sketches, histrionics, birds and words

park info sign designed by act of gyrebolt

@acteus !!!!!!!

OMG????

skfkslckcnelcncn okay I’m at work yesterday and my coworker is telling me about her husband and 2 kids and is bitching and I’m like go. off. because that’s what I do and she says to me “the litter box is HIS responsibility and most of the time he doesnt even do that!!” and I immediately say. “That’s all he does??” because girl just told me she took out the trash and did dishes and cared for her fucking children all before coming into work that morning and shes like “…. that’s not ALL he does……..” like. every time I talk to a girl in a bad relationship a part of me dies. you dont have to be his mom too. he’s not the three year old. he’s not a fucking tamagotchi that if you forget to feed him and wipe his ass he dies in a pile of his own shit. ladies if he dies he dies

ladies, if he dies, he dies!

Me in the group chat.

The url makes this infinitely funnier

I’m right and I should say it

i live for older girls who take care of you and give you advice on weird things w/o judging bc they’ve experienced it and are just so warm. my only goal in life is to be that for others one day

i live for older girls who take care of you and give you advice on weird things w/o judging bc they’ve experienced it and are just so warm. my only goal in life is to be that for others one day

ive never been one for “dating” and “romance” but if he has a third eye, fangs and enormous curly horns then a bitch might just swipe right

therapist: how was your week?

me: mm.. i can’t remember

Teacher: how was your weekend?

Me: can you please start out with an easier question

Teacher: hey read 2 of these 20 page articles that literally couldnt be more boring before class :)

Everyone in class the next day when he asks a question pertaining to the articles

Here’s something to chew on.

about me.jpg

honestly

In case you wanna read the article this quote is from: http://rolereboot.org/culture-and-politics/details/2016-05-daughter-know-ok-angry/

Ok this is important. I feel like this all the time.

I really feel this. A conversation I had with my psychologist last year after I described what I thought was an anxious reaction to somehow who’d hurt me calling me randomly after over a year. My heart was racing and I was shaking and felt hot all over and was on the verge of tears, and she said. “That sounds like anger. You’re allowed to be angry.” And I became very aware that I had not been able to identify my own anger and even know what it feels like up until that point.

I’m pretending all the time to be, kinder, stronger, funnier, more sociable than I am. I guess we’re all like that but it just feels so inadequate.

What’s the difference?

I know it sounds flippant but… certain things are fundamentally performative.  And other things are so close as makes no difference.

Kindness is performative.  Actions are kind, and people are kind by performing those actions.  You can’t “pretend” to be kinder than you are, you can only perform kindness or not perform kindness, and choosing to perform kindness is always worthwhile, no matter how much you may second-guess your motivations.

Strength is so many things.  It takes strength to pretend a strength you don’t feel.  And the way to achieve strength is to exercise it, so long as you do it in enough moderation to not strain or break anything.  Being able to affect strength when necessary while being able to put it down again when that in turn is necessary is healthy.  Everyone starts weight training with the littlest weights.  It’s not fake or pretending to do what you gotta do in any given situation.

Funniness lives in the interlocutor, not in the speaker.  It doesn’t matter how funny you think you are (or think you are pretending to be) - that’s not how it’s measured.  At what point are you “pretending” to be a musician if the music still gets made?  And often what it’s tempting to describe in first person as “pretending” is more accurately described in the third person as “practicing” - which is of course the way you cause things to Be.

Sociability is also performative.  Pretending to be sociable is just…being sociable, despite a disinclination towards it.  It’s making an effort towards something you value.  So long as the effort is not so great that it backfires into resentment, there’s no practical difference.  

Qualities or activities or whatever are no less worthy because you have to actively choose to perform them.  If anything, the worthiness lies in the act of choosing.  It’s not “pretending” - it’s agency.

tl;dr: ain’t nothing wrong with “fake it till you make it.”  A plastic spoon* holds just as much soup as a “real” one

* I keep wanting to talk about semantic domains!  Artifacts are defined by their utility, whereas living things are defined by their identity.  So plastic forks are still forks, but plastic flowers aren’t flowers.  So there’s two pep-talk messages to take away from this: (1) for certain things, the distinction between “fake” and “real” isn’t a relevant one so long as they still get the job done, and (2) the purpose of a living thing is to be the thing that it is.  The idea of a “useless person” is as semantically nonsensical as the idea of “pretend kindness” (or fake cutlery).

I love this post. It illustrates what I think is maybe the key difference between a developing self-identity and a formed self-identity, which is, like…confidence? If you are BEING kind, consistently, if you are prioritizing that over your own comfort or fatigue or even, occasionally, your emotional inclination (because OH MY GOD FUCK THIS GUY, I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE–uuughhh, but no, I’m not gonna lash out at him, that won’t accomplish anything, and besides, he’s probably had a bad day, he’s under a lot of stress, I don’t have to be an asshole about this…), guess what? That makes you kind. That is literally what kindness is. Same for patience, same for strength, same for all of this stuff. You got it. You’re doing it. You’re not faking anything. Stop second-guessing yourself and cutting yourself down. Give yourself enough credit to look at your actions and confidently assert to yourself that you are no longer just making things up as you go. 

“Women talk ourselves into needing less, because we’re not supposed to want more—or because we know we won’t get more, and we don’t want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we’re allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don’t want it. But it’s not that we don’t want more. It’s that we don’t want to be seen asking for it. And when it comes to romance, women always, always need to ask.”

— Hunger Makes Me, Jess Zimmerman

beauty standards are all bad but one that sticks out to me is the idea that women should be free of body hair, because literally no-one has naturally no body hair like what are we trying to emulate here?

oh, except children

oh