one thing i need to start living by is “become the thing that you want” if i want friends who throw themed parties maybe i should start throwing those parties. if i want someone who writes me love letters maybe i should start writing letters for the people i love. if i want to hang out at museums and pretty cafes maybe i should invite my friends to these places. and maybe even then i won’t find the kind of people i want to be around. but then i would have become the exact person i want to be around. and maybe that’s good enough.

D. Alan Holmes, Enlightenment // Signet Amenti // @cryptonature // Alan Wilsom Watts // Evan M. Cohen, "Oceans" // Nikita Gill // @pauladoodles // Julian Gough, "Minecraft End Poem" // Sleeping At Last—Saturn

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Cicero, Ad Familiares

My Ten Beliefs That Might Shock You

Are you ready to have your beliefs challenged? If so, prepare yourself for a shock because I’m here to share ten life philosophies that might make your jaw drop. A fair warning before we start: these beliefs might defy what you think you already know. So, if you’re open-minded enough to take on something new, let’s dive right in! “People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our…

View On WordPress

Instead of apologizing for liking "trashy" media, consider: what is it doing well? If you like it, if it's making you feel pleasure and interest, then it must be succeeding at something. Is it shaping a set of emotional beats that you find satisfying to watch play out? Did it craft a character you find really compelling? Is something in the styling and aesthetics speaking to you? Did it unexpectedly resonate with a mood or experience you needed to see reflected right then?

However shallow or flawed a piece of media is, if you like it, it's because of something it did well - at least well enough to affect you, on the day that you encountered it.

There are a lot of good reasons to acknowledge this. One is about gratitude and manners: someone worked hard on that thing, and if they provided something that gave you happiness and pleasure, it's nice to honor that. Another is about breaking down the insidious habit of sorting everything into simple good/bad boxes. A piece of media, like a person, can do a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right, and the things on one side do not magically erase the other.

But the most important reason, I believe, is to get in the habit of celebrating what brings you pleasure and happiness. All your life there have been and there will be people telling you that you find joy in the wrong things, that if a particular thing makes you feel good it shows that there's something wrong with you. I reject that utterly. If a particular thing makes you feel good then there's something right, about you and about that thing. I'm not saying that pleasure is the only important thing or that every pleasure should be indulged indiscriminately. All I'm saying is that pleasure is in and of itself a good thing, and deserves notice.

Me: Yeah, I minored in philosophy in college, but it didn't, like, affect me or anything.

Also me: *busts out the fucking deus deceptor thought experiment in response to a shitpost about hypothetical walruses*

You know, upon reflection

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)

When Franz Kafka said that he is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived, i felt that on a deep emotional level.

When you say 'Yes' to others make sure you are not saying 'No' to yourself.

-Paul Coelho

You asked for my trust, then marred it with betrayal, wondering why the faith was lost.

"You become what you give your attention to."

Epictetus

“I'm a master of speaking silently, all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence”.

–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit.

My thoughts are tired. I am not seeing things freshly, but rather in a pedestrian, lifeless way. It is as if a flame had gone out and I must wait until it starts to burn again by itself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nachlass, MS 102 (13 January 1915)

I desire violently, and I wait.

Anais Nin