academiartist

[academiartist]

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.

[academiartist]

i know some of the poets outside of their books, like cameron awkward-rich; who was my seminar teacher for a semester in grad school. you know him, he wrote about keeping his hand on the walls of his stupid heart. he gave us a journal without lines in it, so the pages were all blank and naked. we had to write down 3 words every day, ruminations on our own lives.

in pink glitter pen, i watched my handwriting cramp and spill from pristine and well-meaning to the slant of someone deeply suffering. the words stopped being lyrical over the course of february. bad, it said. bad and bad and bad. each day carving out a little bit of marrow, the sparrow of my heart acting as roadkill. that winter i was only allowed to eat apples, like a horse. my ocd had decided i could only touch food if it was red. i was sleeping on the floor and a spider bit me.

i wanted him to be my thesis advisor, but it was covid the next year, and we never spoke again, and i'm worried that i embarrassed myself by asking him repeatedly. for my final project in his class, i wrote about my disability. i called myself a rat, fondly.

his most famous poem is titled Meditations in an Emergency. i didn't know it until three weeks after i had graduated from that university.

at one point, he sat me down after class just to discuss some of my work. it was a night class, and we were all a little drowsy. he blinked up at me. i think sometimes the way you see the world is a little bit alarming. i wonder about that, in hindsight. i wonder if all of us who are walking on thumbtacks always recognize when someone else's spine is the undulating form of a siren. i could see it in him and you can see it in me, if you're looking.

yesterday nat said some of this is worrying.

i told cameron i was fine and i told nat i was fine, but i think maybe all of us had learned a long time ago how to be fine the way a poem is fine - because it happens outside of you. it can be honest, the confession, but it cannot be spelled out across your ribs. we make our art so that the sorrow can hang, limbless, trembling on the fetid walls beside us.

you learn to turn the ugliness into some kind of work, because you must smash the entire human experience of your stupid bones and teeth and tongue into something, so that you have anything to show for it. otherwise, what is the fucking point. why were you suffering, if not to polish the runoff and say - the melancholy is the signature of my art. i took the splinters out of my gums and filed them down into a thesis. the thesis has been turned into a book which is getting published.

cameron, to my knowledge, still has not read it.

i hope he has found his way out of the maze. i hope you and i one day write our own lanterns. i hope we are able to find some kind of peace without viscera. without having to fight for it. i hope we are able to stumble without falling. i hope one day the sky is empty of vultures and we can cross the desert of our memories without starving.

in the meantime we get up and leave the circled shadow in the writing.

[academiartist]

by: 花景色

[academiartist]

[academiartist]

"The brave may not live

forever,

but the cautious do not live

at all."

— Prince Renaldo, The Princess Diaries.

[academiartist]

Seasons as Study Moods: Autumn.

Blanket forts | Studying at a café | The beginning of the school year | Rain against the window as you read | Bookstore trips to clear your mind | Warming your hands with a hot beverage after writing for a while | Leaves crunching under you while walking towards a lecture | Petrichor.

Summer | Autumn | Winter (2022)

[academiartist]

"The leaves are changing;

I feel poetry in the air."

— Laura Jaworski.

[academiartist]

[academiartist]

Those who Want To will always find a reason:

And those who don't will always find an excuse. I’d had this sentence stuck in my head for a while now, and as productive as I was being, it was so potentially toxic. And toxic it became.

The first few days, weeks even, with that thought I did everything. I managed to keep a healthy “balanced” social-private-work life. But it didn't last more than that. For a week I was the most productive I had been in months, or even a year. I woke up early, ate good, exercised, went to work, wrote… and the list could go on. It was all I was striving for, and a bit more.

And then I missed a day. I don't recall what happened, but I couldn't get to everything. And so my brain immediately went “hey! You found An Excuse! You don't want to do this! Screw this!” and threw everything over board. (not so) Luckily, the tight work schedule and exhaustion I had been building up didn't allow me to spiral, but that only meant I stopped doing things, and didn't even try to get back in track.

And the trick is that you have to know where your limits are, distinguish an Excuse from a Genuine Reason, and most importantly, and as I’ve already said before, bite as much as you can swallow. Taking on too much at once may feel rewarding at first, but it'll also mean when things come tumbling down, they will cash harder, since you won't have any basis.

So please, take that one thing, and break it down, and then break it down some more. Start that workout but have a plan first, envision it first. Schedule that date with your friends, your significant other, but be mindful of the time and be firm about your resting time. You can do this, as long as you do this one step at a time!

[academiartist]

Motivation vs. Discipline: How they're not the same.

It's taken me ages to realize. Having the energy and willingness to start a project does not equal maintaining said energy and willingness to see it through. Having the motivation to sit down and go “this topic is important to me, hence I want to do something about it” is not the same as having the discipline to stand and think “this project is way harder than I originally planned, but I’m committed and so I’m going to see it through”.

Finish what you begin, do a little bit better than you think you can, and do a little bit more than you think you can. The three tips from Dandapani to develop willpower. Or self-control. Or discipline. However you may prefer calling it. Those three steps are the basis for a strong self-discipline. And it doesn't matter if it's closing your email after you're done working; making sure every message you sent was clear, correct, and concise; and sneaking an extra email today, or throwing the boxes after you're done unpacking when you move; taking a few seconds to organize things right as you take them out of the boxes, and making sure you also clean so dust from the shelves after finding a new place thanks to that big change you were looking forward to.

Make conscious choices, and there is no quest, big or small, you won't be able to finish. Now, as someone who is still unable to do so, here's my two cents. Start small, start slow, start simple. Change your breakfast, go to bed five or even ten minutes early, walk for five minutes around your living room. Build a disciple and, when you have that one as a default, take another even if it’s a bit harder, or take two that are a bit easier, but they are two. Because motivation gets you started, but discipline keeps you moving.

It's not going to be easy, not at all, but it will be worth it. Find what motivates you, and them compromise, work hard and consistently, see it through. Hopefully the reward coming from completing the task will be as rewarding, if not more, than starting it at all. I have started working on this as well, so let's improve together.

[academiartist]

In the end, we'll all become stories.

— Margaret Atwood.

[academiartist]

I think you should take a break, trust me:

For the past few weeks, even the simplest of tasks have felt too challenging for me. I’m talking getting out of bed, having breakfast, get changed to go to uni. I honestly don't know why, but it's happening. And so through these weeks, I’ve had to put extra energy into basic human stuff, meaning I didn't have as much for uni.

Now, could have I avoided it? I have been asking myself that since Sunday, and the answer is I most likely could have. With rests. Actual breaks. No guilty weekends laying around but beating myself up, no movie marathon sessions which were just me dissociating for who knows how long. Actual, genuine rest. Getting a good share of sleep, eating healthy and replenishing batteries. But that didn't happen.

There's a vicious circle that needs to be broken. A set of habits that are causing more harm than good. And the thing is that, in order to improve, to get better, the body and brain need a break. Shifting habits takes a lot of concentration, of conscious work, and that can burn someone out.

Due to this, take a deep breath, take a break, and begin. Begin organizing that new schedule, begin catching up on assignments, begin being slightly more gentle with yourself. Begin genuinely taking time off during the weekends. Close your eyes, and begin with me.

[academiartist]

The Silver Trio as Studying Moods: Neville Longbottom.

Watering the plants during breaks | green-brown-beige colour scheme | dirt-covered fingers | always smelling like a new flower | rainy spring afternoons | tea as a mood booster | neat handwriting | pressed flowers between notes.

Ginny | Luna | Neville

[academiartist]

[academiartist]

[academiartist]

New Year Resolutions (from someone who never seems to complete them but still hasn’t given up):

Well, with the New Year less than 48h away, it’s about time I set some new study habits for 2023! One for every month of this year, my study goals for the year are as follows:

1. Read 20 minutes* a day.

*I have a 90-minute long commute to Uni, so I might as well use the time smartly!

2. Meditate 10-30 minutes in the mornings*.

*I have classes in the afternoon, so that sounds doable.

3. Develop a sleeping* routine.

*Sleeping 7/8h a night has helped me wonders (whenever I’ve been able to do so)…

4. Learn how to use an agenda*.

*Yes, I’m 20 and I still struggle to manage time, it happens, it’s ok.

5. Use 10-20 minutes to learn another language*.

*A little something to keep my mind off homework.

6. Developing a meal plan*.

*Because eating only oatmeal for breakfast and bread for lunch ain’t exactly the perfect brain fuel source.

7. Attend an online course*.

*Nothing too complex, just some summer challenge.

8. Learn how to bullet journal*.

*Because I’m sure that an aesthetically pleasing, hand-made agenda will motivate me at least a bit more.

9. Listen to a podcast episode a day*.

*Like the language, helps clear the mind while still learning.

10. Find a pen* pal.

*Nothing like old-fashioned letters to work on your penmanship.

11. Go to a museum every* weekend.

*Thank you, student pass.

12. Watch a documentary every* weekend.

*You never know where inspiration hides.

[academiartist]

Y’all ever just

I swear, at this point my default IDE is the Notes app!

I love coding but I am so so lazy and held back by executive dysfunction; often, I want to work on a problem that’s rattling around in my head, but getting off the couch to get my laptop and start feels simply impossible.

So, I bust out my smartphone and jot down my ideas or write a few (untested) functions.

Not only does it allow me to just get started, rather than fighting myself for the willpower to “officially” get up, go to my desk, get focused and start working, (which often feels like a dreaded chore even though I always enjoy my time spent programming) it also takes a lot of the pressure off. Since it’s the Notes app rather than a real coding environment, I don’t worry about formatting or syntax mistakes or any mistakes, really, since there won’t be any error messages popping up until I can test the code later.

For me, I find this a really effective way both to get started without the dread and pressure, and to give myself the time and space I need to think through my own solution; predict what errors will come up from this code, and see if I can’t figure out how to solve it (or at least jot down some things to google later).

I find that programming is so creative, and like all creative endeavours, I am at my best doing it in a stress-free, nonchalant environment. It is easiest for me to brainstorm creative solutions, or even just think clearly, when I don’t feel intimidated. For me, this often results in me doing my best work in places where I don’t have access to a computer, or sometimes even internet: at the dog park, in the bath/shower, or lying on the couch high as a kite while I watch TV. (Yes, I sometimes use my phone in the shower. I am hopeless Gen-Z trash. I know.)

Thank you, iPhone. I hate you and I hate your company and everything it stands for. But, I get a lot of my best work done because of you :]

I wish I had a better solution than this, because like I just said, I hate the iPhone and I want to get rid of it, but I’m still too dependent on it right now. The smart phone just feels like a direct portal to my brain, that nothing else I’ve tried has been able to replicate.

Anyone else here struggle with executive dysfunction? How do you cope with it? If anyone does have any advice, tips, tricks, or ideas for me, I’d really appreciate it :]