Time keeps flowing

As we get almost halfway into FEBRUARY of all things, I can't help but think about how weird things feel every year since the pandemic.  It's gone from feeling like time stopped completely to things progressing slowly but in reality it's been five whole years.  I know part of it is just due in part to the ongoing passage of time seeming faster as I get older, but there's still a degree of unreality present in every day that passes; almost as though I'm in some sort of half-real simulation of what could be instead of what is.  

Everything going on everywhere all at once just gives an increasing feeling of us being on the edge of some great precipice that we won't know we've fallen over until we're hurtling down.  Towards what, I don't think I could really ever say but there's definitely something both different and very familiar waiting.

In my thoughts of things like this, I find myself going back to websites like this where freedom and self-expression are far more available.  The internet used to be a much smaller and more tight-knit space, full of small websites with dedicated niche communities and with every large commercialized gathering ground it's become a more hostile cold corporate place.  I hope more people make projects like Spacehey and that these projects are able to get a more dedicated consistent community in them, and I wish I checked in on the website far more than I currently do.

In other unrelated random news that nobody cares about, here's what I've been up to lately;

GAMES:

• Path of Exile 2 - Diablo style games are really fun and PoE2 is really scratching that itch super well, both in having a proper dark/grim atmosphere and in having a fairly accessible start to getting your character set up for combat while still having the opportunity to really optimize things if you want.  It does still have the staggering overwhelming parts of it but I've been able to just sort of pretend I don't see it and just focus on having fun.
• War Thunder - I don't know why I do this to myself but tank game fun.  Very autistic of me.
• Factorio - Gonna be real this one's another autism optimizing game but I like building the factory
• Arknights Endfield - So it turns out that gacha game and factorio do mesh well and feel good.  I don't know why I like gacha games but they can be kind of fun.
• CS2 - I've played CS in one form or another off and on for so long that I don't really know what to say about it.  Prior versions felt more consistent but as a casual shootybang game it's fun.
• Warframe - Love me War, love me frames.  Simple 'as.  (I have decided to start on the MR30 grind and oh man is it a grind.  But the game itself only gets more fun to play with every year and its definitely got hooks into me again.)