chasingsolstice

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Hail Hades and Persephone, rulers of the underworld! Glory be in their names

moodboard in celebration of their reunion. ♡

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Getting busy with life

Be excellent to each other

Peace out ✌️

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Why dont you go watch a studio ghibli movie and think about the power of love and kindness and maybe you'll calm down

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Today's shadow work topic is: perfectionism and how that fucks you up

My fellow perfectionists, lend me your ears

I have some thing I learned recently that is very fucking helpful and explained a thing to me

What is your exact thought process when you start a thing? I don’t care what the thing is, whether it’s a new exercise regimen or a job or a new relationship

If your thought process is “I need to succeed at this thing” you are automatically approaching the thing the wrong way, because imposing arbitrary standards on yourself with ideas like succeeding at things that don’t have metrics for that divorces you emotionally and mentally from the thing

Basically, what I’m saying is the soul really likes to shrivel up and die in conditions in which your goal is “success”. You might be happy when you perceive yourself doing “well” at the thing, only to experience the crash later if you get fired or the relationship ends or something else and the problem with this is in some degree you probably placed some of your self worth on a thing can can end or be taken from you

The healthier thing to do is embark on a thing, like a new job or a move or a relationship and tell yourself “I’m just going to try this new thing, and if it doesn’t work out, it will be a learning experience and I will have some new memories to look over”

If you approach a new experience as a playful thing, and not this hyper serious obsessive desire to succeed at the thing, the soul gets a chance to be engaged and you begin to live the experience for the sake of the experience, and not for the ideal of succeeding or being respected or some kind of external validation that becomes, later, a dependency issue that rears its ugly head when you get fired or broken up with or fall on hard health times

Basically, if you approach things in your life as opportunities for growth instead of a constant barrage of tests that if you do well enough on, out will come your happiness tokens, you will generally accidentally fall into happiness before you even notice, and start living for the sake of it and appreciating the people in your life more for who they are rather than what they can do

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Time to fucking boycott the Olympics for being so goddamn ignorant.

Like seriously, you're REALLY gonna UNFAIRLY disqualify a woman who was grieving her mother's death.

You're REALLY gonna UNFAIRLY disqualify women whose testosterone levels are naturally higher than the average female.

You're REALLY gonna UNFAIRLY ban swimming caps designed for black hair and caps with the phrase "Black Lives Matter".

You should be ashamed of yourselves for this, and all of the terrible shit you've done in the past.

Oh and those women were all black. If that doesn't tell you what's up with the Olympic Committee, then I don't know what. They've always been racist and misogynistic.

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I've messaged Neil gaiman on this abhorrent website at least three times, each time seeming more desperate than the last in hindsight.

#bad notice me senpai energy #i can feel it and i am ashamed #but his work is so good i cant help it fuck me Right

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they’re girlfriends

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simz.art on Instagram

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load-bearing

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. 

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hot muppet summer

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Which is more "human":

Controlling your impulses or acting on them?

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How to Stay Cool Without A/C

A lot of Northerners were very kind during the freeze in Texas this winter with tips on how to stay warm for people who had lost heat. This is an attempt to repay that favor for people in the Pacific Northwest and other northerly locations who are facing dangerous heatwaves without built-in A/C. My qualifications to give this advice are that I was a summer camp attendee and counselor with no A/C for many summers in humid-ass central Texas with highs over 100F basically every day. Hopefully some of it will be of use to somebody who isn’t used to the heat.

1) PUT ICE WATER IN YOUR BODY. Ice water is your best friend and the #1 way to drop your body temp. Drink more than you think you need (like, at least a half-gallon a day and closer to a gallon or more if you have to be outside doing manual work all day) to cool your insides down and stay hydrated. Have some bananas, trail mix, or a sports drink to help replace the electrolytes you’re sweating out and keep you from getting cramps, but try to have most of your fluid intake be water. I used to take a giant water bottle, fill it part way with water, and freeze it on its side so the ice would slowly melt over the course of the day and my water would stay cold longer.

2) PUT ICE WATER ON YOUR BODY. Cold water, ice, or a damp rag on your head and neck, the backs of your knees, the insides of your elbows, and under your armpits will help you cool down the best, because your blood runs close to the surface in those places. Cold packs designed for injuries or lunchboxes, bags of frozen vegetables, etc. can substitute for ice water as well. Even room-temp water will pull heat away from your body better than body-temp sweat will, especially if it’s humid, so if you don’t have enough ice, the sink, bathtub, or hose will do fine. Dipping your feet into cool water helps a ton as well if you have to sit and work and don’t want your clothes to be wet.

3) WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO GET SO MUCH ICE?  To make sure you have enough ice to last you the weekend, especially through a potential power failure, I recommend getting a cooler (even one of the cheap styrofoam ones is fine in a pinch) and ~10lbs of ice from the big coolers at most gas stations, drug stores, or grocery stores. Try to do this now, before anybody loses power, and store as much in your freezer as you have space for to keep it from melting. You can use it for drinking or to keep your food cold in a power failure. You can use it for a party later if you don’t end up needing it during the heat wave, but you will probably be very happy you had it.

4) AIR FLOW. Being inside a room with the windows closed is the worst possible place to be if you don’t have A/C, because glass windows create a greenhouse effect and the hot air can’t escape. If at all possible, find a shaded place outside where you can catch any possible breeze. If not, open all your windows and, if it’s safe, doors so you can get a cross-breeze. Hopefully you have window screens to keep pets and kids in and bugs out. If not, you’re gonna have to do your own risk assessment. Fans of all sizes and descriptions are your friend; ceiling fans should be set to spin counterclockwise in summer. Even if you have A/C, finding or making a handheld fan will be worthwhile for when you have to venture outside. If you aren’t in a situation where you need to conserve ice, blowing air over a cooler full of ice will give you a makeshift A/C. 

5) SHADE. You will probably immediately notice that direct sunlight is a miserable place to be when it’s super hot. Find or make a shaded location, and don’t be afraid to move around to avoid the sun as the day goes on. Stay on the shady side of the sidewalk whenever you walk someplace. Try to shade your windows as best you can without obstructing airflow using blinds, curtains, shutters, etc. especially if they’re directly in the path of the sun. Do not be a jerk to your neighbors if their shade solutions are ugly. If you can get a shade for your car windshield, I highly recommend it, as the steering wheel, dashboard, seatbelts, and even seats can quickly become too hot to touch in a sealed car and will hold that heat for a long time.

6) CLOTHING. Light-colored, loose clothing that is as close to 100% cotton or linen as you can find is your friend. It doesn’t necessarily have to be short as long as it’s breathable. You will sweat through anything you wear, so I personally prefer only wearing machine-washable stuff. Sun hats, sunscreen, sunglasses, aloe gel for sunburns, mosquito repellent, anti-chafing supplies, etc are all worth looking into if you aren’t used to spending time in the heat.

7) TIMING. Try to stay out of the sun and avoid doing anything strenuous in the middle of the day when the heat is the worst. If you have a choice, plan to be more active early in the morning and late at night when the temperature is more bearable, and take a break in the middle of the afternoon.

Here’s a graphic from the CDC about how to recognize heat-related illnesses and what to do about them. I will add to this that if it’s hot and you stop sweating, you are getting to a dangerous level of dehydration and need to drink something BEFORE you start having more serious problems.

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moleskine = bad

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Creatures and beverages