baja

The danger is not that we have a slot machine in our pockets. The danger is that we have a dream machine in our pockets. Smartphones project the desires of billions of people to us through social media, Google searches, and restaurant and hotel reviews. The neurological addictiveness of smartphones is real; but our addiction to the desires of

We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment.

“What does it mean to accept the gift of misidentification?”

(Sophie Strand—for Advaya—talking about the trickster, the hobbled one, who doesn’t mind being misidentified or co-opted because it gives them an opportunity to disturb the narrative from the inside.)

In fact, one research study by psychologists specialising in creative persistence found that there’s something inherent about the creative process itself that causes what they call ‘disfluency’.1 Any creative project involves making mistakes, navigating blind corners, getting lost down dead ends, feeling embarrassed by early attempts.

You have to do something wrong. The cracks are generative—that’s where the dandelions break through. But you have to do something wrong first. The first step is always the wrong step.

(paraphrase of Sophie Strand, for Advaya)

Some healthy life-enhancing processes are: taking up for yourself, defending the way you see it, allowing yourself to be free to feel as you do, reaching out for someone, trying to do something that you haven’t been able to for some time, exploring, wondering about yourself, trying to meet people, sexuality, a sense of cosmic significance or