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"Sinzing Sunset Boulevard" by Moodorama.

I have been listening to this song a lot. It's very... calming.

When you appeared, suddenly I saw myself again
Nobody knew who I was, not even me
Did I find me, or another us? Who knows?
But I don't care anymore

---

Me: We used to have yelling contests in elementary school and I never won.
Boyfriend: Wow, you suck.
Me: We didn't have them for very long because the yard duty teacher would tell us to stop.
Boyfriend: Haha
Boyfriend: That is not surprising.
Boyfriend: You annoying little brats.
Me: My elementary school is surrounded by houses so hopefully nobody thought we were being murdered.
Boyfriend: They were probably hoping you were getting murdered so then you'd stop screaming.
Me: You're such a grumpus
Boyfriend: Why thank you.
Boyfriend: I just try to be the best I can.

---

I've been visiting 99% matches on OKC. So far, a few of them have messaged me, which is cool. One of them seems fairly interesting, and has been replying a lot. This other conversation with a guy in Canada was promising but went downhill kinda fast. He's sort of boring and isn't doing much to keep the conversation going. It got to "so, how come you don't drink?" (we're both teetotalers) and then... yeah. Stagnant. Oh well.

---

Me: Your Twitter talk made me want to look at mine.
Matt: Why am I not stalking you?
Matt: What is yours?
Me: Haha, I don't use it for very interesting things.
Matt: I don't care. I need to stalk you in all venues

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"When You're Old and Lonely" by The Magnetic Fields.

When you're old and lonely
And the rush of life is past
Days go by too slowly and
The years go by too fast

When your golden loneliness is
Heavier than stone
You can call me up and say,
"My God, I'm all alone, all alone."

"Heroes" by The Magnetic Fields.

Though nothing will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be heroes, forever and ever
What do you say?

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At my crisis line shift, I talked to a 14 year old kid who had attempted suicide by cutting. Like, attempted literally right before calling, I guess. The kid was trying to stem the flow of blood with a towel while we were on the phone. Wouldn't give me an address or anything, only a phone number, so all I could do was pass the phone number on to the fire department and hope things worked out.

Right before my shift ended, the kid called me back and said my alias faintly. When I said "Hello? [Kid's name]?" the kid hung up.

I felt pretty shaken when I was driving home, and for awhile after getting home.

I feel better now though. I ate some Goldfish and listened to music and looked at pictures of my boyfriend because why not, sometimes that makes me feel better for some reason.

Of course, I hope the kid is okay, but the reality is that I'll probably never know. I guess I should just be grateful that I can bounce back so quickly. Something like this would probably stick with a lot of people. I'm taking the fact that it did impact me as a good thing. It means I'm not desensitized. So I still feel stuff, and things get to me, but they don't have a lasting negative effect.

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In the IRC chat I've been going to, I ran into a guy I knew from a chatroom several years ago. It was a bit surreal catching up. He lives in San Francisco now, and just broke up with his girlfriend. They were together for two years and apparently she just decided she'd rather sleep with some random guy from a bar than continue their relationship. He's understandably hurt and bitter because of it, but he's doing his best to move on.

He said he will probably come back to the chat, so maybe we will get to talk again. I was feeling kind of bad myself before we talked about his situation, but my own bad feelings were kind of displaced by my sadness and shock about his situation.

---

After class today, I went to see a documentary about domestic violence. It was very heavy and kind of graphic and I cried a bit several times during it, but I tried very hard not to let anybody see. Sometimes I didn't even know why I wanted to cry. The whole thing was just really hard-hitting. I ended up drinking a ton of water, which seemed to help prevent me from going from "eyes watering a lot" to "straight up crying" during the movie. It made that feeling go away at least, the one where you feel like something is caught in your throat.

The second half of school today was kind of just hard in general. In my last class the lecture was about intimate partner violence and rape. Generally unpleasant stuff. Even though it was kind of dry and academic it was still not fun to hear about. And then the documentary afterward... well... I wasn't feeling great when I got home.

I'm really tired now, but I stayed up late talking to that guy from the chat. Even though I wanted to go to sleep, I didn't want to stop chatting. He went to sleep a bit ago though, so I guess I might as well sleep now too.

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[7:15:25 PM] Dan: I'll just get a prostitute
[7:15:33 PM] Dan: Will that solve my problems
[7:15:49 PM] Me: Yes, all of them
[7:17:42 PM] Dan: Finally
[7:17:52 PM] Dan: I actually had a friend suggest it
[7:25:55 PM] Me: I feel like you might have mentioned that before.
[7:25:58 PM] Me: I honestly don't know what that would fix.
[7:27:00 PM] Dan: BACKED UP BALLS, NIGGUH
[7:37:16 PM] Me: Oh yeah, that's where all the sadness lives
[7:38:07 PM] Dan: duh
[7:44:05 PM] Me: I could see this as a news article
[7:44:17 PM] Me: "SCIENTISTS DISCOVER SADNESS LIES IN TESTICLES"
[7:44:21 PM] Me: "FEMALES ALL FAKING"
[7:48:37 PM] Dan: World changed

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Still thinking about virtue ethics.

Aristotle's proposed goal in virtue ethics is to achieve eudaimonia, which is a long term contentment with the course of one's life, but also a state of human flourishing. A eudaimon life is a life with few regrets, in which one reaches the full potential that could be expected for what one is.

My Ethics prof likes to use the example of a rosebush. A rosebush that is flourishing has green leaves, many blooms, and is healthy and vibrant etc. It is the best for what you could expect of a rosebush. It isn't, as he likes to say, "bionic"-- it isn't some sort of unnaturally enabled rosebush that can walk around and do stuff rosebushes don't normally do. The rosebush needs certain conditions to get it to a flourishing state-- it needs the right amount of water, the right kind of soil, the right amount of sunlight, and so on.

A rosebush cannot flourish if it gets the same amount of sunlight that would be best for a fern. It also cannot flourish if it gets the same amount of water as a cactus. In the former scenario there is excess, and in the latter there is deficiency. It is necessary to find the golden mean between the states of excess and deficiency. This golden mean is virtue.

Aristotle felt that humans were uniquely capable of reason. To reach our full potential we need to make use of that and reason well. We’re reasoning well when we determine where the golden mean is for us-- when we figure out where virtue lies.

To become a virtuous person you need to practice virtue. Another example my prof used was someone who plays a musical instrument. There are good violin players and bad violin players. How do you become a good violin player? By practicing, yes, but not just by practicing. You have to practice playing well. You could play violin eight hours a day and still be a bad violin player if you practice badly.

I think when I first decided I wanted to be the best person I could be, I went a little overboard with some things, but I've been figuring out where a good middle ground is. Like, I realized some point along the way that trying to be 100% selfless wasn't going to work because if I didn't spend at least some time on myself, I wouldn't be healthy enough to effectively support other people. Just trying to make sure I don't slide back though...

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It's weird, I almost feel like something was off in my mind for the past couple days (because of the random anger) and now it's been reset and I'm totally fine again.

Maybe it was PMS.

Part of me wants to think that killing dream cleared me out though. I felt extremely satisfied and kind of smug in the dream.

I don't think I consistently get PMS, if that's what it is, but it does seem like every now and then I just feel super angry and irritated a few days before my period starts. A long time ago when I first learned about PMS I thought I could just counter it by realizing it was probably just PMS and not getting angry. That awareness took awhile to cultivate though. It's easy to see it after it happens but significantly more difficult to do it in the moment. Still, it's not impossible. It's just a habit that had to be developed. Probably the hardest part is wanting the anger to go away. I find that when I'm angry it often comes with the feeling that I want to be angry. So really, the challenge is not to shift the mood, it's to shift the desire. And I guess that's where reasoning comes in.

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