I appreciate y'all for asking questions! I'll do my best to answer juicily and informatively.
From Sarah aka Inkcaps ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚:
What are some things on your bucket list?
I'm not great at keeping lists but I do know that I want to travel to as many places as possible. I want to see Herculaneum and Pompeii. I want to visit medieval castles and villages. I want to touch and taste ancient and medieval history with my own two hands. Also, I don't think i've mentioned this on here before but I'm originally from Venezuela and haven't been back since I moved to The States when i was 3, so when the time is right I very much want to go back and see where my mom and I are from. I want very badly to finally surpass my current level of intermediate spanish into true fluency and mastery of the language. Also this is sort of narcissistic but I'd love to have enough money to do a full battery of psychological testing so I can just have all the data on that. Idk i feel like the information would be useful and satisfy my curiosity. I want to one day be an expert in something. In what? I don't know. I feel like I have too many interests to pick a focus. So I also hope I find a focus. Are these valid bucket list items? I'm not really sure but I'm committing.
what makes you feel most like "yourself"? This could be a particular place, hobby... anything!
I think I feel most myself when I'm wearing an outfit I really really love that has some sort of surprising or unconventional element and leans toward the realm of sluttiness lmao. Also any time I'm able to fully express my sense of humor and laugh loudly and deeply. When I get to share knowledge and excitement about my favorite topics (usually movies), when I spend time with my longtime friends who are like sisters to me, when I'm slaying a karaoke performance, when I'm dancing my ass off at the club, when people misunderstand me, when I eat some food combination that makes me feel like that scene in Ratatouille with the cheese and the strawberry, when I really like or dislike something and am able to thoroughly and passionately explain why. I feel like I am more often than not expressing my authentic self. It's pulling that back when circumstance requires that's the real challenge for me! I'm excitable, expressive, opinionated, curious, vain, lazy, theatrical, distractable, sardonic (not really sarcastic), sometimes combative, sometimes knowledgable, often hilarious (by my own standards), and ultimately very silly.
From futureempressoftheuniverse ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ :
what's your favorite creature from the ocean?
The ocean is as fascinating to me as it is frightening, which is to say very. I'm love and fear the insane creatures that live in the hydrothermal deep sea vents. I also love the weird freaky cambrian explosion creatures. I have a pretty casual interest in biology so I don't have lots of specifics. Of course I love a jellyfish and anything transparent or bioluminescent. I have a deep respect for the noble and wise octopus. And whales in all their magnificence.
From Vashti♡༊·˚
How do you pursue beauty in your daily life?
Not sure if you mean like my physical beauty routine or in like a philosophical sense but it's ok cause I'm happy to talk about both!
The time I spend applying my makeup each morning before work is possibly my most meditative moment of my day. If only I was willing to get up earlier so I could relish it, take even more time with it. For my own purposes I prefer perfecting and enhancing over transforming my features.
I'm experimenting with being higher maintenence and putting in more effort to get better results and balancing that with the reality of my circumstances and executive function. I'm very recently foraying into actually styling my hair instead of praying it dries nicely on wash day. Learning the magic of velcro rollers this last week or so has truly shifted me into a new league of fabulosity and cuntiness. I have a skincare routine I'm pretty committed to. It took me 27 years to realize that effortless beauty is an illusion. As Dolly Parton said "there is no such thing as natural beauty". I actually don't fully agree with that across the board but i get what she means. The undone, messy, sensual kind of beauty I love must be strategically constructed.
As far as other spheres of life go, I find beauty in nature. I love the sky in all its forms. The sight of the moon, whether full waxing waning crescent or gibbous absolutely never fails to delight and excite me. Truly never gets old. Every sunset is magic to me. I love a dark, pregnant cumulonimbus ready to burst. I could go on.
I love to mentally reframe sights and settings that might be considered mundane or ugly by imagining them as part of some sort of art piece like a painting or film. I used to paint a lot but haven't in a while. Usually just a rendering of some random shit i had around the house where the light was hitting it in a cool way. I'd like to get back into that.
I like to challenge myself to see things differently than they appear or from a different angle than normal. Keeps everything fresh and exciting and beautiful that way.
Go to snack & go to coffee shop order?
I LOVE a snack. I love like a sharp salty cheese with a sweet juicy fruit of some kind along with some olives. Big fan of hot chips in general. I love drinking coffee but I'm no connossieur. My coffee order is nothing groundbreaking. I usually just go for a vanilla latte that's hopefully not overly sweet. Iced or hot depends on the weather. I've experimented with all the milks. Lately I've just been getting regular. Saves me having to specify.
Favorite weather?
I love TORNADO WEATHER where the grass turns neon there's a weird yellow haze the clouds are dark the air eerily still and thunder rumbles in the distance. Best if it's a false alarm and there's no tornado and no one is hurt and no property is damaged.
Relationship with religion?
This one's a bit of a doozy. I am not religious. At all. I grew up a corny non-denominational protestant Christian that listened to Christian rock. I was pretty serious about it as a kid even though I had lots of doubts and questions. I was voluntarily baptized at 9 years old. I attended church twice a week. I had a leather bible and a keychain that read "Princess: Daughter of the King of Kings." I'm laughing and cringing as I write this. Christianity is the only religion I feel qualified to speak on, so it's the only one I will address.
In 8th grade I moved states and no longer had a church I went to regularly. Not being inundated with Jesus every week allowed me to detach and transition to a more passive belief that I tried to reconcile with my views that were becoming increasingly progressive as I learned more about the world around me. Even when I was a full believer and bought into the ideology I had already determined that at least certain parts of the bible had to be allegorical because taking it literally didn't make sense. I recently found a letter from my Sunday school teacher to me from when I was transitioning out of children's ministry and entering youth group. The letter said she enjoyed tackling my "hard questions." I wish I remember what those questions were.
By college I stopped identifying explicitly as Christian and simply had a vague idea that a God exists and is a manifestation of love. I saw Jesus as more of a figure whose example we should try to follow rather than a deity.
Eventually I let all that go. I felt I was trying to force things to fit that didn't. I've since completely deconstructed. I've been an atheist for years now and I'm comfortable with that. I now have a better understanding of Christian theology than I did when I participated. The more I learn the more I believe that it's a toxic ideology that has done more harm than good, and that the good it may have done is incidental.
I'm sorry if I offend any well-meaning progressive Christians by saying that. I truly appreciate that they mean well. In my opinion, being a progressive Christian requires a lot of cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics. I think Jesus is overrated. I think the God depicted in the Bible is cruel and bloodthirsty. I think it is abhorrent to think anyone deserves to experience eternal torture for not supplicating to a tyrant. If you're a Christian who wants to believe in a good and loving God I just don't think your holy text or traditions support that.
I have so much more to say on this matter (it's only like my favorite thing to talk about) but I've already spent so much time writing this response and do not have my thoughts organized and feel if I just keep listing things i think are wrong with christianity that i'm just being an asshole. Feeling this way is sadly an obstacle in connecting with my mother whose entire identity revolves around being Christian and believing this life is not the real one and that real life begins after death in heaven.
I'd probably do better in a one-on-one back and forth on this topic.
At this point my ideology is just compassion. All that extra stuff doesn't feel necessary to me.
I'd like to engage in some type of prayer but I'm not sure what that means for me. I don't believe there's anyone to pray to. Would that just make it thinking? Talking to myself? i don't know. Love the idea of ritual and liturgy like catholics do but on what basis and to what end i also don't know.
Current aspirations or overall life's dreams?
I honestly don't know what I want to do with my life. It'd be cool if I could get better at coding and learn some programming and maybe get some kind of tech job that pays a little more in the next 5 years. I don't desire to work very hard, but I have a vague desire to have a higher income than I have now so I can afford more and nicer clothes for my little outfits and to have like slightly nicer furniture and maybe a slighly nicer car when my current one eventually gives out. Other than that I don't really need much. I'm happy living in my apartment. Don't desire to be a homeowner or start a family. I mostly want to live a simple life. Do a job that doesn't take much out of me so I have the bandwidth for friends and hobbies and learning. I'm also thinking about grad school but I'm not sure for what yet or to what end. I'd really just like to learn. I wish that could be enough.