• 26 April 2026

I think I'm right, I don't think it matters (2026-W17)

This has been another rough week. I’m struggling to sleep more than three or four hours at night, so I’m exhausted throughout the day. I’m also just having trouble with adjusting my lifestyle and mindset to being pregnant. Running really isn’t possible for me now; my lung capacity is seriously diminished, and all around, physically, I’m just not able to move around like I used to. My partner is trying desperately to get me to relax at home, but I’m bad at doing that. My workaholic tendencies mean I’m reluctant to ask for help or not do the chores I’m accustomed to. I know I need to be gentle with myself and focus on the positive end result, but it’s difficult giving up my routines.

I suppose it is a good sign that I miss running at all given that it started out as such a chore. I worked hard to build my stamina and endurance, and last year I finally felt like I was making real progress. I was excited to continue that. I will try some short runs and see how I feel, but I don’t think a 10K is in the cards for me this year.

Reading

I heard the phrase “cut from the same cloth” somewhere (not for the first time, obviously), and it reminded me of one of the many lines from Adverbs by Daniel Handler that I’ve committed to memory. Naturally this was enough for me to re-read it yet again.

I like revisiting the things I love, particularly when I’m at different stages of my life. I read Adverbs for the first time in my teens when I was super mixed up and depressed; I found parallels in the many characters in unfulfilling or unrequited love (Alison and her druggie boyfriend in “Soundly”; the ghost). I re-read it again in my early college years, as I started to figure out who I wanted to be; Alison’s triumphant flight from her dead best friend’s car felt the same as me shedding the weight of years of depression. And now, pregnant, Alison is again the easy parallel: luckily I am not on an insipid cruise ship comics conference (and watching in horror as my husband presumably dies in a natural disaster back at home), but her animosity toward the constant overstepping of personal boundaries that people give themselves license to when interacting with a pregnant lady feel especially prescient right now.

Playing

I had been playing Pokopia on my partner’s Switch 2. I have mixed feelings about the game: I really like the atmosphere and the building, but I couldn’t bring myself to care much about the Pokemon beyond building them habits. I burned through the story quickly because I found it bland; now that I’m in the endgame, I’m getting environment levels to 10 and actually doing what I want. My partner and I wanted to be able to play together, so I bought a Switch 2 this week. It’s kind of an impulse purchase, but I figure I’m going to be on my ass for the next few months and a portable console will let me play wherever I’m comfortable (in bed, probably). A Switch also seems like a nice thing to have around with a baby because it’s easy to pick up and put down (compared to PC gaming). I’d love if Moonlight came to the Switch 2, because then it would really be my dream console^[1] , but I’m not foolish enough to think Nintendo will ever do that.

It says a lot about Pokopia that I was willing to buy a console for it, and there is a lot to love. I’m (slowly) turning my Palette Town into a recreation of Johto, starting with New Bark Town. The game looks cute and runs well. But there are also a lot of frustrating limitations.

• When in multiplayer, you can hop from area to area, but anywhere except Palette Town, the guest and the host are stuck in “spectator mode,” which means you can’t pick anything up or access your storage. My partner is helping me in Palette Town, but if I want to run to my storage facility in the Withered Wasteland, I have to kick him out of the game, go get what I need, then reopen the connection to invite him back in. The easy answer is that I should probably just relocate my storage facility to Palette Town, and I probably will, but it’s a frustrating limitation to chafe against.
• Despite being in endgame and having all the powers, I am constantly having to stop what I’m doing (and sometimes un-transform) to refill my PP.
• The electric units have incredibly limited range, both horizontally and vertically, so you have to put them everywhere. The wireless units help clean up the unsightly wires, but their range is short too; even a small two story house needs three or four to power it. You could just use prefabs, but they’re way less fun.
• I haven’t bumped up against it, but I see a lot of folks online complaining about a lighting limit. Given how little light most of the lights produce, I can imagine this will become a problem in Palette Town.

Many of these are probably limitations of the hardware and the overall scope of the game. Pokopia isn’t a Minecraft or Sims competitor, and maybe it is unfair to expect it to be, but when they give you a giant blank canvas like Pokopia, it’s frustrating to not be able to actually fill it.