continuing to white-knuckle my mental health. it's gonna be okay, i did everything right. woke up early, worked out (14 miles of cycling!), showered, ate a good breakfast instead of slop, got to class on time. not gonna let my annoying writing classmates who are SO PROUD of being marines get me down, or my statistics class that doesn't make any sense to me, or the fact that it's gonna take me forever to get home tonight... that's right, i'm being social and staying on campus late. round of applause for ash. good things are still happening! i'm drawing again, i'm gonna finish my owen writeup, keep updating the core site, hang out with friends. no longer employed at the grocery store. everything's looking up.

victor came over on saturday. he was wearing the same exact us army field pants that i have. and we ended up going to the natural history museum with his friend ryan, so i wore my matching pair. and then when we went to get lunch, this other dude wearing THE SAME PANTS TOO walks up. i really like ryan, we had a fantastic conversation. he goes to GW and had to do an assignment on the hominid evolution hall and we ran into another kid from the same class, who knows palisades as it turns out! tried to convince him to go see them with me on thursday, we'll see if it actually happens.

i've been a depressed, burned out POS lately. i don't know what i was talking about when i said i can operate on basically no sleep... hard lesson to learn. whatever. here's a list of good things so i don't completely lose my mind:

• talking to owen went well
• hanging out with victor tomorrow
• my shitty job is about to end AND i got a sick internship for the summer
• shellfest iii was amazing even if visceral violation dropped
• cars get crushed is re-releasing music because of me
• i can take a break from working out without drowning in shame over it
• my stats professor likes me
• i'm not actually that bad of a photographer
• dreamed that johnny whitney was my coworker
• drew is still the best, kindest, smartest, sweetest most understanding person ever and i am the luckiest person on earth to get to call him something as simple as "my boyfriend".

i am probably (definitely) the worst, most useless, most moronic photographer i know.

suchi's birthday was sick. i had to leave early since i had work at 9:30 a.m. today... or so i thought, i was actually supposed to go in at 9. oh well. i honestly should have said fuck it and gone to afters, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. i can operate on a miraculously low amount of sleep; i figure i should take advantage of it while i still can.

anyway, we hung around outside doghaus and ate bread. it was fucking delicious. heydein demonstrated his firefighter squat skills and i found out maryn and i also went to middle school together. small world.

work was fine but i'm looking forward to quitting. i need to lock in for finals. it's all projects, not exams, which feels like so much more pressure! studying for a test i can do, but having to follow an entire project timeline start to finish makes me anxious. even if i know i can get the work done, i just feel panicky all the time until it's over.

shellfest iii tomorrow. i'm gonna tear it up.

dear livejournal... nah, that's jokes. i'm trying to be healthy and self-critical about my weird stalker-worship of the old internet, old scene, but then i reskin my site to be this myspace/LJ clone. at least people can't leave comments. i started writing diary entries in my phone's notes app (see entries below) and realized i'm doing the same shit kids have done for the past 20-ish years. i had the same revelation about drew and i's matching AN lyric discord statuses last summer -- i guarantee you that somewhere out there, kids on AIM had the exact same statuses for the exact same reason. i guess i'm carrying the torch, because we still haven't changed them. screaming gets you nothing?

i have so much work to do. it feels like we jumped straight from midterms to finals, how is the last day of classes may 8th??? that's way too early, last year it was like a week later than that. i'll have a little more time to get my final projects done since my job contract ends on the 30th. it was supposed to end on sunday, actually, but i asked to stay until the end of the month. soon enough i'm gonna need that money, if my plans with drew work out. some days it seems like we really do have a chance, others it feels like it's impossible. but i really want to move out for my senior year, i can't take the commute anymore.

converge/ptw was insane. suchi drove so i humbly paid her in monster and left kevin, greg and vada to chip in for gas money. liz, toby, toby's parents, lane, leo, michael from nuclear tomb and OG travis (not club travis) were also there. lane chipped her tooth. i got pretty battered myself, my left arm is very mad at me and i was worried i got a concussion, some guy fell right on my head in the middle of nerdy. sadly that was only after 20 minutes of waiting while the sound engineer tried to fix a broken monitor. suchi and i played rock paper scissors to entertain ourselves while the girl standing next to us flirted with security like CRAZY. balmora were good but got fucked over by a bad mix, spy were hardcoreslop.

i take a week off and start feeling like i went into hiding. in my defense, teagan got me really sick at lady gaga. i want to say it was worth it, since it was a really insane show. his dad bought him tickets for christmas or his birthday or something; they were all the way up in the back but i liked the view. the only other seated show i've been to was coheed last summer, and that was at pier six which is much smaller. i'd still prefer a small, standing-room-only gig to a big arena, but it's not like i hated it.

teagan should have worn a mask though -- he thought it was allergies! so did i til my nose started running at rhizome. and getting clocked in the head during xmiseryisabutterflyx didn't help, especially since i had to work the next day. i shouldn't have even gone in, but i pushed through possibly the worst eight hours of my life. by the time i got home i had a raging fever, so i called out the next morning. and then cut class the next, and the day after that... still made it to campus on thursday to do my show, though.

would you still love me if *it* was shaped like a:

• disk
• disk with a hole in the middle like a CD
• incredibly thin tube like a straw
• pointy triangle
• cube

would you eat me if i was made of ice cream:

• what if it was the only thing that would stop the misery of slowly melting and dying
• if you were made of ice cream, what flavor would you be

would you still love me if i had stupid facial hair:

• cop stache
• wizard beard

if i was a giant human sized leech would you:

• still love me
• feed me small animals every day
• feed me your own blood

what if i got a full back piece of:

• justin pearson
• your mom
• your dad
• luna

drew flies up tomorrow. i'm freaking out, but not in a bad way. this is my last shift before i get nine whole days off... i'll get paid next wednesday too and that ENTIRE check is going towards fun dates. i'm gonna take him everywhere. we almost scheduled matching locust tattoos with hayden before i chickened out. i would do it though, it's not like a couple's tat. if it is, i'm dating a lot of people, because locust tattoos are such popular band tats. i might still get something band-related. drew's flying out early in the morning so i'll get up early to pick him up. his first impression of DC is gonna be the yellow line, sigh.

woke up really anxious for some reason, texted drew, played overwatch, did laundry, edited & posted mia italia pics, now i'm procrastinating homework. today was supposed to be productive, i literally blew off hanging out with cy and casey to do nothing. and then victor texts asking what i'm up to. i just gotta lock in for a week then it'll be break and i'll be free.

to do list:

• arhu assignment i forgot (sorry tayo)
• arhu midterm prep
• stat midterm prep
• english assignment feat. underserene
• arth assignment
• arth project
• coding midterm
• photo assigment (maybe on tuesday?)

writing this from my work break. working fridays might be the cheat code, it's always so chill. got my AD article done, hopefully jabari actually sees it. gonna get home and edit underserene pics. suchi is seriously the greatest. she saw my photos from practice and offered to tip me, am i actually a professional photog now???? i told her to get me into shows for free as compensation lol. then grind homework tmrw before coming back for a full sunday shift. uggggghhh i hate sundays. drew stayed awake all night. they've got that 50% deal going for a bunch of stuff that's about to expire so maybe i'll buy a whole apple pie.

tuesday was machine girl which was SOOO FUN! i was really worried about it for some reason lol, i almost sold my ticket to vada. but i went anyway and azarial was there! and i made friends with a bunch of randoms of course. i was waiting by the buses afterwards and this girl complimented my face a lot, i was stunned. there was this other cool dude from GMU as well. i really wanted to tell the MG drummer how much i fuck with his style, but someone came up and told us they wouldn't be out til midnight, so i cut my losses. didn't get home til 1 in the morning, ate a bunch of cookies, woke up at 6:30. you know how it is. at least on wednesdays i don't have class til 4 pm. talked to luna and gabby that morning about backpack bands and luna recited the names of every kid we went to pre k with. what a freak. went to photo 2, disappointed prof jacobsen by coming in with more show pics but at least it was AD! then cut my writer's house class to go to underserene. fuck those people lol. i was really worried about being late and sprinted 4 blocks to make it before 7:30 but when i got there everyone was waiting outside. show was great but the sound was sooooo fuckedddd, especially for underserene and invasive. zero vocals. hallucination realized rule. eyecatcher are unreal. i got some stickers then took the train home with maryn. woke up at 6:30 AGAIN, cut my english class to try and get my AD article finished, failed. went to campus. ate lunch in STAMP, remade my rage room playlist twice, got to the station and did my show. i know how to use the phone now so we can finally start taking requests! then art history lecture which was honestly not bad. the girls in my group aren't exactly on my wave but it's forgiven. then home to call drewbert and now i'm here.