Today's delight is that I got a call that my yarn store pickup order was ready this morning and I just! Walked to the bus stop! Got on the bus! Rode it around town! By myself! Got my yarn! And rode back!

When I moved to this city five (almost six now) years ago, I had agoraphobia and absolutely HATED leaving my house alone. And when I did I was at Maximum Stress the entire time. I refused to ride the bus alone after dark despite there being a bus stop one well lit block away from my front door. I hated going places alone.

As my agoraphobia got better, my physical health deteriorated. My chronic pain got steadily worse and when I got covid in 2020 I never recovered, developing a new life threatening autoimmune disorder as well as long covid. I got to a point that I could no longer ride the bus even if I wanted to because my neighborhood is not wheelchair accessible and I was using a wheelchair most of the time when I left my house.

But with some medication and lifestyle changes, I'm suddenly in so much less pain than I was. I'm able to walk to and from and between bus stops (most days). Coupled with the fact that I'm no longer constantly anxious and agoraphobic, and I am feeling the most intense sense of freedom for the first time on years. This is my delight.

Every time I ride the bus somewhere by myself, I'm delighted. I get giddy reloading money onto my bus fare card. I'm constantly looking to see if new places are accessible by bus. And sometimes they aren't (boo!) But a lot of the time, they are and I can plan my trips accordingly. I am experiencing independence for the first time since I stopped driving due to psychosis at 19. I'm living my best life.

Now we need high speed railways in this country and I shall truly be free!

my neighbors. the constant pain I was in has subsided in the last day and it’s now a muted pain. still light years better, and I’m so grateful for the humans I’ve encountered and the guidance of my ancestors. I would never encourage anyone to blindly medicate with herbs but the land truly does provide.

I enjoy being myself! Taking time to myself and practicing to offer myself space.

I’m really grateful for this podcast episode. I’ll be listening to it again and again.

I’m learning what grit means to me, what success means to me, and how it feels to practice self-preservation.

Here’s to being a better person (FOR MYSELF).

I made another one. Sorry guys.

when florence and the machine said "I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject" and when romeo x juliet said "a simple life with you would be paradise" and johnathan coulton said "it's okay, I like you in glasses" and everything everywhere all at once said "in another life I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you"

(edit: I made a longer thing with more examples here)

Hey fanfiction writers: If no one's ever told you this before, it's not just fanfiction.

It's something you spent hours, days, maybe even months on, pouring your heart out onto a page because you were so full of passion and thoughts about a story or characters, you felt like you were going to explode if you didn't get it out. Maybe you lost sleep because your mind was racing with ideas or you forgot to eat or drink water because you were so focused. Maybe your back aches from being hunched over for so long, unmoving. Maybe you even felt like you were going a little feral because you were so excited about what you were creating, or were frustrated when you got stuck. Either way, you put your heart, mind, soul, and body into making something.

It's okay to want people to read it, and it's okay if you're disappointed that they don't or it doesn't get as much of a reaction as you were hoping for. Humans are social creatures. Sure, we write for ourselves, but we also share because the joy of doing so is just as powerful as the joy of the process. Of having created something.

We all experience that joy and that disappointment, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

So it's okay. It's not just fanfiction.

Little Luca au babies

I like drawing them

original image below

I love this meme so much it's so cute

"I see the praised rays

You see me smile

We know the joy beyond above

Has been here awhile"

a couple of silly mgs doodle reqs

best BEAST!!

thinking about how fucking resilient Jews are.

thinking about my great grandparents in romania, raised in a land colonized by the same empire that sent them to the balkans, still working as tailors and butchers like their ancestors had for generations.

thinking about them stowing away on ships to america so their children could live to see adulthood.

thinking about how many other five foot two bookworms have been in my family. i know i’m not the first, and i certainly hope i won’t be the last.

thinking about how many seders my family has held throughout history, how many “next year in jerusalem”s were shouted. it hasn’t happened yet, but maybe it will.

thinking about the women who passed down kabbalah to their children while witches burned in the next village over. how many mothers kept literal magic alive.

thinking about how every single person that lived before me, every branch of my family tree, had to choose to survive. living has always been in the present progressive for Jews; every breath they took was a choice to fight just a little longer.

i come from people who survived the spanish inquisition, the soviet union, the Shoah, the judeo-roman wars, ottoman imperialism, the rise and fall of so many empires i cannot name them all, and the only uniting factor is them. they taught their toddlers the sh’ma and lit candles and read books and sewed clothes and spun linen and cured meat and davened and smiled and laughed and they did that for two thousand years. ten years ago i became the first bat mitzvah in my family line. the first woman in my family to read from the torah.

i hope they’re proud. i hope i was worth it for them.

something I made for the redraw reigen zine a while back

Talking about cogs and gears and such.

are you ever in a park at 9am on a monday and suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer size of some trees (or what used to be trees)

"You've been through a lot haven't you? Let's get you taken care of."

Birthday gift for @probablyhuntersmom!