Awwnuhh

So the only thing I could do was have it end in tragedy. That way I wouldn’t have to break up with the guy and I could adopt his daughter to stay close to her. He passed away peacefully on fire in the kitchen. Now in previous games, when a kid is taken away by CPS, the next kid you adopt is the same kid. Welp that didn’t carry over into sims 4 so the daughter ended up being taken away and erased from the game by the great sims deity.

I’m a sentimental man, so I kept neighbor mans tombstone around. I’d occasionally chat with his ghost, but he seemed cold to me. I can’t help but thinking he was a bit mad his daughter no longer existed. But this escalated once I started seeing Mike. His ethereal visits became more frequent and more hostile, usually breaking my electronics or creating a mess. But he went overboard when he started the fire.

Being a sim the died in a fire, his ghost had certain abilities specific to his death (setting fires). He got pissed because I kissed Mike so he set my couch on fire that ended up barricading us in the bedroom. Now I couldn’t find the fire alarm in buy mode and I hadn’t had the foresight to predict my spiteful ghost died-in-a-fire ex boyfriend would be an afterlife arsonist to care about it that much so a lot of the house had burned by the time I could get the FD there.

After having almost nothing covered by insurance (thanks Obama), Mike sat me down to have a talk with me. While I couldn’t understand him, I imagine he said “What the fuck you need to deal with your crazy ass ex boyfriend ghost. This never would have happened if you weren’t a thirst little sim bitch and dated me first.”

I approached the grave. It was time to release him. He was waiting for me. He knew this was the end. That after this, there was no coming back from the afterlife. I know he tried to kill me, and he knows I got his daughter deleted, but at that moment, it was just like old times. Telling each other jokes 27 times in a row until he would have sex with me.

me:

#stop hating kids who want to learn korean because of kpop 2k15

Why is keeping a journal a good thing for students? Why is it good for anyone? 

I’ve written since I could hold a pen in my hands. Keeping journals is something I’ve been doing on and off since I knew what a journal is. But I have found that, as a university student, these journals are more important to me than they ever were. These are the reasons that make writing a journal a good and even necessary things for students: 

1. You’re growing: university years can be really intense. There are lots of things happening that are shaping your personality, you’re learning, meeting new people, having new experiences. You may suffer an existencial crisis or two in the time span of a single university year. Do I know what I want? Do I know what I don’t want? What do I think of this? What do I think of that? I think that through college and university years, you start to become really aware of everything that surrounds you. You have just stepped out of those teenage years in which everything was a whirlwind and now you have more time and experience to reflect upon yourself and the world. Writing all your thoughts in a journal can be a great way of becoming aware of all this growing process, and getting to know yourself better. 

2. Get it off your chest: sometimes, life is overwhelming, and we don’t feel like talking to anyone about the things that are crossing our minds: exams, parents, friends, politics, love interests… Well, that’s what your journal is for! Writing down those things that are bugging you can be quite freeing, and it’s a way of putting things into perspective. Writing a journal is like therapy, you face and admit things that you’re not willing to tell anyone, maybe not even yourself, and that journal is the recipient of everything that annoys you. It is not going to judge you, it is not going to think your feelings are invalid, it is only going to hold your inner thoughts until you’re ready to face them. 

3. Sadly we can’t remember everything: our brains just work like that. But if you write what you thought a certain day, the events that took place, when you read that journal years after it’s been written, you will see how you’ve changed, how you’re grown, how many things you’ve lived. You’ll remember how that smile made you feel, how hard you cried with that discussion, how that teacher made you cringe every time you saw him, how hard studying for that exams was, how you’ve come to be the person you are… Also, it will make you laugh. I still laugh and cover my face in shame when I read my 13-year-old self journals, and that’s something fantastic. 

4. It’s your safe place: no one can read your journal (at least, no one’s supposed to; if someone does, kick them!) so you’re free to write there as much as you want, how you want, whenever you want, about what you want. There are no rules with journals. No deadlines, no schedules. This is not an assignment. You want to plaster that cinema ticket there? Do it. You want to stick that silly photo of you and your friend there? Do it. You want to draw unicorns and flowers and glitter-y hearts? DO IT. No one can stop you. Just do what you want with your journal. Mine is full of museum and cinema tickets, photographs, quotes, silly doodles and glitter. LOTS OF GLITTER. I LOVE GLITTER. Let yourself go, let yourself feel free and in charge for a little while. Your journal is your mind, your kingdom, and you set the rules there.  

5. It’s a good exercise: as a novice writer, I also use my journal as a creative work space. Studying medicine doesn’t leave much time for my creative writing, but the regular writing pattern I try to maintain and knowing that I’m the only one reading my journal allows me to let go of all my fears as a writer and do as I please. Metaphors, surrealism, dialogs, characterization, colloquialisms, drama, figurative language… I can use as many techniques as I want, I can narrate my life as a novel, as something worth-reading, and that’s invaluable work for a writer. But is the freedom, the lack of fear, that gives you more space to create and find your own voice. 

6. You’ll feel proud: when in some years you look back at all the journals you’ve written and all the experiences you’ve lived and shared and loved and hated, you won’t be able to suppress a smile and caress your pretty notebooks as if they were part of you, because in fact they are. They are a big part of you. 

7. You can burn them: my creative writing teacher has been writing journals since she was a teenager, and now, at 40 something, she has suffered from breast cancer. She told us that she had never felt as free as when she burnt her journals. Yes, I know it may seem a waste of time, spending all those years writing almost everyday to just burn you work to ashes in a second. But, since she was ill, she needed to break with her old self, she needed to let go of things that made life more difficult than they already were, and burning her written thoughts was like burning everything that was putting too much weigh on her shoulders. We all suffer, and destroying our thoughts can make us feel like our mind doesn’t weight so much anymore. You don0t need to write an entire journal and then tore it apart. Maybe writing those things you want to get over with in a scrap of paper and burning it in a bonfire with your friends will be just as refreshing. 

8. Slow down: life is pretty hectic these days, I know. We’re all running from here to there 24/7 and that’s exhausting. Classes, exams, assignments, more classes, more exams, more homework, more pressure, pressure, pressure… Looking for time to write your journal helps you slow down, helps you look around, helps you look at yourself, and that makes you take a deep breath and relax for a bit. If it’s just half an hour a day, or a couple of days a week, use your time journaling to drink a warm cup of tea, eat some delicious biscuits, and write peacefully, reflecting on the sheer pleasure and magic of transforming your mind into words on paper. Forget about university rush of a while. I can’t think of something more relaxing! 

Well, this was it. I know that journaling is not for everyone, maybe you try it and can’t stick with it. But if you’ve ever wanted to try journaling, I would encourage you so so badly to do it. At first, it is complicated. You don’t break with your own censure and are not as true and sincere as you could be, but with time you gain confidence, you get  comfortable with yourself, and when you spend more than two days without using your journal, you feel like there’s something missing. 

Enjoy your journaling! ✒️📖