trial means trying & trying is terrifying
something i’ve learned is that the biggest part of process is making it your own. prioritizing whatever you want in whatever way feels best/healthiest/etc to you.
(i’m hesitant to use words like success, achieve, productivity because i think a lot of weird, not very helpful, mostly capitalist baggage hangs on to them, but you can substitute those as needed if you prefer)
i have multiple clusters of post its all over my bedroom walls. i am not without ideas, but i falter with commitment and focus. i feel the best when i can harness something that resembles follow through and work with it to the end product.
routine and repetition do work for me, but not necessarily in the way that anyone i admire has ever hinted at in the many interviews i have read/watched/listened to.
turns out it’s all inside me? turns out when i started listening to myself i was more productive in the ways i wanted to be and also started to feel a little better and even like myself??
i could tell you all the weird things i do to make stuff happen, but what you might need is to throw all the things that help me out the window.
i wrote down so many words to try and unpack this idea. i touched on productivity culture and privilege and making priorities, but honestly, and i am sorry to leave you with this cliche, but… listen to your heart. work out your ideals and start there. question them. are they attached to someone else’s idea of what’s best or someone else’s idea of you? does that matter to you? go deep.
i haven’t felt so centred as i did in that gorge pictured above. i think the most important secrets live where the river has altered the surroundings significantly. the places that might never hold rushing water quite like that again, but are still a place to catch the rain, still get slippery and murky from time to time. where the earth seems to have crawled up, around, and over.
wake up each day willing to try something new if it didn’t work the first few times. your ideal process will only come through trial and error.
i wish i had known that sooner, but also i try not to wish much upon my past these days. i’ve gotten me this far and that’s pretty great.
sorry, but this is just me talking about Mitski
i was very, very late to the Mitski party. one time a close friend of mine told me i would probably like her and i said something weird about the first track on Be the Cowboy reminding me of old school paramore (which now strikes me as funny, and also isn’t a bad thing, but ok, sure mariah). one night we were about to go to a show and she put on aforementioned album as we waited for our other friend to finish getting ready. we didn’t do anything but dance to the entire album. no speaking, i was barely aware of anything other than my body and the music. start to finish. and there it was, i knew had been presented with some sort of magic. it happened to coincide with quite a tumultuous time in my life & i now associate mitski with the same feeling you get after confiding in your most understanding friend and following it up with a run through a rainstorm. intense, comforting, invigorating.
mitski is cheering you on & so am i
don't dare regret anything
remember what you're here for, you
just play your violin
we will manage somehow
UNNAMEABLE SPIRITUAL INJURY
yesterday i ran around my apartment saying that with emphasis on each word separately. i ran around whispering it. yelling it. i said it like a question. i shouted it with joy.
i’ve been on a Sally Rooney kick (also late to this party, always late to the party) and this strange little turn of phrase really knocked me off my feet.
(as does her work in general. Conversations with Friends had me uncomfortably seen, and while i don’t quite relate with Normal People on the same level, i still have to read it in the same way —short bursts — because it’s so striking)
isn’t this just the thing? aren’t we all just wandering around feeling at once isolated and exalted by our own unnameable spiritual injuries? seeing who might suffer a similar one? looking for a way to cope, to come to terms with it? trying not to take too much pride in our own suffering of it?
it now lives written out on a piece of carnation pink paper hung beside by my bed. maybe you needed it too.
for the foreseeable future the donation link will be for the current struggle occurring on unceded and sovereign Wet’suwet’en land.