someone who lived in my apartment before me wrote a quote under the lampshade above the bed and it says “Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.” and it makes me emotional every time i read it because it’s me as hell
Tag: oh
i’ve cried three times over this thread today
im serious about that “stop saving things for special occasions” bit tho like. even if u aren’t in your 20s. thats for everyone. its one of the most useful things ive learned lately
stop! just stop. eat the special snack. drink the expensive hippie tea. use the incense or the bath bomb or whatever you paid way too much for because you were feeling really bad and retail therapy makes u feel alive
when we save things for special occasions/rainy days it contributes to us feeling like A.) our day to day existence is lackluster and B.) you have to be feeling a certain level of Bad, or have to reach a certain level of Socially Accepted Achievement, to enjoy things
just give yourself stuff. there are definitely sometimes reasons to withhold things from yourself – as motivation, if it’s something you consciously want to use sparingly, etc – but at least for me half the time it just turns into self-flagellation and also cool things and cool experiences and nice treats just collect dust while i wait for some fabled day when i convince myself i finally Deserve it
just fuckin give yourself stuff dude. life’s so mindblowingly short
my grandmother died having only used her china like twice in her life. during the year or so before her death, she was starting to package up and give things of hers to her kids, and gave mom the china while sighing “oh i wish i had used the china more!” and mom tried so hard to convince her to just keep it, then, and eat corny dogs off it if she wanted. she insisted she couldn’t possibly, you need a special reason to use the fine china.
when nana died, we used her fine china as our everyday dishes for years. i was 18 when she died, and never really stopped having that in the back of my head.
now, when i hear myself say “i wish i had a reason to wear/do/eat/use X!” i hear nana regretting never really using her china. and let me tell you a thing:
spaghettios taste great when eaten from fine china.
I’ve seen this post making the rounds. Just wanted to add something to it that my sister-in-law once told me:
“A ‘special thing’ can make any occasion special.”
She told me this when I objected to her opening a really expensive bottle of champagne just to watch a movie. And you know, she was right. The champagne was amazing and while we always sit around and watch movies, that bottle made that night a really special occasion that I will always remember.
So, cut yourself a little slack and remember that an ordinary day can become special.
My mother has always had a habit of buying what she calls “love gifts”. Essentially she would buy me my favorite snack or take me to get iced coffee or buy me fuzzy socks something like that
Her reason for that was simply because she thought of us at work and wanted to get something as a way of saying “I was thinking about you and I love you”
Now as a kid I just took the presents but when I got older I felt a little bad
She didn’t always buy something small, sometimes it was some new makeup or video games or something else that was more than just a few bucks
When I told her “hey mom it’s sweet that you do this, but you don’t have to go do this all the time. You can just wait until a special day or a special occasion”
She just looked at me and said “but Samantha, this is a love gift, and I love you every day not just the special ones”
And ever since she said that I haven’t objected again
This is so important!!! I’ve done this my whole life but have been trying to break the HABIT.
By holding back these desirable things from yourself for a time that you feel worthy, you are adding to the intrusive thoughts that you are not good enough, that someone is more deserving than you.
Wear your favorite shirt to the grocery store too, not just on your birthday or the first date with a guy who you’ve met once before. Wear your favorite shirt ESPECIALLY when you don’t “feel worthy”.
If a dog has a favorite toy it’s not going to ignore it and play with a different one simply to appeal to this notion that we have to earn happiness and enjoyment.
Yes there are “special days” but ultimately there are just “days” and you only have so many.
Tl; dr: Wear the clothes, eat the food, life’s short.
@jhaernyl when I send you things they’re love gifts!
So I just did a post about how I manage my time and my daily schedule and such, and I felt like this part is really important and was getting lost in the minutiae of my day, so I made it a separate post. I was talking about various ways in which my life is not necessarily “normal”, like how I go to bed at 7:30, which people treat as one of my eccentricities, and rightly so. But while it is weird it speaks to the crux of my life philosophy, which I’ve spoken about before as regards dealing with anon hate:
My time and attention are finite resources and they have a value I can bestow where I wish. If something is not necessary to survive, does not solve a problem, or does not provide joy, I stop doing it.
I pay my bills and do my dishes and wash my clothes because you have to do those things. I engage in activism and try to stay current on the news because I believe I have a moral duty to contribute to society, and I run because it’s good for my heart and my body. I have friendships, engage in fandom, play the ukulele, write, go to concerts and movies and art galleries because it brings me joy to do so.
Going to bed early solves a problem for me: I wasn’t doing anything useful with that time anyway, I wasn’t enjoying myself or feeling happy. If I wasn’t getting any benefit from that time, how could I put it to better use? Sleeping is beneficial, so I tried that, and it worked; I get more sleep and I don’t miss anything I can’t catch up with. Work doesn’t make me especially happy or fulfill me in ways we could all wish, but that’s okay. Work is necessary to survive, so I do it. I don’t date much because I tried dating semi-recently and the promise of future joy did not outweigh the lack of joy that dating itself brought to my life; it was painful, ugly, and boring, and so I stopped doing it.
The dating thing may change in the future, if eventually the promise of a relationship becomes more enticing, but it’s an example of how the pursuit of happiness is non-standard, and you are allowed to weigh the cost against the payoff based on your own personal feelings, not on society’s dictates. Because it turns out when you are doing what makes you happy, when you feel joy, you could give two shits about what everyone else thinks should make you happy.
Sometimes, what brings me joy is sitting on the couch listening to a podcast I’ve already heard ten times and playing a stupid mindless flash game; I often catch myself thinking “I could be doing something more useful, something cooler, something more active” and remind myself “But this is making me happy, and it’s what I’m capable of doing right now.”
“Does this make me happy” or, if you’re struggling with happiness, “Does this calm and soothe me” is a great metric for what you should be doing in life when you are on your own time. It’s a good way to check in with yourself and lead yourself towards a more fulfilling life on your own terms.
If you are out at a bar with friends, stop and ask, does this make me happy? Because there is no way in which asking that does not help. If being at a bar doesn’t make you happy and if it’s the only time you see your friends, maybe it’s time for a change; you are now free to pursue something that will make you happy. If being at a bar doesn’t make you happy but your friends do, and this is one way to bond with them of many, then it’s a cost with a later benefit, and you’ve now become conscious that while you aren’t happy right this minute, you are paying into future joy. And if you like being out at a bar with friends and are having a good time, then you’ve reaffirmed to yourself that you are happy and this is where you want to be. And affirming that you are feeling joy is a great thing to do.
You don’t have to be happy all the time – but on your own time, when work and chores and the duties of the day are done, you should devote yourself to finding joy in whatever form that takes, be it a nap or a party or a date or your kids or, I don’t know, watching people make fake food on YouTube.
Believing that your time and attention have value and should only be bestowed on the worthy means coming to believe that you have value, which is so hard to do that I’ll take any shortcut I can get. Devoting your time time and attention only to what is necessary or what is pleasurable means learning a great deal about what you value, and I truly believe leads you to a more fulfilled life.
So when people ask me about time management, I have real tips and tricks to offer – but I think the most important think I can offer is the suggestion that whatever time you have, you should believe it has value because it is yours, and you should direct it appropriately.
my personal fav anxiety is “i’m in the wrong place” anxiety that isn’t alleviated until u see someone that u know should also be in the same place as u
HolY FUCK
I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion in Judaism, and being kind. In that light, I would like everyone to know that my current favorite Jewish supernatural headcanon is that, instead of driving vampires away with crosses or stakes through the heart, we say the Mourner’s Kaddish for them. I mean, that’s just so adorable. You see this threatening undead creature, and instead of yelling murder, you feel bad for them, and you mourn for them. Imagine being a vampire at the receiving end of that, having been chased away for years and years and told you’re a monster when you come across someone who sees you and your existence and accepts that you’re in a pretty bad place and offers help in the best way they can. I’m actually tearing up about this a little. If someone adds to this post I’ll love them forever.
It doesn’t work for zombies.
This is one of the hardest things she learns, in the business. Saying the Mourner’s Kaddish will slow a vampire, to stare at you with wide shocked eyes (and once, memorably, to weep blood-tinged tears), unable or unwilling to lift a hand against you. It will calm a dybbuk, enough to make it stop whatever destruction it’s begun, and almost always enough to start a conversation about why it clings so desperately to the world of the living, what it’s left undone, how it can be freed to move on. You have died, the Kaddish says, and we mourn you as we would mourn our own dead, because someone must.
But there is no soul and no mind left in a zombie, no vestige of the self it once was, nothing left for the Kaddish to speak to.
She says it anyway, with every head-shot, with every flung grenade.
Not because she still hopes one might hear her, but because they are dead, and the dead should be mourned.
Well, I love you forever now.
Almost. It’s a big word for me. I feel it everywhere. Almost home. Almost happy. Almost changed. Almost, but not quite…Soon, maybe.
i think a big thing that disconcerts adults about learning new skills is that learning as an adult means you are very aware of how bad you are at the beginning in a way children aren’t.
i picked up the saxophone when i was 11 and played until i was about 17. by the end of it i was first chair in our highest ensemble, a district honor band player, etc. but at the beginning – and this is important – i was bad. for the first year or so, i had no rhythm, i couldn’t make my tongue line up with my fingers, i was consistently sharp, etc. etc. other kids actually made fun of me for my lack of skill.
but 11 year old me didn’t care. 11 year old me practiced, but she also thought that being able to play the pink panther made her incredible (i shudder in retrospect). i mean, i was aware i wasn’t a master, but my skill level didn’t deter me from wailing out those notes in a way that i’m sure had my band director questioning his career decisions.
right now, i’m trying to pick up the guitar. it’s a very different instrument from the saxophone, and i struggle a lot with things like strumming patterns and barre chords. and sometimes i don’t want to play, because i know i’m bad at guitar. and sometimes i beat myself up when stumbling through a poor acoustic rendition of Everybody Wants to Rule the World because it’s not how i want it to sound. and it’s made even more frustrating because i can navigate the saxophone so smoothly.
but then i remember that i have to think like a kid. i might not be the best at guitar by any stretch of the imagination, but every little bit of progress is still progress. humility is a big part of learning, but if you treat a practice session like your own private concert, it becomes so much more fun, even if you’re bad like i am. when you’re first picking up a skill, whether it be an instrument, or a language, or a fine art, no one is expecting you to be the yo yo ma of that thing. forget about how little you know about the skill and think instead about how much you have to learn – that’s fun! do your best!!
i find that as you get older, people think that you have less of an excuse to be bad at things, no matter when you started learning them
but after you get good suddenly people start praising you for “being ahead of the curve”
the instant you can start divesting yourself from this horrid world of expectation, the easier it becomes to try any new thing
Guys this is so important!! Give yourselves some slack and just keep on trucking! Just focus on yourself and be proud of what you have achieved so far. Even if what you achieved is a little thing, little pieces pile up eventually to something big! You’re doing great, keep it up 😀
yeah its the most crucial thing to be able to enjoy sucking at something. if you’re only in it for the thrill of mastery, youre gonna be miserable for ages. i am absolutely super bad at swords and would surely die in a second in a battlefield. but you know what’s really fun? being bad at swords. especially being very slightly less bad at swords by the end of every swords class. being good at swords will also be fun, whenever that happens, but im not waiting on it.
well fuck
i see
just moving along like everyone else 