12.31 hey y’all i made it i love it here 12.28 2 i am officially on the plane to sydney. i am in the very back row hilariously. thank you all for your verbal manifesting except i had a nightmarish delay situation so y’all don’t love me enough just kidding. can’t wait to read all the new updates in 15 hours. don’t let anything crazy happen without me 12.28 today is the day. i need a xanax heart is full after special breakfast with my friends! i feel so loved. it helped calm my nerves to see my loved ones. songbird was busy and i forgot to make a reservation so we walked to mokabe’s on this beautiful 70 degree day and we all said “i needed that” afterwards. i looooove ashley from flounder guys you all have to meet her now i’m in the airport and nervous sweating like a mf. i cried really hard in gabe’s room for like 2 seconds before i left because i’m scared. i’ve developed a fear of flying this year and i have 3 flights today and one is 15 hours long. an airport employee scanned my passport to check me in and then pocketed it inexplicably and i walked to security before realizing that i didn’t have it. i ran back and asked if he had it and he said no and i felt sheer terror. but it was indeed in his back pocket. kinda funny. we looked at each other for a second like “that could’ve been really, really bad” lol. now i’m having wine at the bar bc i need it. can everyone say out loud right now “i’m so glad emma made it to sydney with no problems” thank you, love you CRIME AND PUNISHMENT SPOILERS: im thinking about this long crazy journey and how it will be ultimately worth it bc i love byron more than anyone i’ve ever known lowkey…last night i couldn’t sleep (obviously) and i was thinking about how sonia moves to siberia to be with raskolnikov for 8 years while he’s at prison labor camp and she brings him lunch etc. and i wonder if i would do that. i hate being cold but i love that man down. i really don’t know what i would do. after my week and a half in his hometown i will update you on my answer 12.27 2 i am so bad at returning library books within an appropriate time they really should revoke my library privileges. no library fines for the whole city is wokeness i can appreciate but for me personally i cannot handle the freedom 12.27 scout’s christmas brunch was so sweet i am still experiencing the luminating effects…i am feeling grateful to Lucky because i have been straight up socially awkward this week because i have something Big coming up that i can’t stop thinking about. and lucky is always honest about having a crash out day and that makes me feel more comfortable. the thing is even when he’s feeling off he still cracks me tf up. i’ve learned recently that i genuinely slap my knee when something is really funny. is this an innate human reaction or have i picked it up from like. peewee herman dreading tomorrow being a major phone-using day bc i have not been about that shit recently. last night i went on a walk with no headphones and then colored in complete silence. and it feels so good, i can hear my thoughts loudly. i always thought i was decently self aware but once i really internalized that the church wants women to doubt themselves because it robs them of their power, everything changed. now i am getting positive feedback at work for my sudden change in confidence. i feel like i just gained access to the remaining 30% of my brain 12.26 audiobooks i have downloaded for my plane ride: the diana chronicles (princess diana book) paradise logic catch-22 madame bovary eugene onegin any other suggestions? 12.24 having a slam dunk christmas eve i’m free bleeding and finishing all my library books. will be maximizing my alone time this week so i’m ready to ball out with 💖byron💖 so glad i started packing last saturday i feel like i finally have that situation under control. please manifest good things for my big flight on sunday i’ve been nervous about it for a long time. need to wake up sort of early tomorrow to make potato casserole for scout’s orphan brunch, text me if ur an orphan and want to join in lol ok thanks bye! 12.22 2 reserving my right to not go to pinball tonight because byron is en route to australia right now which is making it very real that i am going to australia this freaking weekend. and yes i am scared. when i get home ill decide if i need to be there with all my things and prepare myself or if i venture out for some MASH. i can't smoke rn bc of my sinuses and i'm worried i'll be tempted tbh. WE WILL SEE housekeeping: thank you alex for restoring journal25 thank you ariel for recommending headphones i bought those ones :D 12.22 i’m always like “i’m so good at corporate” and yet today i went to my team holiday breakfast at first watch and did not say a word until i could talk about russian literature and which books i’m going to reference for my essay on suffering. people often refer to me as autistic in conversation despite the fact that i do not identify with this and sometimes i see glimpses of why that is achievement unlocked: yelled at my boss about low wages and unfair treatment without crying next i need to yell at the big boss about not letting me take off time after FACIAL SURGERY. i am expected to be at work at 8am the day after my fucking surgery i’m gonna lose my mind movie was so fun last night, lucky is genius for open invite movie. we need to do more of this it was cute. beforehand we were all calling each other in a circle and each one of us wanted to pick up james…the whole world loves flounder user james clock it 12.19 what’s in my purse for YMCA today: -Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell -Wallflower at the Orgy by Nora Ephron -Honeycrisp kombucha bottle filled with water -no headphones fuckkkkkkkkk i just closed all my tabs on my phone and it deleted the open journals ugh i hate that i do this 12.18 2 does anyone have any recommendations for inexpensive noise cancelling headphones pls 12.18 there were so many gunshots in south city last night what was up with that. need to stop telling myself i'll clean and do my chores on my wfh days because i actually have a job to do and then i get frustrated for "being lazy" when i'm literally just busy with my job on the computer...and i think this has something to do with my internalized misogyny tbh i was reading white noise the other day and jack gladney is in loveee with his wife and they have a great relationship and in my past readings i've always seen this as kind of condescending to her almost? and in this reading i realized it's because i don't have a schema in my head for a man actually loving his wife, i just never believed it. i believe a boyfriend can love a girlfriend #livedexperience but growing up in the church i literally never saw a marriage where they seemed to love each other, it's like you get married and then something dies. it reminds me of that girl on twitter that moved in with her boyfriend and was like "i feel so much more creative now" and i was like sorry i don't believe her...and foreverdirt was like "you need to evaluate why you can't imagine how living with someone you love would improve your life". that really changed everything for me. it is ideal to be the more misogynistic one in the relationship (if the world must be this way) because he is helping me unlearn this hahaha. something i've been shocked by is that looking back on my life i've settled and lied to myself in almost all my romantic relationships, it horrifies me. i never experienced affection growing up (hug on birthday and christmas that's it) so when that was available to me i would just take what i could get and pretend it was working. and it disappoints me that i was willing to betray myself in that way. but also i have always been young and i was still learning what i wanted and what was possible so i'm not too upset with myself. i'm obsessed with getting older i only ever get smarter and more sure of myself and then i'm able to get exactly what i want because i understand my desires more. freaking #peace #sign 12.17 3 my friend sabrina was in charge of our work holiday party today and one activity was poem competition. woke youth is taking over corporate america last week we were having lunch together and our very worst coworker sat down with us for 30 minutes and talked about how ai is her personal assistant and if we don’t use it we’ll be left behind…….we told her that ai reduces brain waves and ethical billionaires don’t exist because it is impossible to reach that type wealth without exploitation…we literally could not help ourselves. and her response to this was: “i don’t know if you guys are religious (…) but to quote jesus,,, ‘it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to heaven’” try not to say kill yourself challenge 12.17 2 most referenced tweets as of late: RuPaul- Hard to remain patient with friends who focus solely on their own crucifixion. Get off The Cross, girl... we could use the wood! This girl posted how she met a man 6/25, said 'I love you' 7/6, moved in 7/12, pregnant 8/18- somebody gonna comment “so you never even seen him in a winter coat?” 12.17 my right ear has been ringing loud for the past week so i went to an ENT this morning and i have a deviated septum and chronic inflamed sinuses :/ so i will have to have 2 surgeries in february. so i can't fully cut off my parents until after then bc im on their medical insurance and don't wanna get that bill...the thing is now that they've told me mucus is impacted behind my face i'm hyperaware of it. it's gonna feel awesome to get it all out i can't wait update: milking all the attention i can get by saying “i’m getting two surgeries in february” at work. love! 12.16 sometimes a pinball club meeting can only be described in christian terms as "a triumph over sin and death" cough is truly going away. still trying to track down a physical copy of crime and punishment which is proving to be more difficult than expected given it is one of the most famous books in the world. my library system claims to only have 2 copies ???????????? but this can't be true. it must be a misunderstanding. i plan to go to the ucity library today and grab it, i hope that library card still works. i'm feeling very busy all the sudden, i have a lot to do before i go on my trip. as someone with severe ocd i do not talk about my relationship online because i am paranoid that will ruin it and lowkey just letting you guys know i'm going there feels like blowing up my spot...punkreflex is in love reveal but everyone be cool about it! but it's seriously though it's gonna be so awesome i think not even ill-wishers can ruin it. i'll throw up the evil eye just in case 🧿 i used to think white people weren't supposed to use the evil eye and you had to appropriate it if you really really needed it. lmao relationship ocd is so tough bc that's one that can be lowkey right some of the time...in past relationships i was always like "maybe this isn't meant to be, should we break up" and i couldn't stop obsessing over it. it's always been like eek well yes that wasn't meant to be you were right. you were picking up on the correct vibe. and now i never have those worries anymore thank god but ugh it's so annoying when the ocd actually has a point the closer it gets the more excited i am to go...i can't believe that i changed my mind mostly because of a dream i had. actually i can believe that, that's the most me thing ever. in the dream i was hanging out with byron and his sister and i kept thinking "ugh this is so fun i should just go to AUS" and i would go look up plane tickets and they'd be $6000 and i'd be like ok nevermind. but then i would be having so much fun again and go to look at tickets just in case and again, $6000. over and over. but i woke up and was like hmm, maybe this would be worth it and who knows if air travel will be this **relatively** cheap and easy in the future. because it's not actually $6000, not even close. though i looked at my take home pay for this year and realized how truly bold i am for traveling so often eek......all i can say is yolo 12.15 notes app entry from friday night: poetry night was excellent as always, i read an excerpt of the secret history and discussed its commentary on anti-intellectualism. putting that on my resume + i am white + not latino + i am not a protected veteran. ariel graciously took the cursed item off of my hands and felt neutral towards its energy which was reassuring. she is one of the best listeners i’ve ever experienced, she asks questions you’re eager to answer and she gets you back on track when you’re interrupted. it feels satisfying to get closer to her because it feels like you’ve earned something valuable saturday night i went to Gabe’s old roommate Tom’s house and i spent a long time looking at his bookshelves before making clay ornaments with them :) one time my friend molly said that the first thing i do when i go to someone's house for the first time is look at their bookshelves and she likes that. and i like that she noticed that about me i complained about the book Small Things Like These because there was so much hype for it and it fell flat for me. it was too short to emotionally grab onto anything but i also think i’m not especially susceptible to narratives of Irish Suffering. which is weird because those are my favorite types of anything, narratives about hopelessness and unending suffering. i love The Lighthouse, I Saw the TV Glow, Miracle in the Andes. when you think about it though, most books are about suffering in some ways. i like infinite jest too because the halfway house section has a lot of good commentary on that sort of thing. Tom recommended i read crime and punishment which is like duh, 1860’s st. petersburg is the pinnacle of suffering, why didn’t i think of this before. so i was reading that last night and i’m fuxxing with it i’ve been thinking about dignity/indignity in suffering, american century of humiliation (also the name of the new drink at tschüss), the stories we tell ourselves in order to live, etc. i’m slowly collecting points to expand upon this in an essay so watch out for that. maybe i’ll read my first draft at the next poetry gathering. there is really no place like st. louis in terms of community and having genuine friends PERIOD 💯 tonight i was gearing up for a big night of quick pinball hellos and then greg freeman show at off broadway after but it turns out i don’t have a ticket for the show and i’m kind of relieved..it’s been hard for me to get out and do things recently and the two event evening was feeling intimidating to me..greg freeman i love you but i think the gays at pinball need me tonight. and i’ve already seen him once and both of his albums are hit or miss for me and i need to save money #badly 12.14 have been experimenting with plucking load bearing eyebrow hairs does anyone know if deleting the twitter app still deletes all your drafts. enough is enough 12.12 keep rereading the first chapter of the secret history the last few days because i love how richard papen talks about growing up in a family that just wasn't a vibe...i get him. long passage incoming I grew up in Plano, a small silicon village in the north. No sisters, no brothers. My father ran a gas station and my mother stayed at home until I got older and times got tighter and she went to work, answering phones in the office of one of the big chip factories outside San Jose. Plano. The word conjures up drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop. My years there created for me an expendable past, disposable as a plastic cup. Which I suppose was a very great gift, in a way. On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; a colorful past, easily accessible to strangers. The dazzle of this fictive childhood—full of swimming pools and orange groves and dissolute, charming show-biz parents—has all but eclipsed the drab original. In fact, when I think about my real childhood I am unable to recall much about it at all except a sad jumble of objects: the sneakers I wore year-round; coloring books and comics from the supermarket and the squashed old football I contributed to neighborhood games; little of interest, less of beauty. I was quiet, tall for my age, prone to freckles. I didn’t have many friends but whether this was due to choice or circumstance I do not now know. I did well in school, it seems, but not exceptionally well; I liked to read—Tom Swift, the Tolkien books—but also to watch television, which I did plenty of, lying on the carpet of our empty living room in the long dull afternoons after school. I honestly can’t remember much else about those years except a certain mood that permeated most of them, a melancholy feeling that I associate with watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights. Sunday was a sad day—early to bed, school the next morning, I was constantly worried my homework was wrong—but as I watched the fireworks go off in the night sky, over the floodlit castles of Disneyland, I was consumed by a more general sense of dread, of imprisonment within the dreary round of school and home: circumstances which, to me at least, presented sound empirical argument for gloom. My father was mean, and our house ugly, and my mother didn’t pay much attention to me; my clothes were cheap and my haircut too short and no one at school seemed to like me that much; and since all this had been true for as long as I could remember, I felt things would doubtless continue in this depressing vein as far as I could foresee. In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way. ... I don’t think I can explain the despair my surroundings inspired in me. Though I now suspect, given the circumstances and my disposition, I would’ve been unhappy anywhere, in Biarritz or Caracas or the Isle of Capri, I was then convinced that my unhappiness was indigenous to that place. Perhaps a part of it was. While to a certain extent Milton is right—the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell and so forth—it is nonetheless clear that Plano was modeled less on Paradise than that other, more dolorous city. In high school I developed a habit of wandering through shopping malls after school, swaying through the bright, chill mezzanines until I was so dazed with consumer goods and product codes, with promenades and escalators, with mirrors and Muzak and noise and light, that a fuse would blow in my brain and all at once everything would become unintelligible: color without form, a babble of detached molecules. Then I would walk like a zombie to the parking lot and drive to the baseball field, where I wouldn’t even get out of the car, just sit with my hands on the steering wheel and stare at the Cyclone fence and the yellowed winter grass until the sun went down and it was too dark for me to see. 12.11 having a cough for 3+ weeks is eroding my sense of self. it's completely squashing my creativity, i want to bring a poem for the reading tomorrow but i have nothing. does anyone have a "weird but true" trick for eliminating a productive cough for good...accepting old wives' tales, fables, superstitions, something that worked once and never again.....hit my mf line 12.10 okay not a joke i think i purchased a cursed item from the antique store...it's a postcard with strange artwork on the front, it's kind of neutral milk hotel-esque with a lion and a woman with her face obscured. printed on the back it says: Dear My favorite memory of us is and then it has the national guard logo in the bottom right corner. gabe and i took turns holding it and laughing because it's just so bizarre. but the energy of it is weird. when i picked it out i had to sit down in the stall for a bit because my head felt swimmy. then in line i started feeling really nauseous so i ran to the bathroom and threw up. something just didn't feel right. and then i had the postcard in my room that night and i couldn't fall asleep until 2:30am and slept terribly. i've taken it out of my room but i'm still not sleeping well. i try not to give this stuff too much power bc my religious ocd makes me obsess over superstitions and energies but i'm feeling really weird about it all. i think i'm just gonna silently return it to the antique store. but my anxious brain is saying i don't want to drive with it in the car because i don't trust it. which i know is crazy but i heard this episode of Otherworld where someone had a cursed doll in the car and they suddenly heard the sound of chains clanking loudly and then they crashed into a pole that wasn't there before. but i will feel like a real tweaker if i walk my ass 43 minutes to the hill antique mall. please advise ok im realizing i drove home with it in the first place so it's fine but i will be returning it for sure 12.8 i will not be at pinball tonight i’m sorry y’all have you ever thought about how the theme of st. louis is world’s fair and france? and distantly, (formerly?) unsinkable beer empire. i bought a bud light tshirt this weekend and it had 00 on the back like it’s a uniform. which, to me, is a simulacrum of truth 12.4 watching fear factor. which is making me crave beast games season 2. last season when the contestants had their family come for moral support i asked my roommate “would you visit me on Beast Island?” and she laughed and said no. which i couldn’t decide if that was a slight or a woke take. would you judge me if i had to go to beast island rq 12.3 need to sort out my journals for this year my naming conventions are confusing stuck in my head: we carry the flame, we fight for the gospel