two steps forward, one step back~

(voluntarily, briefly) went back into the office this past Wednesday for the first time since last summer to meet with my intern .... oh that was so healing to see everyone. (org's not quite 'everyone can be 100% remote from this point on' but HQ shrunk to half of its actual floor space so, uh, we're also *all* not required back in the office from this point on because we literally can't fit lol.) 

my favorite coffee shop is apparently closing next week(!); my regulars there and I had a Moment there where we just hugged and switched numbers. no tears were shed but it was a real close thing. ;a;

anyway also finally printed a shitload of zines there and had necessary conversations with $art_director so overall a very good day that day. :)

Some other life updates...

• continuing my zelda:tp run and only had to use a walkthrough twice for the water temple, :P arbiter's grounds was always my favorite one of that game and I don't remember the other temples being nearly as frustrating, but it's hilarious and humbling realizing my teen self could run in circles around me in a zelda marathon. (was i just that bored? boneheadedly dedicated? smarter?) 
• literal jaw drop at finding jeffrey catherine jones' artwork today. it gives me true joy to see southern trans/(queer) artists not from the usual coastal enclaves (southern queers, in my very subjective opinion, have something special about their art), and just fuck, those colors, the sublime sensual inky quality ... there's a sense of the beautiful taboo that i'm always drawn to there.
• don't want to jinx it but may have found a for-real life hack for my to-do list ... I've always struggled with actually committing to a working to-do list, weirdly enough even when i've spent many years successfully completing goodreads challenges and 'draw a thing for 365 days of the year' for the last years now. the tl;dr is actually tallying up all the "tasks" done every 2-3 days and have it be a cumulative deal? i'll likely share it in a month or two if it keeps working.
• I have this weird feeling sometimes where i feel extremely distant from twitter/tumblr cultures (and I don't miss the rat race and realizing how much time was spent on senselessness) - but. there's this strange feeling of ... still searching for what made pre 00's life fun in terms of rituals I could do or establish as an adult? what were the things I did in those slim hours after school that Worked? was it having just two school friends who I saw on a daily basis in meatspace? was it genuinely just how fun spending just 30 minutes on an old gamecube game could be, instead of being tortured about "how productive have i been" today and ending up mindlessly scrolling through inoreader anyway? (like not that the game itself is the answer, but just having a 'we are going to have fun with this thing away from the internet screen' as an explicit goal) was it listening to more music (dawning realization that the less happy I am the less I listen to my oddball tracklist)?  work's actually okay mental-health wise (a blessing) and i'm not in dire straits like I was the second half of 2019, but i'm realizing that i gotta ... move some levers here and there to find how else I can improve this baseline of a very claustrophobic sort of daily ritual. it got set for survival reasons but it's not a healthy baseline.
• more positive spin on the last bit: made the spreadsheet of apartment/condos that would be remotely doable location/price wise, now it's time to go condo touring after the 4th. :v