pangaeapanthalassa

[pangaeapanthalassa]

quit brainrot. unfollow trolls. read essays. go down rabbit holes. have a calendar. maintain a todo list. read old books. watch old movies. turn on dnd. walk with intent. eat without youtube. chew more. train without music. plan for 15 mins. execute. organise your desk. take something seriously. read ancient scripts. act fast. find bread. eat clean. journal. save a life. learn to code. read poetry. create art. stay composed. refine your speech. optimise for efficiency. act sincere. help people. be kind. stop doing things that waste your time. follow your intuition. craft reputation. learn persuasion. systemise your day (or don't). write. write. write. write more. iterate violently. leave your phone at home. walk to the grocery store. talk to strangers. feed the dogs. visit bookstores. look for 1800s novels. experience art. then love. sit with a monk and offer them lunch. don't talk shit about people. embody virtue. sit alone. do something with your life. what do you want to create? turn off your mind. play. play a sport. combat sports. notice fonts in trees. fall in love. notice patterns on a table. visualise it. talk to people with respect. don't hate. be loving. be real. become yourself. cherrypick your qualities. discard the useless. rejections aren't permanent. invite what aligns. accept what does not. read great people. be different. choose different. do great work. let it consume you. lose your mind. value your time. experience life.

[pangaeapanthalassa]

Growing, glowing up 💛

[pangaeapanthalassa]

fyi being organised and prepared doesn’t have to feel rigid. it doesn’t have to be about strict schedules, endless to-do lists, or forcing yourself into systems that drain you. i see real organisation (the kind that actually makes life better) as more like a ritual.

it’s laying out your clothes the night before, not because you have to, but because it makes the morning feel effortless. it’s keeping a beautiful notebook for ideas, so inspiration never slips away. it’s setting your space in a way that invites focus, flow, and ease.

rigidity creates stress. ritual creates readiness.

remember: the goal isn’t to control every moment (i think people misunderstand this when i post about it), it’s to design a life where you are prepared enough to move through it with grace.

[pangaeapanthalassa]

Ask Polly: Help, I’m The Loneliest Person In The World! – November 6, 2013

[pangaeapanthalassa]

an author i love just tweeted about how “big joy and small joy are the same” and how she was just as content the other night eating chocolate and cuddling her dog as she was on her Big Trip to new york and honestly. i think that’s it. this morning i was listening to an audiobook while baking shortbread in my joggers and i realised i really didn’t care what Big Things happened in my future as long as i could keep baking and reading at the weekend and maybe that is the kind of bar we have to set to guard ourselves against disappointment. just appreciate and cherish the mundane stuff and see everything else as a bonus.

[pangaeapanthalassa]

“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

[pangaeapanthalassa]

reading vincent van goghs letters and he keeps repeating the same thing.. that i may be of use in the world. he repeats it over and over, in questions, in musings, in desperation. how can i be of use in the world? (the most precious question!) how can i be of use in the world? (how can anyone?) reminds me of that mary oliver quote: to pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. if i were any more insightful i could say something profound here, but i think if we keep focused attention on the question, we may find a way to be of some good. like rilke meant. by loving the questions themselves, we may one day stumble upon the answer.

[pangaeapanthalassa]

“The rule is that “to become someone that you have never been before, you must do something that you have never done before.” This means that to develop a superior character, you must exert ever-higher levels of self-discipline and self-mastery on yourself. You must do the things that average people don’t like to do.”

— Brian Tracy  (via dr-you)

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It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Lightly, lightly— it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly.

aldous huxley

[pangaeapanthalassa]

if there’s anything i believe in these days it’s my own resilience. no matter how many setbacks i come across i am still actively dreaming the best version of myself into existence each and every day. i am relentless in pursuing what i want and i am patient enough to wait for my efforts to pay off. i’ll make it. i’ll always make it. 

[pangaeapanthalassa]

“I am, like everybody else, a product of my time and my culture. And I remember, there’s a really beautiful commencement address that Adrienne Rich gave in 1977 in which she said that an education is not something that you get but something that you claim. And I think that’s very much true of knowledge itself. The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them, why we skip forward even in a short video that reduces a 300-page book into a three-minute animation — even in that we skip forward — is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of claiming it. I mean, the true material of knowledge is meaning. And the meaningful is the opposite of the trivial. And the only thing that we should have gleaned by skimming and skipping forward is really trivia. And the only way to glean knowledge is contemplation. And the road to that is time. There’s nothing else. It’s just time.”

— Maria Popova

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Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours

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july’s reminders to self:

lift your legs above your sheets. see how the morning sun lights your toes. stretch, reach, float. do you feel the ache in your quads, the pull in the arches of your feet? the singing line down the front of your shin?

nothing smells better than a tomato plant in your garden.

‘where does the sun go when the sun goes?’ muses the rooftop when i lounge on my deck. ‘i always meet her again.’ ‘she is seeing it all,’ i reply. ‘she is seeing it all.’

you can call yourself whatever you like. creative painter academic artist liver dreamer lover writer storyteller— let the words trip from your tongue. taste their letters in your mouth. which is the sweetest?

put a coaster beneath your glass of iced coffee.

the single banana you received in your grocery order is a reminder that the world exists beyond you.

take a cool shower at nine, as the sun disappears. crawl into a bed with clean sheets. close your eyes as slowly as you can—open them. and again. disappear beneath warmcool clouds of rest-full sleep.

[pangaeapanthalassa]

“Seeking joy has been an active practice, because joy doesn’t come easily for me. I’m prone to long periods of fog, as you’ve called it, and if I don’t seek (and make) light, I would stay in it even longer, would possibly never emerge. I swear by keeping routines, which includes taking care of my body—eating enough, sleeping and waking at regular times, getting fresh air, that sort of thing. I also put limits on things that smother my joy; for me, this is primarily the internet, which provides endless messaging that I am not doing enough, am not good enough, and just generally steals my attention and energy, which I would prefer to use on things which nourish me. I believe in the power of creating small joys, instead of waiting for a big one to arrive miraculously in your life. I made a list of these joys so I can refer to it when I’m deeper in the fog, like a menu to order from. 100 joys. They’re simple, but effective—things like bubble baths, calling a friend, dancing, buying flowers, eating dark chocolate, a cup of tea. Some months, I have to challenge myself to meet a quota, when I’m feeling very down. It helps. Little step after little step. Little light after little light.”

— Leila Chatti, from an interview with Sneha Subramanian Kanta in Parentheses Journal, Issue 10

[pangaeapanthalassa]

in nineteen-forty by anna akhmatova

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“You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself. Think of something that you love to do for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.”

— Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love (via ramsesprashad)

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Nikki Giovanni, from “Adulthood II”