I’m attracted to Steve Buscemi. WTF brain?? — I really hate this feeling—the queasiness in my hands when I drink coffee. — Jeremiah 29:11 again. This deception of new believers occurs not out of malice, but an unfortunate result of the wisdom that says it’s best to use lubrication. Wait no. It’s best to use... some kind of “sugar” to make people more receptive to the Gospel message. It’s true that Jesus promises a lot of things, good things to people, but to a beginner who doesn’t see the caveats or footnotes, it’s often misinterpreted. Like, if you were a mature Christian, you would have already had a changed heart such that by reading Matthew 7 you wouldn’t ask God to bless you with riches on this Earth, because by that point, your desires should have already changed to reflect God’s will. But I think what really populates the prayer lives of young Christians is venting and asking God for needs and wants. Not enough of worship and thanksgiving and surrendering to His will and recommitting yourself to Christ so you stay strong against sin and temptation. I often most become emotional and vent to God and talk to Him most often when I’m in pain, which is a bad sign. — I live in three realities, the real, painful one with unknown and uncharted vistas of real people’s feelings, the one in the Narrative that people take pictures of and create discourse of on various media, and a hyper-fantastical setting where everything is bliss and romantic (real world be damned). I experienced some whiplash or vertigo when I was catapulted from World 3 to World 1, hence the fit of rage on Feb 10. — I hope Ally and Athena marry decent guys. And my male cousins marry decent girls who aren’t gold-diggers. Imagine having that drama, me and Ally, fighting for Am-am’s portion with some schmuck/schmuckerella/squammy person who doesn’t think my sister deserves her land/assets because she’s severely disabled and doesn’t have an apparent use for it. I’m pretty sure this is common in Pinoy households everywhere. I pray for the Lord’s providence for the future reality. — I was about to say I feel like Grendel, but then I found John Gardner’s book based on the poem, and found he based it on Jean-Paul Sartre, whom I despise. Bleh. I just feel like a monster, devoid of human connection or the capacity for it. — I just realized that I kind of don’t want to be a specfic writer anymore. I mean sure, I can use fantasy/sci fi in my stories, but that’s not really my mission anymore. I read in _Ordering Your Private World_ that it’s important to distinguish between good and best. I think between a career in specfic and Christian literature, I would much rather be writing for God. I mean, I guess I don’t want an MFA anymore. Although I can possibly see myself going back to school in CDO. With this COVID reality, I don’t even want to live in Manila. One, it’s gonna tempt me to get all those surgeries because the clinics I have in mind are all in the Metro. Two, I just feel really comfortable in CDO. Maybe online school? When I think about it, there are a ton of MOOCs and free courses I could just torrent to sharpen my skills and brush up on fundamentals, and there are a lot of ebooks on the craft and content creators on YT. I don’t even have to pay anything unless it’s a course I really think is worth pursuing. I could also self-study. But I still have this nagging feeling that I’m not actually relevant (as if that matters) unless I get published in a real journal or publication or go abroad like these UPD grads who eventually get hired immediately or are part of the cognoscenti in the literary world. I mean, of course, I need to earn money, there’s the future magazine in the works, but some prideful part of me craves adulation. If I’m writing for God now, and, considering all the comments I received in the Elohim drafts from Prof. Lee in CW151, I mean, I got the sense that people really don’t want my type of writing, especially people in their fields. I was writing about something like “forgiveness and repentance” and got met with “What do you mean?” And all those quotes from C.S. Lewis and Michael Heiser were deleted in the comments/edits because they were “unnecessary.” Wow I really underestimated how much people do not know about the Gospel. How alien and off-putting must it be to people who are spiritually blind or not called to believe. I just had a thought, like what on earth am I going to write about in CW199? For my thesis? Knowing my prof.’s background. Like ma’am I really don’t care if my content offends your sensibilities because you operate on a secular way of thinking about gender and all. I feel like I shouldn’t even be in UP. I’m gonna go the quantum mechanics road, studying physics and science writing and Alister McGrath, using presuppositional arguments by people like Greg Bahnsen, etc, whom I haven’t actually read, because it’s less politically charged, all the while devoting most of my energies this semester actually doing the foundational work for the career God has for me: making sure I stay sharp, keep habits on track and regular, read as much as I humanly can, drown all my impulses to get surgery, which leads to A DEAD END by the way, because it’s not relevant eternally. It IS NOT RELEVANT ETERNALLY. — Couldn’t exercise. Really tired physically because of my period. — I don’t know if this is a literary or narrative principle that’s always kept, but somehow, morally gray characters or bad characters who have done something bad but decide to be good never get a good ending. Just something I noticed. Like in Locke and Key, the woman (in season 1) who unleashes Dodge upon the world because she thinks Lucas is still in there. She gets sucked into that gate in Dodge’s body. Also, that girl who wiped blood in the wound Cheongsan’s friend. She decides to redeem herself but circumstance becomes the end of her. Although the woman in season 1 in Locke and Key eventually does go back to her original body. Just the cliffhanger in season 1 led people to believe she was gone forever. Also, the dad’s killer, he gets trapped in the spirit world forever, but still gets to contribute something good, but still, he’s still stuck in that plane forever. There’s no true redemption for these characters, because of what they do/did. Some kind of justice principle that I see everywhere, and it’s probably written about somewhere, or formalized, but I wouldn’t know the name, because I’m not well-read enough. Maybe it’s something related to narratology.