🤏
feels very trite and toxic positivity-y but (at least for me) i think the problem is feeling pulled in too many different directions with not enough capacity / agency to make meaningful progress in any / all of them; that’s when acedia, anhedonia, et al set in
the solution is to just pick one thing that’s easy, and constantly address it. then do that with another thing. maybe a bigger thing after that. and so on until you’ve re-built (or in my case, built for the first time) trust in yourself that the things you want to, need to, and are capable of doing you will / are doing
throughput is really important, seeing the fruits of your labor is the only reason to keep planting seeds so you just gotta start with stuff that will gratify you enough to keep going (also for me, getting diagnosed + medicated + effective talk therapy-d were all instrumental to this realization / process if that’s something you can / want to look into)
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đź’—
just move towards one thing that makes you happy, one go at a time. if it becomes a pattern, think about what it is about the thing that makes you happy. move towards it, one diy, one event, one forum at a time. also know that you can reinvent yourself hundreds of times in this lifetime, so goals are arbitrary. what matters is that you spend most of your days with at least a bit or a lot of joy. oh also remembering that your career ≠what fulfils you. sometimes we work just to have $$ to do what we really want to do (cook/draw/knit/make music etc). in the end, your life will be made up of many small moments, so just try to enjoy yourself. at least that’s how i do it :)
Apr 22, 2024
I've been in a rut since October and I have been too paralysed by guilt and depression to build back up. But I'm getting there.
I'm in therapy to work through things and tackle some behavioural issues. I have a bunch of concerts on the horizon that I bought tickets to when I was Really Deep In It and just needed to fill my calendar with things to look forward to, and I'm starting to feel the excitement for them. Ive been resetting my wardrobe with some thrifted/second hand shopping and i'm going to a big vintage fair in The Big City near my birthday.
The cats I live with are starting to trust me and I'm starting to be a better roommate, both in terms of being sociable and contributing to chores and such.
I still have a long way to go, but considering that not even three weeks ago I could barely get out of bed, this is an improvement. I'm working towards the goals I have set to better myself, and I'm doing what I can to keep myself going while I work towards being capable of doing more good. I can't do better if I never Do Anything, so I need to trust myself to do things again 🤷‍♂️
Mar 6, 2025
🤔
I’ve been thinking about this a lot regarding my plan to purge/organize my home, because the way I used to do projects like this just doesn’t work anymore. I can no longer wait until I have the energy, then do as much as I can in one go. I do not have the gift of uninterrupted time anymore. Instead, I’ve had to adjust to a more slow and steady way of working. I choose *one* space to work on each day. Often times it ends up being one drawer, or corner, or step in the process.
Logically this is great and the best way to meet my goals. Mentally/emotionally I kid of hate it because it’s not how I’ve worked for my entire life. I have big ideas and want to do them right now!!!! But, when is growth or change ever without a bit of uncomfortability or pain?
So, I am actively changing my mindset. I speak positively to myself about the one small thing I did that day. I share that one small thing with my husband and friends. Because in actuality if it was so easy for me to do, I would’ve done it before. So my effort deserves some recognition!! Positive reinforcement, even when it’s to our own selves, can carry us a long way 🫶
Jan 13, 2025
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Mar 23, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024