a clear mind is a gift that keep on giving

Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer. Put your principles into practice – now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. The longer you wait, the more you’ll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better. From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do – now.

Epictetus, The Art of Living

(…) żyjemy w kulturze, w której cenione jest posiadanie pewnych dóbr i ekscytujących doświadczeń: masz mieć fajne wakacje, superseks, ekstraprzeżycia. A do tego powinieneś atrakcyjnie wyglądać, przy czym to kultura powie ci, co można uznać za atrakcyjne. Żyjemy w społeczeństwie spektaklu, jak to określił francuski filozof Guy Debord. Co nie jest spektaklem, nie istnieje. Co nie jest sfilmowane, nie istnieje. Co nie jest w mediach społecznościowych, tego nie ma. Czego inni nie widzą, tego też nie ma.

nie mam już nienawiści ani wstrętu, trochę dojrzałam i się zdystansowałam, ale naprawdę nie chcę cię widzieć na oczy czy na zdjęciu, ani też słyszeć co u ciebie

może to uczucie ciągnące się przez dorosłość to korposmutek

chcesz umrzeć tak samo jak dawniej, ale masz zrobione paznokcie i wypłatę, więc kupujesz więcej czekolady i ładnych ciuchów, a potem ich nie nosisz

bo nie masz siły prasować ani wyjąć zimowych rzeczy spod łóżka, więc tylko zakładasz coraz grubsze skarpety do adidasów aka najków z przeceny

i dalej wychodzisz na piwo i do eskejprumów, bo całe życie nie wychodziłaś i w końcu chcesz

a tak na serio nie chcesz, ale znasz swoje sumienie

Find your ‘thing.’ Once you discover this, treasure it. Pursue it. Become it. Spend every waking moment of your life chasing after it with a burning desire to succeed.”

— Nicole Addison

How do I stop being afraid? ‘Know that there is no safety anywhere. There never was and there never will be. Stop looking for it. Live with a fierce intent to waste nothing of yourself or life.’ There was one final message: ‘Turn fear around. Its other face is excitement.‘”

— Ann Shulgin

Let yourself be strangely drawn by the quiet pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”

— Rumi

what horrfies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.” “i shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. i lift my lids and all is born again.”Life hack: Be brutally honest with yourself and write down what you think can be improved in your life/yourself. Take an oath with yourself. Take responsibility and stop the victim mentality. Stop giving a fuck about people who don’t value you, who don’t add anything to your life, who don’t know how to give as much as you’re willing to give. - Let me be clear, self respect is not something that magically appears. It should be steel made, exclusively by yourself. If it’s unfound in yourself, act. This process will be very hard, this will involve mountains of discipline and efforts. You’ll make mistakes, you may feel lonely. But little by little, you’ll be able to control your unhappiness and problems with more fluidity and faith in your capacity to deal with your life and its challenges. Be angry with it and attack its challenges. By taking this courageous road, you’ll gradually expend yourself and discover a lot about yourself. You’ll meet like minded people and you’ll feel the vibrancy of happiness more intensely.

“Charisma: “Daniel settled on three rules to develop the charisma that comes from focusing intensely on other people. First, “Imagine the person you are talking to is the sympathetic star in a film you are watching.” Second, “Carry yourself like a king”— calm, comfortable, and without excessive nodding, “uh-huh”-ing, and fidgeting. Regal posture reduces the physical restlessness that can keep people from fully engaging in conversation. Finally, “Make and maintain soft eye contact,” which means relaxing your eyes and face when you look at someone.””

— Lessons from Simple Rules by Donald Sull

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

— Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

don’t let your goals fall out of your sight. take breaks but don’t forget to continue working hard. every small step takes you closer to success. constantly remind yourself of what you’re aiming towards. in the long run you’re going to be thankful you didn’t give up.

THE HEIGHT OF PERFECTION. No one is born complete; perfect yourself and your activities day by day until you become a truly consummate being, your talents and your qualities all perfected. This will be evident in the excellence of your taste, the refinement of your intellect, the maturity of your judgement, the purity of your will. Some never manage to be complete; something is always missing. Others take a long time. The consummate man, wise in word and sensible in deed, is admitted into, and even sought out for, the singular company of the discreet.”

- HOW TO USE YOUR ENEMIES by Baltasar Gracián (trans. Jeremy Robbins)

I thought, on the train, how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes and barrens and wilds. It still dwarfs and terrifies and crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens and orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.

Wallace Stevens

This is it: this is your sign. You’re brand new, refreshed, empowered to change. Your calmer, softer times are coming. Your confidence, your happiness, your bliss, is arriving. Self acceptance is easier, and taking care of yourself is no longer a chore, but something you look forward to. You start to feel replenished - you’re *you* again - and the next chapter of your happier life begins now.

1. ENABLE YOURSELF TO DO YOUR BEST WORK. Find a way to hold yourself accountable in every step of the process and ensure that you will eventually finish the shit you start. Learn how to make a strong outline, and don’t start writing until you have one. Once you do start writing, carve that time into your schedule every day and make it non-negotiable. Work in your optimal environment, whether that’s the library or the living room, whether you have headphones on or earplugs in. (Most importantly, throw your phone in a drawer in a different room and turn off social media.) Don’t let revision be an afterthought–treat it as part of the process, and find the most productive way to do that work, too. Hold yourself to a sky-high standard.
2. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH RESEARCH. Authenticity can’t be faked, and good fiction feels real. No time spent doing research–whether it’s reading, visiting archives and other significant sites, or getting some first-hand experience at something you’ve never done–is time wasted. If you want someone to take your work seriously, you have to take it seriously. Put the time and effort in.
3. LEARN TO TAKE (AND USE) CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM. You’ll never improve as a writer if you don’t listen to discerning readers’ feedback and revise. Moreover, if you can’t take and use criticism, no agent or editor will ever want to work with you. Criticism is a gift. It makes your work better, but only if you make it work for you.
4. QUIT DAYDREAMING AND EDUCATE YOURSELF. There’s a lot that aspiring authors don’t know about publishing. The best thing you can do is disabuse yourself of all your romantic notions and find out how the industry actually works. Follow agents, editors, publicists, and published authors on social media. Read industry rags and newsletters and attend a publishing institute if you can. Knowledge is power, and your chances of making an ass of yourself are much lower if you know what to expect.
5. GET USED TO DISAPPOINTMENT ANYWAY. 90% of the agents you query will probably reject you, and even if you land one a lot of editors are going to reject you after that. Even if you get a book deal, a lot of things are not going to go the way you want. You’re going to have to make changes and compromises, you will inevitably disagree sometimes with the way your publisher wants to do things, you will get some bad reviews, and your sales will probably never be as high as you (or your publisher) hoped they would. A book deal doesn’t mean success. Writing is hard. Publishing is harder.
6. KEEP THE FAITH. It’s hard, but it happens. Failure is a necessary ingredient for future success, and the worst things you can do are (a) punish yourself for making mistakes that are a necessary part of the learning process or (b) rush into something you’re not ready for. Take your time. Learn the ropes. Hone your craft. If there are two qualities absolutely every single writer needs, they are patience and tenacity.
   
   
   
   Persistence isn’t very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent.

   Susan Cain, Quiet 

   
   Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution… Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.

You always learn from observing. You have to pick things up nonverbally because people will never tell you what you’re supposed to know. You have to get it for yourself: whatever it is that you need in order to survive. You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. This is the way genuine learning takes place.

Audre Lorde

Calm. Don’t strain. Go quietly ahead. Do each job as it comes to hand. These jitters, this gnawing anxiety—they get you nowhere. You know how to stop them.

Christopher Isherwood, diary entry dated June 20, 1944 

The first is that you can grow your grit. I see two ways to do so. On your own, you can grow your grit “from the inside out”: You can cultivate your interests. You can develop a habit of daily challenge-exceeding-skill practice. You can connect your work to a purpose beyond yourself. And you can learn to hope when all seems lost. You can also grow your grit “from the outside in.” Parents, coaches, teachers, bosses, mentors, friends—developing your personal grit depends critically on other people. If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it.

Every once and a while you get a glimpse of the person you could be. Grab that. Hold on to that. Work for it. Nothing is out of reach.

 Beautiful things grow out of shit. Nobody ever believes that. Everyone thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head—they somehow appeared there and formed in his head—and all he had to do was write them down and they would be manifest to the world. But what I think is so interesting, and would really be a lesson that everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing. I think this would be important for people to understand, because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that’s how things work.

If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted—they have these wonderful things in their head but and you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like that—then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind of life where you could say, well, I know that things come from nothing very much, start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning, and I could start something.

BRIAN ENO, Here Is What Is

what 2 do when u feel like ur not gonna do anything in life or accomplish any goals

thatadult

Do things and try to reach your goals honestly. If you’re not doing anything but wallowing you’re not gonna reach your goals that’s just a fact. I had to find that out. You can be sad and still work toward your goals and do things (sadly). If you don’t wanna, don’t. But if you want things, you literally will have to get them to get them. Do little things so you can look back and be proud that you did do work (document your feelings in whatever venue you wanna accomplish goals like writing or art or technology development). Invest in yourself etc. or you can just cry until you don’t feel like that anymore. You can honestly do whatever you want, I just know the only way you don’t feel like you’re not gonna accomplish things is if you accomplish things lol like it sounds like a no-brainer, easier said than done, etc. but it’s just true. Also set reasonable expectations that match up with the commitment to your work.. If you’re not doing anything and don’t know what you wanna do, don’t set the goal of “famous and rich by the end of 2016” set the goal of “find out more about myself and get on track to working toward goals”, etc.

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

Just minutes ago I had a talk with a senior friend about how stressed he is with his classes, college apps, and extra curriculars. I always say this to people: You brought this upon yourself. It sounds harsh, but you’ve taken on these challenges with the vision that you’ll be able to persevere. You may or may not have known just how time-consuming your schedule would become, but you started off each challenge believing that you could pull through every one, or else you wouldn’t have taken it on. They say starting is only half the battle, and now it is up to you to end stronger than you started. “Start strong, end stronger.”

Here is thing I learned when I was 29, which I now give away for free:

If you want to do a thing, do it now, or as soon as feasible. Because there might not be a later.

If it is a complicated or expensive or hard thing that takes many stages or has a steep learning curve, start working on the parts you can work on while you can work on them, then move on to the next thing. Accept that there will be a lot of failures along the way, and that you can come back from nearly any mistake that doesn’t involve making a left turn in front of an oncoming semi. Concentrate on yourself and what you can do, and don’t rely on other people to fix things for you, even though you might love them or they you. (This doesn’t mean you can’t love friends or family or partners. Friends and family and partners, in the long run, are the thing other than Useful Work and Adventures that make life worthwhile. Well, all that, and a really nice coffee and tea kit in the kitchen and the skill to use it. But that last thing isn’t terribly expensive unless you make it be.)

But to succeed at a thing–a job, a relationship–in the long term, the thing is: You Must Commit, even though commitment is scary. And commitment is scary because once you’re in you’re in. It’s not bobbing around close to the shore, paddling with your feet. It’s both feet and swimming as hard as you can out where the rip currents and the sharks are, where the water turns blue.

You can’t hold back because you’re afraid of getting hurt: you have to accept that you are going to get hurt, and put your hand in the fire of your own free will.

It’s like climbing. You can make sure you’ve got good ropes and a belayer you trust (you SHOULD make sure you have good ropes and a belayer you trust!), but there’s moves you can’t make unless you’re willing to risk falling. I’m not saying follow your bliss off a cliff, in other words: part of being prepared and committed is having the right kit, whether it’s money in the bank for the lean times when starting off as a freelancer, or a partner who supports your work, or being young enough that starving in a cold room for a few years with pneumonia is romantic (I have the T-shirt!).

That’s why it’s scary. It’s scary because you are taking an actual chance.

But: things don’t work out the way you want them to if you just kind of drift along seeing what will happen. Nice things might happen! …but they didn’t, for me.

Basically, what I figured out was that I had to be a protagonist if I wanted anything to happen, and part of being a protagonist was accepting that I might fail. And then have to deal with that failure. And that if I didn’t do it I would more or less inevitably fail, but I could pretend to myself that it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough and that I didn’t know why.

Seeking success, in other words, meant letting go of a layer of ego defense.

This realization directly led to me having the career I always wanted, and doing pretty well at it.

It also led to me having the best relationship of my life. I wish I’d learned it when I was sixteen, rather than twenty-nine, but I had some things I had to work through first. 

So that thing you want to do? Assuming it’s not illegal or immediately fatal? Do it now.

Your greatest need is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters your mind. You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life, work on controlling your mind. In most cases, that’s the only thing you should be trying to control.

Marc Hack

Lifting heavy weights will give you bigger, stronger muscles. Sparring with better fighters will make you tougher. Reading challenging books will make you smarter and more focused. Pushing through discomfort in negotiations and awkward approaches will make you more socially confident.

In the game of life, pain and difficulty lead to growth. Comfort leads to stagnation.

If something isn’t working, let it go. Flow with your soul’s current, not against it. Sometimes what we want isn’t actually what we need.

 Listen to me. This is your life– no one else’s. At the end of the day, it is you who has to be happy with the choices you are making, food you are eating, things you are doing, goals you are pursuing. Do not let the opinions and judgments of others stop you from doing what you feel and know in your heart is right for you. Eat the food that makes you feel best. Do what makes you feel at peace. Surround yourself with people who make you feel good, who make you laugh, who sincerely make you smile. Go after what you want– not because someone else is telling you to, but because you want to. Listen to that inner voice, trust your gut, and trust yourself.

No one can do for you, what you can do for you. No one can see your vision the way you can. Hold yourself responsible— and put yourself on.

Everything you’re trying to reach— by taking the long way round— you could have right now, this moment. If you’d only stop thwarting your own attempts. If you’d only let go of the past, entrust the future to Providence, and guide the present toward reverence and justice.

MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations: A New Translation (12:1)

As you learn to consciously observe the transformation process, you will watch yourself repeating a lot of old patterns long after you seemingly know better. Spiritually and intellectually, you realize there is another way, but emotionally you are still clinging to the old habits. This is a difficult time. Try to be patient and compassionate with yourself. When you recognize the futility of an old pattern so clearly, it’s about to change! A short time later, you will suddenly begin to respond differently, in a more positive way.

every morning i wake up & get my coffee & i recite in my head this excerpt from ‘invitation,’ by mary oliver:  “it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.” & i just say it over & over again until it sticks to my mind for the rest of the day. it is a serious thing. i am alive. i am so lucky. this fresh morning i get the chance to live again & again & again

The idea is a simple one. That people who Do things, can inspire the rest of us to go and Do amazing things too.

"With you,
I like mornings and nights
Sundays and Mondays
Januarys and Decembers
and everything in between."
— jahjielove

Why are some people drawn to minimalist architecture and others to Baroque? Why are some people excited by bare concrete walls and others by William Morris’s floral patterns? Our tastes will depend on what spectrum of our emotional make-up lies in shadow and is hence in need of stimulation and emphasis. Every work of art is imbued with a particular psychological and moral atmosphere: a painting may be either serene or restless, bourgeois or aristocratic, and our preferences for one kind over another reflect our varied psychological gaps. We hunger for artworks that will compensate for our inner fragilities and help return us to a viable mean. We call a work ‘beautiful’ when it supplies the virtues we are missing, and we dismiss as ‘ugly’ one that forces on us moods or motifs that we feel either threatened or already overwhelmed by. Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

Alain de Botton & John Armstong, Art as Therapy

“I didn’t say I liked it. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”

— Oscar Wilde, adapted from The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”

— Charles Baudelaire

We were easily forgotten. It was a social and moral lesson, if nothing else. But for all foreseeable time to come - for as long as history was written, until the icecaps melted and the streets of Amsterdam were awash with water - the painting would be remembered and mourned. Who knew, or cared, the names of the Turks who blew the roof off the Parthenon? the mullahs who had ordered the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan? Yet living or dead: their acts stood. It was the worst kind of immortality. Intentionally or no: I had extinguished a light at the heart of the world.

Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

Albert Camus, Notebooks

And isn’t the whole point of things–beautiful things–that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

— Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1969

Do few things, but do them well. Simple joys are holy.”

— St. Francis of Assisi

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another―why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

– Mary Oliver, from “Black Oaks”

“I don’t mind being wrong, and I don’t mind changing my mind.”

— Martin Seligman



I will keep telling you that you are important, deserving, loving, intelligent, inspiring, beautiful and strong until you believe it for yourself.“”

“I desire very little, but the things I do consume me.”

— Beau Taplin // D e s i r e

But self-knowledge is not the remedy I prescribe to myself. I want as much self-knowledge as I can get —let me not be deceived— but self-knowledge isn’t the goal I seek. Strength, strength is what I want. Strength not to endure, I have that and it has made me weak —but strength to act.”

— Susan Sontag, from Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1964.

“A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.”

— Albert Camus

Living is the greatest subjectivity.

“Modern society, then, must motivate people to work by mobilizing the self as a relevant, potent value base. The modern concept of work as career treats work as a vital means of glorifying and fulfilling the self. The true careerist is motivated neither by shallow extrinsic goals such as making a living nor by deep intrinsic factors such as love of the work itself. Rather, the careerist aims to accumulate a record of promotions, achievements, and honors that will reflect favorably on the self. Hence people work very hard at things they personally may care rather little about in order to gain respect and esteem through their achievements. The value that drives them is the value placed on the self.”

— Roy Baumeister, The Self and Society

“Never apologize for being sensitive or emotional. Let this be a sign that you’ve got a big heart and aren’t afraid to let others see it. Showing your emotions is a sign of strength.”

— Brigitte Nicole

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand–and melting like a snowflake…

Francis Bacon

“I hide behind simple things so you’ll find me; if you don’t find me, you’ll find the things, you’ll touch what my hand has touched, our hand-prints will merge.”

— Yannis Ritsos, from “The Meaning of Simplicity”, translated by Rae Dalven

“As the Japanese will tell you, one can train a rose to grow through anything, to grow through a nautilus even, but it must be done with tenderness.”

— Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in your own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

The nameless softness that makes human beings human.”

— Christa Wolf, tr. by Jan van Heurck, from “Cassandra: A Novel & Four Essays,”

I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.

Susan Sontag resolves in 1972

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.













You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.

If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be. Maya Angelou

when joni mitchel said “i wanna talk to you, i wanna shampoo you, i wanna renew you again and again,” and when she said, “i wanna knit you a sweater, wanna write you a love letter, i wanna make you feel better, i wanna make you feel free.”

‘I have a hard time making friends’ this isn’t weird

‘I’m afraid of failure’ so is everybody

‘I’m easily bored’ get a hobby

‘I smoke a lot of weed’ stupid people do that too

‘I hate asking for help’ so do dads lost in a new city

‘I have fragile self-worth’ get some therapy

‘I crave approval and validation’ that’s literally just being a human

‘Nothing interests me and i’m not motivated to do anything at all’ you’re depressed

‘All the skills I used to impress people as a child aren’t valuable anymore’ fucking reading? writing and reading and math aren’t valuable? ok

‘I have problems with authority’ well most authority sucks so

‘I abandon things I’m not immediately good at’ everyone wants to be good at the things they do. learn some discipline

‘I’m afraid of not living up to my potential’ normal adult fear

‘I’m socially awkward cause I never learned to interact with other kids of my intellect’ grow the fuck up man

We live in a world of scarce understanding and abundant information. We complain that we never have any free time yet we seek distraction. If work can’t distract us, we distract ourselves. We crave perpetual stimulation and motion. We’re so busy that our free time comes in 20 second bursts, just long enough for us to read the gist and assume we understand. If we are to synthesize learning and understanding we need time to think.

[…] Understanding comes from focusing, chewing, and relentlessly ragging on a problem. It comes with false starts, dead ends, and frustration. Thinking requires time and space. It’s slow. It means saying I don’t know.

[…] We’re expected to have an opinion about everything and yet our time to think is near zero. We hold more opinions than ever but have less understanding. We don’t even understand ourselves. How could it be otherwise?

Farnam Street, In Praise of Slowness:

“Once you start to speak of things that are precious, you are immediately anxious about how people will react to what you have said, and you want to protect these things, to defend them against incomprehension.“”

— Andrei Tarkovsky, from “Scenario and shooting script,” Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (University of Texas Press, 1987)

always shocked that people are like "aah i have no one who wants to see this movie with me so i guess i'm not seeing it :/" like may i change your life with 3 simple steps: 1. go to the cinema 2. buy a ticket 3. see the movie

It’s okay to romanticise the small things about your day-to-day life. It’s okay to romanticise sleeping in, waking up to the sun tickling your skin. It’s okay to romanticise the texture of fingers against a page. Sometimes to save your day you need to romanticise sitting at a desk and working, or romanticise studying hyped up on coffee. It’s okay to picture yourself as if you were the mc in a movie. Watch yourself go through shit and know that it’s just the climax of your own story, and that while you sit in your room sobbing to sad songs, good things are just around the corner.

Sometimes to be okay or get through the day you need to romanticise the simple things.

“This is what I know: In this life, a steady love, and a place to call home, are far more precious than all the earthly possessions and wealth in the world.”

— Beau Taplin • T r u e  V a l u e

In life we pass through so many doors and close them behind us, sometimes with an angry slam, sometimes a gentle click. Moving on, we rarely think about the people we left behind or what they do after we’ve left. But they do carry on. It can be enlightening or at least surprising in both good and bad ways to learn how much of an affect we had on them and their lives in the direction they took afterwards." — Jonathan Carroll

https://anchor.fm/do-lectures

you are your worst enemy until you learn to treat yourself like a friend. sabotaging your efforts and relationships, convincing yourself no one loves you, not trying because you’re sure you’ll fail, being apathetic to everything is bc you think you’re not good enough. but the truth is you are good enough and you can be the best person you can be if you learn to change these thoughts into self-love and encouragement. listen to your needs and be there for yourself instead of destroying your health or abandoning yourself or your future.

https://selfsyllabi.tumblr.com/

https://hoursofreading.tumblr.com/

https://selfsyllabi.tumblr.com/post/174174212172/marxistlangblr-salut-this-is-the-continuation

https://londonotes.tumblr.com/

https://phoebe-does.tumblr.com/

https://studiobaked.com/chocolate-pudding-pie-with-whipped-cream/

https://bluebowlrecipes.com/overnight-gingerbread-cinnamon-rolls-with-cream-cheese-icing/

https://www.anasbakingchronicles.com/apple-crumble-caramel-cheesecake/