Too Much

“You will always be too much of something for someone: too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. If you round out your edges, you lose your edge. Apologize for mistakes. Apologize for unintentionally hurting someone — profusely. But don’t apologize for being who you are.”

Danielle Laporte

Something I've employed in my life in the past few years, without really pursuing it officially or anything, is just doing things. Saying things. If I think it, I will say it. To an extent, of course. Certain things are definitely best kept for the inner workings of my mind. 

While there have definitely been times where I've chickened out and not complimented a stranger or something of the like for fear that they would find me crazy or to be hitting on them when I'm really not, generally this has worked a charm. Impulse can be oh so good. Be spontaneous, be free, be true. There is no need for sugar coating. 

I think the issue with reaching out to others revolves around two things: pride and rejection. We want the other party to reach out, to make the first move, to show they are interested. We are scared that they will think we're crazy or stupid or desperate. People are really good at getting in their own heads. Honestly, take the leap and don't be afraid of being too much. You are always going to be too much for someone, so be unapologetically you. 

This has been a complete and utter mix of didactic and thinking out loud. Excellent. I shall leave you with another fantastic quote from a random Tumblr post that has stayed in my head all week: “You not finding me attractive will not stop me from being attractive.” Stay golden, folks.

A List

Currently, I am finding it difficult to really care about anything I normally care about. However, I did start a list of things that are cool in life a few weeks ago so I thought I might share that and add to it.

a list (from Nicole's MacBook notes)

• stretching when you’re tired, or first wake up
• friends with pre 2000 laptops
• noticing people, instead of ignoring them
• spelling a word right in the spotlight dictionary search on a macbook
• realising you can walk, when in a disabled toilet 
• singing disney in the car (over an hour drive in the rain)
• watching a guy laugh as he went through a puddle
• bumping into friends at the bus stop 
• finishing file transfers a minute before a tutorial finishes 
• talking about a friend you've now had for years who means a lot to you but you kind of forgot 
• talking with someone new, with ease
• deep, coma sleep-debt paying sleeps

Forest Freedom

Several years ago in high school, we studied a module called Into the Wild where we learnt about the poet Ovid and his affinity for the outdoors as his interaction with the world enabled him to transcend lots of things.

I've been feeling a lot like Ovid lately. I feel genuinely deprived of some sort of metaphoric oxygen in my cooped-up-ness. I am raring to go go go. We have arrived at the culmination of assignment due dates and I have arrived at the edge of sanity.

It is thoroughly depressing and taxing looking ahead in my calendar and realising my complete lack of leisure time. Leisure time is vital, man. I'm into working hard, but I'm also into resting the soul. Soul productive time.

My entire being is yearning for the summer time and The Great Outdoors. Soon enough. I am so determined to live every single day of this upcoming summer inside out.

In the meanwhile, I shall be setting up camp on this incredible Tumblr. If you enjoy beautiful things and the colour of all cultures, go for it, dear things.

Goldilocks

I am not sure.

We are so often spoiled with choice. As someone who often struggles with indecisiveness I feel and know this all too well. It's entirely probable that the extensive choice is, in fact, what has led to my frequent indecision. I just spent a good amount of time questioning the word 'probable' because it looks extremely peculiar, but it is indeed spelt correctly. Anyhow, I digress immensely. I am not sure. I am not sure if this platform is for me. I'm torn between social media platforms, how's that for a technology generation problem?

I have struggled to write because I won't admit any of this to myself, I think. Well firstly, I was so hesitant to break the fourth wall even though I really inherently seem to insist on breaking it all the time in regards to blogging... about blogging. But secondly, I am head strong in my commitment to Blogger as a platform. I am a professional sentimental value projector and using Blogger throughout the entirety of my adolescence definitely calls for some high definition projection on my part. Yet my mind has floated to WordPress and Tumblr especially, of late. It might be a grass is greener on the other side sort of matter but I'm not quite sure yet (there appears to be a running theme to this post).

The main issue is that I am still not - and unsure of whether I ever want to be - at the stage of whipping my phone or camera out at every photo opportunity and thus, my picturesque photos are limited. And I thoroughly enjoy and understand the success of the moderately photo-heavy/photo-orientated blogging formula. Thus, I'm caught in a little conundrum, you see. I don't want to post unless I have some nice photos to put up, yet I have things to say that don't require photos.

Perhaps I am steadily making a mountain out of a molehill here but I really do love blogging and never want to give it up. I blog therefore I am, y'know? So we gotta work through this.

Empathy

It can be really exhausting to exist sometimes. Don't get me wrong - it's not that I abhor existence or anything of the like; it is a complete and utter blessing and gift every single day. However, let's not sugar coat things. Some days, some weeks, some months can be utterly exhausting. 

I mean, I feel a lot of things. Often, I am a ball of empathy yarn. I am woven to fit situations and then unwoven and strewn about, tangled with everything in my midst. And then repeat. 

At the end of the day, the yarn is going to be pretty beat up, right? Right. That's where a conversation I had a few weeks ago that enabled an 'aha!' moment for me. The person that I was speaking with explained to me how she had stopped watching the news because that was, for her, misplaced empathy. This meant that she focused her energy instead toward particular people or causes that she felt she could productively aid, instead of expending empathy and emotion toward tragedies around the world that were out of her reach. 

I take this to mean that instead of absorbing the news - which is often saturated with sadness and tragedy - you seek out causes that you want to support and give time, money, and energy to in smaller,  concentrated doses. In this way, you're able to exert yourself most productively in terms of 'charity' (in one form or another), and you're also able to ration your energy most effectively in regards to your own mental well being. 

This doesn't mean you should pull a veil over your eyes and be ignorant to anything and everything happening in the world, but merely be more conscious of where you are knitting your empathy yarn and for what direct purpose and result. 

Different Strokes

Different people have different interests. Different people have different interests. Different people have different interests. 

This is a very simple concept. 

However, it seems that many do not seem to be aware of such a reality. This results in several responses incited within me (in no particular order): anger, frustration, loneliness, disbelief. 

Nowadays, compared to several years ago, it's much rarer for me to feel angry but I find this is something that just gets me completely riled up. I think there is almost an element of personal offence  taken because failing to be aware of/in consideration of this phenomenon goes against so many things I  Or maybe simply because the workings of this concept are just plain ol' obvious.

Rea(d)lise

"Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."

"Where they burn books, they will also burn people." - Heinrich Heines

Books are really important. There is something about books that has lasted and will last in one form or another for many, many more years. 

While I've had my heart broken several times over the last few years as I watched several large franchise book stores shut down due to a lack of profit, popularity, and/or general sustained success - I've also experienced quite a bit of mending. Mending in the form of the Kindle, audio books, YouTuber written or promoted books, and a quiet omnipresence of books around me amongst family and friends and strangers. While I do not personally dabble in the aforementioned "new age" forms of consuming literature, they have definitely served as both a comfort and a little fuel to my interest fire for reading. 

Be it copious amounts of time on the internet, or a complete overdose of word consumption during my senior years of high school, I slowly but surely found it harder and harder to pick up a book and really stick to it. I seem to have adopted this habit of starting books and simply never finishing them, which may be okay for some people, but is completely not okay for me.* I would either lose the rhythm of reading or simply move on to another shiny new book. Or I would incessantly re-read books, as I tend to do so with many other things: re-consume, despite the opportunity to explore the new. And thus, The Pile originated. Or The Piles, I should say. 

Over the past year or two, I appear to have amassed quite a collection of books on/in my bedside table, those of which were:

A) Gifted to me

B) Borrowed by me/lent to me

C) Ambitiously bought by me

All of these books in The Pile share something dreadful in common, however; I haven't read/finished any of them. This Pile isn't exhaustive either. Some happy news is that I did indeed finish a book (not pictured: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green - one of my Year 10 bible study girls' favourite Green book) this afternoon. That book, or at least the act of reading that book, is in fact what has led me to write this post. I was reminded of how much more I like how I function when I read. In fact, I like the world and humans and everything just that bit more. Everything is heightened and slowed down and just that bit clearer and sharper and better. 

This is almost a sequel to my previous post. I'm going to get through this pile, book by book and word by word. Life is busy, but not busy enough to forget things that you love, and things that also arguably love you back in their own way. Books make the world go round and they are oh so special if you would only give them a shot. 

*Exceptions to my general inherent inclination to finish books: The Hobbit and Peter Pan - popular and classic respectively, were both almost a struggle to get through. I only reached about half-way with both before abandoning them. I'm not sure if I'm willing to add them to The Pile. They are currently being Ignored. Maybe. Maybe when I have finished better books.