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[wordsnquotes]

What is it that brings on these moods of yours? Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive.

Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (via wordsnquotes)

[theartofgooglebooks]

Circulation slip with checkouts between 1916 and 1952. 

From the back matter of Marie-Claire by Marguerite Audoux (1911). Original from the University of California. Digitized November 13, 2007.

[gifbro]

[4gifs]

Aww yiss. [video]

[tastefullyoffensive]

“Feels good, it does.”

[cutsycats]

When food is ready

[catsdogsgifs]

More GIFs http://catsdogsblog.com/

[thesewordshavenonames]

Cat gifs are the salvation of humanity.

[thesewordshavenonames]

e e cummings

[tinyd0tsonanendlesstimeline]

And another one..

[personalfans-deactivated2017053]

[thesewordshavenonames]

What

[tamthewriter]

I’m an unabashed evangelist for pursuit of dreams. If you tell me that you love X thing and you ask me, after this year where I spent all my money, and worried a lot about my health, and felt bad about my skill level, if you should quit your job to pursue it I will say, “Yes you should.”

I would say, do it with care and planning. I would say, don’t expect to be successful right away (but I hope you are). I would say, treat it like starting a small business. Have the skills, know the profession, and be ready to put in a lot of time. I would say, expect to have to start over a couple times.

I would also say this: If you go after whatever it is you’ve been wanting to do your whole life, it might be helpful for you to define failure and success. I say this because when you’re in the weeds it’s nice to have a landmark on either side of you, so you can see your progress.

For me, success is being able to pay my bills by telling stories. I mean, my God. Who gets to do that? What a privilege. 

As for failure, that’s me choosing to give up. If I ever say, “I could do all this work but I don’t really want to any more”, that’s me choosing to give up. When I get tired, when I get down, when I look at everything and it’s stupid and I’m the stupidest of all, I think about that. It helps change the way I’m thinking from, I don’t wanna or oh God, I can’t into How’m I gonna? which is helpful.

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned this year has been that you have to choose to be a writer, and then you keep making that choice over and over again. It means turning down job offers, and it means showing up to do the edit that make you feel small and stupid and ashamed. It means finishing what you start writing, and doing your best, then sending it out to a publisher warts and all. It means hustling for the money you’re owed. You choose to be a writer, then you have to keep choosing. That’s why failure is, for me, choosing to give up. When I stop choosing to be at my desk at 8 am success becomes impossible, and it was already unlikely anyway. I might as well save myself the stress.

Incidentally, I’m not saying that if I had to go back to working full time that would be a failure, or that not writing every day would be a failure. Making money to survive, or being too stressed or worried, or spending your writing time helping loved ones is a perfectly reasonable thing and not a failing at all. For me, choosing not to write means deciding to avoid writing because it’s hard or uncomfortable.

It is always easier to do something else, and as much as I enjoy writing, it’s also work. I think the best analogy for writing I ever read was when Haruki Murakami paralleled writing and running. I think it’s a great way to look at writing. 

Some people run a few marathons every year. Some people train for months or years to run one marathon. Some people will never run a marathon, but they like running the 10k. Some people just run for fun. Some remember to take a run around the park in once in a while.

For some people, running is easy, and for other people running is hard, or even impossible. Some people grow into it and some grow out of it. But everyone who runs has to decide to put on their shoes and go outside, even if their knees hurt, or they don’t really have the time, or they haven’t run for years. To be a runner, you have to keep making the decision to run.

That’s what I mean by choosing. If you tell me that you are going to choose to be a writer, I would say, Good luck, and remember to keep choosing it.

[thesewordshavenonames]

Truth. Everyone who is passionate about writing, or any creative pursuit, really, should read this.

[eponis]

Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to ask before giving up

Are you hydrated?  If not, have a glass of water.

Have you eaten in the past three hours?  If not, get some food — something with protein, not just simple carbs.  Perhaps some nuts or hummus?

Have you showered in the past day?  If not, take a shower right now.

If daytime: are you dressed?  If not, put on clean clothes that aren’t pajamas.  Give yourself permission to wear something special, whether it’s a funny t-shirt or a pretty dress.

If nighttime: are you sleepy and fatigued but resisting going to sleep?  Put on pajamas, make yourself cozy in bed with a teddy bear and the sound of falling rain, and close your eyes for fifteen minutes — no electronic screens allowed.  If you’re still awake after that, you can get up again; no pressure.

Have you stretched your legs in the past day?  If not, do so right now.  If you don’t have the spoons for a run or trip to the gym, just walk around the block, then keep walking as long as you please.  If the weather’s crap, drive to a big box store (e.g. Target) and go on a brisk walk through the aisles you normally skip.

Have you said something nice to someone in the past day?  Do so, whether online or in person.  Make it genuine; wait until you see something really wonderful about someone, and tell them about it.

Have you moved your body to music in the past day?  If not, do so — jog for the length of an EDM song at your favorite BPM, or just dance around the room for the length of an upbeat song.

Have you cuddled a living being in the past two days?  If not, do so.  Don’t be afraid to ask for hugs from friends or friends’ pets.  Most of them will enjoy the cuddles too; you’re not imposing on them.

Do you feel ineffective?  Pause right now and get something small completed, whether it’s responding to an e-mail, loading up the dishwasher, or packing your gym bag for your next trip.  Good job!

Do you feel unattractive?  Take a goddamn selfie.  Your friends will remind you how great you look, and you’ll fight society’s restrictions on what beauty can look like.

Do you feel paralyzed by indecision?  Give yourself ten minutes to sit back and figure out a game plan for the day.  If a particular decision or problem is still being a roadblock, simply set it aside for now, and pick something else that seems doable.  Right now, the important part is to break through that stasis, even if it means doing something trivial.

Have you seen a therapist in the past few days?  If not, hang on until your next therapy visit and talk through things then.

Have you been over-exerting yourself lately — physically, emotionally, socially, or intellectually?  That can take a toll that lingers for days. Give yourself a break in that area, whether it’s physical rest, taking time alone, or relaxing with some silly entertainment.

Have you changed any of your medications in the past couple of weeks, including skipped doses or a change in generic prescription brand?  That may be screwing with your head.  Give things a few days, then talk to your doctor if it doesn’t settle down.

Have you waited a week?  Sometimes our perception of life is skewed, and we can’t even tell that we’re not thinking clearly, and there’s no obvious external cause.  It happens.  Keep yourself going for a full week, whatever it takes, and see if you still feel the same way then.

You’ve made it this far, and you will make it through.  You are stronger than you think.

[thesewordshavenonames]

My life right now. Too many knives and forks!

[wordsnquotes]

Time flows in a strange way on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (via wordsnquotes)

[wordsnquotes]

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.

Edgar Allan Poe  (via wordsnquotes)

[wordsnquotes]

gloaming

(noun) Defined as twilight and dusk, gloaming symbolizes the day’s end, the glittery, transient echo when time and nature meet. Author Joan Didon reminds us of the ephemeral nature of dusk in her book, Blue Nights. She writes:

“The French called this time of day ‘l’heure bleue.’ To the English it was ‘the gloaming.’ The very word ‘gloaming’ reverberates, echoes—the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows.”

(via wordsnquotes)

[apocalypse-polakiewicz]

Killian Eng / DW Design

[poetictouch]

T. S. Eliot reads his poem Preludes

Preludes by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

I

The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed, You lay upon your back, and waited; You dozed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your soul was constituted; They flickered against the ceiling. And when all the world came back And the light crept up between the shutters, And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, You had such a vision of the street As the street hardly understands; Sitting along the bed’s edge, where You curled the papers from your hair, Or clasped the yellow soles of feet In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o’clock And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

[havisham]

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest. (via tamthewriter)