December Diary Check-in
(what are we eating?, broken toe?, secret project on hold?, leaving Texas/moving?, Catholic Church?, rat invasion?, war w/(in) Venezuela?, Laura Loomer at the Pentagon?, Trump's salvation? AI Jesus?)
Hi, it’s now the first week of December 2025.
This year has felt so intensely long and FULL, but also like it has gone by in a flash. HOW IS IT DECEMBER, AGAIN/ALREADY?!
Starting in October, everything began to feel otherworldly unreal, discombobulating, and just a profound “wtf is actually happening?!” (yes, even more than recent years).
And then, if your November was anything like mine, perhaps right now you’re feeling like you just don’t want to cook any elaborate meals until perhaps Christmas? It’s not only fatigue on my mind though, but also the price of groceries and having open conversations about the topic—it has left me in a reflective place.
According to the USDA, food prices in 2025 have continued to rise faster than overall inflation. The CPI for all food increased 0.4 percent from July 2025 to August 2025. Food prices in August 2025 were 3.2 percent higher than just a year ago, in August 2024.
Through what I do, I’ve documented parts of my life online, but I have also always tried to help others via what I share too.
I feel like perhaps “easier” or minimal ingredient meals/dishes could be the optimal thing to focus on, given that it seems that majority of people are really struggling with buying groceries altogether right now.
Let me know though?
Furthermore, I decided to try out a new format this month, of a Substack article. This “check-in” of sort, includes topics that in the last few years, I have mostly reserved only discussing with close friends and/or in-person.
Will things get better in 2026?!?
I don’t know—but geopolitically speaking, things aren’t looking so great for the near future…
But first,
“WHAT *ARE* WE EATING?”
Tomorrow I am attempting to make “pizza puffs” with my kids. I had a random craving stemming from a childhood food memory. Growing up in Chicago, we used to get these in the late 90’s-early 2000’s (they could still be a thing there, but I haven’t lived in Chicago since 2008).
“Chicago-style pizza puffs from the 90’s are a deep-fried, handheld snack featuring a tortilla filled with pizza sauce, cheese, and sausage, popular in Chicago’s hot dog stands. They were created in the 1970s by the Assyrian Shabbaz family and have become a staple, similar to a hot pocket but deep-fried. They are made by brands like Iltaco and are still a popular food item found at casual restaurants throughout the city.”
The ones that I am referring to though—this is what they looked like:
A pizza puff is NOT a calzone, nor a Hot Pocket… the texture is closest to a Jamaican beef patty. Except the inside, is sauce/cheese/pepperoni (most common).
I have only a handful of ingredients and am going to give it a whirl with puff pastry first—will post if they turn out share-able (I’ll keep trying if not).
BROKEN TOE
It’s too bad that I don’t have an elaborate story for my toe situation. I literally hurt it while I was cleaning my house like a maniac, lol. The first two days it was mostly just localized pain in the pinky toe (plus black and blue bruising), but then yesterday and today, the pain has spread out to the top and bottom of my foot.
I asked on my Instagram stories, if people who have a history of broken toes, thought it was “worth it to get an X-ray”. I asked this because I know that I’ve heard there’s not much that can be done for broken toes.
Which, 90% of the responses were definitely in alignment with that thought, however, there were a few that offered a different perspective:
A few messages were directly pertaining to “certain types of breaks” that would require surgery. So because of how my pain started to spread out and also since I am a runner—I decided to go in for an X-ray today. Those results are pending.
SECRET PROJECT ON HOLD
This is something that I hinted to only on my “CFL” (close friends list), something that I was originally planning to launch come the new year. However, my creative energy has massively shifted in the last month—has that happened to you recently too?
I wasn’t planning on sharing this, but I am feeling an immense sense of doom at the moment, in regard to the next month or so…pertaining to our country and “world happenings” in general.
Therefore, it just REALLY doesn’t feel in alignment to be launching a creative-type project during this season. This probably makes no sense to the majority of you reading this, but there’s something therapeutic about declaring a pause on something in order to stay in alignment…
More on this, next year.
LEAVING TEXAS/MOVING
Is anyone else feeling a major pull toward “going home”.
What is “home” though?
If you were to ask me that question at any point in the last decade and a half, I would have told you that home is wherever I may be with my family. But also, that the island in which was my *physical* home for over a decade+, was the only place during this part of my life—that felt like home, geographically.
But now, in the past few months, I have been feeling a pull back to my roots. Which is, STARTLING to say the least. I left Chicago at 17-years-old, the SAME DAY that I walked in my high school graduation, I also boarded a plane destined for Hawai’i. I could. not. get. out. fast. enough.
A childhood of long dreary winters took a toll on my summer baby’s soul. I truly thereafter flourished having spent over a decade in year-round sunshine with zero winter dread.
SO, color me shocked when I say that I have been feeling pulled “home”, as in back to my hometown. Logistically, it wouldn’t make sense to move back to Chicago, at least right now anyway. But wow, saying this out loud feels monumental. I don’t know what will come of it. But, let me know if anyone else is feeling this puzzling pull?!?
CATHOLIC CHURCH
The amount of humility it takes to write this out right now…is A LOT.
I was baptized as a baby, in the Catholic Church. Then grew up in Sunday mass, Catechism classes, and made my First Communion.
But as a young adult, I no longer was an “active Catholic”. I started attending a “non-denominational” Christian church instead.
Growing up, although always VERY spiritually-sensitive and ALWAYS feeling in the presence of the Holy Spirit… I somehow also felt like I didn’t “know Jesus”. I had previously blamed this on my experience in the Catholic Church.
At 21 though, when I became a sexual assault survivor, and shed my prior life—I focused on my faith in a different way. Through that Evangelical Pentecostal “non-denominational” church, I CAME TO HAVE AN ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS. But I also sought out to understand Him more than ever before, too.
Yet after a few years, that church known for its vibrant worship, community focus (“Life Groups”), extensive outreach including prison ministry and international church planting (I did go on my first mission trip with them as well)… the contemporary culture of it all, started to make me feel like an outsider.
You see, when you start to go down “rabbit holes” of information, dissecting alternative historical information—of which is much opposing to what you were “taught” in the American public school system, it truly does trickle into what type of crowds your soul can tolerate mingling amongst.
This discussion could go on for chapters, but for now, to put it simply, I am just seeking a more ancestral… traditional… deeply-rooted communion, with both personal familiarity and new ways of understanding the pieces I had missed in the first half of my life as a Catholic.
Up until this year, I couldn’t imagine ever returning to the Catholic Church. There seemed to be just “too many” wounds, corruptions, and imperfections, in which the whole system felt too tainted to me.
But then this year, the first North American pope was elected; the Chicago-born Cardinal Robert F. Prevost. His election has since undoubtedly sparked “renewed faith and hope for a unifying global leader in troubled times”, followed also by an increase of people returning to the Catholic Church…
For the first time as an adult, I started to stay up-to-date with happenings in the Catholic ecosystem. Initially, I was merely intrigued because it felt surreal to have a Chicagoan Pope (or a Pope that didn’t give me the ick, for that matter). I kept finding myself reflecting and thinking as if I were once again living inside my childhood, within the Catholic Church.
I’ve thought—”wow, I can’t imagine how it would have felt as a child, to have seen a White Sox-loving Pope come-to-be, or a Pope that felt at all relatable.” Something about this reflection has been healing.
After a few months, I found myself asking internally, “What would it be like, to return to Catholicism, but as an adult who actually has an intimate relationship, understanding and KNOWING—of Jesus?” This question, is ultimately what’s leading me right now. I haven’t made any moves, but I feel a heavy conviction to figure out what it all means, and why I am feeling this way.
I would be interested to hear from others feeling this way too…
RAT INVASION
I’m not sure what’s going on with the rats. Is it a viral trend that I missed the memo on, orrr is it an actual rat invasion that majority of people aren’t putting the pieces of the puzzle together about?
In the last few weeks, on social media, I have been INUNDATED with rat-themed reels. From baking food items in the shape of rats, to actual rat incidents, and so much more…
I nonchalantly started talking about it on my Instagram stories, and then other people replied with their recent “out of the ordinary” rat stories as well. I’ve been hearing all about the unusual influx of rat incidents, to also:
For now, I saved the discussion to a highlight, but I pray that it ends up being just a weird viral trend and NOTHING ELSE…
WAR WITH (in) VENEZUELA
I don’t publicly focus on politics much anymore, for many reasons.
1.) I have close to zero faith left in any politician.
2.) Adults still cannot have conversations with opposing viewpoints, without taking things personal and oftentimes becoming unhinged.
3.) Unfortunately, for people who are NOT fed talking points and/or are not going along with mainstream rhetoric, I do think that we have reached a very high level of threat just for having actual open conversations that question the current status quo or official narratives. That is ACTUALLY HEART-BREAKING to say, but I am being very serious, it just doesn’t feel SAFE at all.
But also, I feel like a reset is imminent.
Although Venezuela may be the current/on the line-up of western invasions to stage a coup in… I feel as if MAJORITY of EVERYONE I KNOW does not believe a single “reason” any government official may currently give as to justifying the possible war/invasion and/or a boots on the ground scenario.
Which, unfortunately, makes me believe that some sort of “reset” would be next after that, and the ACTUAL bigger picture that such events will snowball toward…
predictive, but upsetting, definitely.
Just to touch on Venezuela—in 2023, president Trump boasted at a Republican Party rally that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela, and said “we would have gotten all that oil”.
This had confirmed the motives behind the 2019 coup-attempt to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro and install Juan Guaidó… You can watch the clip in the below YouTube video, where he had said,
“When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil… but now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re making a dictator very rich.”
The slogan has now shifted from “restoring democracy” to “fighting narco-terrorists”.
However, in the book, Covert Regime Change, by Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College, Lindsay O’Rourke details the machinations, blowbacks, and disasters of no fewer than 64 US covert regime-change operations from 1947 to 1989 (via the many key documents for that era that have since been declassified).
We (the people) know better.
Isn’t it a tad bit hypocritical to be proclaiming “war on drugs”, yet at the same time, letting other big-time trafficker/heads of states, off the hook?»
This isn’t just on Trump though. Former president Obama built up the sanctions framework back in the 2014-2015-era, and then Washington DC further weaponized it to topple Maduro claiming that “maximum pressure” would empower the Venezuelan people. Yet put into actual practice, the sanctions have definitely only worsened widespread suffering.
RECENTLY:
NOW:
In October of this year, president Trump told reporters that he had “greenlit CIA operations inside Venezuela.”
On or around November 21, president Trump reportedly gave Venezuala’s Maduro—an ultimatum to flee his country.
Sources said that Venezuela’s Maduro “asked to keep $200m of his private wealth, amnesty for his officials and safe harbor in a friendly country”… as part of a deal to step down and flee (but then reportedly, the conversation fell apart and there was no agreement reached).
Reuters news agency reported that Trump then gave Maduro a one-week ultimatum to leave Venezuela along with his close family. It said that Maduro did not take him up on any offer of safe passage.
Trump’s press secretary has also not ruled out the possibility of US troops being deployed on the ground in Venezuela, telling reporters that “there’s options at the president’s disposal that are on the table”.
On November 29, 2025, president Trump posted on social media:
Then on December 3, 2025, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a War Powers Resolution seeking to halt what they describe as unauthorized U.S. military “hostilities” in Venezuela under President Donald Trump.
According to Newsweek, “…the lawmakers say Congress has not approved military action in or against Venezuela and argue the Constitution reserves that power to the legislative branch. The resolution now heads to committee for consideration…”
LAURA LOOMER AT THE PENTAGON
In October, the Pentagon implemented new media requirements that include a 21-page agreement for reporters, including a restriction on reporting on “unapproved information”.
The new policy says reporters could have their press passes revoked (and/or be prosecuted?) if they publish information that has “not been authorized” by the Pentagon, *even if the information is unclassified.
This caused the mass exodus, or “walk out” of 30+ news organizations, including Fox News, the Washington Post and Reuters. Of which, journalists all chose to give up their press badges rather than sign the new policy, citing a “threat to press freedoms and their ability to conduct independent news-gathering on the world’s most powerful military…”
So you’re telling me that this update led by “Secretary of War”, Pete Hegseth, was because he is so concerned about classified information, either national security or national defense, being leaked to the media…that a new type of control needs to be put into place by setting out 21-pages of rules, compared to the previous 1-page (and invites a “new group” to the press corps in the likes of Laura Loomer)…
Yet just this week, the Defense Department Inspector General concluded a report that the information in which Pete Hegseth had earlier this year shared on a group Signal chat (you know, the one in which the editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added to) about a pending military operation in Yemen, was INDEED considered classified, and therefore—could have imperiled American troops had it been intercepted.
*Hegseth violated War Department protocol that bars officials from conducting government business on personal devices and from using commercial messaging applications to transmit nonpublic Pentagon information.*