Hi Everyone! I'm Doing Better After The Other Day, Thanks For The Well-wishes. Things Are Leveling Out

hi everyone! i'm doing better after the other day, thanks for the well-wishes. things are leveling out a bit, but life is still kind of a roller coaster lately – with my highs at their highest in recent memory, and my lows at their lowest.

that would be exhausting by itself, but what really concerns me is that the intensity has been increasing over the past three months or so – the highs keep going higher, and the lows keep going lower… if it gets too much more than this, i'm scared i might lose my lunch!

for now i'm gonna keep riding this out and hope it slows down soon, but in the meantime my availability may be spotty, and i probably won't have a whole lot of time or energy to make stuff like i want to. that's okay, though – life is more important right now.

new stream archive! in which i return to monke... i mean streaming. yeah, i think i'm finally back!

Rivers is ready to party 🎲

you know what they say about assuming: it's a natural and fundamental aspect of communication

when you talk to someone else, you are making subconscious assumptions that you both have:

similar definitions of words

trustworthy info or advice

a grasp of what is or isn't a joke

fully expressed thoughts

a clear understanding of all key points

all of these, and especially the latter, are frequently untrue! and there is often no way to know unless you spend five times as long discussing the fine details of every single point, which is simply not feasible... especially when you don't know what details are missing.

this is where assumptions come in, because once the speaker is done talking, the listener needs to fill in the bigger picture somehow. and those details are often filled in subconsciously via quick decision making – by instinct, if you will.

it was the speaker's job to either fill in those details, or expect the listener to do it instead. but when the listener gets it "wrong," the speaker gets to... blame the listener for making independent decisions, aka "assumptions"?? how is that fair at all???

and after the listener hears this again, and again, and AGAIN, the listener eventually learns that they cannot trust their own decision making, instincts, or ability to communicate... even when the real issue was the speaker's miscommunication and lack of clarity.

and sure, the listener may have misheard too; communication is a two-way street, and both parties can get it wrong. but assumptions themselves are not the issue – assumptions mean there's a lack of communication that needs addressing. focus on that!

you know what they say: people who assume everyone else is bad at communicating, are probably bad at communicating themselves

Here's a belated treat for Mario's 35th anniversary: an isometric maze built atop Mario's running animation from SMB1! Use the pipes to travel between the different layers and make your way to the finish.

This maze is a full overhaul of one that I drew on graph paper for Mario's 25th anniversary, a whole decade ago! Once I came up with the idea for the pipes, I just *knew* I had to digitize this one, heh ✨

try puyo puyo today!