#personal crusade

[kazifatagar]

Rafizi: Politics Is Just A Job

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli has refuted claims of being overly emotional in debates, stating his passion is mistaken for sentimentality. In an X post, the Pandan MP clarified that he remains detached, treating politics as a profession, not a personal crusade. He compared political roles to workplace transfers, emphasizing that personal milestones like his son’s death or…

Rafizi: Politics Is Just A Job

[chlscrsstt]

it will be slow going but i will make it to the top, i will make it for myself, i will build it with care, precision, ambition, guts, tears, and the help of my lovely friends

looking at other people’s lives today and re-imagining what a future of mine could be like

remembering all the places and people i have one wanted to be

cinematographer

art director of a travel/food magazine

interior designer

writer/free-spirit

there are no reasons i can’t do these things and be these people

[chlscrsstt]

• Sometimes I feel as though I could fit my interests into a small shoebox that someone could easily stash away and hide forever • At other times, I feel neck deep and drowning in a pool of things that I want to do or people I want to be • I struggle between having specific focuses and having a specific field. I am interested in the arts as an entity—in creativity. The fact that I want to write, dance, create in a variety of platforms, curate, teach, build, travel — is both exciting and entirely numbing. I tire just thinking about how best to tackle these dreams and ambitions. I’m exhausted thinking about the different persons I must become in order to accomplish it • A friend recently told me about how it’s “typical of Aquarians” to try fitting into situations no matter how comfortable or fitting it may actually be. I suppose I can see that angle but I don’t necessarily agree with it but it has always been a way I do things. I try it— I try all things. Even if they aren’t a part of my life forever, they become a part of my practice and how I do things. And when things don’t feel right, they just don’t and I leave it/move on. So this comment she made along with having a Pisces midheaven makes me worry about how long I may continue to be in this “searching” phase. I enjoy all that I do and I don’t feel right unless I’m working, making, thinking, and planning. • But sometimes • I dream about other lives. Today I dreamed about a single life where I pick up and move to San Fran and start my masters in curatorial studies and I eat ramen forever, sleep in a studio at school, and live a very selfish/me-focused life. • I get tired of having things and I get tired of carrying those things around with me. I want to UN-do so much of what it is that makes me who I am. • There is a lot that feels linear and things feel lackuster and boring most of the time. I keep trying these quiet ways of healing, of being. I keep referring to things about myself in the “well I normally do this but…” Nothing is normal though, right? And I am allowed to have been a morning person one year who could cook really great, cheap meals and live her life simply and now maybe I can’t be that person anymore. Maybe I can’t be the 5/6AM girl, maybe I can’t just throw a meal together anymore without planning, maybe i’m not a home cook anymore. • Maybe next year I’ll be that stay-at-home domestique and do nothing but work with the earth, myself, my home, and my pets. Maybe the year after I’ll start my PhD. Maybe the year later I’ll be single and drop it all to travel solo and have a nervous breakdown. We’re allowed to live many lives in this supposedly singular one, right? • Who am I now? Can old me meet the new me? Have we met?
 


[chlscrsstt]

dreaming of what it would look like as a stay-at-home domestique

hands deep in soil, planting herbs and foods with purpose for myself, my home, and my community

working on creating and building a home from scratch; napping with Finn in a hammock in the sun while lucy bathes in an open window

i keep returning to this concept of school and classes but what that would look like through the dimension of horticulture/agriculture/herbal medicine/homestead

are these feelings normal for summer seasons? or, rather, am i just craving change and a sense of slowness that would seemingly come from staying at home? would it benefit my art practice or harm it? what parts of me would unravel? what new parts would i find?

 i think mostly i’m in need of alone time to recharge and sort through some internal dialogs

practicing listening wholly and deeply to my intuition and to where/how i belong

[chlscrsstt]

practice—compassion; art; slowness; yoga; self-care and self-love; herbal medicine; listening

I think I’ve been doing this thing where I think that everything I do is “work” which makes everything I do feel like a chore and that the only true “down-time” are times when I’m doing absolutely nothing. While, yes, we are all a work-in-progress and yes a lot of “practicing” anything means that we are continuing to work on a thing or putting more energy into that place, it also brings up this added sense of responsibility.

I’m a list-maker and love to revolve around schedules and renewing these lists and schedules constantly but as I’ve taken a step back from constantly making lists. Lists help sometimes and they definitely create a visualization of priorities but it also builds up this sense of anxiety and impending doom in a way. Instead of waking up and being excited for the new day ahead, I wake up and immediately feel as though I have to get to work and start ticking off my daily to-do list. It’s been a few solid months without lists and without schedules and it’s pretty rough and free-form is not necessarily my style but it’s been teaching me valuable lessons about where my anxiety stems from more often than not. 

In May and June I’ve had a lot of art deadlines and having a to-do list and schedule has been super important for that. However, it was just a schedule for that ONE thing and not a schedule that included rearranging my entire life or all of the other things I’m balancing. By just focusing on deadlines for one thing, I was able to dedicate specific days/times to working on those without jeopardizing what I personally needed on the day-to-day.

As I’ve been writing grants and applying to mentorships and residencies, the word practice pops up time and time again. The word itself does not invoke the same harshness that work does. So making the shift to say that I’m going to be 

practicing piano

practicing tarot

practicing slowness by practicing self-care and self-love through exercise, walks, down time, reading, running, lifting weights, eating well, making meal plans

practicing awareness and listening by being intentional and careful in the words I speak or type to others and the things I think toward myself

practicing my art 

practicing kindness 

practicing waking earlier to enjoy longer days

I think this shift will help to bring a sense of ownership and power. I’m making the choice to dedicate my time and my energy in these places for personal betterment as opposed to ‘having to-do’ these things because I’ve been allowing the clock/days of the week to intimidate me. 

I have plenty of time to figure things out and I don’t have to break up my weekly into hours/minutes in order to do every single one of these on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe I spent an hour or two a week on piano and that’s better than not spending any time doing it or spending time rushing through it so that I can get to yoga, or making dinner, or taking care of the animals, or sending emails, etc etc. 

This is definitely a year of unfolding things about myself and how I normally carry structure. Over the past two weeks, instead of thinking that I’m spending/giving away my money all willy-nilly, I’ve been looking at what I’ve been receiving in return. More often than not, it’s abundance in some way. I’ve never had enough money to just “blow it on things” and it’s really just not in my nature. So instead of feeling bad for getting groceries, or going out to eat with Sean/friends, or enjoying a hot cup of coffee/glass of wine while I sit and write, I’m recognizing that I’m choosing to purchase these things in order to gain some kind of fulfillment and abundance in other ways.

Everything is a choice and nothing “just happens” to me. I am currently overweight because I’ve been choosing to eat out at new places with sean and not exercise but instead have been choosing to relax at home with the animals. By attempting to see these choices for what they are—CHOICES  (instead of seeing them as a “bad time period” or “bad choices”) I am allowing myself to move on and make other choices that are what’s best for me right now. I am choosing to work 7 days a week because I want to pay off my debts sooner. I am choosing to take a work/community break so that I can focus on myself and my practice. 

[chlscrsstt]

With the comments of certain professors mixed with a terrifying calendar staring you in the face marking down the seconds, minutes, days, and weeks until the end of the semester—I’m finding myself getting caught up in the things I haven’t done and not the things that I have.  I admit that I do this on the regular but it was never really much of an issue for me during school.  School was always cut and dry- things were due on some days.  Papers sometimes but mostly prints and other art projects.  With grad school being solely driven towards reading, researching, and writing I’m finding that it’s hard to distinguish between “getting things done” and getting one part of one thing done and moving onto another part of another thing that needs to be done.  

The spring semester of this program is the way that the fall semester should have been.  There’s structure, deadlines, more meetings, other side papers etc that works toward serving the thesis but may not be necessary.  So now in the spring semester when we have 50 pages due in 10 weeks, there are extra bullshit assignments that really serve no purpose other than bogging us down.  There are readings for every class, there are readings for our own assignments, and now I have readings for my internship as well as my teaching assistantship.  

I admit that I may have taken too much on in the spring term BUT I think that it’s working to my benefit.  I have things to do that don’t necessarily involve my thesis 100% of the time which is the thing that was lacking.  At PCAD we had other classes to distract us just for a little bit and feed our brain and creativity in a different light but with this program its just thesis reading/writing 110% of the time.  What I’m forgetting is that this semester I am also trying to nurture myself in a way that I did not last semester.  See below:

Fall Semester:

Binge watched several television shows

Went to the hospital several times, visited at least 6 different doctors, went under for an endoscopy to find out that nothing was physically wrong with me but I couldn’t eat for 2-3 months

Read some class readings, read some online info for thesis, read 2 books closely for thesis

Went out drinking a bunch for the first month

Made good friends with Madi aka we hung out after school nearly every day

Went to TBA festival, lit crawl, and a few other shows

Did all 23 pages, critiques, distillations, and bibliography in the last week of school

Spring Semester:

Started internship at a gallery

Contacted Urban Gleaners for a volunteer opportunity

Started teaching assistantship

Gave presentation to a senior class for 45 minutes on a Pecha Kucha

Submitted work to 11 different galleries/shows, got into 2, waiting on a contact from another, and submitting a final piece for magazine publishing in a week

Yoga EVERY DAMN DAY (minus 4 days where I was sick) since December 27th, can now do a headstand near the wall, down to 157 lbs

Eating nearly vegan

Have gone out with new people 3 times

Sean and I have been spending more quality time together—making our home cozier

Treated him like a king for his birthday week

Calling Dad nearly every day to see how he’s doing

Actually keeping in contact with Sean’s family more than I did last semester

Keeping in touch with Annie about the gallery plans for the fall

Self-care in general - bath, cleaning the house, dancing around like a crazy, going for a walk in the sun, lounging with Lucy

I’ve read SO many more sources and it’s only week 5 and I have 2 1/2 pages of new writing and have edited my 20 page paper several times (still needs more edits), and I’m restructuring my tentative outline

I’ve got myself on a schedule for writing/reading and have been having studying dates with myself either at the school, at Sean’s job over a beer/dinner, or at home in the bath/kitchen table

Did I mention I’m actually cooking real food?

I need to give myself a break.  Yes, I need to stop watching Gilmore Girls so often but I’m doing SO much better than last semester. I can do this.  I just need to focus on all that I AM doing and remember to continue to make more time for school but not to drain myself because that’s not beneficial to anyone now, is it?

[chlscrsstt]

When I was younger I thought that my need / want to be the center of knowledge and love and understanding was my maternal instinct kicking in. That my want to be a source of trusting, comfort, and understanding equated to my want to be a mother. But I have never had an interest in children either physically or mentally or emotionally and I'm sure that may change but I don't expect it to and I'm lucky that my partner doesn't have interest in children either. I've worked most of my life to be as open minded as possible and to be as free of unnecessary judgment as humanly possible(because I believe it's human nature to judge out of our observations and opinions but it doesn't have to be negative and it can be open to change). Recently I've noticed I'm finally getting recognition for being honest and real and trustworthy. I'm getting more phone calls or texts or messages from people reaching out for help or just someone to talk with and it's a really rewarding feeling especially when that offer is returned and not taken advantage of.

[chlscrsstt]

•The color pink •Throwing things away at a quicker pace than ever before •Detachment •You'll wake up one day and see what's happened, or maybe you won't •Blue water •Storms that shake you •Plans •Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning •Old book/new book smell •Social things and new friendships •Lucy on a leash •Weddings and new beginnings •"Fake it til you make it" •"Take of anything other than people" •Confidence and a stronger voice