04/30/2022 | Whenever I ask why God made a world full of cruelty and pain, I'm often told that it's so we have free will. I'm often asked, "Well you like having free will, right?" Everyone acts like it's a given, that endless choice and opportunity are obviously the best, but I don't know. I can't say confidently that I do like having free will. Sometimes I wish that I had no choice at all, that way there'd be someone else other than me to blame when things go wrong. I'm not afforded that luxury anymore. Now that I'm an adult it's either me or God that's to blame, and I don't think God cares enough to be involved. I don't have to answer to anyone, but I still do. Maybe that's the problem here.

04/30/2022 | I just heard a mourning dove. I love to listen to them. They're one of nature's wonders like sunsets, or the Moon, or clouds, that never get old. It doesn't matter how many times I experience them, they'll amaze each time. They're one of the things I never take for granted. I know to others the mourning dove's cries sound like actual cries- weeping, lamentations- but I don't hear it that way at all. I find sadness in lots of things, even in things no one else seems to think sadness dwells. Still though, I don't find mourning doves sad. Their cry has to be the most soothing sound. Their cry sounds like the early morning, before the Sun has risen, when the sky is still blue. You can go back to sleep or start a new day.

04/30/2022 | Today is the birthday of one of my dearest friends. I got her a puzzle. That probably sounds lame, but she absolutely loves puzzles. I don't understand it. I'm very bad at puzzles, but that makes her puzzle dedication and skill all the more impressive to me. The illustration looks a lot like the sort of style you'd see in a childrens book, which is why I picked it, actually. She collects children's books. She doesn't have children, they're for her future children. It's strange to me, but also endearing. She has all this love for people she hasn't met yet, people who don't even exist. I collect mugs for a house I don't own. Our collections probably aren't that dissimilar. They're small ways of making our hopes more tangible.

I asked her yesterday if she got sad on her birthdays. I thought it was a universal feeling, but apparently it's not. My birthday is a more poignant indicator of time's passage than the start of a new year. The beginning of the year is a leg sweep; My birthday is a kick to the stomach.

It's almost 4AM and I'm not tired at all. It feels like 10 or 11PM, early into the night; Not a night that's almost over. I think I'll try to sleep anyways, even if I don't feel like I need it. The least I can do is try, right?

04/29/2022 | I thought it was the end of the month about a week ago. I have grasp on the passage of time is tenuous, arthritic, and atrophied. The only way I really keep track is when I write in my diary. Now this little digital log will help me keep track, too! I haven't found calendars to be helpful. I always end up missing a day or two or three or a week and bam! The part of my brain that understands date and time dissolves into mush. And that part of my brain can't handle anymore dissolving, it's basically a slushie in there. I think that's part of the reason I like time-locked games so much. You know, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Cozy Grove. It makes it very obvious when you've played and if that was today. I also like the slowish pace of them. I'm the kinda person who likes to grind video games.

I'm still house-sitting, so I'm probably gonna work even more on the site today. I would've done more yesterday, but I found this absolute treasure trove of web graphics! Lots of pixel ones, which I'm not normally fond of, but I liked these for whatever reason. Anyways one page led to another, led to another, led to another and I was ensnared in hunting for colorful graphics to upload to Vashti's Room. That's why they call it's called the web. Not to say this was a waste of time or anything, I found lots of web materials, very fruitful search. The hunter-gatherer part of me was having the time of her life finding all of that internet fruit. Now I just gotta sort it, and create some pages, and write up some CSS for those pages. And knowing me I'm gonna want each page to look different, so they're probably not gonna have the same style sheet. CSS is easily one of my favorite parts of making a web page, so I'm very happy ^_^

Other good news about the site- finally got my favicon to work. I'm not saying /I/ got my favicon to work, something else did. I tried to set it up yesterday for I don't know, 20 minutes (?) until I got distracted and moved onto something else. I've been very distractable lately, and simultaneously very obsessive. The best way to describe it is with an example: This site? Have I been working on it almost nonstop? Yes. Have I at the same time written HTML for one page, then moved on to do CSS for another, then come up with a bunch of page ideas, then go off and download graphics, all without finishing the original page I'd started? Yes. My energy and motivation is more like a fire than a hammer and chisel. It's all consuming and hard to direct. I think I'm a person of extremes- it's either a flurry of activity or total apathy. I don't understand what dictates it at all. There's no pattern to it. I'll go weeks or months in one mode then switch to the other. I normally don't even notice it until that switch has occured. I can confidently say I prefer this mode over the other. Anything is better than nothing, right?

Anyways, look at my favicon! So cute!

04/28/2022 | Just came to the realization that I have a soda brain. It's all fizzy and fun but as yummy as it is, it's uncontainable. Everywhere I pour it I make a mess. Everyone else's brains feel like stagnant pools of water when I talk to them, so boring. Not that it's their fault. If it feels like everyone else is the problem, it's probably just you that's the problem I've found. Water isn't as yummy as soda, but it's good for you. You can see yourself in still water; Soda moves too much and too fast.

04/28/2022 | Hello all! Though this is technically my page for the month of May 2022, I figured I'd tack on the end of April. I don't really see the point in coding an entire page for perhaps a day or two of entries.

All I've really done is work on my site. I have a habit of obsessing over hobbies. I actually had a dream I was coding last night. In my dream I wasn't able to get any of my code right, it was really frustrating. They say art immitates life, but apparently dreams immitate life as well. Even though my dreams are often nonsensical, I still believe that my waking life has a lot of influence over them. I often dream of things I encounter in daily life: my friends, birds, my home, anxieties about driving. My dreams always have recurring motifs, too: defunct malls or shops, unnavigable roads, etc. My dream self encounters run down, desolate, urban mazes pretty frequently. I wonder why? I also wonder if others have these recurring motifs that have no obvious tie to their waking life. I wish people discussed their dreams more. I don't understand how some people aren't interested in dreams. I mean, we spend so much of our time asleep.

That hasn't been the case for me lately, though. Not only have I been getting by, I've also been refreshed by only 4 or 5 hours a night, for almost the past month. I don't understand where this energy came from. It's constant, like a heartbeat. It's electric, like a heartbeat. It has to be one of the best feelings I've ever had- that I can just keep going and going and going. Sometimes it feels like it's not up to me, like my mind will drag me along with it, no matter. I'm in a car, going where I want, but I am not the driver. I hope the driver will keep driving me where I wanna go.