paul •͜•
@pauline
paul •͜•
When a craftsperson has a seed of an idea but is unsure where to start, they do not procrastinate by doing more research. They start by making something terrible. They amuse themselves with how bad the initial work is, because they know that their starting work is not a reflection of the finished work’s quality. It’s just a clearing of the mental
... See moreTerms the undepressed toss around and take for granted as full and fleshy—happiness, joie de vivre, preference, love—are stripped to their skeletons and reduced to abstract ideas. They have, as it were, denotation but not connotation. The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything
... See moreDavid Foster Wallace • Infinite Jest
"I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.”
—Charles Bukowski
I remember hopelessly trying to make myself feel even the glimmer of anything good, turning to everything – the music, the friends – that had brought me so much joy before, only to find that I could no longer feel any of it but rather just, from somewhere afar, see and long for it while watching as the ever-darkening blackness in me instead... See more
Syndicate this essay • How Infinite Jest tethered me to life when I almost let it go
Dissociation. You ‘leave your body’ during a stressful event so that you don’t ‘experience’ the trauma in the first place. Sexually, this form of detachment can involve having sex with people we aren’t truly interested in; instead, it might involve dedicating ourselves to our partner’s pleasure, without any awareness of or attention to our own.
Nicole LePera • How To Do The Work: Recognise Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self
People on social media are constantly trying to destigmatize being “try-hard,” because you can’t really be online without trying. But it will never work. It will always be more compelling to garner people’s admiration naturally than to do it on purpose, and the people best at that will always be the most interesting, culturally speaking.