### **Morning Pages** So I was right. One person received a Palanca letter only yesterday. There is hope for me yet!! No one has surfaced from the poetry and short story categories. And one person for the full-length play got notified on 22 while the other got notified on 19. So they are staggering it for some reason. LET IT BE ME!!!! Okay, I’ve semi-given up on Palanca, a person won the short story and poetry already. But I discovered Dihexa, maybe my miracle drug. I will get my hands on it or so help me God. I literally don’t see myself as a full-time writer yet. Maybe I can be a full-time writer like Zoe Hana even if I don’t become a bestseller. I have to fall in love with writing again, and the only way I can do that is if I get back my fluidity, the same sort that led me to write Seasons of Mourning in that way, incorporating real-life detail and research and lived experience from my dad’s poultry farm business. There’s a downside to beauty, it might just get you kidnapped like what my mom almost experienced when she was in med school, when a van slowed down and opened their door as she was walking to the gate. They speculate it was Muslims who were seeking to kidnap her to make her a wife or something. I asked why they escape justice, Dad mentioned they threaten to kill the woman’s families probably if she reports. Which led me to conversations about their autonomy from law, thoughts about God, like I just realized, is not actually male. Whatever the Bible says. But it was only Jesus who was documented to be born as a human. God was probably written as a “Father” for simplicity. I somewhat believe physicality heavily determines gender, or the experience of gender, and God is too big and too complex if we limit “Them” or “It” or whatever pronoun to just “Him.” Could be coincidence, could be nothing, could be anything. I literally can’t have a binary yes or no in this life, can I? “Bottleneck,” “accept defeat,” woman empowerment coach who looks like Ivanka Trump. It’s all I can do not to go insane when I keep getting prodded by all these signals and signs probably frying my dopamine because it’s a loop I can’t realistically close given the fact that nobody is giving me clear confirmation. So fucking discouraged and sad that KM Fajardo didn’t make any bestseller list for her Local Heavens cyberpunk Gatsby retelling. If she couldn’t do it, when she already has the ideal YouTube + IG + TikTok audience and more than 10,000 saves on Goodreads and a great marketing strategy and aesthetic, plus she is also very eloquent and well-spoken, then what else are the rest of us Filipinos supposed to do? Truly fucking upset because I really thought she would be the next Thea Guanzon, who is the first New York Times bestselling Filipino who lives in the Philippines (but KM Fajardo is Canadian). It seems like science fiction especially, or it’s something I just notice, tends to prioritize Chinese or East Asian authors like Chloe Gong and Xiran Jay Zhao. KM Fajardo literally almost matches Chloe Gong’s Goodreads saves. Publishing really has a problem, and it’s because China is probably the second-biggest superpower next to America. Maybe it’s also because marketing really plays a big part, and also because her publisher, which isn’t a Big 5 publisher, doesn’t have as big a budget. Why does everything hinge on marketing???? Why can’t books be popular for their content? Whatever happens to me in the future will really hinge on getting a big 5 publisher, and that starts with finding and impressing an agent with a good sales track. I literally have no time to muck about with anything else if I want it that bad. Just supremely upset that I have to move mountains and swim against the soft and unspoken racism and unmarketability of being Southeast Asian and a minority. Well, if there’s anything I learned from my mistakes with Jeffrey, he’s probably trying to tell me it’s not about me at all. He’s just really busy. It’s not a reference to my sister or Mike. But whatever, it could be true that my sister has that foreign body proportions and that he might be really attracted to her more than he could ever be with me. I realize he will always be compromised. You know what’s funny? I thought, whatever, I’ll just cheat on him back if he cheats on me, and my sister will be forever indebted to me because I’ll end up forgiving her so I won’t become homeless in the event that my relatives squander our little wealth. It’s highly unlikely, now that we have a small hotel/inn in the making, but whatever. Just a contingency plan. I’ve got to grow up some more probably to not go insane and become mature enough to ignore subclinical tension between them, just hoping that they’d mellow out probably like my uncle, my dad’s sister’s husband whose name also has Alfonso in it and my mom. But who’s talking about marriage? I don’t plan to marry for a very long time. I’m not even sure I want to be married at all. Who’s going to marry someone who doesn’t want kids? Somebody really has to convince me because I don’t want to be losing all my calcium in my spine and ruin my body and have ugly neurodivergent children who’ll struggle in life. Whoever wants to be married to me has to really answer that why question really well. Like why me, when you could literally marry anyone you want, someone prettier, smarter, more well-adjusted, more social, more compatible with you. Of course, I have to improve myself to the best of my ability and capability so that their answer doesn’t ring false. So about 17 minutes after I wrote the previous, “Musk Charity Foundation Inbox” “Coworking Space” just so obviously scammy vibe decided to bring to mind so many synchronicities. I realize, it couldn’t be Jeffrey reading me, which is disturbing. Jeffrey is, or probably at work? Or probably sitting in a UV Express heading to Laguna? Or maybe he is reading me? Maybe this is just a defense, because I’d hate the idea that they know we talked about Anora in my IG messages. And now they’re watching my IG messages because they’re offering me 180,000 USD? When it’s so obviously a scam? All this writing about lotteries and luck. You know what? I don’t even know what people think, I can’t control what they do. I can only live as honestly as I can without endangering other people. One thing is for sure, somebody or a group of people are monitoring everything I do on many platforms all at once, which is really disturbing. What are the odds that my suspicions aren’t real? What are the odds that a random scammer created a page only today just to troll me specifically? Why is it called a coworking space and literally not anything else? Why? On another note, I’m really past distinctions of sane and insane now. How can I remain grounded to any frame of reference when I literally have so much of my reality be mutable and open and vulnerable? False alarm, the scammer who created the page on behalf of Elon created the page 7 hours ago, way before I shared the post. So fucking odd still, to have synchronicities align like that, so I can make them speak anything I want. I’ve got to hedge against this, this feeling of hitting synchronicities like a fucked up lottery almost every day. Emman Atienza is dead 😖 I wasn’t the biggest fan of her especially after the food receipts stunt, but it’s still really sad. Vico’s latest basketball story is amusing me for less than innocent reasons 👀 It even rhymes in English 😅 All right, I’ll be the first to admit it’s so obvious I have a happy crush on Vico. Like I don’t know him like I know Jeffrey, and I’m still in love with him even though he broke my heart (but his latest post is weirdly cathartic). If Jeffrey or another guy pursues me, I don’t think I could be capable of having a happy crush. As in, I would feel betrayed if my boyfriend thinks another girl makes them sweat and bothered. Who is reading me anyway? I have no audience, and if I am really being read, then it’s just confirmation bias on your ends.