#musings on life

[ensfortress]

When did our generation become so obsessed with the past we stopped living?

Bring back 80s fashion we say, 90s hairstyles, 2000s music.

What about 2020s? Do we have nothing to share? Nothing to show? Nothing to hold on to?

Why are we still living in the pandemic, unable to move forward? How long are we to mourn the ages we lost? How long will it take to embrace that we'll no longer be, no longer are the kids, the teens we were supposed to be?

Do we ever get out? Does the darkness ever end?

[queer-reader-07]

i'm thinking about the necessity of rest and how so many people don't allow themselves rest because they view it as "unproductive." and it just... hurts to think about.

i joke about how i'm the "no hw past 9 pm" friend in my chem study group but there's more to it. it's the fact that so many of my friends and peers work themselves to the bones on the regular that me saying that i have such hard limits on when i do and don't work is unfathomable.

like it should not be a shocking thing to hear someone say "you deserve rest. you deserve a break." i told my friends recently that burnout and being in physical pain is not the normal state of being, and i'm not really sure how much that actually got through to them.

i see my friends burning themselves out on the regular, i see them injuring their bodies and not allowing for proper healing, and it sucks. it fucking sucks. i don't want to watch people, especially the people i love, destroy their bodies for the sake of some mythical kind of productivity.

rest is productive. healing is productive. joy is productive.

you're not going to be proud of what you do or make if by the end of it you're so worn out that you can't do anything but crash.

i know it's hard to rest in this capitalist hellscape of a world, but i promise you whatever little amount you're able to find is worth it. sometimes that one assignment can wait until the morning. sometimes the laundry can wait another day.

i want us to get old and i want the lives we have ahead of us to be worth it. i don't want us to spend our lives crashing and burning, rinse and repeat.

because are our accomplishments really worth it if we never let ourselves enjoy the process? i don't want to get my degrees at the cost of my own well being, because i can't imagine being proud of something that completely destroyed me.

please, let yourself rest. let yourself find joy. because your rest and joy are so so precious and productive.

[urwendii]

Idk if its petty to drop your support of someone when they clearly did it first. Like, sometimes i wonder if this is naive kindness or ingrained people-pleasing that i still keep being friendly to individuals who clearly have dropped me from their priority list. If you're not worth the other person's time, why should you offer them yours unconditionally.

[eternallyfleeting]

lost in my head, lost my way home

im trying to find

home, the place to rest and hide

from the busyness of the world

reside, in peace alone

but not lonely.

filled the ache with vegan ice cream

can’t tolerate lactose

my hopes burning

in an empty pot on the stove

dangerous, gaseous

i gaslight myself

— precious

[hypercaring5]

Did you know that sometimes I have to use VPN to access this hellsite? Or Reddit? How about Vimeo?

This country's digital wall isn't quite as big or fortified as, say, China's is, but it's still a roadblock when trying to access information about being queer. That's why even before VPN became a big thing, I already knew how to use them.

[transrevolutions]

it's so weird how people just have. impacts on your life. even people you barely knew, or only knew for a little while.

[tori-fta]

Embrace the Meaninglessness of Life | The Early AM Hours of August 11, 2024

I've seen a lot of discussion online over the years regarding how do we approach life knowing that it's meaningless. Most commonly, discourse boils down to debates over Nihilism & Absurdism, with the former wallowing in self-pity at the meaninglessness of life and the later taking it as reason to party and live in the void. Of course, these are vast overgeneralizations of intricately nuanced philosophies and the prior straw-manning is but a way to draw you, the reader, in with anger and ire, hoping that perhaps you'll read through my thoughts on what embracing the meaninglessness of life entails. Please note that these are merely initial musings and will probably be expanded upon the more I think and type.

To get overly personal on the first date post, I would consider myself a spiritual person as religious/religion carries a connotation of organizational control over the masses, which I believe to be a gross misuse of a necessary outlet for the human experience. I grew up in a conservative Christian bubble, learning that Jesus and the Bible were the Truth (note the capital "T") due to an intrinsic value, not because of what they taught and represented (explains a lot about modern American evangelicals, right?). This never sat right with me. I "believed" and regurgitated these talking points because I was told they were right, ironically, by the same people who told me I was a straight, cis m*n (gender dysphoria is wild, being unable to use certain words only when referring to myself).

The primary reason this never sat right with me was because virtually every other religion and form of spirituality was teaching the same values underneath a unique cultural coat of paint. Naturally this led to a separation between myself and the church (thankfully a seamless one as they didn't even notice🙄). Around this same time, I began having an identity crisis, as I was beginning to discover my gender and sexual identities, and suddenly the world and culture which I considered "mine" no longer had a place for me within it. A few years passed, and during a college course, I found myself intrigued and sucked down a rabbit hole of ancient Celtic mythos and traditions, feeling a sense of pride deep within myself that my ancestors left dormant (shoutout to my dad for doing a genealogy test like every white person ever and confirming that we are, indeed, very Irish before immigrating to the United States).

The Celtic tradition places great importance not just upon the earth and her gifts which we must maintain, something that has always been a driving passion of mine, but also on rhetoric, language, and the power of words due to it being an oral tradition. Bards weren't just the horny songsmiths we all play at least once in Dungeons & Dragons, but they were the bastions of knowledge and history. This part of the Celtic tradition is what drove the final nail into my coffin (yes, it also appealed to me as a former theater AND speech & debate kid).

That was only a few years ago, and since then, my outlook on spirituality has evolved to this brief final discussion before I set aside the keyboard and head to bed 3 hours later than I should have. Today, I offer thanks to the Celtic goddess Danu and the Roman god Bacchus, having taken them as my spiritual guides. I read tarot for myself and my friends, observe and celebrate the holy days and festivals of the Wheel of the Year, and partake in rituals to cleanse and purify my soul. I believe that there exists life beyond earth in the universe but that we cannot know for certain what that life is until we make contact with it, and I believe that supernatural phenomenon exists despite the secularization and modernization of the world weaking our connections to it.

Despite what I believe when it comes to the grander questions of life and existence, the day to day beliefs are the ones that matter most in defining how we truly approach life. I honor Danu as the mother goddess of the earth but also as a muse of poetry and rhetoric, reminding me the power of our words to shape our own reality as well as that of those around us. I honor Bacchus to celebrate life and all that this crazy experience brings to us. The various festivals and holidays throughout the year brings me out of the self to reconnect with the earth and all life that is around me, reinforcing the cyclical nature of existence and how necessary adapting to change is for our survival. My morning tarot reading queues me into what issues are most pressing for me currently, the cards chosen blindly granting me an exercise in self-reflection to orient myself for the day and work on improving the aspects of myself I am unhappy with.

This is what it means to embrace the meaninglessness of life, at least to me. To embrace the meaninglessness of life, we assign meaning to places where none exists. The way we reflect and approach life reveals what truly matters to us. Spirituality is the tool which I use to help navigate this world, allowing the chaotic uncertainness of the next day to reveal patterns within myself and my own being. I'm sure we've all heard at least one rendition of "life is what you make of it," and as cheesy as a mainstream idiom is, there exists deep truth within this one.

Anyways, I am off to bed. Be queer, dismantle the establishment, and serve cvnt while doing so 💖

[humunanunga]

You can believe in magic, but watch out.

[lipikkawrites]

A lot will go wrong before everything goes right.

Keep moving forward.

-@lipikkawrites

[sanctuaryacres]

What's on My Mind This Morning

What’s on my mind this morning? I’m afraid it’s nothing good. We were sitting around discussing the state of the world over morning coffee. One of my thoughts was how people in general, don’t seem to treat each other with respect anymore. Now maybe that makes me an old griper, spouting “Back in my day…”, but I’m going to share just one of the ways that I don’t think we treat each other as kindly…

[bukatra]

The atoms that made up you were birthed in fiery explosions, saw galaxies, and watched life form. You were torn apart and broken down a million billion times. Beathed in, chewed, eaten, flooded, and burned, and yet always always bringing birth and life and creation. Your mitochondria were shared between you and every daughter, woman, and mother who ever smiled and loved and gave birth and rocked her baby. your ancestors bequeathed their atoms to you and ancient plants passed on the sunlight and sugar and oxygen they had so carefully created and stored away.

Look at your hands. billions of cells and atoms you borrowed from people you knew and will never know. Breathe in deep. Every living thing on earth since the dawn of life has tasted that air. It was shouted and gasped and screamed and sighed and sobbed and panted; and you, beautiful you, are continuing a tradition as old as the light from Proxima Centauri. When you eat, you are literally burning the energy of the sun stored by plants and the animals that ate them. You are part of a millennia-old attempt of the universe to express life in as many ways as possible

Life is beautiful. How beautiful to be a part of it. How lucky we are to live and to be alive. All that is asked is that you exist and you continue to exist until you join the cycle and become a part of the rebirth.

[thiscoldheart]

NICOLA COUGHLAN as Penelope Featherington

BRIDGERTON S3 TRAILER (2024)

[contactlessdrivethru]

there is something unique and deeply special about monkey d luffy as a protagonist. he’s overwhelmingly ADORED by the fandom. he’s consistently the most or at least top 3 most popular characters in the whole series. peoples takes about him are gushingly positive. and that’s… really uncommon.

a LOT of fandoms i’ve witnessed or been in have a tendency to favor characters other than the main character. especially in anime. the main characters are often written as a blank slate for readers/watchers to project onto, but that makes them not as interesting and so they don’t get the fan attention.

but luffy is so far from that. and he’s ALWAYS been this way. we love him so much. he’s the heart of the story and the heart of the fandom in every single way. and i think that speaks to how well-written he is as a character. he’s fun and charming and complex and interesting and he makes us laugh and cry and cheer and hope and love. he’s able to inspire so much joy in people, both in his world but also in this one. and i think that’s really special. i feel so grateful to have found this story that means so much to me, and i’m so grateful that luffy exists.

[katy-l-wood]

My cousins that hunt the most also have one very particular type of girl they each like to date, and that type (for both of them) is "never been outside a day in her life." There's usually a new girl every year, because that's just how my cousins are. So they bring up the girl of the year to experience The Wilderness and The Cabin and Hunting. And normally it's actually quite fun! The girls get so adorably excited about everything. Axes. Fire building. Cooking over a fire. Hunting lessons. But usually, usually, they're in the category of "just hasn't been exposed to this stuff, but still has enough common sense to figure it out."

Not this year's girlfriend.

Ma'am. What made you think that putting YOUR WHOLE HAND onto a giant METAL box full of LITERAL FIRE was a good idea??? YOU WATCHED US COOK DINNER ON IT.

She was fine. But. Like. Was she??? Is...is "fire/cooking surfaces are hot" not, like, one of the first lessons a human learns?

[eternallyfleeting]

flow series — murmurations

nature’s instinctive intelligence

communion through communication

an enquiry into time and space

[hypercaring5]

I went to a photo exhibition and was struck by just how many of the exhibitors referred to themselves as visual storytellers as opposed to photographers or photojournalists. It reminded me of a conversation I had when I was in school and a conversation I've had with myself countless times about what title I use when referring to my occupation. (I use writer now, but even that feels...off.)