Sentience

Lead me down the labyrinth of your true, spectacular self (Beau Taplin; Bloom)

[wildsentience]

Our focus might seem narrow but we find joy in obsessing over the details.

Celine Eriksen, founder of New York denim brand, Olga Basha. In Monocole magazine no. 187

[wildsentience]

But marriage is vast and mysterious and private. You could not scientifically compare two marriages for all of the variance of factors, most particularly what two specific people can tolerate.

Fleishman is in trouble p. 37

[wildsentience]

She was grateful he was bathing the boy, though during said bath he had asked that she put the boy's towel in the dryer to warm it, that she bring in a piece of toast for the boy to eat, that she fetch the boy's pajamas from his room, all as the man sat on the closed lid of the toilet, next to the tub, reading something on his phone. Sure, she would do these things, even though all week she had done them herself, without even the option of help, and wouldn't it seem petty to point this out?

Nightbitch p. 54

[wildsentience]

So she actively resisted making friends in a mom context and objected to the sort of clapping and cooing that went on in the library room, the floor play that would be mandatory, the group peekaboos and collective itsy-bitsy-spidering, the happiness and positivity that would also be mandatory. It was a veritable embrace of All Things Mommy, and the mother certainly did not want to embrace anything of the sort: she was indeed a mother, but she wasn't that kind of mother, the sort that built her entire life and being around her child, who filled her days with baby groups and baby activities and fully submerged herself in the mommy current, moving through her days and weeks according to library schedules and civic events, texting about splash pads and jungle gyms, sharing warnings about ticks, about pesticides on fruits and vegeta bles. But there they were. She saw them through the windows framing the door. Those mommies. Those happy mommies.

Nightbitch p. 34

[wildsentience]

We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.

The Push by Ashley Audrain

[wildsentience]

[wildsentience]

But doing something you love on a schedule you can’t control can feel the same as doing something you hate.

P. 85 Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

[wildsentience]

The most impressive people are packed full of horrendous ideas that are often acted upon.

P. 78 Psychology of money

[wildsentience]

You need short term paranoia to keep you alive long enough to exploit long term optimism.

P. 66 Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel

[wildsentience]

[wildsentience]

As if we could ever properly articulate what it means to breathe in the particular scent of your child, to listen as they laugh in their sleep, to feel the guilt of wanting them to leave us alone even as we yearn for them to never leave us at all.

‘How we love’ by Clementine Ford

[wildsentience]

It was a joke I had once laughed at, until it stopped being funny, the way so many things do when love walks out and bitterness takes its place.

They say it takes roughly two years to settle into a new city. Learning the rhythms of that new place, making new friends, finding the best places to eat and where to stroll on a Sunday in order to feel all the possibilities of the world.

- how we love, clementine ford

[wildsentience]

An interior life of dreams and wishes.

- ‘how we love’, clementine ford

[wildsentience]

[wildsentience]

You can’t see the road ahead, and so all you feel is the loss of the road already travelled.

P. 170 - the motherhood

[wildsentience]

Fake freedom puts us on the treadmill toward chasing more, whereas real freedom is the conscious decision to live with less.

Fake freedom is addictive: no matter how much you have, you always feel as though it's not enough. Real freedom is repetitive, predictable, and sometimes dull.

Fake freedom has diminishing returns: it requires greater and greater amounts of energy to achieve the same joy and meaning. Real freedom has increasing returns: it requires less and less energy to achieve the same joy and meaning.

Fake freedom is seeing the world as an endless series of transactions and bargains which you feel you're winning. Real freedom is seeing the world unconditionally, with the only victory being over your own desires.

Ultimately, the over abundance of diversion and the fake freedom it produces limits our ability to experience real freedom. The more options we have, the more variety before us, the more difficult it becomes to choose, sacrifice and focus. And we are seeing this conundrum play out across our culture today.

P.209 ‘Everything is F*cked’ by Mark Manson

[wildsentience]

When we get flooded by diversions, a few things happen.

…The second thing that happens is that we become prone to a series of low-level addictive behaviors- compulsively checking our phone, our email, our Instagram; compulsively finishing Netflix series we don't like; sharing outrage-inducing articles we haven't read; accepting invitations to parties and events we don't enjoy; traveling not because we want to but because we want to be able to say we went. Compulsive behavior aimed at experiencing more stuff is not freedom--again, it's kind of the opposite.

P. 205