- I don't know where my routines went. I started so strong in June, now look where I am. I wasted 2 months. Oh wait, no I didn't. Congratulate yourself at least, because now you've got some offline work done and it's just not apparent online. - I don't think I can write anymore. I feel like I've spent myself empty. I am perpetually numb to both pain and pleasure. I think this is good because it means I can no longer be as reactive as before. My dopamine just needs to be directed to school so I can finally finish: - TODO CL 122 Paper - TODO CW 199 Thesis Research - TODO CW 130 one-act play (and I have no idea what one act is) - TODO Fil 115 review and you already got some pointers from previous attempt - TODO CL 122 Mind map - TODO The Angelical Eden and Egan story or the Mirrored story or the Mandalagit Daughter story for YA - Sooner or later, the impulse to feel good about myself is going to drive this project and I must protect my integrity by making it clear who I serve. I must remember George Muller every single day. I try not to care about my lack of money right now even though you can't really do anything without it. I try not to care about being cut off from people. even though you need connections to get a foothold anywhere. Perhaps God is testing me again. I must allow myself time to grow. It feels impossible to grow anywhere. How else am I supposed to socialize if I don't put myself out there? How is God going to look at my work and be proud? How do I maximize His glory instead of my own given that I am an image-bearer? Too bad because all it seems now is that people think I'm some kind of omen bringer or that disease spreader corpse queen from Tomb Raider. Perhaps God is trying to say a very clear message in my life. He is angry. He is not graceful toward sin. This is what He died for, and every time I succumb to my own sinful flesh it's like I'm crucifying Him all over again. I should know better. Trouble is, try to tell that to people, like God wants you to stop doing what you do best right now. Imagine if God said stop writing fiction or stop existing at all, you'd be angry. All I know is what can I do now but help in the "fight" which isn't really a fight but a kind of amelioration or a damage control system. I am planning to build a Discord bot following Lynn Zheng's tutorial which will use some of Avril AI's code if I can get it to work and if I can get a new faster computer. I mean if nobody uses it then I will use it myself, because I find myself getting tempted so easily these days. It's an accountability system that's going to not be like Covenant Eyes because it will work even if you don't have a partner. Please God, I really need this to work. Give me intelligence enough and willpower enough to be able to select the right code snippets and words that will work their way into whoever uses the bot, including me. I mean, it foreseeably can't work if you don't put in the effort, like any exercise program. The trouble I see with a lot of accountability apps like Brainbuddy is that they don't really go to the heart of the problem. They are only exercising willpower? I think because the more you stretch your capability in this area then predictably it's going to get better, but with each new passing fantasy in your head or surprise porn you see on TikTok, you are totally helpless and may succumb because even though you did not seek it out, it's still in front of you. It's literally hardcoded now in my head. I can't believe I am referring to myself as a machine even though I don't want to. I crave porn because it's an appetite that I have 'tasted and partaken' in the past, and you don't really forget those kinds of "formative" dopamine shots no matter what kind of accountability app you use. I forgot to mention that I completely fell off that app even though I really want to see its benefits. How is my Discord bot going to be any different? In my case it's wanting to be entertained (yuck, "male entertainment") by passive sexual superstimuli because it's what my flesh can feel primitively and transgressively (my brain's specific crossed wires). It's as if I've grown to crave this spicy flavor or, the sin flavor. I know it's not what I liked before. I mean, when I felt pretty, as in when I was younger and could still realistically assume the best, compared to now, I imagined myself making out or my own flesh being handled. I am not there anymore. I dissociate when I watch porn. But sometimes, I can't tell if it depends on my mood or what, but there's a bicurious pull towards those movements, as if I want to touch them sometimes. As if I become a man. This is why I can't tell if I'm truly bi. Whenever I am able to imagine myself touching women, it is automatically a man doing so. I can't be turned on sufficiently as much as I can be when it's a man doing it to her, as when I myself am the one doing it. Oh wait, that previous sentence is backwards. Like, maybe this is because my "bisexuality" was never developed in the form of feeling pretty enough to be the object of some girl I like. And this is why you have to let go of this subconscious motive. Completely cut it off from you like a gangrenous limb. To even have a hint of trying to appeal to men sexually, I mean. You can't really serve God and another idol. How am I to do this? Is it possible that I'm still in "try-to-be-Audrey-to-replace-her-in-Mike's-heart" mode? I don't really think so. But maybe sometimes I get this compartmentalization mindset where I can still draw on some of his "daddy" sex appeal and make myself go in all of these mind trips that just distract me and waste my time. I am disrespecting him if that's the case. That's not the only thing he is valued for, because he's also an image-bearer. You should learn how to respect people by not being like this. The trouble is that I'm perpetually lonely in every sense that I have no outlet. I haven't even had a real conversation in weeks or months. What must it be like to have that? - I wonder what's happening to the environment right now. I just had a dream yesterday that the world is going to be burned up like in "Don't Look Up" which really put me in the shoes of a person encountering the apocalyptic times (and it felt so real, like wow the world is ending) and then oddly enough I read a story today called Cassandra that had the girl die. That's a synchronicity sort of like "I'm confused if this future event influenced the past" a la Interstellar but now it's just dopaminergic and something that God is only telling me because to exercise discernment means being a responsible citizen. I really wish I could do more in this to influence or even secure our future but my neurons are invested in porn research. I really worry because it was the first time that I read my journal in a long while and noticed the lack of entries for August except for the first entry that talks about inertia ignorance and all being the causes for environmental collapse. The "we could have prevented it but we were busy chasing dopamine to make rich richer and making them happy and survive" like in 2012. God is telling me these days not to avoid death, but to be ready, as in my soul. How to prepare others for death so their eternal salvation (and not just a physical one on a scifi Ark) is secured. Perhaps my bot is something of a research project or a capstone project that will give either secular or Christian sources. **My thesis is that secular methods don't work as well, but Christian theories don't either, because they don't have the system formalized in any way.** Or maybe I haven't really delved too deeply. That Workbook for Life Recovery. A 12-step program of sorts but sort of something like a marathon training app that's free and maintained hopefully by my patrons. Of course I'm going to be giving advice because that's a part of the deal. The effectiveness of the program I am developing is also reflective of my testimony. Because it is sort of like a marathon, to be able to train yourself to look away and deem it as God would deem it, not pleasurable but evil and sinful, and you are set free without having to turn to your other sources of dopamine like social relationships. I think I read this somewhere. Like, some people think porn addiction is gonna be "helped" in some Christian guide I forgot the name of if people learn to recognize that it's a relational problem, and how it's a self-worth problem, and how it's a ____ problem, but it's really not. It's a biological problem that's only been magnified by our technologies. It was literally impossible to find this demigod woman gyrating in the bushes somewhere while you were eating your kill of the day in ancient times, but now it's a click away. Imagine if some alien species dropped this demigoddess woman on earth as an experiment to our primitive brains. Wouldn't you think it's aliens? I don't remember it clearly but it's like from this Star Trek remake where they literally saw a flying spaceship lift off, and they ended up worshipping it and making an idol out of it because they don't have a frame of reference to understand what the f. I am teaching people how to control dopamine while at the same time I have not enough? How can I bring this to fruition God? I am so zapped of hope. I have no future to look forward to. Whatever job I will be doing will probably be business related which will suck the soul out of me. - Anyway my point is that I am trying to solve a heart problem and this is basically going to be an impossible problem unless I am going to study the great old white men like Augustine? Was he even white? I don't know. - I wish I could graduate already. I am 24 and I am still an undergrad. Fuck. - --- - Things you need to be clear on: - What is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life and how does Satan come into play with how he uses our own weaknesses against us - Part of me has some idea of this esp. on July 10 - May point to an answer for which is the voice of God and the voice of Satan - Maybe it's the voice of God if it agrees with the Bible and discernment + depending on how mature you are in the faith in accordance with his timetable and decree for your life