Well then, it's been more than a few days since I've added my last entry, and I'm beginning to lose my grip on reality — the fog is closing in, and I stumble blindly in a haze, grasping onto the last remnants of my personhood....Pepe memes.

This is a lie. I don't even like Pepe that much. I find him overrated, though I do recognize the appeal of his universally-relevant application. No, I prefer Shrek. But now is not the time to expound on my love of Shrek, no — now is the time for RECORD-KEEPING, i.e., my own historical consciousness.

Since I last wrote, which was almost a week ago, I experienced many, many painful things. My teacher, Tom, said he was "very, very worried" for my senior project, and that is sounded "vague and confusing, and not in a good way." That was terrible to hear. I also have been falling asleep at midnight, which sounds pretty good, but it actually prevents me from my work done, because I get too tired. I also got bored on Skype with B, who I shall now refer to by a single letter in order to maintain some privacy, and felt bad about getting bored, but not bad enough to do much to pull myself out of my drowsiness. I haven't been reading as much beacuse I haven't had time (or, rather, haven't felt like making the time), and I haven't been learning many new words. I guess I learned "camphor" today: a white medicinal substance. And also, "galluses," which is a somewhat archaic word for suspenders (the "l"s look like little suspenders to me).

I felt pretty bad this week and most of this weekend. Just a constant feeling of dread. Utter dread. I don't know what I'm going to do. Well, that's not true; I have a vision for what I'm going to do, but I don't know if I'll be able to make something good out of it. I made a schedule today, which helped me feel better about my prospects, because I do have around 100 days to finish the whole thing, but I aboslutely must be working on it for at least 5-8 hours every single day for the next 100 days if I want to come close to finishing it. UGH, GOD. WHY HAVE I DONE THIS TO MYSELF. I AM SUCH AN IDIOT.

Anyway! Friday night I went to see a play with Ameesha and the adorable librarian man. The play was....really strange, actually, and I don't think I liked it. Actually, I felt rather repulsed by it. Some of the dialogue was so cringey I couldn't help but grimace in the dark. The stage itself was really nice (I'll attach a picture once I figure out how to fix my fucking iCloud situation), and I liked the main character's big fishing pants. But no, it wasn't good. The highlight was when the main dude disemboweled a fish ON STAGE. I thought it was a prop!!

Saturday, I mostly did nothing. Sunday, mostly nothing, too. Today, I was awoken very early in the night — 3 am, probably — by my roommate and an inconsiderate friend or two of hers. They were having a slumber party. So, I couldn't fall back asleep until 5 am. Then, at 10, I was awoken AGAIN by her friends coming and and out of my room to like...do contouring makeup, or change clothes, or play Lorde, or whatever. Classic slumber party stuff. Honestly, it made me wish I had a group of female friends I could have a slumber party with. Of course, it would be an art ho slumber party, which would consist of the following:

• blasting sweet jams from LCD Soundsystem, The Caretaker's An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (on infinite loop, played at the lowest volume as we all fall asleep), Tangerine Dream, Rachmaninoff, and Ennio Morricone
• tasty snacks to last us the whole night, like flamin' hot cheetos, and stale boxed cereal, and stale Twizzlers, and tablet-shaped mint gum, and weed
• a delicious breakfast of black coffee (stirred and dissolved, not pressed) and that's it
• fun slumber party activities, like collectievly browsing Reddit, or watching really ridiculously high production value ASMR videos/short films, or watching weird miniature Japanese food toy building from RRCherryPie aka Nameless, or drinking alcohol and sm0k1ng w33d
• lots of late-night chatting about our journey through existentialism/coming to terms with our fading youth and ultimately meaningless existences/nihilism 101
• and at the end of the night, a movie. something scary, like Birdemic, or Troll 2.
• oh oh, and we'd do the thing they did in the Princess Diaries where they slid a mattress down a giant staircase!! We would do that until the great sun rose into the sky!!!

Fuck me, now if that's not the dopest slumber party you've ever heard of, THEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT FUN IS!

I hopped around four different locations today to work, and in each place I got the same amount of things done: 0. That's not true. I am being too harsh on myself. I got like...a thing done. Some things. Not as many things as I'd planned.

It's almost 1 am and my roommate is still in our room with her boyfriend. Soon, I will be breaking up their little party. That's right, kids: Mommy has to go to work tomorrow! Actually, this isn't true. I don't have school tomorrow and plan on doing...the MAJORITY of what I need to get done on my senior project this week.

I've been doing a lot of unnecessary work on not-required projects this week. Such as, making the website go live on GitHub. And making a random text generator. And researching brutalist web design, and web design in general, and learning Javascript. I've been looking up adventure games, and graphic adventure games, and interactive fiction, and game development. I've been following a lot of game developers on Twitter. But only indie ones, of course. I've been productively procrastinating, which is the most apt term, and it's not good. Though I am proud of my random generator.

I also joined a game jam with B. The Fermi Paradox Jam. We spent a while yesterday writing the outline for our interactive fiction game. It's about speed dating aliens, and also about interdimensional interaction. (The second half is B's doing.) It was weird; I like, couldn't contribute anything substantial. It was like the gears in my head weren't turning. Just stuck in place, whirring against metal. But anyway, we worked on it, and I think we can finish something. I tried drawing some stuff today, but I suck at drawing and couldn't make anything nice.

Still feeling random pangs of regret and self-disgust. If only I had a better work ethic. If only I was raised by different parents. If only I was a completely different person born into a completely different circumstance.

One thing I did do this week: I made a random Internet bio text generator. I'm very proud of it, because it's very funny and pretty accurate. Alas, I have no one to show it to — not even Carlos and Katie, who came back from Italy this weekend but have still not shared anything about their trip with us. (I have a theory that I will not see them at all this semester until B comes back for Thanksgiving, and then I will see them once, and then once more after I graduate and B comes back for winter break, and immediately thereafter I will be whisked away to New York, never to speak to them in person again, for they are enmeshed in their own little lives, disgusted at their own circumstance but unable to remove themselves, like putty on hair.) Only B understands.

Speaking of, Skype sucks ass. FaceTiming is definitely better in terms of not crashing all the fucking time, but the whole idea of face-to-face distance calls is mentally and physically taxing, and also kind of ridiculous. When FaceTiming or Skyping, there can't be anything distracting you from the person you're talking to. There is only that singular contact between screens that symbolizes the fortitude of your relationship. But this style of conversation is deeply unnatural. People are often distracted while conversing, playing on their phones mindlessly, or eating food, or watching some television. Full, undivided attention is uncommon, and typically only present in the honeymoon stages of friendship or romantic relationship. It's not that I don't enjoy talking to B — I just think that physical immobility in participants leads to immobility and stagnancy in conversation itself. After getting through the routine daily narrative, there isn't much else to do on Skype but sit and stare at each other, willing yourself to not fall asleep.

This boredom is what happened at UCLA, but now I'm much better equipped to deal with it. Still: Today, I fell asleep while watching a movie that I had picked out (it was a terrible movie, I regret ever picking it), and I felt myself again drifting into a fog of my own creation. Alertness, something I took for granted when I was younger, is a fickle characteristic, and all the pieces have to be in place for me to feel anything resembling cognizance and intelligence. Only when I drink coffee am I able to immediately induce alertness, and I feel whole again. Maybe I'm just intellectualizing and psychoanalyzing caffeine addiction.

Now, I will sleep. I'll eat a snack, and then I'll sleep. Tomorrow will be a productive day, full of coffee and laserlike focus and functioning headphones. Speaking of, my mom brought stuff today. She told me that all of Hangzhou's citizens are partying in Huang Shan right now for the G20 summit, because the government ("Communist countries can do this!") gave people the option of taking an all-expenses paid trip so that they wouldn't loiter around the city and make it look...more Chinese? Ugly and poor? Either way, I think this is hilarious. A bunch of people randomly in Huang Shan, because their government paid for a trip so that they wouldn't have to be crammed in the beautiful city they live in.

My dad is having a fun time on his Alps hiking trip. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him so happy in his dorky little hat and strap-on backpack and walking sticks. I'm glad he's having fun, because I know we give him a lot of stress. A lot, a lot of stress.