dont want to write by CJ Q. '23

i haven’t written about what’s been happening in my life at all in the past month, not here nor in my personal notes. i want to say that i’ve been busy, but that’s not true. i haven’t been busy much at all.

let’s see, december. towards the end of the semester is the time when all the performance groups do their semester performances, and i don’t go to a lot of them. sometimes it was because i was busy doing something else. but most of the time it was because i couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed. i think at that time of semester i spent a lot of time playing kingdom of loathing again, after not having played the game in almost a decade.

one of the things that occupied my mind at the time was hydrant, this project that’s like the successor to firehose. it’s still something i’ve been thinking about a lot, and i’m trying to involve frosh with its development, because i’m graduating, and i can’t support this forever. i’m kinda worried about what’ll happen once i’m gone, but i hope that things will work out.

there was a blogger checkin that was particularly memorable, which involved some singing. there’s video games that happened. vampire survivors, iris and the giant, shapez.io. i had one final exam, for 24.901 introduction to phonology, and that went fine. i helped scan and grade another final exam, for 6.3900 [6.036] introduction to machine learning, which took several hours but went fine.

on christmas i went to eat dimsum with some esp friends who were staying over for break: zawad, lixuan, and wasabi. we’re all international students, which is part of the reason we were staying in mit for winter break. that night and the next night i spent some time with friends from galactic, the team i do mystery hunt with. we played some fun games with each other.

during winter break i joined my second dungeons and dragons campaign, with the same esp friends who were staying over for break. we played every other day, for seven sessions, each around four to five hours. it was a lot of dnd in a short time, and we went from level 1 to 4, and i had a lot of fun playing my half-elf rogue! i got into the game in a way i didn’t when i played dnd digitally. i resubscribed to dropout and started watching dimension 20 again, and i love the game so much now.

over winter break i also met with some friends who were in the area, like junwon and victor. for the first week of january, jeffery and andrew started sleeping over, and i’m still surprised how we managed to fit three people in my single room. they stayed for a week and we did lots of things together, like eat meals, do work, hang out in the sipb office, whatever.

i got my grades. they’re great. i’ve been doing work for the philippine math and informatics olympiads again. i’ve been doing more square dancing, and that’s fun.

a lot of my writing energy is going into this larp i’m writing, for the assassins guild game i’m going to run. it’s set in a magical realist world where paranormal artifacts exist, and the player characters are in an auction for some of them. it’s way more writing than i expected to do, and made worse by the fact that i don’t have a lot of motivation to write fiction. gah. i’m not even sure how much i’m enjoying this, versus how much i’m doing this out of obligation.

the other thursday there was a promys meetup. promys was this summer camp i went to back in high school, and i was a counselor for a few years too. there’s a promys meetup every jmm, and this year the jmm was in boston, so i went because the meetup was nearby! that’s also why jeffery was here, for jmm. (andrew was here because only because he wanted to visit.)

during the meetup andrew and i saw jiahua, a friend we met in promys, and we decided to schedule dinner the next night. we ate at oath, this pizza place near mit, and talked about our lives since promys. it went well. it’s nice having acquaintances that i can not talk to for years, and when we see each other we can schedule a meal and talk and it’s like no time has passed.

jeffery and andrew left a few days ago. the night they left i felt so lonely.

in an appointment with my therapist i talk about how a lot of my thoughts are directed to moving on. it’s the feeling i have with sipb when i’m trying to find frosh who’ll take lead on hydrant. or when, for puzzle club, i’m letting the juniors handle more logistics. or when in esp i’ve spent more time documenting what i know than doing things. or when for the assassins guild, i’m writing a game, because that’s what people do when they’re old.

it’s not that, i mean, my last semester hasn’t even started yet! but the end feels so near. and soon enough, i’ll need to apply for opt, and go apartment hunting, and graduate, and pack all my things, and leave, the way all people do when they graduate. and things are happening so fast that i don’t have the capacity to emotionally process anything. and i’m afraid that once my life is on pause again, all these postponed feelings will catch up, and i’ll be sad and angry and filled with regret. but right now? i’m going too fast to be sad.