Books I want to read this summer (heavily from: http://rookiemag.com/2012/06/magical-thinking/)
"Just Kids" by Patti Smith (everyone keeps talking about how great it is! I want to know too!)
"Unspoken" by Sarah Rees Brennan (Gothic novels!)
John Bellairs books (More Gothic novels!)
... Find more Gothic novels...
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
Any Francesca Lia Block books that I missed in 2008.
Grimm's fariy tales, if I want really gruesome things?
BUY: The Scribble Diary. I need motivation to create without pressure!
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr
The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits (I secretly really like reading things about psychics/intuitives even though I don't really know my stance about the concept)
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
Here They Come by Yannick Murphy (maybe not, though, cause I don't very much feel like being punched in the feels?)
Frida Kahlo: Song of Herself by Salomon Grimberg (... I don't mind much being punched in the feels for Frida, though. Frida is my heart.)
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (Ladies live together and become friends? Okay, I'm down.)
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh ("I read this book every year in the summertime. When I was younger I
would only read the first half, which is full of collegiate shenanigans
and fresh ripe strawberries and the escapism of friendship." Yeah, I'm down too.)
Sunday, June 17, 2012
I rather like my current Tumblr follow list (see below), but it's time for a little housekeeping - I don't read many of these anymore, because I want to spend my time reading things that do more than just make me smile (though sometimes I need a reliable smile so that's why I'm keeping these around!). <3 Suggestions?
Updated 1 week ago
Friday, June 15, 2012
Recent Inspirations
From 2008 - 2010, I was in the worst slump I've known to date. Even though I now know it is all just a part of my healing process, I can't help but shake my head at the teenager I was then - former straight-A high school dropout, at the peak of my disabling depression, calling in to my 10 hour/week part-time job that I never wanted in the first place but was afraid of quitting, not going to my classes, not doing my homework, eating and sleeping erratically, watching cable television for entire days at a time, e-mailing my high school friends constantly during bursts of hypomanic delusions of productivity.
It was... uninspiring. I needed that kind of downtime, but I wish I had been doing something better, something more enjoyable, with all that wasted time. The only thing I think was even remotely healthy for me at the time, were some of those e-mails I sent. I was obsessively attached to my Google Reader and regularly sent my friends collections of links that they would like, or that had a coincidental theme that resonated with me that particular day/week. Of course, I gave all that blog-reading and e-mailing an overinflated sense of importance (who spends 10 hours back to back doing that kind of thing?! Eeeep), but it kept my brain moving, it kept me constantly inspired somehow.
I want to get back into collecting things from the Internet regularly and posting them or sending them to close friends. I do NOT intend to obsessively spend hours at a time doing this (I have already been online for over 2 hours bouncing from tangent to tangent, how unfulfilling!), and I FULLY intent to incorporate things from my daily life as well, as I did in the scant posts here before I realized that gratitude blogging in letter-form was not for me.
I want to get back to keeping an eye out for patterns. I want to re-open my mind to the imaginative energies of drawing connections between things. I want to collect them and look at how they make me feel, and at the ways I am already a living example of their lessons, and at the ways I can further work those lessons into my life.
I want to get to a place where I won't forget things that were once important to me so that I don't constantly run into the same lessons all the time without having learned them. I want to get to a place where I can look at something and just know if there's a deeper lesson to be had or if it's just something that was nice to see.
Without further ado, here are the things that have stayed with me this week, and that I will be working on:
1. This print of Bertrand Russell's quote: "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
(I think, after seeing it earlier this week on Tuesday, it somehow got into my head that I should just give into the temptation to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and be ENTIRELY IRRESPONSIBLE... which is both good and bad. Good, because I feel so free of anxiety that I actually feel an inclination to do things because I want to enjoy them. Bad, because, well, I've been pretty irresponsible. Clearly I need to work on things in therapy, and clearly I need to learn moderation and compartmentalization. I need to learn to do what I need to do, when they need to be done, and then shift easily into or out of relaxation mode. I need to take when I need when I can get it and not expect everyone to accomodate me.)
2. Some comment I read (can't find it) on a survivor blog where someone shares their journey with their therapist into becoming a functional, productive human member of society - which entailed a lot of introspection and coming to terms with the inner resistant monologue that, unnecessarily, asks, "How can you expect me to ___, when I've been ___?" And deciding NOT to give into that.
3. Similarly, two of the comments on this post (also a survivor blog; trigger warnings for suicide, self-harm, rape, incest, abuse, involuntary hospitalization). The comments said:
Oh, and one more thing. I am SO GLAD you sorted out that the
thyroid issues will mess with you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Acknowledge that and you can perhaps say “it’s the thyroid” and
process some of the negative thoughts that way.
That’s a good idea! If you find yourself thinking negative things
about yourself in your head, just imagine your thyroid saying it and
say, “Shut up Thyroid”.
...which I instantly realized was the lesson behind my therapist's constant telling me that I CAN choose not to give into my situation, I CAN choose to repeat to myself "it is not life-threatening, nor am I incapacitated or hospitalized", and I CAN use that to enable functioning. Maybe it's because the thyroid problems are relateable, but I've begun saying "Shut up, Thyroid" and processing the thoughts that come up. There are surprisingly few of them than there were a few weeks ago when I called my therapist in the throes of a panic attack, and it was very freeing to say "Hey yeah, I'm doing okay, even for someone like me it's not hard or impossible to do something like walk to the train station."
4. This is me. To a TEE. This comment holding the OP responsible is exactly what I need to hear:
5. Gala Darling - Happiness is Simple: Why Too Many Choices Make Us Miserable & 5 Ways to Improve Your Life!
6. Ramit Sethi's Big Wins Manifesto. I think it dawned on me that all his "systems" actually just teach the same lesson as Gala's post above on minimalising choices to maximize happiness. He and his clients and his friends have their focuses that they want to spend money and time on, and they work harder at the beginning, in small bursts, to reduce the options that can take away from their priorities. They focus on reducing. Then they just focus. On having fun, on shopping, on eating out, on ... whatever they choose!
7. Neil Gaiman's graduation speech. "Make good art. Make it on the good days too." & "And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time. I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work."
That goal is the reason you are struggling, the reason you are working less than glamorous jobs, the reason you are busting your ass to make connections and move on to the next job.
It was... uninspiring. I needed that kind of downtime, but I wish I had been doing something better, something more enjoyable, with all that wasted time. The only thing I think was even remotely healthy for me at the time, were some of those e-mails I sent. I was obsessively attached to my Google Reader and regularly sent my friends collections of links that they would like, or that had a coincidental theme that resonated with me that particular day/week. Of course, I gave all that blog-reading and e-mailing an overinflated sense of importance (who spends 10 hours back to back doing that kind of thing?! Eeeep), but it kept my brain moving, it kept me constantly inspired somehow.
I want to get back into collecting things from the Internet regularly and posting them or sending them to close friends. I do NOT intend to obsessively spend hours at a time doing this (I have already been online for over 2 hours bouncing from tangent to tangent, how unfulfilling!), and I FULLY intent to incorporate things from my daily life as well, as I did in the scant posts here before I realized that gratitude blogging in letter-form was not for me.
I want to get back to keeping an eye out for patterns. I want to re-open my mind to the imaginative energies of drawing connections between things. I want to collect them and look at how they make me feel, and at the ways I am already a living example of their lessons, and at the ways I can further work those lessons into my life.
I want to get to a place where I won't forget things that were once important to me so that I don't constantly run into the same lessons all the time without having learned them. I want to get to a place where I can look at something and just know if there's a deeper lesson to be had or if it's just something that was nice to see.
Without further ado, here are the things that have stayed with me this week, and that I will be working on:
1. This print of Bertrand Russell's quote: "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."
(I think, after seeing it earlier this week on Tuesday, it somehow got into my head that I should just give into the temptation to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and be ENTIRELY IRRESPONSIBLE... which is both good and bad. Good, because I feel so free of anxiety that I actually feel an inclination to do things because I want to enjoy them. Bad, because, well, I've been pretty irresponsible. Clearly I need to work on things in therapy, and clearly I need to learn moderation and compartmentalization. I need to learn to do what I need to do, when they need to be done, and then shift easily into or out of relaxation mode. I need to take when I need when I can get it and not expect everyone to accomodate me.)
2. Some comment I read (can't find it) on a survivor blog where someone shares their journey with their therapist into becoming a functional, productive human member of society - which entailed a lot of introspection and coming to terms with the inner resistant monologue that, unnecessarily, asks, "How can you expect me to ___, when I've been ___?" And deciding NOT to give into that.
3. Similarly, two of the comments on this post (also a survivor blog; trigger warnings for suicide, self-harm, rape, incest, abuse, involuntary hospitalization). The comments said:
15.
Eric B. | June 12, 2012 at 7:32 am
Eric B. | June 12, 2012 at 7:32 am
16.
Cinara | June 12, 2012 at 7:46 am
Cinara | June 12, 2012 at 7:46 am...which I instantly realized was the lesson behind my therapist's constant telling me that I CAN choose not to give into my situation, I CAN choose to repeat to myself "it is not life-threatening, nor am I incapacitated or hospitalized", and I CAN use that to enable functioning. Maybe it's because the thyroid problems are relateable, but I've begun saying "Shut up, Thyroid" and processing the thoughts that come up. There are surprisingly few of them than there were a few weeks ago when I called my therapist in the throes of a panic attack, and it was very freeing to say "Hey yeah, I'm doing okay, even for someone like me it's not hard or impossible to do something like walk to the train station."
4. This is me. To a TEE. This comment holding the OP responsible is exactly what I need to hear:
"Stop making excuses. Step up. You want to do good in school, start working and stop whining about it. You can change today. Start your assignment. Perhaps get a doctors note or talk to your teacher and explain the situation to him?Just to let you know: Even if you fuck up on this assignment/highschool, your life is not over. You can upgrade by going to a community college and transfer over.Again it's all on you. Good luck."
6. Ramit Sethi's Big Wins Manifesto. I think it dawned on me that all his "systems" actually just teach the same lesson as Gala's post above on minimalising choices to maximize happiness. He and his clients and his friends have their focuses that they want to spend money and time on, and they work harder at the beginning, in small bursts, to reduce the options that can take away from their priorities. They focus on reducing. Then they just focus. On having fun, on shopping, on eating out, on ... whatever they choose!
7. Neil Gaiman's graduation speech. "Make good art. Make it on the good days too." & "And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain. I said no to editorial jobs on magazines, proper jobs that would have paid proper money because I knew that, attractive though they were, for me they would have been walking away from the mountain. And if those job offers had come along earlier I might have taken them, because they still would have been closer to the mountain than I was at the time. I learned to write by writing. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work, which meant that life did not feel like work."
That goal is the reason you are struggling, the reason you are working less than glamorous jobs, the reason you are busting your ass to make connections and move on to the next job.
from last night's episode of eli stone
"The court says you're an adult now... And as an adult you're going to realize that there are no sides. There are just people."
(from a very old draft - there was more to the post, but I have no idea what it applies to anymore! I just like this quote now, because it reminds me of my former Human Services professor, who drilled into us that in individual cases, it is not the system that should shoulder the blame, it is the person. Ultimately it is individual people who choose to commit crimes, or resign themselves to stereotypes, or who choose to perpetuate negative stereotypes when individual people always have a choice over what they do and who they decide to be. To this date, her orientation course is hands-down the most life-changing experience I have ever had, even though I failed it at the last minute by being too anxious and scatterbrained to finish two very simple projects.)
(from a very old draft - there was more to the post, but I have no idea what it applies to anymore! I just like this quote now, because it reminds me of my former Human Services professor, who drilled into us that in individual cases, it is not the system that should shoulder the blame, it is the person. Ultimately it is individual people who choose to commit crimes, or resign themselves to stereotypes, or who choose to perpetuate negative stereotypes when individual people always have a choice over what they do and who they decide to be. To this date, her orientation course is hands-down the most life-changing experience I have ever had, even though I failed it at the last minute by being too anxious and scatterbrained to finish two very simple projects.)
When I started this blog in 2008, I was going through one of the toughest periods in my life. I stopped posting soon afterwards, because I felt my inner negativity seeping into the forced sweetness of my "thank you" letters. I can't even begin to tell you how many letters I had written, or started writing, and promptly scrapped because they sounded so bitter and self-pitying (and dry/sarcastic/etc. etc.)!
I'm reading them now, in a much more uplifted headspace though still struggling with depression and general appreciating things, and they're not so bad. I want to go back to writing gratitude lists and "thank you" letters on a regular basis, but mostly just to keep to myself. For now, I am still contemplating using this blog for general musing over life choices, but from a place of deep gratitude and appreciation.
However, to anyone looking for regular "thank you" letters, I must MUST point out that since the start of this blog nearly four years ago, another one, much funnier, more relateable and WAY prettier, was started in 2009 based on the very same idea and is still going strong today. I present to you, "THXTHXTHX: a thank you note a day" by Leah Dieterich, who even has a book out based on her blog!
So THANK YOU, Leah Dieterich, for using your mother's etiquette teachings to make your slice-of-life, bright-part-of-your-day blog! Thank you for doing a MUCH better job than I ever could have, for doing justice to the power of gratitude and to the art of letter-writing. I hope to spend a quiet afternoon reading your entire blog over a giant mug of herbal tea one day. I know it will make me smile from ear to ear, and that I will be learning many much-needed lessons from you.
<3!
I'm reading them now, in a much more uplifted headspace though still struggling with depression and general appreciating things, and they're not so bad. I want to go back to writing gratitude lists and "thank you" letters on a regular basis, but mostly just to keep to myself. For now, I am still contemplating using this blog for general musing over life choices, but from a place of deep gratitude and appreciation.
However, to anyone looking for regular "thank you" letters, I must MUST point out that since the start of this blog nearly four years ago, another one, much funnier, more relateable and WAY prettier, was started in 2009 based on the very same idea and is still going strong today. I present to you, "THXTHXTHX: a thank you note a day" by Leah Dieterich, who even has a book out based on her blog!
So THANK YOU, Leah Dieterich, for using your mother's etiquette teachings to make your slice-of-life, bright-part-of-your-day blog! Thank you for doing a MUCH better job than I ever could have, for doing justice to the power of gratitude and to the art of letter-writing. I hope to spend a quiet afternoon reading your entire blog over a giant mug of herbal tea one day. I know it will make me smile from ear to ear, and that I will be learning many much-needed lessons from you.
<3!
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