Not an invitation to cocoon yourself in a self-care bubble for four years, but a reminder to the 24/7 worriers that you can literally write "To Do on Monday: Worry about ________" on a post-it note and stop worrying about it for one day while you recharge.
Another point: Both your mental health and your ability to resist will be improved by finding a community. A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. And apes together strong.
Of course! Fascism will be stopped by positive thinking! Make sure toncare about you mental health first and foremost. It is the most important part of the <current political climate>. Feeling good is more important than doing anything, atter all.
...you guys get that being herded into a complacent mindset of "i will resist fascism by chilling" is exactly what a fascist regime would do in 21st century, right?
I think you're reading too much into this, the post doesn't say "you can resist by doing fuckall", it says you shouldn't allocate every second of your life to active and constant resistance and state of worry because it is, in the long run, going to damage you, burn you out and impact your wellbeing. It's actually not healthy to keep the candle burning in both hands.
"Protect your mental health" doesn't mean "ignore everything at all costs to achieve a sense of blissful ignorance", it means that you should know your limits. If I spend every day constantly worrying about the rise of neo-fascism I will achieve nothing and worsen my personal condition. If I instead allow myself to be more in-and-out, work within a community but then come home and, say, play a game or watch a movie, I will be much more beneficial to the society
Worrying doesn't have a lot of utility in and of itself, to be honest. Whether you're at home sipping tea and not giving a shit or at home doomscrolling and biting your nails off, it doesn't change much so far as everything else is concerned, but at least the guy sipping tea is looking after herself.
The point is, act when you can act, join protests, support your local community, sign up for or spearhead community initiatives, slow down the machinery, etc, but when there's nothing in front of you that you can do, continue to live your life. People being able to live their lives is what we want, after all.
When I say "connect with nature" I don't just mean the aesthetic forests with deer and beautiful flowers.
I mean the weeds growing through concrete, the fungus that grows on the rotten shed, the nettles that always seem to return and the scary, spindly cellar spider in the corner of the bathroom.
Nature is not always pretty or magical - the pigeons and seagulls you swat at are nature too, the wasps and flies that hover by your meals are animals too, store-bought strawberries and the leaves that fall from your neighbour's tree are not all that different from the Giant Sequoias and it's seeds.
If you want to connect and understand nature, I mean *really* connect to it, in it's entirety, you have to seek out and learn about the ugly, scary and mundane things as well. You don't have to like it, just don't forget that it's there.
okay, so it’s a lot like conceptual art, or like introspective meditation, at the risk of sounding pretentious
Like. It’s not so much about “the cards are a portal to a higher wisdom that knows more than me” thing- it’s more of a, “given the symbols drawn, could I interpret them posing a question or possibility or suggestion?” Followed by, “is this applicable to my current context? COULD it be?”
Like.
I don’t lay out á tarot hand and say “ah yes, the devil and the tower, I am about to be betrayed”
But I MAY lay out a hand and say, “okay, devil and the tower. Something treacherous and danger. Am I approaching a treacherous or risky situation in my life? What might be a tipping factor? Am I being deliberately reckless? Maybe I should spend some more time working on X project I’ e been thinking of before spending money on it” or “you know what, I HAVE been kind of uncomfortable with X thing, I should say something” or “yeah okay I KNOW Tom from work sucks to work with, I KNOW, yeah maybe I should consider ways of handling that”
Less of a magic oracle, more of a tool for doing literary analysis on real life. Like simplifying everything and laying it out flat so I can gain some distance to untangle my problems without in-your-head crap like projected feelings and social obligation getting in the way and muddying the waters.
So like. I don’t think tarot cards can legit tell the future, but I DO think that self-reflection, mindfulness, and consideration sometimes allow us to predict and calculate our own circumstances.
The greatest source of "magic" in this world is the human brain's capacity for pattern recognition and drawing meaning out of random chaos, and a tarot deck is a type of randomness engine with some meanings attached. You lay out some cards, your brain sees things that are meaningful to you and spots angles that you might not have considered before.
Is it supernatural? No.
Is it incredibly cool and can it often be very useful? Yes. The human brain is magnificent and powerful. And that's just pure science, baybee
And I say it as someone who drew and wrote up her own oracle deck.
Tarots, stones, bones, and oracles are Rorshach tests. It's about your reaction to what you see in them, and about making you look at parts of your life in different contexts. That's it. Simple trick, but given the amount of change a little introspection can cause, the effect can indeed get downright magical.
A regular part of my job is trying to reach out to people who have been quietly trying to make their community a better place; the volunteers, the teachers, the fucking. People who rehabilitate injured wild owls in a Quonset hut in the woods, and to a one this is the kind of person who immediately reviles at recognition. The kind of person who immediately says that they never got into this to get praise for it, and that they’d infinitely prefer to quietly plug away at this anonymously forever.
And from this I’ve always drawn two conclusions:
To always distrust Mr. Beast and his ilk who always want their acts of charity done on film, because the people who really want to do good and have no motives to do it besides the doing it never want recognition for it, and
That there are, in the dark, in the quiet, always people who are doing good, and the reason you don’t hear about it is because they’d rather die than receive recognition for it, but they’re real; they do exist. And you are never alone
DIY notebook/junk journal tutorial for people on a budget
I found myself watching a lot of bookbinding videos recently & had the realization: I could probably do that at home, for free. And I was right. So before an influencer convinces you to drop 50 dollars on a book press and a fancy bonefolder, here's how:
STEP 0: MATERIALS
Cardstock - This can be any slightly thicker paper. I've been using postcards and blank greeting cards, because they're already around the size I want, but you can even use the cardboard from a cereal box if you want something sturdier.
Scissors/Xacto knife - You need at least the scissors, but the Xacto knife makes things a lot easier. If you have an actual paper cutter, use that instead.
Glue - your choice, I've been using modpodge but you can use a glue stick, etc instead.
Sturdy tape - duct tape, electrical tape, masking tape, etc. It needs to hold up to wear and tear; washi/scotch tape will not work.
Binder or Paper clips - binder clips are my preference but large paper clips work in a pinch
Ruler(s) - If you have them, I recommend using two rulers: one metal (if you're cutting paper with an xacto knife), one plastic or wood (this will be your bonefolder).
Pen or pencil
Paper scraps - These will be the pages of your notebook. You want them to be the same size or bigger than your covers. You can use literally anything; I've been using the last blank pages of old planners and notebooks, end pages of old books, and various scraps that would otherwise be thrown away.
Safety pin - Awl substitute
Needle and thread
ADDITIONALLY you should have a) a surface to glue on and b) a surface to cut on. A piece of scrap cardboard works well for both.
--
STEP 1: DECORATING THE COVER
Take the cardstock you want to use for your cover, cut it to size if you need to, and fold it in half, using the side of your wooden/plastic ruler to flatten the crease. If you want to decorate it, take a magazine clipping or paper scrap of your choice and glue it on one side ( shown below). Avoid gluing anything onto the crease.
Flip it over and trim the sides down. Cut off the corners, then glue and fold the sides over. Use the ruler on anything you need to crease.
Flip back over and repeat for the other side! Make sure to leave a gap at the 'spine'.
STEP 2: CREATING A SIGNATURE
A "signature" is a stack of folded papers, aka, your notebook's pages. Take the papers you wish to use, fold each of them in half, and nest them together. I've been using 10 sheets of paper for mine, which will become 40 pages total. It might be harder to fit more than this into a small-sized notebook. Also, I try to arrange the sheets so that the CLEAN EDGES line up at the BOTTOM of the stack, with the rough edges at the top. This way you'll only have to trim 2 sides instead of 3.
Line your cover up with the signature's bottom edge, making sure everything inside is aligned neatly. Then slap on a binder clip and trim off some of the excess material with scissors, if needed.
Use a ruler to mark where the edge of the cover is, then remove the cover to avoid damaging it (but keep the binder clip). Hold the ruler firmly in place slightly to the left of the line you just made. Carefully make repeated, even strokes with your xacto knife along the side of the ruler to cut straight through the layers of paper. Repeat with the top of the signature.
A metal ruler is recommended for this step because a sharp xacto knife WILL CUT THROUGH PLASTIC AND WOODEN RULERS. I learned this the hard way, but if you're careful it should be fine.
If you have access to an actual paper cutter, skip this step and use that instead!! it's way faster and safer!!
The finished signatures should be the same size as your cover now.
STEP 3: PUTTING IT TOGETHER
Stick your signature into the cover, align everything, then open to the center page. Clip the pages to the cover at the top or bottom, one on each side, in this 'open' position. Make a few marks along the center crease with even spacing.
Awl time. Using your marks as a guide, CAREFULLY push your safety pin through your signature and out through notebook's spine. You might want to use a thumbtack to make things easier on your fingers.
The next step is to sew the sheets together through the holes you made. Unfortunately this is not a sewing tutorial, so if you don't know how to thread a needle you might want to pause here and look that up. I'm using a simple saddle stitch, keeping the knots on the outside. There are many ways to do the actual book binding, including just stapling it, but this is how I do it.
You can remove the binder clips at this point. The only thing left to do is reinforce the spine. Trim the thread and fold your Sturdy Tape of choice over the spine, leaving some excess at both ends. The goal here is mainly to cover up the loose thread. Split the excess along the dotted lines shown below...
...Then stick it down on the insides of the front and back cover.
I am fully in favor of culling highly invasive animals even if it personally makes me sad, but I am really freaked out by the hatred people show those animals and the absolute glee at the prospect of killing them.
I think you can cull invasive species while treating them with kindness and respect, and that means 1) killing them quickly and as painlessly as possible 2) trying not to waste their remains if at all possible, like the rising use of invasive fish in local restaurants and 3) remembering that every invasive animal, with the exception of domestic ones, is actually native somewhere.
My general rule is to ask yourself if the things you say about invasive bugs, fish, reptiles, etc are things you would ever say about feral cats, which are one of the most widespread invasive species in the world with massive impacts on native animal populations and ecosystems.
I meant to include this in the op but I forgot because I have ADHD and my brain doesn't work so:
Invasive species are not evil. Even if they do a lot of damage. Even if they kill native species. They are just animals, displaced from their native habitats (almost always because of humans) and doing what they evolved to do. They don't know that they're in the wrong place or that they're causing damage, because they are animals.
Remember that. Even the most ecologically destructive invasive species is just an animal doing what it is meant to do; the fact that it isn't doing that in the right place isn't a sign that it's bad or evil, just that humans fucked up somewhere and that it's our responsibility to fix that without "punishing" the animal for behaving naturally.
i've been reading a lot of books about urban naturalism recently, and the one big thing they all talk about is how you HAVE to stop seeing nature as something that happens somewhere else. nature is not just charismatic megafauna and state parks and mountain ranges. nature is that abandoned lot that's growing native milkweed in it. nature is the murder of crows that lives in your block. nature is the moss growing on your roof and the dandelions growing in the sidewalk cracks and the song birds at your neighbor's birdfeeder. and you should care about it! you should notice it! that's YOUR nature!
