less depressed / you should check out are.na
june has been a busy month. we went to wu-tang forever: the final chamber a few weeks ago, and last week i walked 22 miles and spent 23 hours in class at a work conference. more travel is coming up next month. i am tired and happy.
on my drive home from the conference, i realized that i’m at a significant crossroads between passions. more significant, i feel that all paths will lead to genuine fulfillment.
i’ve created so much space in my world to think that it’s all i do anymore. life will be one long brainstorm if you let it, and i remember there was a time when i wanted that? endless introspection and interrogation : the meta-work.
these days i feel antsy to do. anything, all of it, ideally still from a seated position, but i’m working on that.
whatever shift i’m in comes down to accepting that nothing is ever finished, you are never done. you will find your north star, and then it will move, and there will always be a dish in the sink. clarity and satisfaction come from movement; contemplation is comfort, but not momentum.
so if i won’t ever be done, what do i want to do now?
still an impossible question. trying not to think about it.
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i also went out for a friend’s birthday recently. we talked a bit about depression and how we all think we’re coming out of it but aren’t sure what not-depressed feels like, so maybe we’re wrong? but everything is more vibrant lately. i’m not quite as energized and motivated as i’d like to be, but i’d like to be. the apathy is ebbing.
my future is easier to picture: one where i wear linen pants in the summer and own a briefcase but never use it. hopefully the world sticks around that long.
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are.na is great, by the way. it’s not very intuitive and is best used on a desktop, but i have found so much niche art and reading material that i’m becoming evangelical about it.
i came across an article titled i’m like a pdf but a girl: girlblogging as nomadic pedagogy, which is exactly the type of word salad i salivate over. there are rabbit holes for things like glitch feminism and adult supremacy and collapse informatics – none of which i’ve heard of but are prime candidates for my next fixation.
it’s not all so explicitly political; there’s also photography and memes and tons of graphic design resources.
on are.na, there are channels and blocks – basically boards and pins. blocks can be a file, URL, or text and they can be connected to any number of channels; channels can be private, closed (visible to everyone, only edited by you or collaborators), or open (visible to and editable by everyone).
even better, most books and articles are attached directly as files and you can export entire channels to download all files at once (!).
you can also follow profiles or channels, including mine if u want :)
p.s. cloudhiker.net is also very fun; it’s basically a replacement for stumbleupon.