vfdinthewild

[vfdinthewild]

"VIEWS FOR DAYS"

-real estate brochure making me do a double-take

[vfdinthewild]

"This was just the sort of thing he imagined the Vickers family discussing over dinner, in their calm, clinical manner."

-from A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, pg. 256.

[vfdinthewild]

"Ingredients: [...] Artificial Vanilla Flavoring, Dipotassium Phosphate..."

-from this package of horchata mix

[vfdinthewild]

"On the very first day, when I’d achieved nothing and had felt sad and slow all day, I went to put a notch in the Bad Day column before stopping myself"

-via this tumblr post by @narcissistcookbook

One of the many weird things about depression is that it retcons your life. Not only are you lying in bed feeling like a piece of shit and that everything is awful, but you start projecting those feelings back along your own time stream - you start low-key believing you’ve always felt this way, that nothing good has ever happened, or if it has it happened a long time ago.

On January 1st of last year I decided to start keeping a tally of good days and bad days, because I stopped trusting my brain to report on that accurately. I expected to come and look at the tally when I was depressed and go “oh, I had a good day only a few days ago. this hasn’t always been like this.”

What I didn’t expect was that the process of asking myself whether a day had been good or bad would radically shift my perspective on what a bad day was and what a good day was. On the very first day, when I’d achieved nothing and had felt sad and slow all day, I went to put a notch in the Bad Day column before stopping myself:

wait, i thought. has today actually been bad? not bad enough to write it off. i played rummikub online with my partner. i drank some water. i had a long bath. no, today wasn’t a bad day.

And so I put a notch in the Good Day column and went to bed. The next day I did the same thing, and the next day, and the next day. Just the process of going over my day every day meant that I found at least one good thing that happened every day. I had a good meal. I went to the pub and was around people, albeit quietly. I went for a walk. I saw a duck. There were days where truly awful, terrible things happened, but even on those days there was always something - even if the something was a simple as We Were There For Each Other or We Reminisced.

On December 31st I put the final tally down. Not a single day had been so bad that I could justify writing it off as a bad day. The bad day column was completely empty.

I’m still depressed, occasionally deeply, but I think I have more perspective. Depression is a physical feeling, and an emotional feeling, but even without trying *something* comes along every day that makes me glad I’m here despite that feeling.

[vfdinthewild]

"this is the uncanny valley for ducks"

-via this tumblr post by @todaysbird

can’t stop looking at this mallard with a gray beak…this is the uncanny valley for ducks

[vfdinthewild]

"Vectors Free Download"

-found attached to this star image on Google Images

[vfdinthewild]

"I get a CSA vegetable/fruit delivery every week."

-from "how do you romanticize your life ?" on Reddit

[vfdinthewild]

"Virtual front desk"

-Menu option on the Envoy app

[vfdinthewild]

"GVFDXVFGAK"

"GVFDXVFDAK"

-the coded riddle text from Taskmaster 12.4 "The customized inhaler", 28:15.

[vfdinthewild]

"the head of the nonprofit I volunteer for doesn’t know what a budget is"

-via the Ask a Manager column of the same name

[vfdinthewild]

"On the very first day he was left alone with the baby, it began to cry, and he found himself suddenly flooded with unbearable images of dying children in Vietnam."

-from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, part one (34:18).

[vfdinthewild]

"They'll never accept it, but everyone who cast a vote for Donald Trump did real, generations-long damage to the United States and the west in exchange for essentially nothing of value."

-via this tumblr post

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada.

Generations of damage. For Putin.

[vfdinthewild]

Arches National Park, Utah photo: Elliot McGucken

[vfdinthewild]

"She was kind to me from the very first day: she had seen so many other like this one, staggering in from Siberia, baffled by comfort."

- via Us Conductors by Sean Michaels, pg. 310

[vfdinthewild]

"Painted eyebrows, vases full of dried flowers."

-from Us Conductors by Sean Michaels, pg. 221

[vfdinthewild]

"POV: You've finally found a vintage furniture designer who doesn't just 'paint it white'..."

-via an Instagram reel from user auldehome

[vfdinthewild]

is there a gimmick blog for accidental VFD phrases???