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[bridgettelizabeth]

"ai is making it so everyone can make art" Everyone can make art dipshit it came free with your fucking humanity

[bridgettelizabeth]

Acrobat dancer, circus performer Vera Christy Original Contact Photo, 1920s. | src David Pollack Vintage Posters

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[bridgettelizabeth]

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

Mary Oliver died a year ago today, having given her gift both power and time. Drink in her abiding wisdom on creativity and life. (via explore-blog)

[bridgettelizabeth]

Elif Batuman on feeling like everyone around you seeming so much more formed and opinionate.

[bridgettelizabeth]

“What is it that the child has to teach?

The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not.

And the child is right.”

— Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

[bridgettelizabeth]

Self-Discipline Isn’t Always the Answer

So I wasn’t really taught to brush my teeth every day as a kid. So I didn’t. I got to be an adult and realized “hmm teeth are expensive I need to start brushing them” and brushing my teeth twice a day has been on my actual to do list every single day of my college career. It’s a habit I needed to build.

Have I successfully done it? Absolutely not. I’m pretty good about doing it at least once a day, but some days it just doesn’t happen. It’s not that I forget usually, I just had some aversion I couldn’t figure out, until last week.

I’m at the grocery store, in the toothpaste aisle with my roommate, and I complain about how much I hate mint. I FUCKING HATE THE TASTE OF MINT. The taste and the smell, any kind of minty thing in any form, I HATE IT. But literally every “adult” toothpaste in the aisle was some type of minty disgusting nonsense. And my roommate was like “you know you could like get kids’ toothpaste? You like bubblegum right?”

And y’all, it was like the clouds parted. I got some strawberry bubblegum kids’ toothpaste. I brushed my teeth with it and it was a whole new experience. I have successfully brushed twice a day every day since, because the mental block I had towards it is gone! 

I thought my lack of brushing was just a moral failing on my part; I was too lazy, too undisciplined, to build a good habit. But really? I just hate the taste of mint so much I didn’t want to brush my teeth.

This made me realize that when presented with a change you want to make, a habit you want to build, if you’re encountering resistance in yourself, you should lean into that resistance and really investigate what’s causing it, then work on accommodating that. 

Say you hate washing dishes so they pile up and then you’re overwhelmed by how many you have to do. Why do you hate it? Deep down, what about it do you dislike? Is touching wet food super gross for you? Try thick rubber gloves while you’re washing. Does the sound of dishing clanking together grate your nerves? Do them with headphones in and turned up loud. Do you hate the smell? Light some candles, spray some air freshener. 

Do these things instead of gritting your teeth and forcing yourself, then ultimately failing and getting discouraged by your “lack of self-discipline”

TL;DR: When a task is consistently hard for you, relying on self-discipline, forcing yourself, and gritting through doesn’t always work. Lean in and listen to your discomfort, and find what makes the task hard, then try to accommodate that. Also, mint toothpaste is gross.

[bridgettelizabeth]

“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.”

— Julien Smith, The Flinch (via wnq-anonymous)

[bridgettelizabeth]

“Start to cultivate self-discipline. Become a person who can make a decision and carry it out. Set yourself a task and follow through with it. It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular. I’ve advised people to just take a walk around the block every evening after dinner. Literally, just walk once around the block each night. Do that simple thing for one month and you’ll have power. Power you can use to take the next step. But no, most people think that’s too simple. That’s not worthy of their great spiritual potential. They want to get right into the heavy work and do something big. The result is that they end up doing nothing.”

— David Gold, After the Absolute: The Inner Teachings of Richard Rose

[bridgettelizabeth]

I think one thing that a lot of Addams Family fans forget is that for the family, goth wasn’t about being gloomy and sad or bitter and cynical at all. Morticia was always gazing out at rainy days and declaring, “how beautiful a day it is!” or saying that “black is so much more cheerful!” because they found joy in their dark aesthetic. Wednesday was curious and sharp-minded and very clearly exercised and expressed her personal sense of power and self through things like her interest in weaponry and true crime - in the original series and comics, she was always dancing and playing with her brother. Edgy Wednesday didn’t happen until the 90s reboot, and well, it was the 90s. Gloomy grunge and artful sadness were in at the time. And let’s not even talk about Gomez, who was so full of life and love for his family that he’d often break into song or dip Morticia in the kitchen for an old-fashioned kiss. The Addams worked so well because they were healthy, happy, loving and goth. They were a perfect example of indulging in an aesthetic without letting it become toxic or consuming their lives.

[bridgettelizabeth]

Hot take everyone needs at least one creative hobby to accompany their consumptive ones. I don’t mean just art and writing I mean literally anything where you create something. Embroidery, cooking, knitting, gardening, wood whittling, trap making, needle felting, instrument playing, bug raising, fandom analysis writing, ANYTHING where you do work and can hold the fruits of your labor in you hands. Anything where you MAKE something else.

Something that isn’t a career choice. Something you don’t have to be good at. As long as it brings you joy.

Please get hobbies, they enrich your life.

[bridgettelizabeth]

god i’m not even through one episode of paranormal home inspectors and it rules, this lady thought she was being haunted by the wails of the restless dead but she was just listening to raccoons fuck in her attic

[bridgettelizabeth]

“Except you can’t judge a book by its cover. Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. A girl or a monster or both. Not everyone in a story gets a happy ending. Not everyone who reads a story feels the same way about how it ends. And if you go back to the beginning and read it again, you may discover it isn’t the same story you thought you’d read. Stories shift their shape.”

— Kelly Link, “Pretty Monsters”

[bridgettelizabeth]

What if everything turns out for the best? What if it turns out way better than you could have ever imagined?

[bridgettelizabeth]

A lot of people are really scared and angry because of the results of the newest climate change reports — as they should be. But I’m already seeing a lot of posts and news reports like “HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING” and bizarrely enough, the answers are never like “weed out climate change deniers from your government, impose strict new rules for the corporations that are  creating most of the emissions, pour government resources into alternate forms of fuel, etc.” It’s always like “carpool to work!”

Look. Of course you should be working to reduce waste in your own life. But let’s not fucking pretend that consumers are the ones who made this mess. You know what another recent study found? Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. If the rest of us stopped ALL WASTE and fucking ascended to a higher plane of existence that no longer requires consumption of any kind, the world would still be absolutely fucked if those 100 companies keep on as they do.

I hate this personal responsibility model when it comes to conservation. By ignoring the actual source of the problem and focusing on individuals instead, guess who gets targeted? The absolute most vulnerable individuals on the planet. When people advocate personal responsibility, somehow they’re never talking about billionaires and their private jets. They’re creating straw bans that will make life more dangerous for people with disabilities. They’re shaming women for using disposable menstrual products. They’re criticizing the poor and destitute for using “wasteful” products because they’re all they can afford. They’re making vaguely eugenic statements about getting people in “third world countries” to stop ~breeding~ so much. It’s monstrous.

Stop shaming consumers for the sins of corporations and their powerful investors. Stop placing the blame at the feet of the people who already have the hardest time getting through life. Do something, and by “do something” I mean buy a reusable coffee cup on the way to fucking vote. Go to a protest. Call a representative. Demand accountability from the people who got us into this mess.

[bridgettelizabeth]

“Be Still...”

Artist and photographer: Emma Hack. Model: Bridgett Cains. Keeping up my annual tradition of spending a day during winter nude and covered in paint on the studio floor. The last time I was painted I’d just found out I was pregnant. This time I had my six-month-old daughter and my mum with me. At eleven hours it was by far our shortest day of painting and shooting, but as a breastfeeding mum it was definitely my most complicated and difficult paint yet.

[bridgettelizabeth]

The only time I’m straight is in a handstand 😉👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

[bridgettelizabeth]

hey folx, real quick regarding Pride season:

if y'all see that your local libraries and museums are doing pride displays and events, PLEASE INTERACT WITH THE MATERIALS AND/OR ATTEND THEM! even if its just a pretty arrangement of lgbt books, borrow the materials amd make comments about how much you like them.

libraries in particular take a lot of heat for showcasing lgbt stuff, but having supporting statistics in hand to defend ourselves helps to keep the directors from backing down when confronted by conservative blowhards. but we only get those statistics if you’re actually there supporting us. my system dropped our Storytime with a Drag Queen events because of this.

please boost this, and as always, support your local queer librarians!