7 september 2025
Today's been a good day! Last night we all gathered and drank, and it was weird but funny.
Now I'm hanging out with my friend and her roommate. Overall I've had a fantastic weekend catching up with friends! I keep running into people around campus that remember me from when I went to college. It's so nice to be remembered <3
--- September 7th, 2025 ---
First of all, the thought that comes to mind is to say that I hope Blue is doing fine. I do understand the awkwardness of texting your ex after a while, and I also understand the apprehensiveness that comes with it as I am manifesting it too. But I do genuinely wish you the best, even if our paths have permanently diverged and there's a rift that neither of us would rather bridge over, lest we end up in the same place again.
Second of all: I just read pilosophos' feels post about town connections, general solitude in the presence of so many others, and the inability to have serendipitous interactions with others on ~town as one would in a real town. I agree with him on so many points, none more than the point of living in a metropolitan area and yet being devastatingly alone. I realize that ~town, for me, has represented a substitute for (and/or otherwise manifestation of) my desire to "run into" people: friends, acquaintances, anyone. And at that, I have been very successful. I rekindled friendships with new people and old people alike (finding out nebula was an old town acquaintance was a very pleasant surprise!), and I was able to share moments with them. But, yes, I do feel bad that they're miles away and I can only say hi when they're looking into the same scrying mirror I am, on the other end of bundles of optic fiber. The ability to find someone, ask what they're doing and ask if they want company while doing it doesn't really apply to online communities like ~town. We have mitigated this somewhat via VR gameplay sessions (which - I really like Walkabout Minigolf, it's a good analog to hanging out in person with the people you wanna just sit around and chew the rag with) but, again, that has to be a scheduled activity. No one wears their VR headset 24/7 or even 18/7 accounting for sleep :P
I'll update this and write more as I come up with it, for sure. I'm on a bus to Detroit now after spending some time in Cleveland visiting college friends. I had an excellent weekend and it taught me a lot, not least of which that I am valuable, remembered and a good addition to a friend group, stuff that my brain has notoriously struggled with. I even made some new friends on top of the ones I missed and visited.