1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.

To move out, move on, quit my job(s). Being in a new place with the possibility of unemployment, poverty, failure, loneliness. I imagine something like taking on an internship at Poketo, for example, and packing my bags and moving to LA. I would get out of touch with most of my friends in San Diego (not that I’m doing a good job right now) and possibly have trouble making new ones in the new city. What if I hate the place, even though I thought I might love it there? What if I end up making dreadful friends, as I often do when I visit a new place? What if I lose the internship completely, quickly, and/or fail to make enough money to meet my rent, food, social needs? How will I find new friends? What if I fail everyone and everything?

This feels to me like maybe a 7/10, I guess. It would feel super terrible, but at least I’m not dying, or something?

2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?

I would freak out in the back of my brain as I present some deadpan face to the world. I’d probably try and work somewhere else, leave and never come back. Run away from my problems! How healthy. Try to join new groups?

3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios?

I would be living on my own, which would probably feel wonderful. I would be meeting new people, and there are a lot of people out there. West Coast Swing is a great community to have a family right away, (though how good am I at that <– wrong section!) and I’d be following my dream(????). Foolish people have achieved better before, through charisma and dumb luck. Wow, I’m such a pessimist.

4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?

If I were fired from both jobs? Get right back on the job market. No panic. I’m well qualified to do what I do, and if I can’t find that then I can work things out freelance, or doing another minimum wage type job, like hostessing or something. I live with my parents so it’s not like rent is a huge deal. Just emotional damage, having to deal with them all the time.

5. What are you putting off out of fear?

Okay. I’m doing this questionnaire because I thought it would help me with something. To be honest, I’m happy with where I am right now; perfect. I wish I had more things to do, sort of, but then again I’ve been wishing for this free time for months and years. And it’s not like I have a TON of free time. I have weekends now, that harbor a few hours that I had never had empty. It is a scary feeling at first, but then wonderful, and then the time is up already and it’s time to move on. I’m in a stage now where I need to rest and enjoy the empty time, and I can feel the era ending and my restless inspiration kicking in.

You could say I’m putting off starting projects, out of impatience, and fear of failure. I need to be more okay with throwing my work away, with sharing mediocre creations to better myself, to take criticism. I’m putting off making friends, too, because the ones I have at times make me feel antisocial.

I’m also putting off calling Wonder Con about my tickets. I keep forgetting, really, but I really should do that. And I’m putting off looking for new jobs because I really like the ones I’m in. I don’t like the thought of leaving, but I guess overall I should keep my options open.

Yeah. I’m putting off that. That’s my answer. Job searching.

It’s just that I have two jobs when some people have none. And I don’t want to be greedy or anything. Is that an excuse? I enjoy what I do and I have plenty on my plate.

6. What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action?

Financially I’m saving up. Emotionally, I’m taking a hit. I don’t completely enjoy living at home, or as far as I am from my friends. I don’t enjoy being so far from the dancey places, to the point where I’m too tired, lethargic, fearful to go. Because it’s so far for a long shot. Physically I feel okay, I think.

7. What are you waiting for?

I don’t fucking know. I don’t actually know what I want, is what I’m waiting for. But that’s for the next exercise, isn’t it?

I went to a casino for the first time since I’ve turned 18 last night.

It was haunting to see small, mostly asian adults, hunched over and blank, calmly yanking down the handle to a slot machine, or intensely setting plastic chips down on a green felt board. As if one’s life depended on it, or as if one’s money did not. It was haunting to see a detached band of employees, charismatic but equally empty, doing their rounds to provide the strange services a casino might offer, to clients who throw their money slowly, slowly down the drain.

It was a little worse after getting to know gambling as a homewrecker, and as a mathematical quandary.

This has been an awful week so far by day, and an all right one by night. Nerves that I can barely control, making me want to throw up when I haven’t eaten anything (mostly because I’ve had no appetite, due to nerves), and then a warm nothing. Strange. No. Not really strange.

An idea I had just now: carpets designed to get stained. Somewhat inspired by this, partially by young apartments and their accidentally disgusting carpets, and by our new puppy, which pees on everything.

I really appreciate this in Chronories. I know there’s a few other programs that also do this, but at the moment I can’t remember which.

After adding to an entry in Chronories, I don’t need to save. I just need to close it and it’ll still be there the moment I return. There isn’t even an option to save, as a draft. It’s just like writing in a diary, which is what Chronories was designed to emulate.

I had a dream.
I was restarting my computer for software updates, and I fell asleep with it on my lap. My glasses, the square but thin ones, were still on when I woke up at around 6:30am.

I had a dream that I was driving around in England. We were going through forest area, and Antha Mack was there, as well as one other person. It may have been Matthew, but I’m not sure. It was some guy friend of mine.

I was driving around on the road, there was a building, perhaps a university where I should be going to in the summer, except it’s countryside. We were driving, I was driving on the right side of the road for some good amount of time. Finally, I realized I was driving on the right side. A few other cars were as well. I vocalized this thought, and moments after I did a car headed down toward me and the few other cars who were driving the wrong way. Panic. I rationalized that the other drivers were also confused Americans, perhaps. Although that doesn’t explain how my steering wheel was still on the left in the car.

I don’t remember too much now but I remember Antha was recording my opinion of something on tape. The last question she asked… I thought about it for a long time. There was only stuttering recorded on the tape as I tried to get a thought out. I formed an entire thesis, a paragraph answer that was unique and good, in my opinion, but my first statement I suppose was too generic for her. She and the other companion both rolled their eyes as I uttered my first thoughts, and she shut off the tape, saying I had wasted her memory. I was immediately furious, but disarmed. I knew I had insightful things to say, but there was no time or place to prove that. I began to hate her, and now the bitter feeling has crept over into the daytime. I feel irritated for no good reason.

There were chocolate and peanut butter cream puffs in the kitchen at work today.

I was thinking about famous people.

About, in particular, to be frank, who I would want, who I considered attractive, who was good, who was not. In essence, passing judgment upon them as any common consumer of mass media would.

Then I thought about the question: “Who would you want to meet, dead or alive, and have dinner with? What three people?”

And I realize that my answer is no one. Not because there aren’t extraordinary people out there in the world. It’s that I wouldn’t know what to say to them. I would feel shame in asking the average questions because I feel like they’d all be asked before. I would feel patronizing in trying to ask them a unique question. A sad existence to enjoy the unique questions, yet they live it. Pitiable for me to try to impress them when these famous people have done so much, have (for the most part) deserved their fame.

I also realize that the answer is no one only because I have now met Ze Frank, felt the sheer terror upon entering his presence, had the awkward small talk that is to be had between celebrity and fan, in a line after a conference, if only for a hug and a photograph.

And I realized that I wasn’t really attracted to any celebrity. I think many are beautiful. But I only know their faces, and the airbrushed versions of those. I can’t imagine having any meaningful conversation, discourse, relationship at all with any of them, because I don’t know them. And I don’t know about all or any celebrity specifically, but if I were one, I wouldn’t really want to get to know a fan either. Even if, as a fan, I wished dearly to have a conversation with him or her. I realize that the happening would only end up in awkward silence on one half, and witty cracks and polite statements on the other, to fill in the void, to make the unfamous feel as if they had not wasted that famous person’s time, to give the unfamous something to live for.

A work in progress. I’m painting it too.

Recently, I’ve been caught up between the events of days with the idea of love. Just about everyone I know who seems somewhat interested in having some sort of romantic relationship is in one, or only just recently got out of a very long term one, etc. etc. I’ve been thinking about this abundance in affections, and its specific avoidance of anything to do with me. I’ve been wondering if I should love, if I deserve it, and how I should go about obtaining it.

But about ten minutes ago, after cleaning my room for the entire day (it’s nowhere near done by the way, I can no longer see the ground) I found a letter, from what I consider my only real boyfriend (well, I’ve had two, but the first… I don’t know if he counts. It just doesn’t feel like he counts.). I had tossed the winter formal wallet-size photos into the recycling bin when I decided, on a whim, to read one of the three letters I’d stuffed into the photo album with them.

It was truly a love letter. Something that girls would all go crazy for, what they cling on to men for, what romantic comedies are all about. And yet, reading it, single and possibly lonely in the month of christmas, and I didn’t really feel sad. I decided to keep it, and the other two letters, without reading them (not the photos).

I don’t really know why. I’m not clinging to the past. What he wrote was sweet, and when I think about it, I probably rolled my eyes a little bit on the inside when I read it, knowing he was cheesetastic as ever, and loving him still.

Reading it know just makes me realize that I have once loved, and once was loved. I am love-able. And there’s no reason to be chasing after boys when there’s not really anyone I’m particularly interested in. Something as crazy incredible as I once had with this particular boy has to come on its own, without me looking, and will probably pass as sure as it will come, someday.

I’ve told myself something like this many times, but tonight I’m fairly sure I’ll believe it, and stick to it.

Plus, all those couples. Maybe not an anomaly, but it isn’t something that means that /I/ have to enter into, voluntarily, forcibly. Since when was I a crowdpleaser anyway? (since I started dancing. I know.)

Classes designed as an accumulation of XP
Especially for game design, or motivation, or a course on mathematical optimization or similar
Multiple kinds of quests and points to get your grade in class – if you choose an optimal way, which involves minimal work, you’ve won anyway.

A story
about a girl who lives in real life
Where achieving things is difficult, but physically more rewarding than the digital realm
A romance, requited or no, with a digital being
A user, from some end of the universe, neither know where or who or what
The feeling of digital love (cue Daft Punk)
She doesn’t find it as easily in real life
But in the end, chooses reality
Because of its rewards
His arguments about having someone, versus having someone in reality
Something to think about.

This was originally intended to be original content. Pun? Redundant? I can’t think straight, and am tired, and etc etc, excuses. I don’t know why.

-1. Last beverage: combination fruit punch and pink lemonade.

-2. Last phone call: with my mom about banksy.

-3. Last text message: Guyane

-4. Last song you listened to: I… don’t know

-5. Last time you cried: A few moments ago

HAVE YOU EVER:

-6. Dated someone twice: No

-7. Been cheated on: Yes

-8. Kissed someone & regretted it: No

-9. Lost someone special: Yes

-10. Been depressed: Yes

-11. Been drunk and threw up: No

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS:

-12. dark red

-13. eggshell white

-14. does black count? if not, then chartreuse

THIS YEAR HAVE YOU: (2010)

-15. Made a new friend: Yes

-16. Fallen out of love: er, kind of

-17. Laughed until you cried: Yes

-18. Met someone who changed you: I find that everyone I meet changes me, at least slightly.

-19. Found out who your true friends were: not really

-20. Found out someone was talking about you: Yes?

-21. Kissed anyone on your friend’s list: No >_>. Wait, yes.

-22. How many people on your friends list do you know in real life?: All but perhaps 2 or 3

-23. How many kids do you want?: …

-25. Do you want to change your name: no

-26. What did you do for your last birthday?: Disneyland

-28. What were you doing at midnight last night?: writing a fucking novel

-29. Name something you CANNOT wait for: a day off

-30. Last time you saw your Mother: a few hours ago

-31. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life: more spare time to sleep

-33. Who was the last person to cheer you up: my mom? or my cat.

-34. Who is getting on your nerves now?: my sister? no one really. maybe mark.

-35. Most visited webpage: probably gmail, facebook, or nanowrimo.org

-36. Whats your real name: Jasmine

-37. Nicknames: they exist

-38. Relationship Status?: no thank you

-39. Zodiac sign: leo

-40. Male or female?: female

-41. Primary School?:

-42. Secondary School?:

-43. High school/college?:

damnit, I’m tired of this.