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alt title: spontaneity
other folks have already sung the praises of learning to appreciate the mundane, and they're right but there are probably some obvious ways you can circumvent mundanity in your day to day – you know you better than anyone; what does your heart yearn for? what do you wish was a more active part of your life?
then just fucken go out there and do it. do it in the scariest way possible. lower the barriers you've constructed around yourself to keep you safe and comfortable, because those things are what define mundanity. reduce the friction to do medium-challenging or medium-scary stuff by doing big scary stuff. then do it again. and again, and again
it's going to be exhausting, there are going to be lulls between the times when you do the big-scary-thing that opens doors, but the more you do it the easier it gets and the more momentum builds from initial pushes
november 2023 i was taking djing lessons, and i had made some progress but had never dreamed of actually playing for people (or at least not like, any time soon.) after a lesson i saw an instagram post about an open decks that very night. i forced myself to go – and absolutely fucked up my ~15 minute set. but a year later, i was invited by one of the hosts to play another open decks. then a month later, my friend asked me to dj vinyl for her birthday. two weeks later i got booked for a party, and a week after that i got asked to play another party where they recorded my set and put it on socials
show up to a pottery studio and ask them about their course offerings, go to an open mic and perform something you've been sitting on (or just pull something out of your ass), just step off the ledge and lo and behold, you'll be in the water
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hey, thank you so much for the detailed response- although people have given me some great advice, i think this hits the mark perfectly.
not to overshare, but i think i’ve become paralyzed with my responsibilities and forgotten the things i really love and desire- namely, creating and engaging with art, meeting and surrounding myself with genuine and enriching people.
i found it so much easier to bring these things in my life after i had metaphorically jumped into the deep end! and youve reminded me that these barriers of comfort that i’ve settled into might be holding me back!
so i appreciate you and i hope karma brings you some sage words when you most need them
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this year has been all about getting “out there” for me. since i’ve been doing concert photography more, i’ve come to realize that it really never hurts to ask - even if the ask seems outlandish at the time. if the opportunity doesn’t open itself up to you, then it wasn’t meant for you anyways!
i am someone who deals with imposter syndrome quite a bit, and i’ve had to come to realize that i have to do the scary things in order for me to achieve what i want to (and to make them not so scary over time)!
this applies to relationships as well, but i’m not so much focused on that in this particular phase of life as i am on my hobbies/career.
anyways: DO THE SCARY THING. ASK THE SCARY/CRAZY QUESTION. YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU DON’T TRY. DON’T LIVE A LIFE OF “WHAT IFS”!
(this is aggressive bc i’m mostly trying to remind myself of it)
Oct 14, 2024
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i’m such an advocate for regular ass people doing art. or anything new that “requires skill” really
we are so scared of doing things because we’re not any good at them. so what.
karaoke with the confidence of a popstar even if your voice cracks and you don’t know breath support. paint even if it looks like a toddler made it. play the same three guitar chords and paint your furniture with a kitchen sponge and try to bake macarons.
it’s so sad that people who aren’t, like, professionally skilled, get laughed at for their art. or like i said, trying any skill that isn’t honed yet
there’s something so important and human in the arts, its such an amazing outlet but people refuse to tap into it because they “can’t draw a stick figure” or “write too cliche” or “have two left feet”.
DO IT POORLY!!!!! DO IT SCARED!!!!! DO THE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO DEEP DOWN IN YOUR SOUL EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU’RE BAD AND FEEL EMBARASSED!!!!! let yourself have fun with things!!!!!!!! it shouldn’t be a competition all the time. you probably are not ariana grande, but you’re allowed to have fun singing and stuff too. if you have a voice in your head that laughs at you when you’re not immediately good at something, learn to gently correct it. tell it you’re learning and you’ll never be any good at something if you don’t have the courage to just….start. somewhere, anywhere
Feb 1, 2025
Recently I started rock climbing. I was extremely trepidatious at the start. The only experience I had with climbing of any kind were those portable and ticket-able rock walls that would pop up on the boardwalks of NJ in the height of the summer tourist rush. The first couple of visits, I could barely get on the wall. My toes would slip, my fingers would release. Even when I was able to hold myself up, I was terrified of falling, of equipment failing me, of making a fool of myself in a crowded gym full of people who looked like they had been born doing this.
I’m still very new, I’m still learning. But every time I walk into the building, my silly little shoes in chalky hand, I decide that I’m going to do something hard. Because I can do hard things, and so can you.
I can make it to the top of the wall now. Not every time, and certainly not on every course. But sometime soon I will. Because I keep trying something hard.
Jan 29, 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