daily reminders
- no human being is 100% happy 100% of the time
- being a person is extraordinarily difficult even in the best of times
- this is not the best of times
- someone is grateful you exist (don’t argue, it’s true)
- a bad day does not predict a bad existence
- it’s gonna be okay
@presidentofthehotgirlclub not a kitty video, but i think you’ll like this if you haven’t seen it already
“There are no monsters in the sea, only the ones we make up in our heads.” Bless you, ma'am.
i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing
sometimes someone is acting selfish because they just didnt think you had any interest in what theyre hogging. sometimes you dont get invited to the movies because your friend could have sworn that you said no. sometimes you think someone is mad at you because theyre bad at hiding how little sleep they got. we are all like little worlds that briefly crash into one another from time to time and we just arent physically capable of seeing the whole picture at once in those moments. and learning that really changed everything!
I think stambreed Vash would fully lay across Nai in bed at night. Nai is seatbelted in by his dog/brother/boyfriend who sleeps like the dead and is too precious to disturb
nai being unable to move and feeling pressure on his torso in the middle of the night and being like ‘am i having sleep paralysis’ and his sleep paralysis demon starts snoring
Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.
(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)
I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.
It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice - they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”
When you know what’s important to you, you can fight for it, or at least be equipped to notice right away if it goes and some of your ability to thrive goes with it. When you don’t, or when you’re thinking of all these things as ‘nice things about my life’ rather than ‘load-bearing bits of my flourishing as a person’, you’re not likely to notice the strain created when they vanish until you’re really, really hurting.
Almost two weeks after reading this, and I’m still kind of blown away at what a ridiculously fruitful definition this is. Like I had no idea that load bearing things were a thing that needed to have a word for them, but now I’m like holy shit I’m so glad that there’s now a word I can use to refer to this really important class of Thing.
This is astounding. Load-bearing. Forget spoons, this concept is wonderful. I’m going to update my Spear Theory with this.
