sayajay.net

During the summer of my second year of college, I had started my first real-ish part-time job, and I was working full time. I had to get up early and sleep early. I was living in Oakland at the time, so it took about an hour to get there.

So each day, I'd get up at 6 am to arrive at work around 8-ish. After working the full day, I'd get home probably around 6:30ish. I'd have dinner, and then I'd just play Age of Empires on PC for 3 hours, and go to sleep around 10ish.

It was a simple schedule, and the days went by insanely quickly. I didn't have time to dawdle, much less do anything else.

This last week was kind of like that. Except with fewer video games, and more anxiety. Yay.

Some (odd) highlights of my week past:

• no photos taken. So, this last week is a black hole in which literally nothing happened.
• more dawdling noted. I've been back onto Reddit and Instagram again. I need to put a stop to this nonsense.
• work meeting anxiety. I guess the "highlight" of this week, is that I took part in a work meeting with a client, for the first time in what seems like ages.

I hate meetings. For a few reasons:

• I do not consider meetings work. As an engineer, anything that's not programming is generally just busy-work that I wish would be taken care of by someone else.
• I have some personal anxiety about talking to people I don't know. What's funny is that when I was younger, I didn't use to be this way. I was much more confident about meeting people, but I seem to have since withdrawn into myself. I have some ideas about why this could be the case, but I don't think a few sentences in a blog post is going to elucidate all that for me right now.
• To best honest, I think I'm just afraid of people thinking I'm not qualified for my job. Imposter syndrome has been a problem with me in the past. So whenever I'm in a good situation (like my current work situation - usually, at least), I question whether I "deserve" this. And then I become anxious in the face of anything that reveals that I'm generally unqualified.

Logically, I think I understand in these situations. But the anxiety still makes me.... "queasy", I guess is the right word.

I wonder if I should see my doctor about that. Hmm.

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I feel like I should write about something more than my anxiety. The goings-on of my life recently? There isn't much going on, being stuck indoors for the past few months.

I did write about my obsession with Oxygen Not Included. I've put it aside since then, as I can't seem to get to the mid-game in a good state. I think I could, but it's terribly time-consuming.

In the meantime, I started looking over the Assassin's Creed game series, which I used to love to death. Used to. Ever since the abomination of Assassin's Creed III, I haven't returned to the series. Things I didn't like about Assassin's Creed III:

• terrible framerate. I played the PS3 version. They were pushing 3D mode back then, so I dunno if that had anything to do with the lack of optimization.
• broken stealth systems. The exact place I stopped, I don't recall. I remember trying to hide in some bushes, and then immediately being spotted by nearby soldiers after walking next to a tree. I tried that segment multiple times, and I kept on getting spotted over and over again. It frustrated me, and I just pseudo-rage-quit, and I never returned to it.

Naturally, these are all vague remembrances, as I played this on launch day. Maybe I should give it another chance. But the Ezio trilogy was so great, and I thought part III was going to continue that greatness. Like most things in life, I was wrong.

I did play Black Flag, which was fuckin' great. So I thought about starting with Assassin's Creed Rogue, which came after Black Flag and feels very similar.

It's been years since I've played Black Flag, so getting used to the ship controls in Rogue took a little bit, but still feels pretty good. It is kind of amazing how seamless the transition from controlling the ship to controlling your character is.

Sadly, the most fascinating part of my week was this video game I'm playing. It's a decent game, at least.

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I've been noticing an uptick of traffic to the site. I have no idea how that happened in the slightest, considering that:

• I've told no one about this website.
• I do not post links to this website anywhere.

I wonder if I accidentally have it posted somewhere. Meh.