@mariedouceur - Tumblr Blog

matryoshka2001

diablosita13

zegalba

Church of Santo Stefano at Ponte, Florence (1574) Designed By: Bernardo Bountalenti

utronabalcone

the great slumber; aka blood puddle pillow by keetra dean dixon, 2004

ongoing series initiated in 2004. inspired by those suspenseful moments when a sleeping loved one is a little too still for a little too long. project goal: taking ownership of morbidly intrusive thoughts through humor & play.

higgsboshark

The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism.

cheskamouse

This is a powerful positive message..

pluckyredhead

I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.

There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.

No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.

Knit a sock.

If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.

adhd-informative

This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.

hyperactivehedgehog

This is what “humans want to be productive” really means

We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators