daisywords

[daisywords]

Feeling better about yourself will not solve all of your problems. sometimes you're going to have to become better*

*it's good that we've recognized that people's self perceptions can be skewed in unhelpful ways. imposter syndrome is real. advertising wants us to hate our bodies and otherwise feel inadequate so that we'll spend more money. etc etc etc

however

problems can only be solved by changing your self perception when the problem is stemming from your perception

Feeling better about yourself can help with issues like this:

body anxiety/hating your appearance

low confidence preventing you from trying things

self-hatred convincing you that you don't deserve things

lack of self respect keeping you in bad friendships/relationships

genuine self improvement can help with issues like this:

lack of organization making your life hectic

lack of motivation preventing you from accomplishing your goals

ruining friendships because you are being inconsiderate, mean, or rude

lack of attention span/frustration tolerance

self-centeredness preventing you from helping others

The key to all of this is being able to tell the difference between skewed negative self-perception and objective self-critique.

skewed negative self-perception can look like this

thinking you are inherently unworthy or less deserving than other people

thinking you are exceptionally ugly

thinking you are exceptionally harmful or incapable

objective self-critique can look like this:

noticing how your actions/tendencies harm others

noticing how your actions/tendencies harm yourself

noticing traits in other people that you wish to cultivate

Healthy self-critique exists more in the realm of observable actions and consequences. It steers away from blanket value judgements and making yourself the exception.

Of course it's important to notice and steer yourself away from skewed negative self-perception. (It's also hard to do constructive, objective self-critique when you're struggling with this.)

But, in the vein of "oh great, the worst person you know just learned therapy speak"–type issues, the worthy goal of maintaining a positive self image does not release you from the responsibility of trying to cultivate real virtues in yourself.

Also, the blanket answer to anyone expressing any desire to improve in any way should not be assuring them that they're perfect already and just need better self-esteem. like idk man I think it depends

[daisywords]

i don’t know how to explain to you people that no matter what a country’s government is like i do not and will not support the US indiscriminately bombing that country’s civilians and i don’t know why that’s a controversial take tbh

[daisywords]

[daisywords]

a nice side effect of tumblr being a breeding ground for posts that spread everywhere else on the internet is that I can send people screenshots of tumblr posts without them ever suspecting I'm a tumblr user myself

[daisywords]

Hello! My short story, The Archivist, has been published in the latest issue of Corner Bar Magazine. If you like dystopian futures and libraries OR you have a deep, unceasing fear in the pit of your stomach that A.I. is a rot on both society and the human soul, then this is the story for you! You can check it out at the link above :)

[daisywords]

Cindy Rizza (American, b. 1984, Waltham, MA, USA) - Cyclical, 2022, Paintings: Oil on Linen, Private Collection

[daisywords]

[daisywords]

the really crazy thing about cooking is that once you practice it enough (for all the gamers reading this: "grind enough exp") your threshold for wuat counts as a low effort / depression / I Dont Really Want To Cook meal rises steadily and you can feel yourself becoming the kind of person whose "chill dinner" takes 1h45 and involves three pans

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I don’t care about sourdough I’m so sorry

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my spouse and i disagree

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no outfit feels more main-character coded to me than the white dress + red sandals combo. I'm America's favorite princess. I'm a special little birthday girl. I've never done anything wrong ever in my life. unfortunately this is necessarily accompanied by the saw trap that is wearing a white dress

[daisywords]

anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

[daisywords]

I see more talk about what "body horror" isn't than what it is or anything else about it

and while there are some good points in this conversation (a disabled person existing is not body horror!) I think some aspects of this are ultimately reductive in the sense of talking about "what" instead of "how" and "why"

imo depending on how it's framed, the exact same physical element could fall under the body horror umbrella or not. If in the narrative it's playing on the inherent stressors and vulnerabilities of being embodied I think it could be

And some of the real-life vulnerabilities and stressors of being embodied manifest with things like injuries, disease, pregnancy, and disability. If you're playing around with and distorting that stuff to explore themes through a horror-flavored lens, then what else is that but body horror?

yeah like maybe that isn't body horror and it's just regular gore. maybe the curtains are just blue. idk man I think it depends.

[daisywords]

you talk to your mutuals via discord i talk to my mutuals in the tags of reblogs they may not ever even see. we are not the same

[daisywords]

being a person who cycles through food obsessions instead of craving variety is convenient in many ways. for example I can keep eating the same leftovers for multiple days without getting sick of them. I only have to try new recipes if I feel like cooking something new, not because I'm bored of everything in my repertoire. however. it does feel kind of comedic to be distraught that tomorrow I can't eat cornbread for breakfast for the third day in a row because I finished it off today (mm 2pm cornbread). like girl I promise you'll survive (before three weeks ago I had not made cornbread in like. years)

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"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!

[daisywords]

i think people who complain about paragraphs being too long should just read/write screenplays instead. some of us actually enjoy reading