The Idea That Your Behind Someone Implies That You Are Going The Same Way, Which Is Inherently Wrong

Can we talk about how the idea that STEM and the humanities are mortal enemies with no overlap is actually incredibly harmful and is not only preventing people from pursuing their passions but also part of the reason why the humanities aren’t given their proper respect? No, artists are not all snobby pretentious assholes who think they’re more cultured than everyone else and no scientists are not all emotionless robots who think they’re smarter than everyone else and it’s possible to be an artist and a scientist at the same time. By acting like you have to choose between STEM and humanities we are eliminating thousands of potential careers and causing unnecessary divisions in a time where nothing is more crucial than unity. I’m so tired of people acting like STEM majors are incapable of understanding art and humanities majors are incapable of understanding math when the two fields are crucial to one another. Who would design our architecture if it weren’t for artful engineers? Who would discover the rules of composition? At the end of the day we are all just people trying to learn and make a living, and all of these careers are important to humanity. People can’t say that STEM is more important than humanities if there’s no such thing as STEM vs humanities.

mood this week <3

on building mental discipline

do something small that challenges you every day for a week. something small, whatever that means to you. maybe that's drinking a cup of water with every meal, going outside for ten minutes, or going for a run, taking a cold shower. whatever a small but tricky task means to you, do that every single day for a week.

it will be hard for about three days and then it will be easier.

the week after do a slightly bigger task. again, do whatever the next step up would be. cook a meal from scratch, call your mum, schedule an appointment, make the bed every day.

it will be hard for three days, then it will get easier.

third week do an even bigger task. vacuum your apartment, go to the gym, iron your shirts. whatever the next step up is for you, do that.

over time your brain will find it far easier to pick up new habits. it will have become used to the idea that you do new things and it is hard for a few days, but you always stick to it. you've built up your reputation with yourself to the point that your brain automatically thinks of you as disciplined and hardworking.

work out what habits your ideal self will do, meal prepping, exercising, seeing friends, going to therapy, and do them. your brain will have learnt that you do things even when they are hard, because it knows they eventually will get easier.

build up your reputation with yourself.

on lurching towards the breaking point

The X-Files (01x17) // tumblr user @/inkskinned // Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

studywithelle pinpost

I am 16 and i am in S5 in Scotland

This year I studied Highers in English, Biology, History, Latin and RMPS (religious moral and philosophical studies)

Next year I will be taking Advanced Higher English, RMPS and Modern studies, and a Higher in Classics

I hope to study English at Oxford, and then do a law conversion degree

I play cello (taking grade 5 exam in a few weeks), and piano at a grade 2/3 level. my sports are orienteering, ski-racing, tennis, and badminton. member of law, politics, debating, and newspaper societies at school.

would love moots!

When Dostoevsky said, "Pain changes you, but it teaches. That is its mercy." but Kafka said, "Pain changes nothing. It just repeats itself until you forget who you were before it started."

oof

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

obsessed and horrified with the romanticisation of the secret history. why am i seeing 'dark academia aesthetic' edits with the audiobook opening playing over the top, why am i reading posts about what it would be like to date henry winter (he would not date you, he would not socialise with people outside of the greek class), why are you guys talking about how fun it would be to go to a college like theirs and join a cult class like theirs. youu people are missing the point of the story!! morbid longing for the picturesque!!! you guys misunderstood the book!!!!