Like that of standing on a grassy country hill on a summer night, while a nearby TV tower flashes its red lights and once in a while a car drives by on the nearest highway. And I'm listening to 'Time Stand Still'.

Of course at the time that I was on that hill it didn't actually feel like that. And I certainly wasn't listening to Rush. Though it certainly was a plesant experience, it wasn't so wonderfully magical as I like to remember it. Trying to re-live times like that rarely amounts to much, as while I'm trying to re-live them I feel the same as I always do. Somehow seeing the world and myself exactly as they are, rarely seeing or feeling nothing more.

There are exceptions, though. Like when I'm running through the rain or early morning fog. In those cases the atmosphere really does make me feel good. Instead of only reminding me of times when everything was so much more mysterious and awesome, it almost makes me feel like I'm there again. Smells are great like that.

Farmhouse

2024-05: There is a distinctive smell to this place. Sometimes it reminds me of playing Subnautica, which was something I did a lot of while up here in 2022, and to a lesser extend Subnatutica Below Zero, which was mostly during the winter (end of 2022 and again at the end of 2023; playing Below Zero when it was not snowy outside felt not quite right so I avoided id), and the nostalgia for that is mostly for this one night when I was starting my 'Home' base near the twisty bridges, building my first Seatruck module, and we were eating Cheetos Mac and Cheese.

But it also takes me back much farther, to that cold fall/winter when I was still working for JHT, Sara was in Madison for a long stretch, and I made myself sick by making a stew with green potatoes. Carbon Based Lifeforms - Photosynthesis was my theme song for that period. It seems a good representation for my general melancholy of feeling cold and sick, not liking my job, and being sad about the world, tempered by the subtle sense of purpose that I got from taking care of the farm animals every day and doing a bit of woodworking. During that time I created WSITEM-100307, the 9″ cube to help Sara organize the kitchen counter clutter. That also seems to be about the time I fell out of my photo-archiving routine, as there's a big gap in my photo collection from about 2020-10 through to the end of 2022! (I still have the originals backed up and just need to sort through them.)