12/31

Apparently it's harder to shake this than I ever imagined it would be;
happy new year to the oldest feelings in the book.

davis

I need this to be good enough.

I need to be good enough.

little miss

"you are free to choose, but you are not free from the consequence of your choice"

the older I get, the more questions I think of, and the less answers I find. I'm doing it wrong but I'm doing my best, and I keep hoping that as long as I keep smiling it will be ok. I know what I need and I'm risking everything for it. I know you don't think I do, but I understand what is resting on my decision. I hope I'm right.

"I'll get tough"

higher

Dalai Lama's 18 Rules for Living:


1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.3. Follow the three Rs: 1. Respect for self 2. Respect for others 3. Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

I always promised myself that I could find it inside --
I'll walk down the beach for miles until I can breathe again.

no title 12/14

"every saint has a past, every sinner has a future"

it's deep inside me -- please, let the nightmares fade away.

10 days

I can't wait to watch the sun set over the water -- I want to hug and never let go.

If only I understood the way the world worked...if I only I understood how I work. If only I could make people happy, if only no one was hurt. If only I wasn't so cheesy and unrealistic. If only I was that person I try so hard to be. If only.

10 days until a book and a cup of tea and my family all around me.

I'm a little disjointed -- but you bear with me. I'm scared to leave my friends.

"the heart has reasons that reason does not understand"

coffee & flowers

"don't say it doesn't matter, cause its gonna matter to me" - J.O.

"mysterious"

quietly

"slave of the ordinary" -- someday I'll break my chains.
somehow I always forget that I'm the only one who can change what I see.
I wish I was different enough to make an impact.

no title 11/15

1. 1 year ago

2. coffee
3. "I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." - Henry Ford
4. 2 years ago
5. "Today, he walked back in an hour later to find me still struggling to make a decision. 'You're still sitting here?' he asked. 'Just try something. If you sit here and think too much, you'll create a problem that wasn't even there in the first place.' MMT."
6. kings of leon
7. "I think the reason we hold so tightly to memories is that memories don't change, even when people do."

baby blue

the dunes

"I'd rather have flowers on my table than diamonds on my neck"

ice

I was so caught up in the day to day that I never realized how thankful I am for everything I found here: all the friends that appeared seemingly out of nowhere when I needed them most, all the professors whose eyes lit up and who told me I could do it, and all of the doors that were held open for me along the way.

Thank you to the people I don't know who smile at me when we pass, the people who have more courage than I do to keep saying hi when I'm scared I'm not good enough, and the people who care for me when I'm sad (and even when I'm not).

It's because of you that the cold New England weather didn't win.

sleet

be a bright spark

to be continued - brain drain 10/18

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." - Emerson


-the social construction of failure
-assessment as a collective - working together to avoid complete individual failure
-resilience through working with others
-failure as a function of expectations

love like crazy

"What they did not want you to ever find out is that your generation, the generation born between 1980-1995, actually outnumbers the baby boomers. They knew that if you ever turned your eye towards political reform, you could change the world.

They tried to keep you sated on vapid television shows and vapid music. They cut off your education and fed you brain candy. They took away your music and gave you top ten pop stations. They cut off your art and replaced it with endless reality shows for you to plug into, hoping you would sit quietly by as they ran the world. I think they thought you were too dumb to notice.

Indeed, I thought they had won.

But I watched you occupy the capital of Wisconsin. I see you today as you occupy Wall Street. And I see a spark, a glimmer of the glorious new age that is your. A changing of the guard, a guard that has stood for entirely too long and needs your young legs to take his place.

I watch you turn away from what is easy and stand up for what is right. I see you understand we as a society are only as strong as our weakest link. I see you wise beyond your years. And I am proud. Give 'em hell kids. You are beautiful."

-Kate Danley

critical

Radical

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe dark motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." - C.S. Lewis

"seeing more than black and white"

demagogue:
-anarchy
-unnecessary anger
-inciting unrest
-frustration
-easy

dialogue:
-neverending
-productive
-compromising
-critical (and self critical)
-difficult

trends

candles
surprises
the ocean
octopi
flowers that smell good (gardenias)
shades of blue and green
refurbished furniture
reading nooks
mason jars
country music
guitar
eyes that smile
lyrics that mean something
window sills
mountains
pumpkin
cinnamon
coffee
cowboy boots
chai
grass

define:

-WHAT IS CLASS SUICIDE?

-HOW DO YOU CHANGE CULTURE?

-CAN WE REMOVE THE LINK BETWEEN POVERTY AND OTHER RISK FACTORS?

-HOW DO YOU/CAN YOU CREATE PUBLIC POLICY THAT ELIMINATES OPPRESSION?

-WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?

-WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO?

-WHO IS WILLING TO GIVE UP COMFORT AND SAFETY FOR EQUALITY?

-WHERE DO YOU EVEN START?

-WHOSE PROBLEM IS OF MOST IMPORTANCE?

brain drain 9/4

"All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers"

note(s) to self:
return raincoat
build bookshelf
spend as much time outdoors as possible
appreciate the good sides of everyone
eliminate negative rambling
examine the New Thought Movement

goggles

I guess I'm just spewing "me" into a satellite somewhere far out there. Its a funny feeling, really...being so small but every shift in my emotion feels huge. It's like my kids, whose world is no bigger than routine meltdowns at 3PM for little to no apparent reason. I wonder if I'll ever be bigger than what's right in front of my nose, or if its the "human condition" to only see our immediate surroundings.

brain drain 7/7

Somehow I've lost my bearings, my self assuredness. I feel strange and unsure, and its been growing for years. I wonder if I grew up too early, if I think too much and my naiveté ran away. I used to write and write and dream and now I wake up, go through my day, and fall asleep.

Then again, isn't "just living" better? Maybe I'm just worrying about it too much, and maybe my worry obscures what's right, what I feel and know deep down.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to accept life as simple. I wonder if I'll stop writing the same thing over and over, and I wonder if I'll be fun and free and easy again.

8:15

agency & free will

"everyone is a genius. but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it is stupid." - einstein

hesitant

"keep a green tree in your heart and a singing bird will come"

winded

This is looking like a contest

of who can act like they care less.

no title - 4/4

brain drain 3/29

TO DO:

1. let go of this fear that has been holding onto me for months.

2. smile more.

3. stop procrastinating. I love what I'm doing, I need to do it.

4. keep in touch

5. thank the people around me for what they do for me every day

6. allow confidence to return

7. immerse myself in anything and everything that interests me.

viewpoints (part II)

Q: If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it's worth living?

Kubrick: Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; by as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism -- and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man, But if he's reasonably strong -- and lucky -- he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life's élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying face about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death -- however mutable man may be able to make them -- our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

only the ocean

"Bat your eyes girl, be other worldly.

Count your blessings, seduce a stranger.

What's so wrong with being happy?

Kudos to those who see through the sickness..."

I think this has turned into a place to leave myself inspiring notes.

I've always wondered what "this" really is. Who am I touching? What does this mean to others? What does this mean to me? How am I shaping myself? What have I created? What have I left out? Have I grown over the years, or actually walked backwards?

lost in the day

even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth "you owe me." look at what happens with a love like that...it lights the whole sky.

-Hafiz

forecast

crocus

I could be making a huge mistake right now.

"In the midst of the discussion, a peasant who by banking standards was completely ignorant said: 'Now I see that without man there is no world.' When the educator responded: 'Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars...wouldn't all this be a world?' 'Oh no,' the peasant replied emphatically. 'There would be no one to say: 'This is a world.' ' "

I want action. Your words have been empty for so long. I need to feel it again, I need to know you're there, I need to know that I can move forward, and that you want to help me do that. Employ praxis. Remind me what a flower is.

Realization: the world is full of dreamers when it comes to love.

pros/cons - take 2

- 3,097 miles

+"there is nothing like a dream to create the future"

- promises (specifically when they aren't fulfilled)

+ "I don't want to go...I don't want to leave again."

- "from a distance you look like my friend, even though we are at war. from a distance, I can't comprehend..."

+ the past (not recent)

- the fact that the future used to be a pro.

+ the pictures from my wall.

- the pictures in my head

+ the song

- "hate is easy. love takes courage."

no title

"Do what makes you happy"

"It really is so much more important to be happy than to hold a grudge"

"Love prevails everything"

"Most of all, over any sort of logic and reason, I felt like saying no would be one of the biggest regrets I'd ever have."

alma mater

What's the difference between change within ourselves as an individual, and a change in our environment that dictates a change in how we are seen?

What causes someone to act a certain way around some people, but a different way around others?

What gives people the status of "powerful" or "popular"?

What is the difference between being respected and being liked? Could anyone really be both?

What catalyzes extreme revolution, both within one individual, or within a larger system?

I have so many more questions than answers, recently, and it makes me slightly uncomfortable.

But then I think about it, and I realize that maybe it's good for me to be uncomfortable sometimes.

Is that another question within itself?

second chances

"perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in awhile so that we can see our life with a clearer view again"

reinvigorated, recharged, and ready.

barefoot

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

brain drain 1/17

-nature vs nurture: dichotomy & vectors

-"you've become so much more yourself in the past 2 years"

-morals

-sunsets

-bob dylan and the eagles

-tempura

-sunshine

-"so if we had the same nurture... we'd be the same."

-finally grounded

wildflower

It's taken so long. So many empty hearted texts, calls for help on so many disappointing nights after empty days. It's taken so many tears and shakey conversations where I couldn't even express what I needed from my listener, other than someone to listen. It's taken so many arguments, so many excuses and attempts to pin the sadness on something tangible, in hopes that it would go away.

Isn't it fitting that in the end, all it took was one question.

I'm taking control again. A body in motion stays in motion, and I'm finally rolling. For months I've been sitting around waiting for things to get better, and it killed me. I shut down, I stopped thinking, I stopped writing, and I stopped loving until nothing was beautiful anymore.

Somewhere along the way I forgot that it's all up to me. It's up to me to be doing what I want to do, to be having fun, to be happy. It's up to me to open my eyes and my heart to new options, or simply appreciating what's right in front of me.

"soakin' up the way of life I was raised in, runnin' barefoot bloomin' in a summer shower"