studying-66 - Tumblr blog

[studying-66]

Florist, 1986. From the Budapest municipal photography company archive.

[studying-66]

sometimes i think about how there has always been this dream version of me in my head who knows how to play the piano and can sing in key and charts stars by herself (and w her loved ones too) and reads so many books and studies diligently every day and is top of every academic pursuit and has all these skill-based creative outlets she nourishes constantly and does not have to compromise any of them for the other bc she knows how to budget her time and is not afraid of failure and does not let petty distractions like phone time get in her way. and i'm like oh. i want that really bad. like that truly eclipses everything else in my life

[studying-66]

Safia Elhillo, from Spring

[studying-66]

[studying-66]

Eli McMullen - Slowing the Night, 2024 - Acrylic and gouache on panel

[studying-66]

kirsten sims / fernando pessoa

[studying-66]

Louise Glück, Poems 1962-2012 / Cynthia Ozick / Adonis, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, from ‘Celebrating Childhood’, Selected Poems / Gregory Orr, from “Origin of the Marble Forest” / Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. by. C.F. MacIntyre, Sonnets to Orpheus / John Boyne, The Absolutist

[studying-66]

In a dream, are all the characters really you?

[studying-66]

Trying to remember the last time I played hide and seek. The last time I said hi to everyone on the street or saw the girls I spent every day of six years with. The last time my dad picked me up, or my mum brushed my hair. When was the last time I dressed without consideration? There is so much to think about now. I remember falling on the grass at school and making stories with the clouds. Hanging upside down from the swing and realising how big the world was. I wonder on the path of growing when we stop feeling big. I am taller now, smaller still.

[studying-66]

[studying-66]

Bianca Stone, from The Möbius Strip Club of Grief; “The Fall”

[Text ID: “What to do with this mind? / Throw everything / into the fire and scream”]

[studying-66]

The first night after heatwave & The cottongrass-beast by Miikka Lönnqvist ( mkklnn.jpg )

[studying-66]

fucking hate it when the stuff everybody says "actually works" does actually work.

hate exercising and realizing i've let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i've overturned my fight-or-flight response.

hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i'm less anxious and i have more energy

hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i've actually started healing about something once i'm able to externalize it

hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently

hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love

horrible horrible horrible. hate it but i'm gonna do it tho

[studying-66]

it’s crazy how i don’t know what any of you do for school/uni/work? who are you guys outside of tumblr? what do you work as?? 

[studying-66]

Brianna Wiest, 101 essays that will change the way you think

[studying-66]

I had this feeling suddenly. I get this feeling a lot, but I don’t know if there’s one word for it. It’s not nervous or sad or even lonely. It’s all of that, and then a bit more. The feeling is I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I’ve gotten this feeling nearly everywhere I have ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do about it except drink some water and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.

I’m lonely. What kind of loneliness? Every kind. I feel disconnected. Abandoned. As always. Repetition. So what, my love? So what? At first, I just wanted to run away. Now I have no where else to run to, nothing to run from. I don’t belong anywhere, I don’t want to go anywhere, I just want to be happy.

(1) Czeslaw Milosz, New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 (2) Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life (3) Daniela Fischerová, Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else (4) Wisława Szymborska, tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, from “The Railroad Station”, Map: Collected and Last Poems (5) Daul Kim (6) Sarah Kay, from “The Paradox”, No Matter the Wreckage

[studying-66]

you worry the cardboard sleeve around the coffee and think about landfills and the future without straws. you are worried about prion disease and deer. you are worried about the rising temperature of mushrooms. you are worried about teflon and microplastics and carcinogens and whatever else you're being quietly lied to about.

your mother used to jokingly say you are "a worrier," which always kind of oddly hurt your feelings. you feel like a person. and besides, you've been told one-million-times that this is normal. examples get trotted out in a pony show each time: everyone gets nervous sometimes. they talk about public speaking and picturing people naked and how when they get nervous they just-get-over-it.

you run your hands down the grater of your life and feel the sharpness. you started holding your breath in tunnels as a kid, worried that if you relax, the ceiling would cave in. like years of architects and engineers weren't responsible - you, and your faith, you were responsible for the success of infrastructure. if you slipped for a moment, your whole family would be swept away under the ocean. and the problem is that it worked - no tunnel collapsed.

you once broke a coffee carafe and even though you didn't drink from it after, you worried that there had been some previous invisible micro-break that had made you drink glass particles. you stayed awake for 24 hours, constantly dreading each swallow, waiting to taste blood.

you hate being late, you worry about it. you go to grab literally just lunch with a friend - no pressure, no emergency - and you still park the car an hour early and just sit there scrolling on your phone aimlessly. maybe you just don't like surprises or change. you triple-check you locked the doors, and then go to bed, and then get up out of bed to check twice again.

a worrier. like a strange and dreadful bingo card, you collect weekly experiences. someone tells you that you're overthinking, that's 2 points. you have to physically turn around and go back in your house to check you unplugged everything, that's 1 point. spiraling about climate change or politics or the state of the world is a free space, that's basically every evening.

you worry you're being selfish and not a good person because how come you're worried about your dog's health and the itch in your eye when you know people who are really very ill or who have it worse or who are genuinely struggling. then you worry that you're being annoying by infantilizing them. then you worry that your priorities are wrong, that you should be infinitely more worried about the state of a dying planet.

you wanted to be a person, is all. you wanted to go through life in a softness, to hold the world gently and have it whisper past you. and instead you are a worrier. everything that touches you is hard and raw and sharp like diamonds.