You Mentioned Years Ago That You Once Worked On A Project Restoring Former Coal Mine Land, Trying To

My counselor once told me to make sure I wasn’t doing things to distract myself from the boredom rather than try to sate it. I feel its one of the most important things he ever said to me.

When I’m distracting myself from the boredom, I read or game excessively so I don’t feel the emptiness of boredom. It’s a short term thing, and it only staves the boredom as long as I’m doing the thing.

When I’m sating myself from the boredom, I pursue things I am genuinely interested in and so find myself feeling fulfilled and happier for a longer period of time. Even if I stop doing it temporarily, I don’t immediately fall apart as I would with the distraction.

Strandbeest Evolution

Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests are massive, wind-powered kinetic sculptures designed to roam Dutch beaches. Conceived in the late 1980s as a way to kick up sand that would replenish nearby dunes, the beests have grown into a decades-long obsession for the artist and his followers.  (Video and image credit: Veritasium) Read the full article

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

A short list of things I think everyone should try or do at least once in their life that will make you feel more alive. Not all of these are applicable to every person, but it’s a summary:

Take a dance class of any style with a semi-serious instructor for at least 4 classes worth

Write a work of fiction, of *any* length and *any* quality

Learn a least a bit of a language that isn’t your native one. You don’t need to become anywhere near fluent, but try and get a bit beyond yes, no, and where’s the bathroom. If you’re from a country where most people are bilingual already, that doesn’t count! Get bits of a language with which you are truly unfamiliar.

In the same vein, make peace with subtitles and start consuming music, TV and movies from cultures that aren’t your own. If your country imports large amounts of media from a specific other culture or cultures (American movies in foreign markets, for example) that also doesn’t count! Get some feelers out to begin to take in content from a culture that you don’t already have a lot of knowledge of.

Try at least one less common/less “exercisey” and more fun type of physical exercise such as roller blading or roller or ice skating, gymnastics, trampoline, rock climbing, aerial silks, pole dancing, surfing, etc

Learn a hobby or craft that produces a physical finished product and produce a single, complete object - regardless of quality - that you can hold in your hands and say that you made.

Look up a how it’s made video or YouTube video on how an item that’s interesting or relevant to you is made

Give one type of thing - media, hobby, sport, whatever - that you’ve never been interested in or never tried because of some preconceived perception an honest shot and see if your perception was correct. Sometimes it won’t be, sometimes it will be, but it’s valuable to know.

Rearrange the furniture in a room in your home

It’s about NOVELTY, babey! Get some enrichment into your enclosure!

“Winter Bonsai” 1982 by  Eyvind Earle (1916-2000)

Flowering Wave

Happy New Year, best wishes to everyone!

Why can’t real life cities be 10 mile tall gothic metropolises with red and black and skulls and statues of weeping saints everywhere

People with low spoons, someone just recommended this cookbook to me, so I thought I'd pass it on.

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It's very simple in places. It's basically the cookbook for people who think, 'I'm really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can't think of anything else to cook that won't exhaust me'. And it's free!

itch.io

The Sad Bastard Cookbook by tRaum Books

by Rachel A. Rosen and Zilla Novikov || Food you can make so you don't die.