Wendy y. Alas

I am a photographer living in Chicago. And this is personal, kind of.

[wendyalas]

The Internet...

used to be a cool and safe place. Maybe not entirely safe. Maybe not safe at all. It’s always been dangerous, addictive, distracting but more so today than ever.

Social media used to be better back in the day. Going back 20 years ago or so, you could actually make good connections and meet interesting cool people in forums and MySpace, even on Tumblr.

Then Facebook happened, followed by Twitter, then Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Everyone joined in. It seems like people cannot live without it now. Even our parents and grandparents have and cannot live without Facebook. 

I deleted my Facebook around spring/summer of 2020. Perhaps I found the arguments a bit overwhelming. It’s not that I don’t like confrontation, it’s just that I find debating with people who are set on their minds extremely discouraging. I found myself disliking people I used to like and feeling more depressed about the state of the world. I realized the internet was not a safe place to hide from people anymore, because everyone was home all the time, everyone was on the internet... all the time. 

I’m still on the internet all the time. I check my instagram daily. I go on twitter daily. I don’t always engage. Sometimes I just lurk or share funny memes as stories, but I stay away from debates, not because I’m afraid to stand up for my values, but because I find negativity overwhelming. I’m a vulnerable sponge and absorb feelings/vibes easily. I want to feel okay, so that I can function in my every day life.

Before the internet, I found reading to be my safe place. My hiding place. I am glad that it’s a place that it still exists for many. 

You may ask if I ever get FOMO? I thought I would before the pandemic, but haven’t since I left. I found that the real genuine friends, still reached out to me, still communicated via instagram, or text. The people that matter and that I matter to, will personally invite me via text if they want me to be there. 

It’s also nice to have that privacy and not knowing everything about other people. Yes, people still share their lives on instagram but I find it less overwhelming, I also follow people that I want to follow and not feel forced to engaged with family members, high school classmates that I have nothing in common with except disagreements. 

It’s been nice posting here even if it’s just a stream of consciousness journal entry.

[wendyalas]

Love Me, Maybe: The Neuroscience of Unpredictable Love » Brain World

The ups and downs of an unpredictable relationship — and, more so, an unpredictable partner — can be infuriating, irritating, and it pla

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

“There will come a day when you’ll be so grateful that you never gave up.”

— Unknown

[wendyalas]

I began to know my story then. Like everybody’s, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

—–

I don’t think grief is something they get over or get away from. In a little community like this it is around us and in us all the time, and we know it. We know that every night, war or no war, there are people lying awake grieving, and every morning there are people waking up to absences that never will be filled.

—–

And yet the comfort somehow gets passed around: a few words that are never forgotten, a note in the mail, a look, a touch, a pat, a hug, a kind of waiting with, a kind of standing by, to the end. Once in a while we hear it sung out in a hymn, when every throat seems suddenly widened with love and a common longing:

In the sweet by and by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

Wendell Berry

[wendyalas]

Early Sunday walks with this furry little monster. 🐶 #peluche #maltese #doggy #dogwalking (at West Town Chicago)

[wendyalas]

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. (at Marina City)

[whatisbeautybutamyth]

[wendyalas]

Cheers... #becausework. (at West Town, Chicago)

[wendyalas]

#authenticity #genuinelove #lovecreateslove

[wendyalas]

“my issue with what they consider beautiful is their concept of beauty centers around excluding people i find hair beautiful when a woman wears it like a garden on her skin that is the definition of beauty big hooked noses pointing upward to the sky like they’re rising to the occasion skin the color of earth my ancestors planted crops on to feed a lineage of women with thighs thick as tree trunks eyes like almonds deeply hooded with conviction the rivers of punjab flow through my bloodstream so don’t tell me my women aren’t as beautiful as the ones in your country.”

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

[wordsnquotes]

So listen to me when I say love isn’t something that we invented. It’s observable. Powerful. It has to mean something…Maybe it means something more - something we can’t yet understand. Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive….Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it.

Interstellar, Dir. Christopher Nolan (via thelovejournals)

[wendyalas]

#goodfriends = #goodlife (at West Town, Chicago)

[wendyalas]

my precious little pooch, @peluche_maltese. #malteseofinstagram #sleepydoggy #nofilter #windowlight #littlecookiedog

[wendyalas]

Look mom, I’m famous... at work. 😜 #dayinthelifeofwendyalas (at Chamberlain Group)

[wendyalas]

(359/365) A very Merry Christmas 🎄🎁 ⛄️ ❄️ with the Budas. (at Mason, Michigan)

[wendyalas]

(325/365) successful coconut milk pumpkin pie; made from scratch. 😋👌🏻#ibakedit #365days (at Chicago, Illinois)

[wendyalas]

(289/365) Hey Chicago, hey! #project365 #365daysofinstagram (at Chicago metropolitan area)