RIP Joann, Now What?

the way ivan aivazovsky looks at the sea…i think…i think that’s what love looks like.

Excuse me while I get covered in paint

Pigeon wings under a UV light

'Valkyrie' by Edward Robert Hughes, c. 1915.

Im.. Soft 🥺🥺🥺

cr. 

here's some more unsolicited adult advice as someone in her 30s who knows there are a lot of twenty somethings and teens that follow her: if you're trying to build a new habit you really want, and are struggling, you have to break it down to the smallest building block possible. If you're failing, you haven't thought small enough. I know it's possible to hear stories of people who just snapped into new life mode one day by "just deciding", but truly what's happening there is a confluence of events and experiences that force the brain into some sort of epiphany. You cannot will an epiphany. It'll never work. For most times of your life, you will need to build habits intentionally, and that means not working against yourself and to set micro goals. like laughably tiny goals. because once that easy tiny goal is met, you can build off it, tiny goal after tiny goal until you reach your big goal.

so for example, if you want to be a morning person that gets up at ass crack dawn so that you can work out, eat brekkie, shower, and get to work at a leisurely pace, and you're not that person because you will hit your snooze button 800 times, you have to get the big picture goal out of your head. think smaller. "I want to get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do." If you can't do that, make it 5 minutes. "I want to cook breakfast every day" hell no too big. "I want to eat something, anything, before I leave the house" hell yeah, fantastic. When you go to the grocery store to make sure there are things in the house for breakfast, if you keep buying bagels and microwave sandwiches that you ignore, you gotta think smaller. SMALLER. What's something so easy to eat that you'll never say no to. Is it a yogurt? Is it a handful of grapes? Is it a hostess ho ho? is it hot cheetos? FORGET the big picture of the fantasy put-together woman preparing a full nutritious meal that you'd be proud to admit to. Think only of the smallest goal you can achieve. If you know you can't say no to an ice cream sandwich, put a ton of ice cream sandwiches in your freezer and have one for breakfast every day until it's so instilled in you that you gotta get up to eat something you can start diversifying.

It sounds like, from the lack of habit place, that must take forever. But really it doesn't take too long to form the habit once the discipline kicks in. the trick is that you have to give your brain something easy to become disciplined to. If it's too hard, think easier and smaller. No one has to know. Literally no one in the gd world has to know that for 4 weeks when you were 22 you had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast every day. who cares. If it gets you eating oatmeal with fresh fruit in a few months who cares. you did it, yay. smaller, easier. if you can't do it, think smaller and easier. smaller!! EASIER!!! You are not thinking smaller and easier enough. break your brain thinking how small and easy you can go. SMALLER. EVEN SMALLER, SIS.

Sometimes love isn't grand gestures or daily phone calls

Sometimes love is when my mother comes home from visiting family 7 hours away. Where I couldn't go. Because, because car ride are too much and I'm sick.

She comes home and tells me of my whole family crying about me when they were leaving. Wishing they could do something

Maybe love is when my cousin gifts me fabric and patterns because she knows I love sewing. Even if I can't right now.

Perhaps love is my aunt gifting me rolls of leather and upholstery fabric and 3 kilos of cherries for the same reason.

Love might be another cousin crying, wishing my mother to tell me she thinks about me every day but doesn't have the words.

These people, my blood, that never felt like family or close. That are so far away in the world and in life.

Perhaps life is in those small moments. And way more people care for you than you think. Even if you have no clue. And thought they'd abandoned you long ago.

Another good thing to come from this bummshit journey :)

People care, we are all just as awkward and lost for words. Give others the grace to be as awkward as you think yourself to be. They might surprise you

i think it’s really important for everyone to have high standards in love. then, it’s important for people to start treating themselves the way they expect from a loved one.

learn to write long reassuring passages for your own self when you feel low. likewise, make a make a cup of herbal tea and make a playlist for your own self. take pictures of you smiling under the sunshine and post that appreciation post for your own self. watch the movies that you would make your loved ones watch and cook your favourite meal for the movie. tuck yourself in bed with a cozy blanket and turn those fairly lights on for your own self. buy flowers and buy tiny little gifts. take yourself out to a cozy places and write poetries about you being in love with yourself despite the struggles. tell yourself that you still love yourself when you’re breaking down and your mascara has spread beneath your eyes because of the tears. tell yourself you’re in love with the mess because you’ve also always loved the best.

learn to be in love with yourself the way you romanticise someone else doing it for you because at the end, it’s you who will complete you.

-nishtha.

Hyperallergic

My Grandma's Doilies Are Not a Joke

When will art institutions finally pay respect to our foremothers’ artistry?

This all day long … Elena Kanagy-Loux's article is right-on. I myself have made it a point in recent years not to share any content that glibly uses the phrase, "not your grandma's " because it's a) lazy and b) dismisses the real fact that grandmothers and older textile artists have worked hard to keep craft traditions alive and evolving, not to mention their immense skills. We should be thanking them and looking to them for inspiration, not mocking them. via @hyperallergic ❤️

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

I was talking to a coworker recently and offhandedly said I wasn’t exactly competent at a lot of things. He reared back in obvious visceral disagreement that made me stop midsentence.

“What do you mean you’re not competent?”

“I guess I mean compared to the people I’m surrounded by? I’m not very handy, I guess.”

He looked baffled.

I tried to illuminate with a story. So at the sex shop we needed to vacuum every night, right? But one time after my days off I could tell the carpets hadn’t been vacuumed since I last saw them. I asked the other girls why not. It turned out that the screw that held the handle on the vacuum had been stripped and it wouldn’t stay in. Why was that down to a single screw? Bad design.

So any attempt to vacuum meant the handle just popped off when the screw jumped ship. I looked over the vacuum. I found a junk drawer. I found the biggest screw I could that still fit in the hole wrapped it in tape to bulk it out. Then I shoved/screwed it in place. Then I duct taped the opening so that fucker couldn’t pop out. Voila, a working handle.

The other girls were utterly delighted that I’d fixed the vacuum but I was painfully aware that my solution was neither elegant nor long term.

My coworker listened. Finally he said, “I think being competent just means you have the ability to learn a skill you lack, and you can do that. Your solution worked, and you were the one that tried to fix the problem.”

I digested that and agreed, but admitted any new skill learned would prompt me to be a huge baby about it.