Venting (requires a willing listener)
Exercise (requires motivation)
Massage (just show up)

So yeah. Massage wins.

But I’m not talking about those bougie, cucumber-water “massages” places. No. I’ve been down that road. I paid the sign-up fee, signed up for the monthly subscription, and learned, after enough disappointing appointments, that unless you book three months in advance, you’re not getting the “good one.” You’re getting the new massage school graduate who’s still figuring out towel origami.

And that hour peaceful, deep massage you were promised? It's more like 40 minutes with a guy named Chad who wants to focus only on the neck because that's "his specialty". And the talking. So much talking. Pan flute on a loop, you bet. Trying to get to know me while sharing your gluten allergy? It's a hard pass.

I don't want a back rub. I want back therapy. I want knot extraction. Pain is welcome, necessary, even. Because if it doesn't hurt, it's not working.

That’s when I discovered the Chinese foot massage places.

You’ve seen them. Strip mall storefronts with simple signs, no pretense, and a golden cat waving in the window. For years, I was curious, and honestly a little intimidated. Then one day I just walked in, desperate for some stress relief, and everything changed.

First shock? No appointment needed. Walk in. Sit down. Choose from the menu. Want just feet? Feet plus back? Hot stones? 30 minutes? 60? 90? Done.

And let me be very clear: Feet are very important here. Revered, even. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the foot is a kind of map. Reflexology links pressure points to organs, muscles, energy flow. You don’t have to believe in all that. But when they hit the right spot, you feel it.

If you’re squeamish about feet, this may not be your place. You can ask to skip that part, but honestly, you’ll get the side-eye. Why are you here if you don’t respect the foot?

The ritual begins with a foot soak. Translation: feet are gross. Let’s wash them. While your feet soak, they start with your head, neck, and shoulders. Pressure, a little pain. It’s a gentle preview. Don’t get too comfortable.

Then comes the foot massage. Thirty solid minutes. And when I say massage, I mean real work. Thumb pressure. Knuckle digs. Arches attacked. Toes compressed. This is the part where I feel my body start to let go. Relaxation is setting in, my defenses are lowering.

Finally, it’s time for the back. And this is where it gets real. If you enjoy back rubs and scented oils, turn back now. This is for those of us who crave elbows in our shoulder blades. Forearms grinding into our stress knots. Breath-holding, eye-watering, “I can take it” therapy.

I’ve had ladies dig in like they were exorcising stress demons out of my spine. Not a word spoken. Just pain, release, breath, surrender. If you whimper, they’ll pause and ask if you’re okay. If you say yes? They keep going. Be strong, it's worth the endorphins.

And one time? They switched out mid-session and sent in a man. He stands over me and asks: "What level do you want?" 1,2,3??"

Level? Oh, 3. Definitely a 3. I think I'm tough, but, honestly, I'm stupid.

Five minutes later, I’m gripping the table, trying not to bite through my cheek. Defeated, I choke out: “Two. Please. Go down to a two.

He pauses. Looks down at me with no judgement. "Okay. Two."

Then resumes what can only describe as the second level of hell, which still hurt like hell, but in a way that felt tolerable. Like I could finally get a breath in. I gritted my teeth and rode it out one knot at a time. As the pressure points released, I was begrudgingly grateful.

After that? Your back is stretched, your wrists rotated. If you go premium, the therapist vanishes, returning with a hot rock to press into your shoulder blades. Then they ask politely: “Too hot?” It's one of the few times they talk the entire session. And then, inevitably, the rhythmic karate chop on your back gives the universal signal -- it’s over.

The therapist leans close and whispers, "Okay. You're done".

My eyes fly open. What? Already?? At this point, I feel like a puddle of goo. Do I have to move? Can I just melt into the table for, I don't know five more hours?

Reluctantly, I peel myself off the table and gather my things and head up front to pay. I feel a bit spaced, walking back to my car, but my muscles feel relieved, and my tension has lifted.

I always glance back and say "I'll be back in two days!". But I never am. Recovery is real. Still, once the pain fades, I start planning my next visit. Because somewhere between the foot soak and the knot extraction, I find a version of myself that doesn't feel like she's holding up the damn world all the time.

And it's worth every penny.

Just... skips the dudes.

And then I found this gem:
People and Places, Live in Osaka, October 10, 1980

This song was new to me, but the second it started, I instantly felt something. This wasn't the Journey I grew up with. This was experimental, different. Maybe a last exhale before everything changed.

Perry commands the stage in an open blue kimono and green, skin-tight pants. Schon's afro has softened into ringlets. He's starting to smolder a little. And Rolie -- he's doing something hauntingly funky on the organ.

The stage is bathed in red light, like we've stepped inside a heartbeat. It only lasts for a few moments, but it's enough to make you pause, lean in. Something unexpected is about to happen.

Then the song kicks it up with this weird, rhythmic call-and-response between the band:

“Do you feel me?”

It’s not just a lyric, it’s a gesture. The band isn’t playing at the audience. They’re talking to them. Pointing at them. Seeing them. This is a conversation.

We see your joy. We see your heartbreak. You’re not just watching us. You’re in it with us. We're in it with you.

Perry lifts his hand and points to Schon.  Not to cue him, to cue us. Don't watch me. Watch him.

And then Neal f'n Schon? He starts... singing. Wait. What? The man whose guitar usually does all the talking leans into the mic, closes his eyes and questions:

"Do you see the faces."
"'Round and 'round the places?"
"Are they people that you want to know?"

It’s probably the only time you can clearly hear his voice in a Journey song. And honestly? He doesn’t do too bad.

Then Perry steps in. His voice clear and sweet, cutting through the groove like a laser. He looks into the crowd, shading his eyes and answers:

"Yes I see their faces one by one..."
"Yes I see their joy and sadness..."

The song continues to gain momentum. It isn't just slick. It's groovy. It has that loose, weird, wide-open ’70s vibe. Like bell bottom jeans. Lava lamps. Gum-wrapper chains.

It's a little funky, a little trippy, and a little weird. But it's real and honest. It's reaching for something.

As the groove continues,  the song starts to shift.   Perry's voice lifts high, clean, open. He's breaking through the atmosphere, igniting.  

“Take a ride on a rocket,"
"Take your mind, unlock it...”

Suddenly, we're not in the same song anymore. We're traveling. The song leans back, lights something and says: Let's explore together. Be who you need to be.  Connect.

The message is simple but the words don't really matter. It's the mood, the energy that carries us forward.

"Take your life as you feel it, let no one deceive it."
"You all know we can do it, if you put your mind to it."

And then just when we're fully into it, immersed, riding that groove, we start winding down.

Schon gives one last spark with a shred of his guitar. Then the organ takes over, holding the spell, as its haunting melody fills the stage.

The bands holds still, silent. The lights start dimming one by one. Until Rolie, riding high up on stage, is the only one left.

As his hands leave the keys, the stage goes black.

And the organ goes silent...

What a difference a year makes. Now I’m deep into agentic coding at work, and I get exactly what he meant. Those “all you can eat” subscriptions people use at home? They don’t exist for businesses. Every prompt, every response costs money. And once teams start adopting the tech, the costs add up fast.

So how do you prevent Bob from Ralph looping all weekend and using all the tokens? Unless you're Google, you impose spending limits. Per person. Blow through your tokens? You're done for the month. Or you go beg DevOps for more.

But once you’ve felt the speed, there’s no going back. Working this way feels like flying down the Autobahn at 500 miles per hour. Features, bugs, docs -- those dreaded unit tests? That stuff that used to take weeks? It gets done in ... days. You feel like a superhero. You feel unstoppable. Until you hit your usage limit.

Coming off a 50 PR-a-day high? It hurts. Bad.

So you have to learn to be conservative, to be token responsible. You walk into every session with rules:

“Be terse.”
“No preamble.”
“No recap.”

And that's where the frustration starts. Because the way to learn new tech is not by being restrained. It's by being curious. You need to try things out, push yourself, ask questions. Make mistakes. That's when the Aha! moment happens. That's when you start seeing the pieces come together. But wandering costs money and every decision has implications:

Long, vibey sessions? Gone.
Politeness? Optional.
Better models? Use sparingly.

You start watching your usage meters. You start thinking about tokens while solving problems. Sometimes you think about tokens more than the problem itself.

Can I risk asking Opus for help? Is Sonnet going to put me in a hedging loop? How much do I have left to spend?

It’s a low-grade tax on your brain. And it doesn’t just change how you work, it changes how the team works. Because if tokens are a scarce and valuable commodity, people will naturally protect them. They're not bad teammates. They're just trying to get their own work done before the meter runs out.

And that’s the part that I didn't expect: the cost pressure. I guess I was just naive. But now I'm starting to feel like AI is becoming less of a collaborator and more like a tool I'm forced to manage. It adds unexpected anxiety to the equation.

There's no good fix for this problem. These systems are expensive to run, subsidies are drying up, and companies are feeling compelled to get into the race.

Which means this tension isn't going away. If anything, it's going to get worse. And session and token management is going to become real friction in all our lives.

So now I basically work in two modes. At work I have to be efficient and focused. At home, I get to be curious again. I wander and experiment. I waste tokens.

And I remember why this felt like so much fun in the first place.

I wasn’t going to do it. I’d sworn I would never log in again. After the blowout I honestly didn't think I wanted to play the game anymore. Ever. I was done.

But after three days of cooling off, curiosity was getting the better of me. Things had gotten… heated when I left. A lot of people were frustrated. And I was in the middle of it. I wanted to know what happened.

I took a breath, grabbed my mouse, and loaded World of Warcraft.

My character, a feral druid, appeared exactly where I left her — Shattrath City — the place I’d hearthed to right after the rogue raid. I fought the urge to check the auction house (a time-consuming addiction) and reminded myself I was here on a research mission. Talk to a few guild mates, get an update, and then log off.

Unfortunately, scanning guild chat wasn’t giving me answers. Normally it was a never-ending scroll of Leroy jokes, enchant requests, and LFG spam. But tonight, nothing. Total silence.

Were people running dungeons? I opened the guild list.

And froze.

Instead of fifty-plus members online, the list was nearly empty. Key players? Gone. Officers? Missing. Holy crap. Where did everyone go?

A “Hi!” popped into my chat window. “Glad to see you online!”

It was the guild leader. The one person I’d hoped to avoid. She was one of the reasons I’d decided to quit.

“I’m sorry about what happened the other night,” she typed. “We shouldn’t have acted that way.”

I cut to the chase: Where is everyone? What happened?

“People decided they wanted something different,” she said. “They left. Don’t worry, we’re going to recruit! I hope you’ll stay!”

I stared at the screen, stunned.

This guild, the one that had worked so hard to reach end-game, was basically gone. Decimated. Beyond repair.

And I was pretty sure I had something to do with that.

I never intended to hurt the guild. I’d just wanted things to be… fairer. More fun for everyone stuck waiting outside Karazhan. But my organized protest had apparently cracked the guild wide open.

And the real irony? I never really wanted to be in a guild in the first place.

Guilds are basically small companies — leaders, politics, rules, schedules, expectations, and drama Lots and lots of drama. Putting lots of personal time into the game is expected, but the payment is digital loot not dollars.

I played games to relax. I didn’t want obligations.

But if you want to progress in WoW, really progress, there’s no avoiding it. End-game requires coordination, resources, organization, and people. A guild provides all of that. So when a good one invited me, I took the plunge and said yes.

And the first end-game dungeon, Karazhan, was where the problems started.

Up to that point, everything had been fine. Sure, there were cliques and politics, but we all worked together to get our Master Keys. No key, no Kara. Once we had them, we were ready to progress.

Or so we thought...

The guild leaders had other ideas. The cliques merged into a single elite group of ten, the maximum allowed, and they announced they’d be running Karazhan first. They would figure out the bosses, get geared, and then teach the rest of us.

And honestly, we understood. Learning new content is brutal. It involves a lot of research, wipes, consumables, tenacity, and skill. They were the best players in the guild. We weren't.

So we became the backups, the benchwarmers waiting by the door in case someone couldn’t make it. And to maintain our backup status, we were forbidden from making our own groups or raiding with anyone outside the guild.

Our job was to wait.
Be patient.
Be available if needed.

We tried to be supportive, even though it stung a little. Some nights we stood outside the giant doors of Kara on our mounts, cheering the chosen ten as they went in. We listened to their fights over Vent. We wished we were good enough to join them.

And then one afternoon I got a whisper from one of our guild officers:
“Our feral druid can’t make it tonight. Can you come? We’ll need you to tank and do some DPS. You won’t be allowed to roll on loot, that’s reserved for us, but you’ll get good experience.”

Loot or no loot, I didn’t hesitate. It was a chance to go in. To prove myself.

I gathered my potions and reagents and met them at the gate. But this time, I didn’t watch them go in. I went in with them.

Raid on!!

What I discovered that night was simple: I wasn’t as LEET as I thought I was. Karazhan was hard. And I had a lot to learn.

But that’s the next story.

I like to dive deep into things. It's just how my brain works. How it breathes. When I get curious about something, I don’t stop at the surface. I fully immerse myself.

This past year, my immersion hobby has been bands from the '70s and '80s. Not just focusing on the hits. I'm analyzing the deep cuts, the live performances. Watching old interviews.

And it's not just the music I’m drawn to. It’s the cost of greatness. The machine these bands had to feed until it consumed them. The bands I have circled back to all have that mix of magic and pain. Fleetwood Mac. The Bee Gees (yes, seriously). The Eagles.

And now? I’m into Old Journey. Not pre-Perry -- I'll get there, I promise. I mean that sweet spot when Perry joined, and the whole sound shifted. When a tight, talented rock band started to catch on fire.

I’ve been drawn to that stretch between Infinity and Escape, where you can hear the transformation happening in real time. The band's alive, experimenting, evolving. You can feel them climbing toward something.

And in that climb, I found songs no one talks about. The ones that didn't get the air play. And finding them? It's that strange, giddy joy of realizing I haven’t heard it all. These songs were here the whole time, tucked between the hits, quietly brilliant. Just waiting for someone to notice them. And no, I'm not a fan girl. I guess you could call me an analyst with a soft spot for art that costs something.

And Steve Perry fascinates me. Not just because of that voice (though my God, that voice). But because of what it took for him to help take the band to next level.

His live performances weren't just equal to the recordings. They were better. Better! I've been listening to the bootlegs, and he never seemed to sing a song the same way twice. 

He was vocal athlete chasing perfection night after night. And it cost him.

Looking back, I wish I’d seen them live. Even in ’83. Even with "Separate Ways". But I didn’t go. There was too much hype. They were too overplayed. I tuned them out and missed what was really happening.

Now I'm enjoying making up for lost time. Re-discovering a band I thought I knew.

Infinity, Evolution, Departure? They were riskier, groovier, weirder. Brilliant.

I missed this the first time. But I'm here now. With my ears and mind wide open.

They wrote Patiently before Steve was even in the band. And for some reason, luckily, it worked. If it hadn't, the journey might have ended.

Patiently — Midnight Special, 1978

When I first watched this performance, I didn't recognize him. A skinny guy with long hair and soft brown eyes steps up to the mic. Shyly, like he's asking for permission.

Can I sing for you now?

An open blouse with poofy sleeves. Tight white pants that should be illegal. An angel floating in from another realm just to sing a little.

As he clutches the mic stand like it's the only thing that's keeping him grounded, I realize.

This is the man before.

Schon opens with a soft guitar intro. He looks young, groovy. The afro is enormous. The vibe is serious but comfortable. He's already been through the machine. He knows who he is on stage.

He almost nods to Steve to begin.

"Here I stand... so patiently..."

Eyes closed. The voice? Unbelievable. Clear, pure, effortless.

This is a version of Perry's voice I hadn't heard before. I didn't know he could sound like this.

One in a Million

Midway through, the song picks up. And he's having fun. You see him grimace, playfully, singing "one in a million" like he's beginning to loosen up.

The stage presence isn't quite there. There's some awkward dancing. A kick here, a bounce there. He doesn't quite know what to do with his body.

But none of that matters. Because the voice — the voice is there.

And if you watch closely, you can see the blueprint forming. The phrasing. The head tilt. The way he lives inside the lyrics. The way his voice cuts clearly above the guitars.

And he looks so young. He's 29 but could be 20. The relentless touring, the pressure, the performing hasn't worn him down. Not yet. He looks energized, happy, hopeful.

It might be the purest version of Steve Perry ever recorded. Just a man, patiently waiting to make it, with no idea how much it's going to cost him.

A shy smile as he holds the last note. The audience applauds. He grips the mic stand as he looks out into the crowd and quietly says:

"Thank you."

One Year Later — Midnight Special, 1979

Same show. Such a different feel.

The band is lip-syncing this time. It's unthinkable, really, for a group that believed in being authentic. Everything feels slicker, overproduced. There's a lot more makeup and polish.

And Steve? He's changed.

He's confident now. Or trying to be. He moves like someone who knows he's supposed to be the frontman, the sex symbol, the brand. He's performing now, not just singing.

That shy performer from 1978? He's gone. It all happened so fast.