I Went For A Walk In A Privately Owned Forest Today And Realized That Forests And Groves In Scandinavia

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.

Terrarium Life collection~

I painted these way back during the pandemic (hence the hoard of toilet paper and Switch that I wish I had, but they were all sold out) No pandemic now but the chimney smoke from all the neighbors have made the air unbreathable and I'm stuck inside again 😭 cuddling my dog, drinking tea

tending to my fish tank and my plants

- I read

Took a break and escaped to fantastical worlds to escape this one and to not think, not deal with any problems. It's called a mental health break. Healthy escapism

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.

“A traveller I am, and a navigator, and everyday I discover a new region within my soul.”

Khalil Gibran

by marina weishaupt (500px / flickr / instagram)

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 ❤️

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poem 85 from “The Gardener”, 1914 Translated by the author from the original Bengali. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Do you think the people who design modern sewing machines in plastic cases ever feel insignificant because of it? knowing that they're making machines with the lifespan of a dog when they could (if they'd been born a few generations earlier) be making machines with the lifespan of a Galapagos tortoise?