i've been more selective about the people i spend time with and less afraid to speak my mind in general, i guess i care a lot less about what people expect of me on the whole. i dont do it in ways that get me in trouble though-- unless i'm ok with it.

by that i mean, i had this one conversation with a friend online where they basically tried to solicit compliments out of me. which is something i do not do period-- if someone is asking directly about what i think they will either get the full picture or none at all. i don't understand how a relationship as transcational as fishing for compliments should be acceptable, its just disrespectful and youre just being used as a vice for their inferiority complex. it's also insincere which i really don't like. i want to pride myself on sincerity whenever possible. so i decided not to put up with it at risk of tanking my friendship. why be friends with someone who doesn't want to understand me? its like an oxymoron at that point.

on an unrelated note. this is embarassing to admit but, basically i tried this friendship app called bumble bff the other week. really one of my lowest plights for real life social connection, and what set me on being a voluntary social outcast forever. it went pretty much as expected-- met a lot of people i didnt really click well enough with to persue the friendship any further. most conversations felt one sided, awkward, boring or forced.

i did meet one person who i got on pretty well with, i liked their music, taste in art etc. so i tried meeting up with them. it was a bad time LOL. it was jsut this awfully loud, rowdy bar with terrible djing, bad food just bad everything. i actually liked hanging out with the person themselves, they were very sweet and i had a good time drawing with them. but i could kinda tell from the gist of our conversation (that managed to travel above the headache inducing noise) we were just on different pages in life entirely.

i think i have a big ego or something cause, i just dont see myself as having much in common with the average person anyway. my beliefs, experiences and understandings are totally antithetical to the average socialist dem upper class 20 something going to private school. as a person i'm an anomaly, i went from being a millionares daughter to a bootstrapper working retail and going to fasfa-funded college. even in other countries i think i would just struggle to relate to others cause my life has just been so fucked up and weird. it has been a lifelong issue for me, to make friends, as well, even when i was a child and reasonably more sane and healthy. i am starting to understand why, yes it is my fault but i think it makes my life better, actually.

i think being alone i have more room to be creative and think whatever i want. and really, my urges for socialization are fufilled by those i meet on the internet, because i think the internet draws people who are similar to me. so in that way, i dont let my ego get ahead of me in thinking im unique. i love meeting freaks online, and the places i get to travel to and see from meeting up with them in person. it's not bad, i'm grateful and i think i'm okay with things this way.

i've been craving playing minecraft lately with this new friend i made online. i wish i was less busy with work and school. i really miss drawing, playing videogames, reading. i've been doing more interviews for internships-- hopefully my life will manifest into something more peaceful soon... looking back at previous pages, my journal's been more sparse. i've gotta make more time to reflect on things, it helps bring them all together.

but now i've just like used my free time to i dont know, be idle. i go on long walks but i just feel sad. and i clean my house but my tasks are left unfinished, why upkeep my house when nobody will see it. i've been escaping too much into reddit posts, reading manga. one piece has been my friendship simulator and comforting but i dont think i read in a way thats healthy. i just cant stop reading it cause it placates my loneliness. same with youtube. i'm addicted to media because it placates my loneliness, i dont have to come to terms with being alone. parasocial relationships with video essayists, breadtubers, lets players and the like. but i think thats hindering my development as a person.

i would hate to look back on my life and have few memories because i've spent so much time in front of a screen. i've absolutely already lost years of life to media over-indulgence. i have an online friend i really enjoy talking to and relate to because he was extremely similar, chronically reculsive until one day he got sick of it and just made an active effort to go outside. i hope i can find the strength to be like him some day, right now i dont have it at all. i can only find the will to go to work and not scream my head off in existential distress.

like its become more frequent that everyday i show up at work i just want to SCREAM. like i want to hit myself and throw myself at a wall, i feel like going crazy a lot. maybe those are empty words and im just exaggerating but i geniunely just, i have this new habit where i shake my head/rub my hair to "keep it all in". if i dont do it i think i will break and have a panic attack, i have before had one at work and it was embarassing. i am definetely lucky to have sympathetic co-workers though.

sometimes i wonder if that is how i am "meant" to be an artist. maybe i can only connect with people through media, one-sided relationships of consumption. i like when i read with a book and it feels like a discussion with a friend as i take notes and synthesize their points. i can't achieve connection through normal conversation with people, i feel like a ghost and their words pass through me, i only hear symbols and gestures of what theyre trying to say but i think there are not making a connection with me with any effort, i am just another device to them recieving inputs and information to generate a response. i am eternally an observer of their movements. do you have to be alone and at peace with loneliness in order to be a good observer? is that what it takes to develop the skill of obseration? to let go of ego-problems of loneliness so you can see and appreciate whats going on?

i try not to bring it up to anyone so thats why i say it here where it will be lost in the noisy vortex of information. it's so embarassing but i still haven't moved on from what happened last summer. everyone around me tells me to move on and i am definetely trying. i try to make new connections with strangers, try to go out so i can make better and new memories. i know that my stagnant circumstances and routines cause me to dwell on it alot, of course if i dont have something better happening right now, i'm going to dwell on the past.

but i lost someone who felt like family. and that loss happened at the same time as when my brother, who came back into my life for a short while, left it once again why? because he wanted to scam me out of a free work project. he was using bloodsucker salesman tactics, playing on my loneliness and longing for family, to extort DAYS of labor out of me. he played on my emotions, making up some story about being depressed and suicidal so id feel for him, of course i'd trust him hes my fucking brother. but he just ghosted me.

when this other person left though it wasn't betrayal, it was reasonable. necessary. they left it seems cause they were afraid of getting close again and, don't see hope in rectifying things. which i knew was the only answer and i agree with. i knew it from the day it all started, i knew it could only go one way, we would all have to split ways, there was no way of uncrossing those boundaries. when i met with them again, i felt myself growing attached once more, i knew we couldn't pretend like nothing happened and just be friends. i wanted to pretend so bad, because when in my life will i meet a person who felt so close like family again. but could i keep things that way between us, without making it complicated, and am i really honest with myself with in feeling like family? is that just an excuse? how do i know what family is when i never had one. my family for a long time, were just sandbags in people suits, empty mannequins who repeated habits of how things are supposed to function.

and i feel my relationship starting to tank again once more. it makes it even HARDER to move on when the circumstances that led to that event have been repeating themselves once more. it's not as bad this time, and i'm not resentful to my partner like i was before, it's nobody's fault. it's not like we're breaking up, it's just this feeling of distance.

my partner hasn't been home as much, ontop of that we have opposite working schedules which means we see each other even less. we've been arguing more when he gets home cause he's usually in a bad mood. i try to be patient but i've felt myself closing up and not wanting to disclose my feelings because they feel so trivial and i never know if he is ever in the right mood to listen. i know that sometimes it's good to handle emotions yourself but i feel like i've been almost entirely indepedent in doing so. i guess thats definetely good for personal development, i dont think anyone should be responsible for my emotions beside myself, which is not the way i would've acted in the past.

but its gotten to the point where whenever i get sad i really just can't open up. cause im afraid of addressing it as trivial. which yes in the grand scheme of things it definetely is. but im not looking for someone to tell me that my problems are the center of THE world. i just want to occupy their attention for a little while.... i think my partner can't relate to me sometimes with feeling sad. he just sees it as stuff not worth addressing or worrying about, even accepting. its weird, sometimes i want him to express how he feels too. i want to see him be sad but i rarely see him sad. i see him defensive, angry, or dismissive. but rarely sad. i guess thats a weird thing to say, maybe i want to know that he sees sadness as normal...

i have so much trouble accepting loneliness. rainer rilke says i must in order to be a good artist. but i'm conflicted, because in a perfect world art is a social activity. but i live in a world alienated, independence is a virtue. probably not gonna see any marxist artist communes within my lifetime. perhaps it'll be most comforting to me to exist in a world of private self expression. i haven't eaten enough today...

the leak in my ceiling, which i had been in routine contact with my landlord about for months, finally turned into a HOLE. plaster fell from it one day and just scattered everywhere across the floor, all over my belongings and the room really started to smell like rotting/decaying wood and damp, musty plaster. my cats (love them but they are so stupid) were drinking out of the gross bucket i used to collect the dirty sepsis/paint water from the leak. i basically decided enough was enough, they're either fixing this shit or i'm gonna light a fire under their ass so i can get out of here.

i spent janurary consulting free legal aid resources, writing emails, calling the building authority and basically just scraping together as much of a paper trail as I can to justify a case of inhabitability. then i sent my stupid landlord a 14 day notice of repair-- im lucky to live in tenant friendly chicago. after many useless visits "assessing" the damage, lying to my face and generally doing everything possible for them to avoid addressing and resolving the actual problem-- I got them to agree to let me out of my lease scot-free in return for me not lighting any more fires and getting the city more involved/aware than they already are.

i then spent a couple more weeks apartment hunting AND studying for my big test to mark the end of my term... really stressful. my apartment got so so dirty because my bf is almost never home long enough to contribute a ton to chores.

despite this though, i passed one of the hardest classes of my degree (so far) and now i get the rest two weeks to unpack/relax!

and I got really lucky in finding a place!!! and like-- i kinda signed a lease before we were officially given permission to break our current one which was a *little* risky-- definetely stressful -- but it worked out. I moved in just last friday. it's well kept, has wood flooring and big windows, a really nice view, in-unit laundry, central air... yeah, i didn't know I would ever be able to afford a place that doesn't have peeling paint and a lingering poo smell in the hallway, haha.

they kinda nickel and dime for everything but i guess i have to accept that as the cost of a well kept place. i come home and i actually feel RELAXED now. I don't feel concerned about my health, i don't feel dirty, i dont feel stuck, i don't have to be freezing cold or debilitatingly hot. i feel like i have the privlege for once of CHOOSING my home instead of lapping up whatever cheap rental manages to take me in as a charity case. it's amazing the difference a good credit score, rental history and decent income makes. i wish i could've had this accessibility years ago but, i guess it made me a more grateful person to have not had it before.

so yeah i'm really happy. I wanna take pictures and post them when my place is less messy looking. it already looks so good and i havent even finished furnishing it. I dont know i'm just indescribably grateful to live in such a comfortable home. i enjoy my cleaning cause my home actually gets clean instead of there being a persistent mold smell. my floors are dust-free instead of constantly littered with paint chips.

right now i'm just finishing up the last of decluttering some unnecessary stuff, and unpacking. i'm gonna try and make sure I get some drawing done this week before i have to go back to schoolwork in march, which is fast approaching. it might be a while before i can just simply relax and enjoy my hobbies again before that. but i just feel so well, mentally. it was a beautiful day and i went for a long walk outside!!

i got lucky and my work gave me christmas eve off, as well as the morning of christmas day, so i drove out with my fiancee and we hung out with his family. i actually had a pretty good time, i've gotten more comfortable with his family. it was a small/relaxed gathering, we just watched a movie and played monopoly, opened presents. very normal. i got ykk the deluxe edition ^_^

my mom sent me gifts in the mail, they were honestly so touching/thoughtful. she got me a pair of kaledioscopes, those were a childhood favorite toy of mine. and some cute socks, a reusable tote bag with some cats on it, a coffee mug warmer. i was so grateful.

and i sent out gifts this year too!! finally, years before i was embarassed because i never had enough money to get people gifts. it was really fun wrapping and picking them out. i sent out chocolates, books for people i knew would read them.

new years was much less eventful, i had to work new years eve... sort of crushing. but yknow, i had the morning off so i just chilled and stayed up. drank sake. if i'm being honest with myself, i actually dont care too much for parties so it's not like i felt too excluded. but i definetely felt sad i couldn't do any sort of small gathering, like i did last year. all of my real life friendships sort of crumbled away, its only me and my fiancee now. but i'll make new friends and i've got to be grateful for my online ones, also!

hmmm.... so resolutions, right? mine are probably:

1. finish my degree
2. get out of debt
3. keep the house consistently clean
4. make real life friends/have a social life
5. learn to cook real food instead of eating like a mouse off scraps of random things
6. finish pip/maya comic! (i dont plan on it being crazy long-- maybe an hour long read of 4 chapters )

ok, list of books this year read... uh, i'll try to recall as much as i can, and give small reviews if i feel like it. might leave this as a wip cause theres a lot to cover...

list of books i actually finished

• milan kundera - the unbearable lightness of being
• healing and the mind - bill moyers
• lord of the flies - william golding
• brave new world - aldous huxley
• the story of philosophy- bryan magee
• mythology - edith hamilton
• paul klee: life and work - boris friedewald
• the plague - albert camus

• a happy death - albert camus

• you are not a gadget - jaron lanier

list of books that i have half-finished or decieced to drop for one reason or another

• franz kafka - the castle
• the scarlet letter - nathaniel hawthrone
• the woman warrior - maxine hong kingston

but yeah i'm better now. some part of me misses being sick, cause i could ditch so many responsibilities and my only obligation was to rest! and be quiet. my brain when i wake up, is always so busy with things i need to do. but when i was sick, i could only ever focus on the present, i was so slow. i sort of miss that low energy.

on top of that, i've been getting used to a new work environment and responsibilities. not super fun but, it's better than being a full on cashier i guess cause its so solitary. i want so badly to just have, normal working hours. when i finally move up into the cold corporate hell office landscape, maybe those will be blessed upon me.

so yeah, life has been pretty boring. i've been pretty depressed. its hard, being sick really didn't help with that. one thing about my depression that was, absolutely addictive was sleeping all day. i love sleeping, and if i knew it werent so bad for me and my mental health, i'd probably sleep all the time. like seriously. i can't stand this culture that promotes a high energy, always on the go, lifestyle. i'm looking forward to the summer because i can relax on the beach. i can swim and read books outside, which is considerably more healthy than sleeping in my room in the winter x)

i'm also trying to regain my appetite, which wasn't very good to begin with! very shot by my illness. while i was sick, my fiance made some delicious vegetable soup for me. i feel like such a womanchild sometimes, cause i suck so bad at cooking, his cooking will be the only thing i eat all day even if its only one meal sometimes! haha.

we've been doing our date nights at that beautiful old restored cinema i talked about, we watched three different films the last two weeks-- "freddy got fingered", "the idiots", and most recently, last night-- "fallen leaves."

freddy got fingered was uh, an experience! i thought it was really funny and very much an "anti-movie" and proud of it. my fiance has been a total pest about having me see it since the literal dawn of time, and has only become more insistent and annoying about it in recent months :D sooo, i finally gave in.. i cant say i regretted my time! everyone in the theatre was laughing and having a good time.

the idiots by lars von trier actually made me cry. while the whole "pretending to be a mentally impaired" never caught me as something to be TOO sympathetic with (and i very much dont blame the people who walked out upon realization), there is a deeper undercurrent about seeking understanding and intimacy, and wanting to unveil a primitive self i related to. though the circumstances in which the group met were crude, absurd, and sometimes downright hedonistic, the sense of family, and fufilling this need for a home among others resonated with me, even if that home presents itself as, a bunch of assholes...

i loved fallen leaves... i loved the sympathetic portrayal of the solitude and mundaneity of poor working-class life, i loved the unconventional (older, average looking people) protagonists for a romance film, and i loved how they felt like regular people. regular people who are capable of extraordinary commitment and feats of strength for the sake of love.

but my coloring skills.. are so behind ;__; ugh! i have done master studies and lots of painterly studies of colors i enjoy but, certainly not as much or as often as i have drawn from life or studied the forms and contours of things. so my colors look so uninformed and "baseless" i guess. like if my drawing skills are as old as a 15 year old, my coloring skills are just a babbling newborn! i am horrendously behind in that regard. in case you were wondering why i never color things.. i have an aversion because, i know the drawing will go to ruin >_<

but i have to catch up and synthesize the two. when i color things it feels like a soft muddy, disharmonous note is being played, undermining the quality of the original drawing. only through following through and coloring more things will they be more caught up with each other. gotta get comfortable with that discomfort

cause my drawings being uncolored isnt an intentional choice, its an act of cowardice! so all of my drawings will feel "unfinished", or i guess, my goal isnt to finish things cause i feel like "finishing" or "polishing" kills them. instead, i want the choices behind them to be acts of intention. cause i think thats what differenciates a good piece of work from a bad one. if it's achieving what its artist intends to achieve, even if that intention involves a degree of the unintentional (like the surrealists and utilizing automatism, for example!)

and a lot of the art i love has color. colors are some of the greatest amplifiers of mood, afterall. not that it cant be achieved with line alone, but i think something about my drawings feels a little too quiet sometimes, being void of color. but then i color them and the colors i pick sometimes strangle the original appeal of the shapes and overwhelm them!

theres a balance to be struck, i guess i just have to find it through refinement and research.

he wants me to go into marketing or something down the line because he thinks i'm "smart". i have no idea why, i don't think i've done anything in particular to prove my intelligence? and the only experience i have with marketing is just freelance work i guess doing stuff on twitter would've been considered marketing.

but i'm trying to disengage myself from twitter, preferably cut it off entirely. i'll admit i havent been able to part with it, because i do miss having people look at my stuff and having mutuals interact and whatnot. also doing commissions when in a financial pinch really comes in handy. and i do have that little secret sweet selfish desire for fame, that feeling of being special. but i've gotta remind myself how vapid that is. whats the difference between 20 and 2000 people liking something if the 20 people give you more thoughtful feedback and engagement...

anyway back to the original topic. he might just be biased cause i'm a native speaker of english and i'm white, in school, young/attractive/hip, a woman so ""empathy skills"", also a born citizen so i guess i have a more intuitive understanding of american culture compared most of my coworkers who are immigrants. so i feel a little weird knowing that those are *probably* the primary reasons i'm being treated so well. and theyre literally all just luck, i just won the genetic lottery there.

so yeah, i'm being trained on the customer service desk now, which is basically a combination of an assistant manager, accountant, and a bank teller. what makes this all so weird is i've only been working here for like two months. so i'm still making rookie cashier mistakes but i'm being asked to like rearrange cashier positions. HAHA. i'm so nervous. i've never been in a position of power and i don't really like it. i don't want a lot of responsibilty and i hate feeling like i'm in a hierarchy and i'm "managing" other people. does not align with my personal values and the structure i actually believe in-- a worker democracy.

but the thing is i'll have to do it at some point. if i want to have a normal/comfortable life in the US. so i'll just try not to micromanage anyone or be a dick basically. i know about a lot of things the cashiers do that are againist the rules but i don't really care because theyre so inconsoquential and i'm not gonna rat someone out who's barely surviving on minimum wage and are just trying to make their own lives easier. but i have no idea what the expectations are for me regarding me enforcing the rules so, i'm a little scared. i'm afraid of being forced to hurt people again.

i feel very uncomfortable/nervous. i hate having my routine dissettled. and this is a whole nother ethical conondrum.