How Excited Are You For Adult Summer Break?

a) I’m gonna tan all day and have sex all night!

b) If I go north will it get colder?

c) The gym has more AC than my apartment. LESSER OF TWO EVILS.

d) How do you cook things without making any heat? Raw diet?

Crying Can Be Easy

A few months ago I cried in front of a guy. It was after I learned how to cry properly so I did it. I just let the tears fall down my face. I didn’t will them not to come and end up with a horrible headache, I just allowed them to be. 

He saw them and asked if he could wipe them away. 

No. They’re mine. I put them there.

I’m sure that at the time I just didn’t want to be touched but the words fell out. And saying it, I felt it, I took another step towards being unembarrassed about being a person who cries sometimes.

He said it was the saddest and most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.

Which I suppose was a nice byproduct.

It happened again tonight, I cried in front of someone. In public, on a train. I didn’t wipe any of it away, I just looked straight forward and relaxed the muscles in my face and let tears come out of my eyes.

I didn’t even really notice how it felt in my eyes. I was distracted by the way it felt on my cheeks. Like some sort of upended water torture, relaxing instead of… torture. A tear tracking it’s way from my eye to my lip, coaxing me to form words. A tiny droplet, my eye telling me to open up my mouth and do something about the problem.

I couldn’t help but think of that line from Assassins. 

I did it so I’d know where I was coming from. So I’d have some place to come from, some place to go.

I left the little salty track as a reminder of where the feeling had come from and where I had to go.

Stop The World, I Want Off

Last night I went out with the cast.

Sort of.

I left the theater with the cast.

Walked to the restaurant with the cast.

Did a lap at the restaurant, decided I didn’t want to be trapped behind a table and walked right back out.

Don’t settle. don’t finish crappy books. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant. If you’re not on the right path, get off it.

– CHRIS BROGAN [x]

2017 Survival Guide

Watch tv shows with great soundtracks

Write postcards to reps and friends

Make beautiful things

Take work you like

Write a long letter to your shrink

Buy good-smelling dry shampoo

That’s Okay. Breathe.

It’s a new world out there.

A world where I spend a lot of time writing post cards to my senators, listening to political podcasts, and getting pretty depressed.

I used to feel like paying attention to politics was a hobby. Listening to Rachel Maddow an hour a day, checking in on what the white house has been up to.

Now it feels like it’s grown out of what I can handle. And now that it’s become a depressing day job I can’t handle additional heaps of upset. A few weeks ago I was given Colson Whitehead’s, The Underground Railroad. I’ve had to put it down. Now when I read something that isn’t politics it has to be light and fluffy. Which is unfortunate because that’s not really my style.

So it turns out that my self-care is much more about knitting than reading. In fact much more knitting than I anticipated it ever would be.

I’m finding that I crave it all of a sudden. I spend hours looking at patterns and yarns. Sorting through my yarn stash for what can go together, looking up new techniques.

And when I can’t scratch that itch, I get antsy. I’m a grumpy grinch.

When Will It End

The thing that’s scary about “adulting” is noticing that this is it. This is the whole world. This is traveling and paying bills.

This is what being marriageable is. And friendship is.

And it’s not bad.

But it sort of… maybe isn’t all that you thought life could be.

http://lasocialista.tumblr.com/post/151030786382

And it’s not like you get much better at it. It just keeps happening. You can get better at anticipating it, you can get better at not minding it. But the only thing that really helps is allowing yourself to be amazed and impressed by it.

You’re Good Enough Just As You Are

I went to a yoga class yesterday. And the teacher kept telling us: You are enough. You are good at yoga. You are good enough.

Every single time she said it tears came to my eyes.

I felt completely ridiculous.

And yet it felt so good.

The other wonderful thing she said was that you’re allowed to be uneven. You’re allowed to feel strong in some places and unsure in others. You’re allowed to push yourself one day and treat yourself the next. Notice how the same pose can feel different on your two sides.

We will never be the same again.

But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.

– Welcome to Night Vale, Episode 75 – “Through the Narrow Place” [x]