Related Recs

🔄

Life cycle Is hitting

Something about right now feels very cyclical and circular, like I’m closing a loop.  The closing of my 20s maybe. Maybe! It’s the sensation of going back to the same well with hindsight. It always comes back, right? Making peace with the rounds and the bends of this, it’s good I think.

@riiia

Feb 22, 2024

🟢

I envy everyone

Life is fucking confusing, and every want comes with a doubt. As far as I can tell, your 20s (I’m 27) are about cobbling together a life while wondering if you should blow it all up. And then someday, hopefully, you fall in love with yourself (or something) and that love becomes a foundation for everything else. I know people who have built things up and torn them down, people who have made irrevocable choices, people who are coasting. I want all of their lives, sometimes, because I’m sick of the choices I made. I think that’s just fear of commitment, and not taking good care of myself—but who knows, maybe I’m about to make some choices for the plot. The people who seem to have it all figured out may be crumbling beneath the surface (me irl). The ones I trust the most know how to look around and say “there but for the grace of god go I.” You‘re never too old to let whatever you’ve been collecting slip through your fingers and choose again.

@bluz

Jul 11, 2024

📆

there is no such thing as “the golden years”

or I guess theres no set time of one’s life that should universally be their golden years, rather. I had an awful time starting my 20s, I graduated in 2021 having already lost half my college career to the pandemic, spent a year post college trying unsuccessfully to launch a career, lost another year moving back home to deal with family obligations, then found myself at 23 thinking I had missed the window on some universal period of self actualization that was supposed to happen between ages 19-22. I think this idea is engrained in us because the progression laid out by our capitalist framework is that we do k-12 school, figure out how to apply our knowledge to a field in college, then know ourselves well enough by then to fit into whatever role we have chosen as the most productive for ourselves, and then do that stably as a career until retirement. or you get married and have kids to and support the domestic life of the partner who progresses professionally. obv what crises like COVID demonstrate is that this progression is flawed, and it’s not a one size fits all mold. to limit one’s entire development as a person into what they do to prepare for a lifetime of working is insanely reductive. if you find yourself jealous of those younger than you, it’s likely that you envy the stage of life they are in - the stage just before they assume responsibility and obligation and lose the agency to chose how they apply themselves. this is somewhat of an imposed illusion, though. we all have agency at all points of our life to make the choices that can lead us towards our own flourishing, whether they be big steps or small ones. for me, I decided to change career paths entirely and pursue grad school. i’m about to graduate and now i’m feeling like my passions are leading me elsewhere other than the field I set out to enter when I started my program. I turn 26 in like 3 weeks and i’m still figuring out what drives me and how to pursue it. for some folks that clarity of direction may come sooner, for some it may come later, but the point isn’t for that clarity to steer you to a destination where you then arrive at self actualization and can finally enjoy being - the point is to have the clarity to enjoy where you’re at within process of discovery. to be is to be in process. ditch the assembly line mindset you were taught, you don’t come out of your early 20s a fully assembled human ready to produce economic value. your whole life is a process of constructing and deconstructing, adding on new pieces, finding joy in troubleshooting the newness of each piece, swapping the old parts for ones that might serve you better, being informed in the creation of the new by what didn’t serve you with the old. you slowly build yourself into a state that works in each moment to produce the greatest flourishing for you in that instance. to inhabit that process actively is self realization. it’s a task, not a place. you aren’t a fixed piece, and you shouldn’t envy those who are chronologically younger than you because you assume time grants them more freedom to assemble themselves than it does you. they might be more or less realized than you based on how much time or thought they’ve dedicated to the task or how much freedom they’ve had to pursue it. understand, though, that you have control over how much time and thought you dedicate to your own realization and can act on it regardless of stage of life. sometimes obligation gets in the way of the immediacy of that ability, trust me I get that, but even taking brief moments to envision what things or places or people or experiences might serve to build you up in the ways that you need is valuable in and of itself for granting you a sense of direction that you can pursue at any time. just don’t get so caught up in feeling like you need clarity first to know what to do. don’t sit around getting distracted waiting for it to come to you. interrogate it, seek it out. use your time wisely, but don’t be mislead into thinking there’s a timer on it. there’s no deadline if the assignment isn’t to present a product but instead to enjoy the process of creating and discovering for as long as you so choose.

@royallmonarch

Jul 11, 2024

Top Recs from @gabbaghoul

📱

making everything into an imessage sticker

nothing makes me happier than receiving bespoke reactions from my pals in the group chat

@gabbaghoul

Nov 17, 2024

📈

reading future consumer trend reports

This is kind of an anti-rec, more of a PSA. If you haven’t heard of the marketing research company WGSN it’s worth a deep dive. Horrifying to see that years ago, a marketing research company predicted that we’d all be into 90s and early 2000s nostalgia, nihilism, and awe/whimsy. The scarier part, for me, is how companies that work with these firms will prey upon individuals’ sincere interests and perspectives. Some unpaid intern from WGSN is def monitoring this app lol. I wrestle with that competing understandings that a zeitgeist will always exist; that the transmission of preferences/ideas between people is how culture is made, with also not wanting to be unconsciously influenced by a predatory system whose only goal is to make me feel like I’m less than and therefore push me to consume. Sry I’m super red pilled this morning lol.

@gabbaghoul

Jul 10, 2024

🧹

Little errands and chores

I love the mundane little tasks one has to accomplish just to maintain day to day existence. I do my best thinking when carrying out mindless tasks. Then I can apply the ideas later. The order and calm that getting my errands and chores completed bestow upon my life allows me to better focus on things that may be more commonly considered hobbies, a.k.a. writing, reading, making art, etc. Everything has meaning and beauty in it.

@gabbaghoul

Jul 8, 2024