♡

Energetic being ˚˖𓍢ִ 𓇢𓆸

[deviika]

—Yiwei Chai, The Jacaranda Years

[mouseshouses]

Leaf fall!

[expensiveity]

i can’t stress how important it is to know who you are as a person because people will literally try to project their insecurities + preconceived notions onto you.

[soundcarvings]

“That isn’t who I want to be so I will simply not become it” are words I repeat to myself often these days.

[matineaux-deactivated20260222]

kind of weird how parts of your soul are left in various locations without any warning… like yes i’m always at the top of that hill, sitting at the bus stop, in the cool light of the Japanese restaurant, standing at the pier etc etc

[sawasawako]

anyway… if anyone is looking to improve their reading & writing skills, i highly recommend this article by celine nguyen, which analyses the opening paragraphs of good essays to understand how and why they work. focuses on nonfiction but could apply generally i think

[gatheringbones]

[“Reading and re-reading the same passage ten times, the reader gives up on the book. They keep finding the text interrupted by their own thoughts. They read to access their own experience, to recall their past, consider their relationships or establish their own views more firmly. They are unable to read others without primarily reading themselves. They drop the book into their lap and go back to their phone.

Meanwhile, across town, a person is listening to music while they go about the business of clearing up their flat, ordering something from the internet and arranging a birthday drink with a group of friends. Multiple distractions need their attention and the music is an aide to staying focused on these other things. They listen to a playlist organised by an algorithm and only notice what’s playing when they realise they don’t like a song and have to skip it. Later, they work out in their bedroom to an upbeat gym playlist, and then they spend the evening studying at the kitchen table to a generic piano playlist. Any composer, any year, any player. Just select chill piano for concentration. Music for mood. Everything’s yours. Take what you want. Get what you can.

In an upstairs classroom a student is learning to read without their creative energies roused, to better prepare them for life in the workplace; they are taught not to respond energetically to text but instead to remain distant, to take from rather than be a part of the experience. They annotate, discuss, question, abstract the meaning in order to better get a sense of the context.

The tendencies of our time are stamped so violently upon us, they emerge in our actions unbidden. When we are fixated on what we can get from an exchange, or how we can benefit, instead of considering what we can offer, we are being exploitative. This fixation can be so intrinsic, we imagine ourselves innocent of it.

Unintentional exploitation is exploitation, none the less. A sign of the times: our consumptive, atomised lives are framed by the proud narrative that civilisation evolved from an aggressive instinct; our kill-or-be-killed mentality got us here, from cave-dwellers to sky-scrapers. Man the hunter. Man the war-maker. Man the coloniser. Man the democratic consumer. Competition is natural. Competition breeds progress.

But is human nature separatism, tribalism and passionate distrust of the ‘other’? Or is it co-operation, recognition and, provided basic needs are met, a live-and-let-live attitude to all? What’s your own nature? How do you know? Is it what you tell yourself it is, or is it better observed in the things you find yourself doing that you wish you hadn’t done? What is the nature of the people you share your life with? How closely do you even notice your own behaviour? Not your own feelings, but your own actions? How closely do you notice the behaviour of others?”]

Kae Tempest, On Connection

[stillgotscars]

Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath wr. c. February 1953

[anxeious]

[myplaylist153]

bag tour!!! ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜

[weltenwellen]

Natalie Díaz, from "American Arithmetic", Postcolonial Love Poem

[theglowsociety]

Becoming More Than a Museum of Yourself

It’s easy to fall into the trap of curating your life as if you’re a museum of past accomplishments, experiences, and identities. You collect memories like artifacts, displaying them proudly while subconsciously freezing yourself in time. But life isn’t meant to be a still exhibit—it’s a living, breathing experience that demands movement, growth, and renewal.

You are more than what you’ve done or where you’ve been. You are also who you’re becoming. The world doesn’t need you to preserve yourself in perfection—it needs you to show up, messy and evolving, fully alive in this moment. To do that, you must remember to breathe. Not just physically, but intentionally.

Breathe in possibility, courage, and the unknown. Let yourself be open to change, to ideas you’ve never considered, to opportunities you can’t yet see. Breathe out fear, stagnation, and the weight of needing to “be” a certain way. Life isn’t about being complete—it’s about being in motion.

When you stop living as a museum of yourself, you stop clinging to what no longer serves you. You give yourself permission to reinvent, rediscover, and reimagine who you are. You let the winds of the present fill your sails instead of being anchored by the past.

You’re not here to be admired like a relic behind glass. You’re here to breathe, to move, to evolve. So step out of the museum. Feel the pulse of life. Become more, again and again.

[myplaylist153]

Sad Girl Days Are Over - @/Heaven Sent Honey, one of my favorite creators on youtube

[shisasan]

Virginia Woolf, The Waves originally published: 1931

[myplaylist153]

jan 27: a quiet sun-drenched afternoon spent picking strawberries with my friend

𓇢𓆸

[pradadada6]

[legrandcirque]

Clarence Hudson White, The Watcher, 1905.

[luulapants]

25 ways to be a little more punk in 2025

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive

Think about wealthflow - there are a thousand little mechanisms that corporations and billionaires use to capture wealth from the lower class: fees for transactions, interest, vendor platforms, subscriptions, and more. Start thinking about where your money goes, how and where it's getting captured and removed from our class, and where you have the ability to cut off the flow and pass cash directly to your fellow working class people