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im not very good at this. i tend to blame my circumstances for my behavior and my mood but genuinely that can only go so far. at some point you have to go out of your way to make your life what you want it to be.
don’t like your hair? cut it. cant seem to do well in classes? talk to professors. feeling unproductive or stuck? go sit in the sun or something. we can’t fix some things, i cant work less or have a different relationship with people in my life but i can do these small things to take ownership of my own life.
currently for me this looks like reading virginia woolf, doing yoga at 1 in the morning, washing my work apron once a week, and spending a lot of time with my uncle.
Feb 22, 2024
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i began to make more intentional decisions, aligned with what I truly wanted for myself, rather than what others expect from me—whether those "others" are real people or more abstract societal expectations that i had internalized. This meant sitting down and listening to what i needed, wanted, and could give to myself. having an idea of what i want my life to look like in a few years really helps—especially if it’s got a mix of realistic and crazy aspects in it i guess
my life is far from perfect, it doesn't have to be. It's all cyclical, i think.
I’ve started treating myself with more compassion, which, like everything else, is a work in progress. I try to do this because guilt can be too defeating. i fuck up all the time, but i try again and again and again. And when everything feels overwhelming, I try—if I can—to step back and view my life from an observer's perspective. Detaching a bit can really help.
Dec 4, 2024
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i have been home from uni for a while over christmas break. i think about this often but i genuinely believe that uni has allowed me to grow so much as a person, to find the parts of myself that i really needed, and to understand the importance of connecting with others. and it is lovely to go home and be able to see my familiar environments in a new light based on things i have experienced at uni. but it does hurt me how easy it still is, despite all this, for me to fall back into my old habits when i am at home; being unproductive, doom scrolling, the way i can actively feel myself wasting time. i am aware that these are things that negatively impact my mood, and yet i still find myself caught up in them. i wish i understood why i do this. maybe it is the fact that i was working so hard at uni and i have simply crashed here. i have come to understand the concept of taking a real break fairly recently. but i feel as though a break should be healing. and i just wish i could read, or post on here, do things that i know will inspire me as default, instead of reverting to actions that make me feel worse. i believe i can get to that point, every day is a new day and a new chance to live it the way i want to. i am doing my best. maybe my mind is at conflict with itself; it needs a break, but also needs to feel productive, so it does neither. i am working on finding the balance. everything is a work in progress.
Dec 28, 2024
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To be upfront, there are two things about myself that I love:
1. I'm tenacious AF
2. I am generally a positive person. I can handle almost any situtation, and I've had to learn to actually ask/demand more, so it's not always great.
With that being said, I've wanted to die many times. I've experienced a lot of trauma. I have PTSD for years. Things got to a point where I knew if I didn't make really drastic changes I was going to die in some way- I simply could not go on how I was.
The only thing that started to change things is when I started to learn more about myself and my reasons for doing things, being with certain people, getting into certain relationships. Part of my whole issue was that I had major trauma from childhood that I was actively avoiding. So many things happen to us as children, big and small, that we don't have the capacticy to deal with at the time. But as adults, we do.
I remember the moment where things started shifting for me. It unlocked a hunger in me to dig more and more to why I was the way I was, and why I made the choices I did, in a really deep way. I became more action oriented in facing my shit, healing it, and discovering what I was like without it. It definitely wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun most of the time, but in reality the years I spent doing that are small compared to the life I have ahead of me. I'm a whole new person, but the parts of me that are true are the same. I became a more mature, loving, responsible version of myself.
Hating your life is a sign something is not working. If you're unsure what that is, go inward. If you don't know where to start, think about the very next step. That's all you need to do. You're never locked in where you're at now forever. Don't know what you want to do for a career? Switch gears and do a completely different job. There is no timeline. You can literally do whatever you want. When I was doing a lot of the stressful inner work, I worked at animal shelters because I needed something so low stress. And I was mid 20's!!! No career goals in sight!!! Not even anywhere in my brain!!! If you're straight up hating something that is taking up most of your time... just quit it. Life is too short.
Success to me is ease and grace. I want a peaceful, joyful life (most of the time). Sometimes to figure out what you need to do, you gotta take a giant step back. Or a step to the left. Or take a big roundabout. Or maybe a quest needs to be taken...
Dec 4, 2024
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bc that’s most likely not your problem! (exceptions do apply)
Feb 24, 2024
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This might not make the most sense but if I don’t write it I know I’ll be angry with myself.
As someone who has always naturally been drawn to archives and journals and stories- I’ve found that I’ve been trapping myself in the narrative. The idea that life is a singular, vertical narrative, that pain is not simply pain but part of some bigger cycle of distribution and retribution. That pain is naturally repaid with love or safety or comfort. This narrative keeps me coddled in myself, it keeps me safe from having to face the fact that tomorrow might not be easier than today. That this year might not feel much better than last year. That as some things go on, they don’t always get lighter. They don’t alchemize from emotionally pain into material pleasure.
The hero’s journey tells us that the narrative follows simple steps. We are called- your alarm, a Britney Spears song, plays in the morning. Your car breaks down in an unfamiliar part of the city. There’s a death in the family. Whatever it is, the call is something that moves us from familiarity to the unknown. It pulls the hero into the journey. We will then face the unknown and hopefully overcome it. But what about the calls that we don’t answer? Or when we get stuck in the unknown? What about when we are braver than brave and we still cannot overcome everything? I’ve learned that sometimes our pain doesn’t come with atonement. Sometimes there is no return.
Life doesn’t fit into the narrative. The alarm in itself is a narrative, you set it the night before, or maybe you set it three years ago and you’ve been waking up to the same song every single day. The car is a narrative, the unfamiliar side of the city is a narrative. Why haven’t you been there? The death is a narrative explored and experienced by every person in your family, every friend of the dead, every coworker who called the morning after to see why they didn’t show up when their alarm went off that day. Everything is a million narratives coinciding and to trap ourselves into one, to tell ourselves only one story, is blinding us to the intricate nature of life. We cannot exist in only one dimension, and to choose to exist in various different- sometimes beautiful and sometimes horrible- narratives at once is to choose to stop coddling oneself, to stop following your pain like it always has something to give you.
Sometimes it doesn’t. Maybe that’s fine.
Mar 11, 2024
so i learned abt seasonal work from this chick i hooked up with a singular time who worked w the peacecorps and travelled all around the country. i didn’t want to go home last summer so i decided to apply to work as a host at a fuck ton of hotels and lodges in national parks. i ended up working in yellowstone for the summer and it absolutely changed my life. as someone whos not super exceptional and who’s worked in food service since i was 14-15, i really never thought i would be able to get to do stuff like this. the people i met in the mountains who have been traveling for years on end and just working these shitty service jobs to support it really changed my life. we r suffering in late stage capitalism but there is a really beautiful world around us and i suggest you try to see as much of it as you can.
it’s not as hard as they make it seem and it’s a million times more valuable than staying in whatever bubble we’ve created for ourselves.
(me at the top of one of the tetons holding quartz)
Feb 15, 2024