I've been interning for a chess stream for about 2 weeks now, and I haven't had this much fun in so long.

Over the weekend we had 4 time US chess champion Yasser Seirawn staying over, and he got on stream multiple times. The easiest way to describe him is that he is the Bob Ross of chess in commentary and personality. Is easily one of the most jovial people I've ever met- there's also a 4 page article about him from the Los Angeles Times that begins with "He is hale, hip and handsome."

On Saturday, with did a fundraiser stream for one his chess mentors growing up. There was tons of support from the wider chess community, and we broke through our donation goal in an afternoon.

On Sunday night, he said out of the blue that if we reached 1000 subscribers (get 440 new paid subscriptions) before he left on a flight the next day, he would commit to streaming for the channel for a year. It was impromptu decided that we would do a 24 hour livestream to try to reach the goal. We worked through in shifts, I stayed awake for 20 hours of it to do background technical work / moral support- but was it really necessary? We ended up reaching the subscriber goal within 4 hours. We also hit the front page of Twitch and hit a record 4200 concurrent viewers at once- absolutely nuts for a stream that averages 500 viewers on good days. What a weekend, and what a great guy. Holy shit.

Here's a clip of sleepless me hanging my queen and causing Yasser a lot of pain.

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I met up with elizabeth last Wednesday for a Land of Talk concert! It was a great night. I've never been to a speakeasy before, but I met up with her at one with a couple of her friends (Note- I've never met a vlogger before, but it turns out that two vloggers in the same room is a perpetual energy machine). I loved the secret club vibe to it, and they served some of the best drinks I've ever tasted. I'm inspired to get into cocktails.

I didn't actually take any photos with Elizabeth, but I did get this great picture of the band I've been obsessed with all year:

I booked a one way flight to Spokane, WA for the middle of October. I'm planning on meeting with a friend there for a week, and then... couchsurf around the pacific northwest until I find work? It's nuts, but I'm sick of feeling sorry for myself.

I'm working on a portfolio website that I'll start applying to jobs and finding clients with. I'm trying to put as much of myself into it as possible, so that I can:

1. stick out and

2. work with people who like my sense of humor and

3. actually work on the portfolio without fretting about how shitty my work is.

This is what is going above the fold:

Also, I'm sneaking this in some way or another:

I'm trying to not rely too heavily on being clever, but I've been flexing my stand up comedy muscles lately and they love an excuse to workout. Presenting the portfolio pieces is the hard part, but hey, selling yourself is an actual job and not a joke.

I'm thinking about buying Facebook ads in every place I visit to try to target people. Maybe some craigslist ads to sell myself since I'm nuts. I'm also thinking about posting it on Designernews to gain some notoriety. I don't think it's going to be designery enough to hit desginery design pages likes SiteInspire and Typewolf, but I really don't want to design for other designers. I also don't want to go boring until I know that I'm not needed in this world.

I'm thinking of this whole thing like the Giant Red Paperclip. I'm afraid I'm being incredibly naive, but fuck- it will bug me if I don't try this out once.

I have my own Twitch emote now, lol:

Meeting one of my favorite authors tomorrow, (Arjun Basu)[https://twitter.com/arjunbasu], most famous for his 140 character stories on Twitter.

I've been very inactive for the past week or so, I feel like I've been trying to impersonate a rock in every aspect of my life. It's a very strong funk. I finally just said fuck it and make a comment here on pubski. Hi everyone. I like reading about your lives. You're all very interesting, I'm rooting for you all. I don't have much specific to say. I'm going to go back to observing.

The devaluization of thought has been on my head lately. It occurred to me that on any given day, I'm probably consuming 2-5 thoughts that click with me, as if they could resonate throughout my life and I could base the entirety of my thoughts around them. One good Nautilus article. One good poem I feel the need to read out loud. A Youtube analysis video on a great movie. A song I want to become friends with. These ideas spend increasingly shorter amounts of time in my head as I encounter more of them.

I yearn for that feeling I got the first week of college, when the many introductory professors had filled my mind with persuasive arguments for how their field encapsulated the entirety of human experience, and it clicked to me while sitting in a coffee shop- "Everything is connected!" I spent that week starstruck, in love with an idea and the way it danced, the way it gave space and voice to other ideas it interacted with- if an idea was a person, this "Everything is connected!" would be the kind of person who walked with gravitas, would ask questions and be genuinely inquisitive of the answers she received, would be the type of hiker who made sure to stay slightly behind the slowest person, who knew that in their head, always seeking to bring the best out of people.

Over time, I've treated "Everything is connected!" terribly. I've danced with tens of thousands of other ideas and there's an embarrassment of being seen with her. She is pop poetry, and it seems as though the more I encounter, the less likely I'll ever enjoy her the same way, the longer it'll take for me to recall how it felt, the easier it'll be for me to confuse her for someone else.

Just another stepping stone to bigger ideas, I guess. I never want to take that away from someone else.

I went in to place my two weeks, and got fired in the subsequent conversation. Too fresh and complicated to talk about it right now. You guys liked my post into oblivion when I finally got a job, and I did a lot of talking about it here and I'm grateful. I know we're just internet strangers, but you guys helped me out a lot. I'm sorry if I've disappointed you.

Trying not to fall into NEETdom, been going to the local art space every day at the same time I would go to work. A friend of mine has set me up with a (big money) client that should be an ace in the hole, but there's a lot of internal guilt and ruminations swirling in me right now. I've sought out a lot of help from my circle already, and I'm dreading replying back to people. I've been meditating a lot.

Here's what I've been listening to.

I can't wait for tits and beer leftism to come back to the internet. A united community where high schoolers can hate Republicans because they're old, stupid, and too religious. One where Klienbl00 hits r/bestof every single week on reddit and identity politics step aside for the working man! M'ladies and gentlemen, we're entering a new golden age.

I don't know man, I feel like a lot of my identity has been shattered. Filipino / American, debate geek, psychology and political science graduate because I wanted to know why and do all I could do to get people to understand each other and interact, a la if you can't dream for each other, you're dreaming against each other fucking naive little shit I am. Fucking Duerte / Trump / Brexit / the fact that our lives are 10,000 more complex than our parents because of globalization. Fucking trying to juggle all of the microcosms I inhabit because I naively believe in some moral good in being able to handle the cognitive dissonance in communicating all across a spectrum of ideas. Fucking wanting to understand how other people understand each other - the marketplace of ideas will eventually solve... / I can demonstrate that we're all more similar than we think / a house divided will not stand.

My education is like that SMBC comic where the physicist is falling off a cliff and solves when she's going to die.

I just feel like tomorrow I'll have to start again, anew. My ideas about people are too kumbaya, I need to grow up.

New to Hubski. Been stressing out for the last few weeks or so because I realized that I've been in a new city for more than 6 months and haven't really made any friends beyond work. Trying not to be too hard on myself, because it's my first time being alone in a new city and I've always struggled with social anxiety, but decided yesterday to be more proactive about things. I remembered that when I was in college I broke out of my shell by being active in online communities, so I'm starting small, commenting here, I guess. Hi everyone.