Thoughts

Kinder

in

i've learned how to be kinder to myself.
more forgiving.
allowing for faults and discrepancies and mistakes.
extending grace.
embracing imperfection and a need for a change of scenery, mindset and routine every so often.

i take deep breaths
i draw myself baths
i take myself to the movies even when i might be the only one in the theater
i buy myself foods that might not always be the healthiest
i light candles
i push away from my desk even when there's a pile of work on it
i close and turn off all of my screens
i make time for exercise
i don't make time for exercise
i sleep in sometimes
i take off my shoes and walk barefoot
i don't always wear makeup
i go to those just-for-me places
i treat myself to things i don't always need
i go for a walk late at night or early in the morning or whenever the mood strikes me

i'm kinder to myself and in turn that helps me be kinder to others.
because what goes around comes around.
so they say.
i do find that mantra is especially true in this case though.

The Events At Dusk

in

whispering fading darkness. 
your favorite light is the light that can equally belong to the dusk and the dawn because, if you didn’t have a point of reference, you could close your eyes and open them again and not be sure which time it was. 
the familiar feelings aren’t present, and so the present ones make you feel like a stranger to yourself, but not one you altogether dislike. 
you miss them. you miss them in their familiarness. but you aren’t sure if that’s an alright thing to feel. whether it’s a sign of set back, of being stuck, or a sign of moving forward, of growth.
there’s the smell of smoke.
there’s the feel of grass on bare feet.
there’s the vision of blurry lights strung in the trees.
your altruistic turned mercurial ways. 
the events at dusk.

One From The Other

in

"Quite literally the worst thing I could think of is having a job and a life where one only began when the other one ended. I hope you enjoy what you do enough that you have trouble separating one from the other as well."

This was a sentiment expressed to me by one of my favorite people recently and it resonated with me in such a very real and deep way.
I think it's something we should all think about really.
I was going to expand upon this... but now I actually think I'm just going let this be.
I think the words speak for themselves.

Wilderness With Words

in

i saw it put by Dani Shapiro that writing is a way “to forge a path out of [our] own personal wilderness with words” - a way to both exercise and exorcise our most fundamental insecurities. 

wilderness with words.

i do so often feel like there’s a wilderness inside of me.
i’ve been told that there’s infinity inside of me.
but that dredges up accossiations with order and some sort of straight and narrow organization, direction and clarity for some reason. but wilderness, wilderness is what i most often feel to be inside of my heart and head. endless mazes of trees and unnavigatable landscapes filled with my innermost thoughts that i so often cannot untangle from one another. 

i cannot read or look at an article, book, magazine or movie, without logging away some sort of thought/idea/plan/sentiment i feel like i absolutely must remember and use at a later date. i feel so filled to the brim with the information i constantly, not only take in, but want to keep in. keep in until the right time to put it back out into the world in a new forum, inserted into this writing or that idea, or that creation, or that project or this conversation. i feel that my mind is always always always whirring and humming away. idea after idea scrolling across my frontal lobe, begging to not be forgotten, to be expanded upon, to be recorded, remembered, noted.

i do so best work things out in the written form.
and so, since there's a wilderness inside of me, i suppose it's okay to attempt it's navigation with words.  

especially because i haven't found another outlet to be quite as helpful as this one.
at least not yet. 

Moonchild

in

i'm a child of the moon
dancing on
asphalt underfoot
in the light
waxing and waning

She's Made Up Of

in

she's made up of:

denim. yarn. sail cloth. leather journals with misc mashed together let’s-save-this-too pieces of paper and important memories. blue. gold bangles and poorly made toe rings. booksbooksbooks. donuts. that butterfly-in-your-stomach-feeling. drift wood. that song that comes on the radio. rosemary. sun faded globes. back issues of vintage magazines. clipboards with torn this-inspires-me-right-now pages. words said in late night parking lots. green doored apartments. dormant type writers. unsnapped photos. that now-or-never sentiment.

With A Knife

in

she stirred her coffee with a knife.
not because it was altogether more efficient than another pre-assigned utensil, but because there were always extras of them. 
knives, filling up and out weighing the utensil tray.
taking up more than their fair share of space.
not-used-as-much.
not-as-needed.
and so she put them to use.
she made them needed.
she stirred her coffee with a knife.

Friday Girl

in

i was never one for those all-smushed-in-the-middle days of the week.
i was a friday girl.
a sunday-then-monday girl. but never a tuesday girl.

tuesday through thursday generally go unnoticed and overlooked in my mind and by my attentions. and saturday, well it’s smushed between friday and sunday so i don’t have too much attention for it either. 

if i had to choose one though, it would be friday. 
you have the whole weekend to look forward to, and the whole week to look back on.

Those People

in

sometimes people come into your life at very specific and necessary times. 
to teach you something. 
so you’ll teach them something. 
to lead you somewhere you wouldn’t have otherwise gone. 
to help you through something you needed help through. 
to say something you needed to hear.

but those people don’t always stick around. 
sometimes they’re friends. 
sometimes they’re acquaintances. 
sometimes they’re significant others. 
sometimes too they’re family, and their not sticking around is often the hardest to cope with. 
and sometimes those people won't not be around but instead they'll be in and out of your life, for different times, different seasons. 

but sometimes, they’re meant to just be there for a time, and then after that time has come to an end you have to learn to move on. you can’t keep hanging onto the what-ifs and the might-maybe-mays. because you’ll never give yourself the opportunities you deserve to grow and move and be into the person you’re meant to grow and move and be into. 

those people don’t know how you like your coffee. 
those people don’t know what to say when you’ve had a bad day.
those people don’t know whether you’re going to break out in song and dance when that song comes on the radio, or change the station.
those people don’t know that dancing is your way of unwinding, letting go, being free.
those people don’t know that you never really liked _____and you were just pretending to for their sake.
those people don’t know about that big scary-all-the-way-through thing that happened to you.
those people don’t know about that extremely-wonderful-over-the-moon-amazing thing that happened to you.
those people don’t know about these people.
those people don’t know about the book you read that made you feel that way that made you do this.
those people don’t know about that place that you went and what you did when you were there.
those people don’t know that you’re stronger than you’ve ever been in your whole life in so many ways and you love the person you are and are becoming as a result.

and those are altogether not necessarily the most important things in the world… but think about the people who do know the answer to those things about you and how those people no longer know.

and that maybe there’s a reason they don’t.