day 1: sunday

• I woke up from multiple (and related) extremely vivid and violent dreams concerning real flesh and bones people, which occurred during hypnopompia while drifting in and out of consciousness. interestingly I woke up hating said people a lot less than I normally would. I woke up in an amazin state of mind, actually -- peace. I suppose "zen", as some would call it. straight, calm and collected thought. no silly nonsense to keep your mind busy feeling pain. I was woken up against my will actuallly, I would have gladly stayed in bed being an asshole to dream people for a couple more hours, but real people expected otherwise of me. but I wasn't angry at them for that. not after such therapeutic dreams.

• you know, I can't help but feel that dreams do provide very concrete evolutionary advantages. what can I say.

• anyway, after the dreams slowly faded into amnesia and the morning progressed, the day turned really shitty, because other people are very shitty. oh well, you win some you lose some.

• then I got to spend the rest of the day by myself. after seriously considering suicide for a few hours, the realization that I am not burdened by the internet anymore started setting in. I no longer have to live up to the expectations internet people have of me. I have eliminated an entire source of anxiety from my life for at least seven days. I can just focus on being happy in the moment, and writing, and making shitty art. then I at least partially relapsed into the zen-like state of mind. a lot less peaceful and still burdened by excessive thought, but I dare say I was quite joyous for a bit there. then I went back to feeling like shit for some time. oh well, you win some you lose some.

• then I spent some time fucking around with my shiny new 9front system. which is to say, playing doom. and reading man pages. and reading a few source files to determine just how long it would take me to unsuccessfully attempt to write a driver for my scarlett 2i4. also, I found out about /lib which is... interesting. I mean 9front's reputation of having a peculiar sense of humor is well deserved. oh well, you win some you lose some.

• well, I did it. one whole day without sending a single packet to a gateway! I did use my cat-5e to copy files between machines, which doubles nicely as an excuse to keep it away from the router.

• it just occurred to me that now all of my machines are NTPless! all time keeping is now being done locally, presumably with good ole quartz oscillators. it will be interesting to see how far they have drifted by the end of the week.

day 2: monday

• I woke up from similarly vivid dreams today, maybe even more so, but I no longer remember absolutely anything. perhaps thankfully so, actually (if you dare accuse me of using those adverbs wrong, show your work, I fucking dare you). I do remember they were bad dreams, and not in a good way, like yesterday. terrible start to the day. I really ought to try to head to bed earlier. but I need time to write this stuff! it's now 4AM! when am I supposed to do it otherwise? what with $FULL_TIME_EDUCATION, and having to have dinner, and having to spend a few hours incapable of writing because... sunlight? why do I only seem to be able to write at night? sigh.

• anyway. $FULL_TIME_EDUCATION requires using the internet (because of course it does), but I forced myself to only use the HTTP, and moreover in read-only mode (fortunately I don't use javascript, so that sort of works itself out). my mood remained pretty shitty throughout but what can you do.

• then I got home. and fucked around for a few hours before getting to writing. I have been writing non-stop for a little over an hour now. I would say it has been a 'productive' day so far, as much as I hate that word, and as much as it doesn't feel even remotely good. I mean, getting shit out of your chest is always cathartic, but the act of production itself is not only not rewarding but in fact highly anxiety-inducing. I barred myself from the internet to not have to honor the expectations of others, but I can never escape my own expectations. I tried drawing for a bit and found myself yet again unable to express myself graphically. it is extraordinarily frustrating. this is probably at least partly due to my poor fine motor skills, but I reckon it's also at least just as much an inability to form concrete visual imagery in my mind. which is kind of surprising actually, I always thought I was decent at that, but I guess I'm only actually passable at forming concrete semantic imagery, and the visual component is just my brain "filling in the blanks". I somehow have to find a way to wire all of that hardcoded visual processing back into my rational self, for further analysis and ultimately drawing. this is all just a very obtuse way to say that I lack talent. oh well. they say you can learn anything with hard work and dedication, but I hate work, let alone hard work. hmm, maybe if I got something going for myself that is dedication? I may well prove myself wrong. oh well.

• I like the word foreordination. I don't know what it means, but I like it. foreordination.

day 3: tuesday

• I woke up from a dream which I can no longer recall, and another one that took place in a swamp. I was on a small wooden boat, and close by a large block of wooden staircases formed rows of seats, with maybe 4 or 5 people sitting. I don't remember how they looked, but I was fairly kitted and they weren't. a little girl (maybe 6-7 years old?) walked up to me (on the water?) and asked me whether that was the alien rifle I had, obviously intending to steal it from me. so I just shot her in the head, and absolutely nothing happened; wait no, that's not what's supposed to happen! so I rewound the dream a bit: she asked me about my rifle and I shot her in the head, killing her instantly with an absurdly loud thunderous crack which creates huge concentric rings of waves propagating outwards through the swamp, and whose recoil launched me and my boat upwards into the air and then underwater.

• then I went to see the loony doctor. she didn't have anything too interesting to tell me, and in all honesty I didn't either. I only do these appointments because my parents want me to, but no meaningful progress can ever be made. at best I can give vague deflective answers to her questions, if not outright bullshit. what am I supposed to do, tell the truth? the truth is far more complicated than any of them can possibly imagine, and, frankly, it is none of their business.

• yes, that entire last section is the rationalization with which I delude myself into believing that it's totally okay for me to be unable to communicate with other human beings because I'm too good for those plebeians anyway. sigh.

• I'm not sure what else I am supposed to say. today sucked the whole way through. yadda yadda nada gada bada, PRFHUNJEW:LIT"SOKAYWELLALLBEDEADSOMEDAYYAAAAY

• oh also I'm trying to make my scarlett 2i4 work on 9front. I read the USB audio class specification. the introduction that is. and I'm not reading the rest, because I might as well go read postmodernist philosphy and learn just as much. sigh, I wish I could just rip the linux or openbsd drivers into 9front, but I'm afraid I don't know nearly enough about any of those systems to make that happen.

• I *reaaaally* need to work on my sleep schedule. it's nearly 4AM again.

• what do you call it when a pilot named poly who's a fan of KGLW experiences a double engine failure? poly gon wanna land

day 4: wednesday

• I woke up from a dream in which I was a little kid again. it took place in an extremely familiar place I haven't been to for years, and probably never will again. RM (and old woman) and QU (a fellow kid) were there (both real people), along with a few other non-descript classmates. also someone from the modern day was there, but I don't know his name, only how he looks. he called himself m in the dream (we'll get to that). RM was asking something but I can't quite remember what exactly. m replied something about his name, about how he managed to snatch it or something. everyone was extremely impressed. I mean, m? one of the only 26 one-letter names, all to himself? holy fucking cow! he said it very casually, like, *oh yeah about that*. I immediately mocked him for that; "lol, when are you getting the helicopter that comes with that?" and started running around the room. when I woke up I remembered the exact words that were said in the dream (this was an extremely talkative dream, with a lot of extremely specific dialogue, which is rare for dreams) and then I forgot (the only word I really remember clearly now is "helicopter") -- but maybe that was just an illusion and I actually never did, I dunno.

• I just found out that an email I sent didn't actually get sent because I don't have a local MTA (OOPS), and there is absolutely nothing I can do about that for 4 more days AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADFLKGHjsf

• after that I had to spend the usual 6 hours time pretending to be doing something not nothing. I tried programming a bit but I suck at that. I'm trying to get a little vulkan engine going again, but ughh, it seems all so pointless. I ended up reading the 54 remaining parts of joneworlds. I was trying to read them slowly, just a handful at a time, but I just couldn't resist today, and I binged them all. I was honestly hoping for a more seamless transition on the ending/beginning, but it's alright this way too. also tons of red herrings and loose ends I would've liked some elaboration on, honestly. anyway. good stuff.

presumably this link still works but I can't check

• I still can't believe I fucked up that email thing. just before this one week in particular??? ughhh. three days and a bit to go.

• it's nice staring into games/catclock's eyes instead of the abyss for a change. they look so happy. they know something I don't. fwoop, fwoop, fwoop.

• it all seems so pointless. all of it. I want to keep working on the seven day theory but I just can't. I can't bear to. this whole experiment was a disaster. yes, today wasn't a good day; obviously I'm holding stuff back from this diary. but fuck em, they don't know one bit what they're saying. they can go fuck themselves. they prolly don't even know I care. which is why I succeeded with flying colors. and why I'm fucking miserable.

• tomorrow is flag day. I didn't know it was tomorrow, I thought there were still at least a couple weeks to go. but apparently not. nothing I can do but wait and see. ugh, I want this week to be over already.

day 5: thursday

• no dreams today, amazingly.

• yesterday I went for a 3AM walk around town. I was going to write a detailed account of that. let's not. the things I saw are beyond the words of any mortal human. remember that machine that lets you truly comprehend the scale of the universe and, as a result, makes you go crazy? well, kinda like that, except I also received class-X mnestics at the same time. and I survived. which is to say my mental health has been rapidly deteriorating recently due to circumstances that are beyond my control, and this silly experiment isn't doing me any favors. it's time to abort mission.

I was going to write a snarky mission report or something here. that's idiotic. let's

not do that either.