile mobs within. I also want to build something which has the obvious aesthetic of a sauna--I built something with the aesthetic of a beach; I built something which has the aesthetic of a hot tub; I built something which has the aesthetic of a pool. A sauna would be the next logical step. I know what I want to do (the pool basically has an offshoot area which goes into the inside of a mountain, the idea would be to just put the sauna inside there), but it'll take a ton of work especially since I'm not quite sure how precisely to execute it and it'll take a lot of resources, namely, smooth stone slabs, glass, lava, and materials for firepits. (My basic idea is to put lava inside the walls and underneath the floor, augmented by smoke signals, but I haven't figured out the block-by-block exact schematics yet.)

Another thing I want to do: figure out a way to explore on the surface and NOT manage to either loop around back to my house, or have my exploration path lead to the castle which is the house of someone else. (I've gone out on adventure three times. Twice, going in LITERALLY OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS, polar opposite, facing exactly 180 degrees traversing opposite ways on the terrain, I somehow pathed to the same castle. Once, when I tried a different angle, a third from the area, I ended up looping to my house.)

There's a bunch of things that I eventually want to work towards. There's a bunch of things that I want to eventually look up to see about implementing. I know that you can make some incredible things in minecraft, e.g. farms for resources that you normally can't farm for, or which are harder to farm for, or which are inconvenient to farm for, and so on and so forth.

I am not going to be amazing enough to make anything like that.

But like.

I want to make a ton of good things. Mostly. Stuff that you make once, then never use again; stuff you make/do for achievements; stuff which you try to see if it can work. But more than all of those. Things which I feel like making, to suit my aesthetical tastes. I've made stuff like a fountain, a water well, the aforementioned beach/pool/hot tub, stuff like that.

Things which whenever they strike my fancy, I make them. Mind you, I can only think of so many ideas without seeing others play and see what they do. (Visiting the castle/house in that sense isn't a total waste of time since in theory I could come up with new ideas from there--though currently, I can't think of anything I'd want to make, after visiting there.)

Like, I watched a stream where a person decided to make a combined mine/house, and went through the effort of figuring out how to grow trees underground. (Which is difficult--not impossible! But, difficult.) And used glass to make the underground trees look like a garden. I loved it--I didn't really think that glass would do much good for my farms, beit tree farms or actual farms, but that idea is the kind of idea which would inspire me.

Not to make a carbon copy of the idea (like I said, I strongly considered from that idea, adapting it to my farm for various foodstuff, even if I decided against it ultimately), but to get inspiration from the idea. Might also just browse the wiki on items and such, see what they build, see what effects they have, and from that get some inspirations. (For instance, one thing which I got inspired from the wiki was making artificial waterfalls which not only look aesthetically neat but also act as a mob defense because no mob can pass through them apparently.)

I mean, lots of this stuff sounds boring. It's not really boring to me, though the process is often tedious. Do you know how much wood I have to farm to pull these things off? Each project I undertake probably takes me like...a thousand wood total. Maybe much more, but I really don't think that's ever an overestimate.

Getting the materials is thus tedious because it's grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding.

But while the setup is tedious, the actual process never is. It's not boring for me, it's fun to be doing those things and kinda relaxing. I also get to multitask a ton when doing so, because I can do things other than minecraft, while also doing minecraft. 

Like, I know it sounds stupid, but who knew? In a game called Minecraft, when you're just relaxing by doing nothing but mining, it's actually...well. Relaxing. Soothing. Nice. Fun. It's actually annoying when something forces that to stop, rather than exciting. (This would be why my mine is probably gigantic compared to most people's mines. Because I mine to mine, rather than to uncover caves, rather than to uncover mineshafts, rather than to uncover adventures.)

Cutting wood can be similar, but is a little more tedious than mining. Mining, your main tedious things are making return trips with full inventory, what I call 'crosshatching' the strip mine, crafting more torches, and on rare occasions crafting more pickaxes. Those four things don't happen often.

Wood requires a little more micromanagement. Instead of just having one tool out at all times which you're always using, you need to switch between the ax for wood and anything else which doesn't have durability for the leaves; leaves take an annoyingly long time to break and the only way to do them quickly (that I know of) is shears which have durability ate up and give you a material less useful than the materials which would otherwise naturally drop. (Basically, shears drop leaves rather than apples/sticks/seeds, and shears run out faster than even a wooden ax does with junk durability. So you have to get rid of the leaves which block you from cutting wood, by spending time breaking each leaf in the way.)

Plus, you still have to drop your supplies off, and daylight running out means you need to sleep. (You can mine through the night since monsters can't spawn in the well-lit mine. You'd have to be brave to chop wood through the night, since monsters do spawn on the surface--I've lit the place up well enough where there's a 99.99% chance they shouldn't spawn due to the light, but I've been blown up by a creeper which spawned basically RIGHT next to my house, in a spot I THOUGHT was safe. So I always assume danger even if by all rights it should be safe.)

Still, both activities, mining and chopping wood, are still things which I get enjoyment out of by just doing casually.

Anyway.

This was a good timekiller.

Gonna go do something else now.

We're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Believe it or not--I've never seen it before.
Yes, really!
I've never seen it before!
I'd have loved to have seen it! My lack of seeing it wasn't out of any aversion to it, it's just that...it was never available to me in any way shape or form. I've always wanted to see it, I just never had the ability to see it.

I have read just about every single spoiler possible for the series due to TVTropes.
Mind you.
Read, does not equal, remember.
I do not remember most of them, but I have read them all.

So like. I in THEORY know almost everything there is to know about it--but nothing quite beats seeing the actual show in person and it is amazing. <3

​We've finished the first season and we'd do more if I didn't need to go to bed because so tired...

Which means bed!
I will quickly mention--I said Sanguine Blade would be OP if Riot didn't gut the item.
They nerfed it.
100 extra gold, and at all levels 20% less attack speed.
100 extra gold, not a real nerf.
20% less attack speed at all levels, a rather considerable hit to the earlygame spike--going from +40% attack speed to +20% is halving the earlygame power of the item, but does place it in BotRK territory. (BotRK is 25 I believe.) Lategame at 80% tho still means 30% more than any other item in the game. Not the double it was before, but still such a big lead that do I still think Sanguine Blade is a must buy in almost every game for an ad champ?

Yes, yes I do. This change takes it from a 99% must buy, to like...a 95% must buy. Yeah there's now more situations where it's not as good to buy but this nerf to it is such a small nerf that it's still ridiculously OP as an item. This wasn't gutting the item and the only way to keep it from being OP is to GUT the item, so. Still OP, we'll have to see if Riot realizes their nerf wasn't enough of one.

...But that wasn't my fault. My internet went down before I could make one.
Still tho.
You'd think I'd deliver on a lengthy blog today to compensate.

I won't say 'I got nuthin'', because. Well. Actually. I do have a rather lengthy blog entry I want to make. And knowing me. That means it never gets made. But I don't really have the mental faculties to make it right now because I'm pretty dead tired right now. I had a lovely evening which I spent on a date with my girlfriend, and while I admit it was one I occasionally made some minor multitasking for, I was mostly intent on watching my girlfriend. Not on doing other things, e.g. blogging.

I like blogging. I hate missing blogging. I hate blog dodges. I hate empty entries. I hate not delivering. But frankly. If I had to choose between writing a lengthy entry on a blog or spending devout time with my girlfriend I am choosing my girlfriend every single time. (I mean, maybe I'll write a blog entry concurrently to a date...but IF I do so, I'll be doing so while informing them of what I am doing. After all, as pretty much my only reader, my girlfriend would actually take interest in that! Sometimes. My point is. While blogging and girlfriend time are not mutually exclusive, because I can write blogs when not spending time with my girlfriend and there are some windows where I can write and so on and so forth...if I have to pick and choose, and tonight was such a night...I'm gonna choose my girlfriend. A blog's just...not worth it in the long-run.)

I had a really, really, really lengthy blog planned for today. As much about family stuff as I could think of (the guy who fell is fine, by the way, thankfully enough), but also a lengthy blog about a couple of things I've been toying around with. As a reminder, we leave tomorrow. We're supposed to be gone by 10 local time (which is 8 my time), which means being clear before then which means eating breakfast, packing, and leaving before then. Probably in six or so hours by my guess.

I wanted to stay up for like four of said hours, so I thought I had the time to blog here--even when going on the best date with my girlfriend as is humanly possible given the circumstances (no sound available to me). But while I want to sleep as much as is humanly possible on the trip tomorrow...I'm not sure I can pull it off. I'm fighting off the urge to sleep as is, and have been since before midnight.

Kinda sucks. I feel like in spite of not having set my watch to local time (I've deliberately kept it at my time). In spite of going to bed after midnight my time (which is after 2 am local time) and waking up as late as was humanly practical. That somehow, in spite of me taking every precaution against it. My body has acclimated to the new timezone and is treating this as 2:45 instead of 12:45.

That, or being sick leads to tiredness and tiredness leads to continued sickness and sickness leads to more tiredness...

Butstill. I shouldn't be falling asleep so easily so early. And yet here I am, struggling to stay awake.

Oh well.

Won't get the blog I wanted to give and given my track record, doubt I ever will. But it's the thought which counts.