cassie ink

or you could add it up and give a shit (WN41)

week-notes/41

Doing

I think I’m in the midst of a depression different from any I’ve experienced before. I have known for a while now that I experience seasonal depression, but it’s always been low-level and manageable; I’ve had depressive episodes in my life, but I’ve insisted that they have always been situational (i.e. I was in high school and depressed; I graduated and was no longer depressed). This one is a combination of the depression I know and something new: I’m steady in my moods and able to function on a day-to-day basis, but there’s this enduring ennui that I can’t shake. It’s all job-related — disappointment about not transferring has left me disengaged from the work I’m left with. My heart was ready for a change and, now that it’s off the table, my heart just isn’t in anything. I’m hoping our upcoming holiday break will let me recenter and recover, but the thing about depression is that it makes it hard to be optimistic that things will get better.

There’s this side of me that is a fundamentally impatient person; when I was in my last two years of high school (especially my last year), I was in the deepest depression I’ve ever experienced. There were a lot of factors that went into it, but chief among them was that I was unhappy with the life I was living — I didn’t like the person I was and was ready to make a big change, but I felt I couldn’t do it until I got out of high school and moved onto the next chapter of my life. I knew who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do — but I had to wait out the clock of senior year to get there. I felt stuck. I felt trapped. Things right now feel alarmingly similar and that scares me. But I also wonder if I’m connecting those dots in my head and overthinking myself into a depressive episode when things really aren’t so grim. This cycle makes me a lot of fun to be around.

In computer nerd shit this week, I set up Navidrome with Tailscale properly so that I can access my library from anywhere. I also started moving Joe onto immich from Google Photos; in the process, I realized he takes a shitload of pictures. I guess it’s good that one of us does. I still need to figure out what I want to use as a Google Drive replacement, but once that’s squared away, I can stop paying for Google One and moving closer to my dream of data independence.

Reading

I’m making more progress on Villette. Last week I reported that I was about halfway through, but unfortunately I double-checked and my copy is actually 500 pages, not 400, so I’m a bit less than that. I’m ending this week on page 225. I stand by what I said last week — the book is torn between the minutiae of Agnes Grey and the sentimentality of Jane Eyre — and my pages for this week specifically lean more toward minutiae; Brontë spared no details in Lucy’s outing with the Brettons, the pink dress she wore and everyone she saw there. I’m no stranger to 19th century literature and how it makes a meal out of the day-to-day, but Villette feels less consequential than the dances and balls found in, say, Austen’s novels. It’s pretty clear that the book is setting up Lucy and Graham, which is fine, but their interactions lack the spark and wit of Lizzy and Darcy.

Watching

Joe and I have been watching a lot of Memoria on YouTube. I really like her content. Starting Breaking Bad has felt like too much of a commitment this week, so this has been a good light-hearted stopgap.

I downloaded the first season of Community after talking about the show with a student. I’ve watched a good amount of it in the past, but I quit it before I finished it because I didn’t like some of the directions it went. I’m considering rewatching it as my solo-show (i.e. not what I’m watching with Joe). I told this student that Britta was my favorite character and she said that made sense.

Playing

I haven’t made time for any games this week, but Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was announced. At one point in my life, this would have been earth-shaking news: I have been an ardent fan of the KotOR games for going on twenty years, and I have written a not insubstantial amount of fanfic related to it. Maybe it’s the depression or I’ve just become a jaded old cynic, but I have absolutely no interest.

  1. I’m really not playing AAA games any more.
  2. Star Wars games announced early in development don’t exactly have a good track record for actually being released.
  3. All the KotOR lore and characters that I care about are not canon any more.
  4. The game is set over a thousand years after KotOR.
  5. It’s a CGI trailer with absolutely no concrete information or showing.
  6. The game presumably follows from the lore established in the Revan novel and The Old Republic, which is absolute shit.

Despite these facts, the class acts in the misogynistic cesspool that is the KotOR subreddit responded by talking about their penises and telling the “problematic baby bitches” to “shut the fuck up and be excited.” Really it’s on me for expecting anything useful or intelligent to come from the same place that whined about a woman writing the KotOR remake.

Listening

I listened to a shuffle of some songs by The Most Serene Republic (off Population and Underwater Cinematographer). I was really into them in 2009-2010; I still think “Humble Peasants” is a cool instrumental track and “Cedar Nouns and Adverbs Walk” still gets me. Otherwise, I wasn’t too taken with them.

I also listened through Cleopatra by The Lumineers; I generally like The Lumineers and have loved “Gale Song” and “Ophelia” for a long time, but I’ve never listened through the album. The album as a whole didn’t grab me, but I did like “Long Way From Home.”

I played back through Star of Love by Crystal Fighters, an album I loved a lot in 2012/2013. It’s very of the time; it jumps around in genre a lot, which isn’t bad, but it does feel in places like they were grasping at whatever sounds were popular at the time (see: the sometimes out-of-place dubstep). I still think “Champion Sound” fucking rocks.

I’m continuing to really enjoy Navidrome and Symfonium. I’m less sold on Feishin, but it’s fine. I saw a tip somewhere to make a smart playlist of songs with no plays, which will be a fun way to sift through my library and favorite more of the songs that I already like (and discover ones I legitimately haven’t heard yet).

Here’s my songs for this week. These pictures come out a little blurry for some reason. Maybe I need to start using my actual camera.

Photo of a notebook with a list of songs

  1. “I Broke Up (SJ)” by Xiu Xiu
  2. “Teeth Like God’s Shoeshine” by Modest Mouse
  3. “Where Cedar Nouns and Adverbs Walk” by The Most Serene Republic
  4. “Gale Song” by The Lumineers
  5. “Consumer Blues part ii” by Pigthe
  6. “Connect the Dots (The Saga of Frank Sinatra)” by Car Seat Headrest
  7. “The Mending of the Gown” by Sunset Rubdown
  8. “Champion Sound (Alternative Mix)” by Crystal Fighters
  9. “The Fabrizio Palumbo Retaliation” by Xiu Xiu
  10. “it’s not a side effect of the cocaine, i am thinking it must be love” by Fall Out Boy