Church
My father has been trying to persuade me to go to church with him. He strongly disagrees with my disdain for church. It's funny, because one year ago he would have gone on and on about how he thinks the "corporate church" is incorrect and how he thinks all churches should be house churches. Now he wants to go to a church again, and I view this as a regression on his part, a step in the wrong direction. It's a pentecostal church too, which is a little nauseating to me, but it makes sense because he is becoming obsessed with extrabiblical teachings about demons and spiritual warfare and curses and miracle healers and speaking in tongues and all kinds of bullshit superstitions. I told him that I consider church to be places where people go to get brainwashed into believing in superstitions, and he told me Satan is putting ideas into my head.
The whole family went to an Easter sunday service but I sure didn't. I slept in, played video games, did some pleasure reading, all of which are things that I consider more productive than sitting through a church service.
I'm a little scared that if I do go to church with them I will find myself realizing that I kind of miss it. I need to stay vigilant, not allow those feelings within myself.
Elder Scrolls Online
I have been playing a lot of Elder Scrolls Online recently, for hours at a time. I find it a lot of fun to try to find aesthetically pleasing screenshots. I want to join a guild and find a group of people I can chat with and befriend
I spent real money on the game after already owning the game. It was an impulse, I couldn't help it. It's one of those things where it's like, yeah technically it's a waste of money because I already have the game, but I really want a cool mount, and a cool outfit, access to the DLC regions of the game, and extra inventory space, and those take currency that has to be bought with money. So I subscribed to the Plus membership, $15 a month in exchange for $17 worth of currency, extra crafting inventory space, and all the DLC. I also spent $20 buying a package that included an elk mount and $30 worth of currency. So I'm "getting my money's worth".
Will I play enough to justify this? My reasoning thus far into my life has been that for each dollar I spend, I want to get an hour of gameplay out of it. So if I spend $70, I want to have at least 70 hours of enjoyment out of the game. Valheim has paid off for me, I think I have 700 hours in the game over a period of years and I only spent $20. But Elder Scrolls Online, I only have 80 hours. If I pay $15 a month, I need to play 15 hours a month too.
More aesthetically pleasing screenshots incoming. Maybe I should make Youtube videos about it. I set up a gaming channel a long time ago.
Ugh, I'm turning into a bum. At least I'm in school.
Piano
I've been taking piano lessons for a while now, almost a couple of years now, and I am very behind. The book was supposed to take me a year to complete, but I'm still on the year 1 book and it's been years. This is entirely my fault for not practicing enough. Each week I apologize profusely, each week I tell myself I am going to get it together and practice and master the song, and then I just... don't do it. I can't bring myself to practice every day and it's extremely vexxing and frustrating. Most days I just outright forget, and then Sunday rolls around and it's like "oh shit I only have two days until I meet with my teacher" and then I practice like crazy but two days is just not enough time.
If I can't get it together I should just quit. It would be better than the partial effort I am putting in. It really sucks because my dream was to play music that I like.
Friendship
My closest friend messaged me last night and told me how he's really glad to know me and how he really enjoys talking to me and he's glad I'm a part of his life, and that I'm his "main friend", and I am very happy about this but it genuinely surprised me, because we are internet friends at this point. I met him at 15, he moved to Texas when we were 19 and I live in Iowa. And like, he has all these in-person friendships with all the people he's met, and he hangs out with them all, and it's so odd to me that he appreciates an internet friend more than all these other relationships, as well as all the friends he's known since middle school.
I would like to fly down and meet him over the summer sometime. Bar hopping in Des Moines was a good memory, maybe we could do the same in Dallas. Money, though, and time.
Cowardice
I've been changing my name across all my social media platforms. I've always had the mindset that not using my real name is a kind of cowardice, which is odd because I do not hold others to that standard at all, but I just... it felt cowardly to hide behind an alias. But then I started getting all these scammers messaging me across all or several social platforms, and it's like... ugh. So, I changed my Steam, my Discord, my Riot, this website, my Youtube. Hopefully it eliminates all the stupid scammers messaging me, but now I'm hiding behind aliases and thus will feel a lot more emboldened to say awful things.
It's a really really really bad habit of mine, but sometimes I comment things on Instagram just to see how many people I can piss off. I don't believe any of it, and some of it is very edgy, but I get a strange sense of satisfaction knowing I made someone's day worse, and I know it's not loving of me, and morally wrong, and I hate myself for it, but I do it anyway, it's such a strange place of cognitive dissonance and conflict between behavior and belief. You would be surprised, though, how easy it is to receive death threats.
Money
I am impulsive with money and it's driving me insane because I want to have more emergency money. But I end up using a lot of money by the end of the month. I can use the excuse like "bipolar disorder makes me impulsive" but I do genuinely believe that I am capable of being better with it if I make an effort.
I don't get approved for pre-approved credit cards because I don't make enough money. I want to start building more credit, but my only consistent line of credit at the moment is student loans.
Oh shit, I forgot about student loans last month. Nice. Fuck, I don't have enough money this month because of separate tuition payments. I guess I'll just be two months late. Which is fine but I'll be two months late on my medical and psychiatry bills too because fucking tuition ate up ALL my goddamn money for ONE class.
Chess
I want to get back on the chess grind. I was training hard for a number of months, doing coordinate training, playing tons of chess, trying to visualize the board in my head. I bet a meal on whether I can win a game of blindfold chess, and I intend to eat my filet mignon. And then I somehow lost momentum, my interest waned, and I haven't played chess in three months. My desire was rekindled two days ago when my parents gifted me a marble chess set. It's huge, it weights 19 pounds. The pieces are a little hard to distinguish, the pawns and bishops look the same, but the bishops are a little taller. I can tell it's hand-carved. I've always wanted a nice chess board, I guess this is it.
Miscellany
I'm hungry hungry hungry but I already put my retainers in so I guess I'm not eating.
How is it that I wrote a huge daylog like two days ago, and now I've written 1500 words in this one. I guess I am becoming wordy, which simultaneously pleases and vexes me. It's 4:30 AM here and I can't sleep. I guess I'll go lay down for another hour and see what happens.