svnsettia

welcome to my journal

my name is lea (pronounced like tea leaf!) and i'm 21 years old.

i mostly post about...

christianity radical feminism learning html
as well as some reflections on my personal life (i don't tag them; you'll just have to scroll and find them).

i have a lot of hobbies! my main ones are penpalling (both snailmail and email), scrapbooking, coding, and blogging. i also enjoy reading, as you can see on my goodreads.

visit my website

please feel free to message me or comment on any of my posts at any time, even if they're super old posts. i love the interaction, and i won't find it weird at all!

i'm starting to switch over to neocities and post more on there. i'm not leaving dreamwidth, but i'll be more active on neocities so there will be some posts that are exclusive to one platform or the other. if you're interested in seeing everything i have to offer, please check both my dreamwidth and my neocities.

i dislike therapy in the sense that i've never benefitted much from visiting a therapist. i've been to tens of them in the past decade, and even when i do everything right, they seem to be a massive waste of time and money at best. in the worst cases, therapy has been quite traumatic. but i do like therapy! i like cbt, dbt, erp, mindfulness.. they're all incredibly helpful to me!

i do much better when i learn therapy from books and worksheets, and then practice it on my own. i wouldn't recommend this to someone who hasn't actually been to therapy before, because it's important to talk to a professional and see what the vibes are. eventually you'll figure out what therapy sessions are like, and you'll understand the structure well enough to replicate it on your own. that's when you're ready to turn to the books and start your own self-directed therapy practice.

here's a cool new skill i gained during some recent self-directed dbt and erp sessions: understand that your emotions are connected to urges. you have permission to feel emotions, but that doesn't give you the right to act on your urges. you should always act in a way that reflects your goals and values. for example, if you're feeling angry, you could think "i'm so mad right now!! my friend just hurt me a lot! ...i shouldn't be mad at my friend though. i love her. i'm going to insult her because she made me feel such complicated and unpleasant emotions. i'm a terrible person for having this urge, but i can't control it because she made me so mad!" or you can go through this thought process:

i'm beginning to notice that i'm feeling angry. it's okay for me to feel angry.
i'm noticing that i have the urge to insult my friend. it's not okay for me to insult my friend.
if i insult my friend, she will get mad at me, and the situation will escalate. i will hurt her feelings, make me look bad, and damage our relationship. i will need to continue dealing with the consequences of insulting my friend, even after i'm done feeling angry.
if i ignore this urge, it will eventually go away, and i'll be glad that i didn't give into it.
i'm going to feel my emotions, deal with them by doing a worksheet/engaging in my hobbies/talking to someone else about it/etc, and then i'll let this go.

letting go isn't always the best option, though. one time i went through this thought process during an erp session, and i needed to resist the urge to lash out and start insulting people. normally the urge goes away within ten minutes, but i continued to feel upset and betrayed even days after the session was over. i carefully considered whether both of us would benefit from a conversation about what happened, or whether bringing up such a conflict would just put unnecessary strain on our friendship. i decided that calmly bringing up my feelings, with a clear and benevolent goal in my mind, was the best course of action, so that's what i did... and it went really well!

most accessible porn addiction recovery resources have been entirely unhelpful to me, as they're all directed towards men. arguably, female porn addicts struggle a lot more than males do... but there are hardly any woman-centered porn addiction recovery resources that specifically address the needs and struggles of female addicts.

i saw a statistic in my "anthropology of sex" class that it takes four to five months for young men to recover from porn addiction. but recovery, as defined by males, refers to the ability to hold an erection without the use of pornography. even recovering addicts are not concerned with much more than their masculinity. the masculine attitude towards porn recovery is that men need to recover from porn induced erectile dysfunction, increase their willpower and confidence, and regain their sexual vitality. they only want to beat their porn addiction because they can't get hard anymore. i haven't seen many male porn addicts who are very concerned about the way they see themselves in relation to women, mending their relationships with their own sexuality, and advocating that the victims of porn (ie sex workers and prostituted girls/women) are liberated from the industry and compensated for all they've been through at the hands of porn users. and if some porn-addicted men do care about these things, their concern only seems to run as deep as their worry about their own success in interpersonal relationships with women. they want to be able to obtain a sexual relationship with a woman. it doesn't matter to them whether these relationships are healthy or respectful to the woman involved.

porn changes how you see women. men don't suffer from that because the way men see women and intimacy is already fully backed by patriarchy. they're not the ones feeling the pain of being made into a sexual object for the consumption of others. women have gotten addicted to depictions of ourselves as victims, which is infinitely more painful and difficult to recover from than the mere limp dick syndrome that porn addicted males are so loud about.

when i first started using porn, i was aware that porn degrades women, but i didn't understand the full extent of sex industry's harm to everyone involved. to avoid disrespecting women, i almost exclusively watched porn without any women in it. seeing women in porn felt like seeing myself in porn, and it was difficult for me to feel anything but discomfort with the fact that she was being made to perform her sexuality for a camera. if it was gay or solo male porn, i didn't care much about those things--i know it's bad, but i'm really not above hating and disrespecting men.

in this post, i won't get too deep into what porn did to me. that's for another time, maybe... but i'll make some broad statements: it wasn't good for me to consume depictions of casual sex without any vulnerability or love. it wasn't good for me to see such intimate imagery of people who are complete strangers to me. regardless of the sex of the actors, it was not good for me to repeatedly consume content in which sex was treated so casually. it caused me to treat my own sexuality in ways that were careless and self-destructive.

my own recovery wasn't about restoring my confidence, willpower, or sexual vitality. it was all about desiring better things for myself than porn. it was about self respect. a huge part of my recovery was based on wanting to make my friends proud, wanting to respect women more, and wanting to be a female porn addict who recovered and can talk about the experience... so here i am, talking about it!

i think i got banned from neocities this morning??? i refreshed the page, and was suddenly logged out. it didn't let me log back in, so i tried visiting my site to see if there was anything wrong with it--and it was gone! nothing there! i sent the link to my friends to have them double check it on their own devices. same result.

what happened was this: i'm very new to coding, and i like to learn by copying code from other sites and tinkering with it. i use a neocities html file that's entirely inaccessible from my website to add, remove, or modify parts of the code, then i run it to see what changed. this morning i thought i'd try to copy an entire webpage, which was over 10,000 lines of code, and see if i could reduce it to its bare essentials. i wanted to see how many lines of code i could remove until it became nothing but a template with some nonsense text on it, that way i could properly understand how everything worked.

then i started having problems saving the code and viewing it as a webpage. it became unresponsive, so i refreshed the page and was redirected to the neocities homepage. you know the rest.

i contacted support to tell them what happened and try to get my account back. hopefully it was just an issue of the spam filter malfunctioning and accidentally flagging me. but it's dicey because i did steal the code for an entire webpage, which could get me into some trouble for copyright. i also have "dyke" in my profile name, which could be flagged as hate speech.

hopefully i can get my account back soon! i've probably spent around 100 hours working on it.

aside from being banned from neocities and losing a lot of my work (i only backed up half of it), the rest of my morning has been crazy too--i missed the bus and was 15 minutes late to my doctor appointment, which they counted as a no-show and charged a cancellation fee for. rats! i was at the bus stop on time, but i missed the bus because i zoned out and didn't notice that it came and went without me. and it was unexpectedly hot outside! it's october, so i wore sweatpants.. only to find out that the weather today is perfect for a day trip to the nude beach. i was sweating a lot, and my phone started overheating so the battery drained really fast. i was worried that i wouldn't be able to call the doctor to give them a heads up that i'd be late, but they ended up calling me while i was on the bus to ask where i was. when i told them i'd be 15 minutes late, they cancelled my appointment. by the time i arrived, there were still 15 minutes left of my appointment! i'm not sure why they didn't let me see the doctor for those 15 minutes. the appointment really should not have taken that long, since i already saw a nurse to refer me to the doctor, and all i needed was a referral to the psychiatrist. why do i need to see a nurse to refer me to the doctor to refer me to the psychiatrist?! just let me see the psychiatrist, goddamn it!

all things considered, today hasn't been that bad though. i'm feeling okay because i feel close to god rn, and i've finally gotten enough sleep for the first time in a while.

update: my neocities account was restored!

i'm in a fourth year practicum course for what is now called women, gender, and sexuality studies (when i enrolled, it was called women and gender studies. this was a recent change). the professor of this course is a man, and so is the department head. there are only eight students in this class, so the prof made a whatsapp group chat with all of us in it. i've already complained about this course before [see it here]. so you might remember me blogging about it.

the professor sent a message to us mentioning a different prof who he needs to report to. i asked "is he the head of the wgs department?" and he said yes. so i responded to express my disapproval: why is the department head a man?"

one student responded with a link to the department head's profile on our university's website, and said that they found it very impressive. so i clicked on the link and skimmed his four most recent publications. only one of then centered women... while two of them centered men. the fourth didn't even seem to be about gender at all. i brought this up in the group chat, saying that i was disappointed but not surprised. i said that the women's studies department head should center women in all their publications. then it was just me, up against three other students who were disagreeing with me. and no wonder they were disagreeing with me! they spent the last three or more years being taught about feminism by an institution that thinks it's totally acceptable to have a male wgs department head.

i'm sure you can already guess what their arguments were: that feminism is for all oppressed people, that i'm "hyperfocusing on the sex portion and not including the other lenses", that we should be more inclusive, that it's "women, gender, and sexuality studies" and not just "women's studies." i can't say i'm that surprised, but you'd think that at least one person would agree with me, no? every time i've told someone outside of the wgs department that our department head is a man--i've told my friends, parents, coworkers, therapist--they've reacted with outrage and disgust. as they should! which just goes to show that the men in power in the university have fucked with wgs students' minds so severely that they don't even see feminism as women's liberation anymore.

here's the thing: i'm all for using an intersectional analysis in feminism. but if it's going to be called feminism, it must center women and female people, and analyze the identities that intersect with womanhood/femaleness and are affecting their experience of misogyny/sexism. wgs has completely forsaken class consciousness in favour of what they call intersectional feminism. making broad statements about the ways in which all women and female people are oppressed is frowned upon. i know because i've been frowned at, accused of essentialism, dismissed, argued against, and told i'm not intersectional or inclusive enough. why are we, as self-proclaimed feminists, refusing to acknowledge that all women have one thing in common: that every single one of us is oppressed by men in very similar ways?

anti-racism, anti-classism, and anti-homophobia have completely taken over women's studies, at the expense of feminist analysis. the people who see no problem with this are forgetting something: we have a sexual diversity studies program at our university. we have transnational and diaspora studies. many other universities in our city have indigenous studies, asian studies, black studies programs. these programs also lack a feminist analysis. so why are they seeping into wgs, while remaining unaffected by wgs?

imagine for a moment that you used the "intersectional feminist" arguments in any other context: we should talk about how accessibility benefits abled people too, because everybody is differently abled. we should talk about how socialism benefits rich people too. you know, anti-racism should include white people, because racism harms everyone!

feminism has a barrier around it that's only permeable from the outside. every other anti-oppression ideology has seeped into it, pushing women aside and claiming feminism as their own. but when has feminism ever seeped into some other discipline, and pushed other minorities aside for the sake of a women-centered analysis?

==========

"take that reblog down. don't you know that op supports---?"

we're all people living in the same world, so no matter what you believe, there will be some overlap with other people. nobody can ever be the exact opposite of anybody else. but something i see a lot, and even hear from professors, in academia, and in irl activism, is the automatic assignment of certain ideas with certain ideologies, which are then used to dismiss or dispute certain arguments. there's one example of it that has been plaguing feminist discourse since the dawn of the sex wars:

"radfems are against porn, and conservatives are against porn. therefore radfems are conservative."

let's break this down.

conservatives are against porn because they think that women are evil temptresses that are trying to corrupt good men. they think that female sexuality is dirty, and that sexuality is accurately represented in porn, therefore porn is dirty. conservatives want to protect society from female sexuality. they look at sex workers with hostility.

radfems are against porn because of the exploitation of women and the separation of sex from intimacy... [i already went into detail about this in another post]. radfems want to protect women from exploitation. they look at sex workers with compassion, and understand that swers are among the women who are most hurt by patriarchy.

even if, reading this, you don't understand what the difference is, or you disagree that there's any difference at all... hell, even if conservatives and radfems are against porn for the exact same reason: you can't reasonably deny that they are opposite in nearly every other way. radfeminism wants to destroy patriarchy and is very critical of marriage, intercourse, the nuclear family, capitalism, religion, and every form of oppression. conservatives cling dearly to all these things, and hope to preserve them at all costs.

so spend a moment thinking about it. if radfems and conservatives seem to agree on something, is it because radfems are actually conservatives? or is it because both radical feminism and conservatism are fully developed ideologies that aren't very concerned with appearing to disagree with each other on all fronts?

i'm angry about this because i've had male professors dismiss me, censor me, and label me as conservative [read about it here] for expressing criticism against the sex industry. these profs never even asked me, "why do you think that?" before deciding that i must be a conservative. the same happened to dworkin and mackinnon.

==========

heads and bodies

so it turns out the reason i've been struggling to transfer code from the coding site to dreamwidth or gmail is that these platforms don't use "head" "body" or "class" functions. i got around that by putting all the formatting stuff under "div" "p" or "span." it isn't the greatest, because it makes my documents very messy, but it works!

this time i'm gonna
experiment some more with
boxes
while practicing
things i already
know, such as:

fonts and colours

lists

hyperlinks

hm. it's strange that last time i made boxes, they stretched to accomodate
text, but this time, it didn't. i wonder if it's because i defined dimensions
for the text. let me see if that's the case:

woah. this isn't what i thought would happen.

i learned something just now though!

when i defined the length and width for the first div, i also defined where
the next div would start. that's why there was overlap!

now i want to figure out how to do it on purpose. i originally wanted to learn how to use images as backgrounds in this post,
but it's good that i ran into this problem so i can deepen my understanding of
html and how it works.

woaahh!!! i did it! so basically what i did was i made the div above this one 15px tall, and then i typed a lot to make the text taller than 15 pixels.

this just looks like a big disaster, but it was very educational for me. in the next post, i'll try to make boxes with images as the backgrounds.

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<body>

this time i'm gonna

<span style="font-family:georgia;color:gray">experiment some more with </span>

<span style="font=family:garamond;color:brown">boxes </span>

<span style="font-family:arial;color:red">while practicing </span>

<span style="font-family:verdana;color:orange">things i already </span>

</p>

<li style="font-family:courier new;color:green">fonts and colours</li>

<li style="font-family:lucida console;color:blue">lists</li>

<li style="font-family:monaco; color:purple"><a href=https://www.dreamwidth.org/circle/svnsettia/edit?action=subscribe target=_blank>hyperlinks</a></li>

</ul>

<span style="font-family:lucida handwriting;color:pink">hm. it's strange that last time i made boxes, they stretched to accomodate </span>

<span style="font-family:arial; color:orange">text, but this time, it didn't. i wonder if it's because i defined dimensions</span>

for the text. let me see if that's the case:</p>

</div>

<p>woah. this isn't what i thought would happen.</p>

</div>

<p>i learned something just now though!</p>

<div>

<p style="font-size:9px;font-family:helvetica">;when i defined the length and width for the first <div>, i also defined where
the next div would start. that's why there was overlap!</</p>

</div>

<p style="font-size:10px">now i want to figure out how to do it on purpose. i originally wanted to learn how to use images as backgrounds in this post,

but it's good that i ran into this problem so i can deepen my understanding of

html and how it works.</p>

</div>

<div>

<p style="font-family:arial;font-size:13px;color:#d4afeb">woaahh!!! i did it! so basically what i did was i made the div above this one 15px tall, and then i typed a lot to make the text taller than 15 pixels. </p>

</div>

<div>in the next post, i'll try to make boxes with images as the backgrounds.</div>

</body>

</html>

today i started learning html on codecademy because i want to have more control over formatting on dreamwidth and emails! penpalling (both email and snail mail) is one of my favourite hobbies, so i want to get better at making my emails look nice.

i want to try out/show off some things i learned! such as:

how to make a list
how to bold and italicize text (i already knew how though!)
i didn't learn this from codecademy; i already knew it from tumblr, but ~~strikethrough~~
how to use commands like <body>, <div>, and <p>. dreamwidth seems to not like those commands though.

i also know how to add images and videos! here's a gif i like:

. and here it is again, but a little bigger:

i think that i've already absorbed some very basic/common commands just by messing around with html makers as i try to embed little gifs into my own dreamwidth posts. i was also exposed to some snippets of html while following "how to edit your tumblr theme" tutorials in the 2010s. i learned how to edit (but not create) css codes on myspace in 2021, so that's also been somewhat helpful as i start to approach html.

this is transcribed from an excerpt from a letter i send my pen pal:
( click to see the original )

❝ i feel like as a kid, i took a lot of things very seriously and literally. things like "communication is key" really affected me, probably in a bad way--when i'm anxiously attached, i feel the need to tell the other person everything and to communicate all my feelings, no matter how trivial. this means i'll confront people on even the tiniest offenses. at some point, it loses its merit, because instead of letting things go, i make a big show of communicating my feelings about it. [...] i gain nothing by confronting people about things that happened only once and probably won't happen again. then i was reading about dbt and it said the same thing [another one of my friends] told me: i should only communicate my feelings (or do any action at all) if doing so will help me. it needs to align with my values and my goals. getting mad over small things, and being confrontational about them, doesn't help my goal of being a good friend, and of strengthening a healthy relationship w/ my friends. ❞

when coupled with "don't bottle up your emotions," "communication is key" became pretty detrimental to my relationships. i thought that these slogans were related to each other--something like "you shouldn't bottle your emotions; you should communicate them to others!" i very recently learned that something as simple as journaling or meditating counts as not bottling up your emotions. you don't need to tell them to anybody except yourself.

i think that my misinterpretation of these two very popular slogans has enabled me to form anxious attachments and a compulsion to ask, tell, and confess. this, in turn, causes me to stay reliant on external validation for my emotions. i find it difficult to remind myself that my emotions are justified, that they make sense, and that i have the right to feel them, so i turn to others. i constantly want to tell my friends every thought and emotion that i have, so they can reassure me that it's okay to think and feel the way i do. i'm working on this now by using dialectical behavioural therapy and exposure and response prevention.

i'd like to make a post to summarize my views on pornography, prositution, and other forms of sex work. it will be useful for me to have it all in one place, and i'll continue to update it as i learn more about the topic.
i've broken down my arguments into three categories: demand, consent, and intimacy. there's a lot of overlap between the categories, but i still find it helpful to have it organized in this manner.

↶*ೃ✧˚demand. ❃ ↷ ˊ-

sex work creates a demand that will be fulfilled with sex trafficking.

let's imagine the best-case scenario: a woman doing sex work because she wants to. she genuinely enjoys this type of work, and her clients treat her well. this is understood by some to be "ethical sex work."

as a business, sex work must actively encourage the demand for sex work to keep increasing. porn industries want to create porn addicts. they want to create a pornsick society. that’s how businesses survive. it's horribly optimistic to imagine that every person who wants to use pornography or prostitutes will do so ethically (assuming that ethical sex work is possible). but let's imagine for a moment that ethical sex work exists, and that everyone who wants to consume sex work does so ethically. would there ever be enough women who are willingly going into sex work to satisfy this demand? as long as there is a demand, there will be sex trafficking to meet that demand. the “ethical” sex worker is a very very small minority of sex workers who throws every other sex worker and prostituted woman/girl under the bus for her own gain.

sex workers need men to use porn and prostitutes, and they will encourage men to do so. is this good for feminism? do you think these are good men? do you think these men respect the women in their lives? do they have healthy sexual relationships, or are they sexually reliant on static fantasies created by strangers who they have no personal connection or intimacy with?

↶*ೃ✧˚consent. ❃ ↷ ˊ-

consent can't be bought.

consent can’t be bought--in fact, the mainstream conception of "consent" isn't one that respects women's sexual desires. it's a copout that allows men to do whatever they want to women, as long as the woman agrees to having it done to her. sex is something you do with someone, not to them. so many women (including myself) have uncritically consented to sexual activities in the heat of the moment because our minds were clouded by confusion, surprise, or anxiety, and we didn't feel like we could take a moment to think things through.

think of it from the perspective of someone who uses a prostitute, in the best case scenario (in which the woman is pursuing prostitution of her own volition and not out of necessity): you found a woman who you're sexually interested in, but she isn't interested in you. instead of offering her a worthwhile sexual experience, you use your money to blow past her disinterest and buy her consent. you then begin to touch and penetrate a woman who wouldn't be interested in you if not for the money you offered her. you see no problem with this. since you are paying this woman, she is providing you a service. you have a one-sided sexual encounter where you use someone else's body to fulfill your own desires.

think about the men who do this, and the men who consume pornography. how do you think they view sexuality? how do you think they treat their own sexual partners, after consuming so many static sexual fantasies that are devoid of any personal intimacy?

↶*ೃ✧˚intimacy. ❃ ↷ ˊ-

i've decided to put "intimacy" at the end, because it is the most subjective of the three. upon reading this, it may become quite clear that these views are influenced by my personal experiences with sex work, sexual trauma, and christianity.

if you’re sex positive, you’ll be against porn. porn misrepresents sexuality by completely divorcing sexual pleasure from love, intimacy, and vulnerability. witnessing such intimate imagery of total strangers will inevitably mess up the way you approach your own sexuality, and the way you interact with sexual partners.

sex work puts a price on sexuality and makes it into something that can be bought and sold.

porn consumption encourages hookup culture.

i'm in my fifth and final year of a women's studies degree. so far i've had two separate male professors dismiss me when i expressed anti-pornography and anti-sex work views.

the first time was in summer 2022. at that time, i only recently quit camming. my experience in sex work caused me to become critical of the industry. i began to question whether sex work and pornography could ever be feminist. i don't remember many details from the exact conversation with that prof, but i do remember expressing that i was starting to question whether sex work could ever be healthy for the sex worker. in response, he posted a list of sources after class for further reading. all of them were in support of sex work.

the second time was last week, and it was infuriating. at this point, i'm pretty confident in my anti-pornography stance, and my arguments are much more developed than they were last summer. one of our assignments in that class is to host an event that's open to all students in the women's studies program to attend. we get to choose any feminist topic that's important to us. so exciting

! i raised my hand to ask "does the topic need to be related to a course reading?" and the answer was "no," so i asked "are we allowed to choose something controversial?" and he said it depends. so i told him i wanted to do my presentation on radical feminism and its views on pornography. he essentially told me that i shouldn't choose that as a topic because i'm representing the university and i need to "respect the institution." such bullshit! he went on to talk about how he is personally pro-sex work because of his "sex-positive gay sex politics."

aside from the fact that it's deeply upsetting for a male women's studies professor to claim, in front of an audience of young women in our early 20s (i.e. a demographic that's very likely to create an onlyfans because they believe it may empower them), that pornography can be ethical and feminist (

), it's just awful that a professor would not allow opinions that conflict his own to be shared. i'm fully ready to bring back the sex wars and fight for my right to discuss my views on this topic. it's very important to me, and i need to push back against the male professors spreading pro-pornography rhetoric in the women's studies department.

i'll summarize some of my arguments and make a post about it tomorrow. i'm sure it will continue to be useful for me, as i continue to interact with people who don't understand how damaging pornography is to our society.

goodnight!

update: here's the post summarizing my arguments!

i know that my last post was a few months ago and it said "i'm back!" but then i continued to not post anything. part of it is because i broke my laptop shortly after that post and didn't have easy access to a computer until recently. the other part is that i just kept spiraling deeper and deeper towards rock bottom and was just too focused on surviving. my workplace became a very bad environment for me, and i was struggling immensely with grief, loss, codependency and addiction.

since we last spoke, i've been continuing to develop my faith and learn about christianity . i've also learned a lot more about radical feminism (message me for a link to my radfem discord server!), and really started to solidify my anti-pornography views. i've definitely been growing into myself and my beliefs, although there's a lot that i'm admittedly still unsure of. i hope to share these things on my blog as i start using dreamwidth more and becoming comfortable here again.

i fell out of using dreamwidth after i caught covid.. i sorta just stopped doing all my hobbies and went back to my old patterns of chronic twitter use and bad coping. i've been struggling a lot lately and it will do me some good to stay away from certain things. so i'm back!

since my first bible study entry, i learned when you read the bible for the first time, you need to accept that you won't understand most of it. none of the bible makes sense unless you read all of it, because everything happens in the context of everything else.

after finishing the book of job, my sister and i were confused and bummed out: how could god let such a blameless and upright man be tortured for so long, just so god can win a bet against satan? my sister found a video about it on youtube and sent it to me, and that's when we properly realized that the bible is way too advanced for normal people to read on their own. here are the sources i'm writing about in this entry:

video: the book of job explained
videos by bibleproject: overview: job; the book of job;
website: what does job 2:10 mean?

you can watch these videos without reading job! they're easy to follow and they don't assume that you've read or understood job.

i already wrote about god's righteousness compared to human righteousness here, and this entry builds on that. a major theme in the book of job is humans trying to understand why god runs the universe the way he does. humans try to figure out the rules that he follows, so we can crack the code and make sense of things like suffering. it's complex though, and god has a universal vantage point. he understands so much more than we do. job's perspective is limited to his own tiny life, and only god is qualified to run the universe. we don't have the perspective to make assumptions about how god ought to do things.

( about the videos )

the concept of speaking against god is very interesting to me.. job spoke rightly about god, but job's friends did not. but job talked smack about god, and job's friends did not! it's not a sin to question god, or even to talk bad about him, if those are our honest thoughts. it's worse to lie to god and to force ourselves to follow something we don't believe in, or to fear that our faith will waver when we start asking questions. it is right and just to question god if we involve him in the process and do it through prayer. even jesus seemingly spoke against god when he said "my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"

i've finally recovered from covid so i'm gonna list all the things i've been up to real quick, since i missed a weekly check-in!

( covid induced morbs )
i got out of my funk after new years eve, which was the day the last of my symptoms went away. i got a message from a friend asking me out to dinner, which surprised me because we haven't talked since early december. the day after that, i messaged some other friends to invite them to get drinks at a really fancy and expensive bar. these plans were made a month ago with three of my friends, but we wanted to wait until closer to the date to invite the last two people. we're not as close to them as we are with each other and we wanted the plans to appear more spontaneous to them. i sent the message while feeling bad about myself, so when he responded "i'd love to!" it felt really nice. i waited a long time to finally invite him because the youngest of our friends still needed to reach legal drinking age. her birthday was yesterday and we went to a karaoke bar and then had a slumber party at my house. one of our friends introduced us all to soju and we all loved it and finished a bottle together.

tldr for this week:

saturday: new years eve party
monday: art gallery with my sister
tuesday: birthday party (karaoke and sleepover)
thursday: dinner with my friend
friday: genshin impact in-person event
weekend??: drinks at fancy bar - date and time tbd

if only my entire winter break could have been this exciting.. ˚‧º·(˚ ˃̣̣̥᷄⌓˂̣̣̥᷅ )‧º·˚ i'm grateful that i have friends and that i can go out with them, but i'm allowed to be upset that i got sick!! school starts in a week, which is kind of a bummer but at least i'll be able to go to the gym again. hopefully i can meet some new people this semester.

hi everyone i missed my weekly check-in yesterday and won't be catching up with reading lists or notifs until i've recovered from covid

lea's weekly check-in ➛ december 11th - december 17th

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

something good that happened is...

aside from yesterday, which i already wrote about, i had a chance to finish the 3.3 archon quest this week!
( spoilers )

something bad that happened is...

i stayed inside too much and ended up feeling really gross. i'd have random bursts of feeling hot or cold or clammy and a little nauseous. sometimes i'd feel weak or lightheaded, too. i was worried because my mom came down with something too, and i might have caught it from her, but it turned out to just be weird symptoms from an eyelid infection. nothing she can pass on that easily. i also just felt down because i finished school before all my friends so i wasn't busy but they all were. it seemed like nobody had time to hang out with me.
i think my main struggle this week was with my faith though, but i don't want to get into that on here. it's too personal.

i overcame the bad thing by...

visited my friend! it was very good for me to just suck it up and spend a day downtown. i also have plans every day next week up until thursday so i shouldn't have to deal with that horrible stagnant feeling for a while. i had a chance to talk to some friends about my struggles with my faith this week and they helped me a lot.

i'm thankful for...

the fact that i can rest during my winter break, the opportunity to hang out with my friend yesterday, seeing my friend in church today, spending quality time with my grandmother today, the lady who brought my painting back to me after i forgot it at chipotle, my cat's willingness to let me bathe her, the flu shot i got and the willpower it took for me to get it, my dad setting a good example for me when he gave back extra change to the cashier after she miscounted it, the cool craft i bought at dollarama for real cheap, the bravery i showed when i ate my thai express order despite thinking it was contaminated, the party supplies my mom bought for me, the peach schnapps my dad bought for me, and the guidance my friends have given me.

things i did this week:

finished playing the new genshin archon quest
continued playing coloring pixels
continued reading chosen for his desert throne by caitlin crews
continued reading the book of job
continued building my diy miniature house

let me know how your week was in the comments! feel free copy one (or some) of these prompts or just summarize your week to me (۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶ thanks for reading!

today i went to the art gallery with

creamerry ! we spent a long time there and i enjoyed it a lot. merry is really good company and the place was mostly empty so we got to wander around and take our time seeing everything we wanted to see. my favourite exhibit featured old furniture and tube televisions because it reminded me of my grandparents house that has now been sold. i'll never set foot in there again. there were chairs in the exhibit that we could sit on, and they were very comfortable because they were the perfect height. my feet were firmly planted on the ground but i wasn't squatting. we sat for a bit and i made a comment about how the sounds of all the televisions playing together reminded me of placid plastic duck simulator. merry agreed.

at the end we went back to the first floor and i was curious about the tables that i saw set up there. turns out it was a sensory station where there are things you can smell, touch, and taste. you can carry them around the museum because they correspond with the exhibits. we didn't do that because we already finished looking at everything, but they also had tables set up with art supplies. one table had watercolour pencil crayons, and another had model magic. we sat at the painting table and i took a pack of model magic from a different table because i wanted to mix mediums. this is what i made:

( click to see big image )we got food at chipotle after that. i got the kids meal because i wasn't that hungry and wanted something cheap. it was very disappointing and i was upset that the guy made me the wrong thing at first (which was better than what i ordered!!) and then threw it out to make me something worse. i would have liked it more and chipotle would have lost less money if he just gave me what he made instead of starting over. the description on the menu was lacking, and i didn't expect to get what was basically just ingredients. it said it came with juice and a choice of fruit or chips, which they didn't give me until i asked for it. the fruit was just a tangerine. the audacity to charge me more than $8 for what i got! they charged merry twice that for a burrito and a bottle of water, so i'm glad i chose the kids meal instead of something from the regular menu. it was higher value than a side like chips and dip and it did what it needed to do: kept me from being hungry. i have a sensitive stomach and i'm glad that i had no problems with that meal. it's hit or miss with burritos sometimes.

overall i had a really good day! i haven't left my house much this week and i was very happy to see merry. we don't see each other often and we always have lots to talk about. i really enjoy merry's company because i feel respected by them and they provide me with a unique perspective on a lot of things. i'm also looking forwards to seeing my other friends on tuesday! i'm throwing a party to celebrate scaramouche becoming playable, and the fact that both my friends have him (i'm saving for yelan and c1 hu tao so i'm skipping scara)! i'm making cupcakes and cocktails and we're all gonna bring our laptops so we can farm scara's artifacts--it works out, since i need the other set from the same domain for my hyperbloom raiden shogun.

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