Constantly Having to Get Back on the Horse

 Resilience.

It's what some of us have to be our whole lives. We're constantly kicked off the horse, we have to wipe the sand off our pants and wiggle out the bruises from our impact down. It's not easy getting back up and sometimes it is just our pride that gets in the way that makes it so hard.

I feel like sometimes I'm in a rotation of a few days between having to get back on the horse, sometimes it feels like every morning with my chronic pain and fatigue. 

It honestly feels as if I'm no more closer to the goal based on the amount of times I have to keep getting back up. I just want rest from exhausting myself out, meanwhile the horse (the dream) is still wanting to continue on and I find myself chasing after the horse as it's going ahead. I feel lost on time, like it's whizzing by and the dream is further from my clutches. 

I don't believe in keeping face for positivity's sake. How this society is structured is not meant for people like me: chronically ill and neurodivergent. I sometimes just want to give up and refuse to go into work by how my body is being brutalized by working full-time when most with my condition can't.

There was a time where I was in a wheelchair and it scares me if I were to go back to that reality. It scares me how so many of us are just a few missed paychecks from being on the street with no social safety net in place. 

But still I grit my teeth and I rise in the morning. I shouldn't have to but I have no other option. I am still pushing for joy in my daily life, despite how fast they whiz past. I feel like I am living for the weekend yet I try to make the most of them and feel like a wizard trying to freeze time.

I mix all the pain and the hope and charge forward towards the things that light me up in the dark. It's understanding my darkness, my shadow self, and the reality of what I live in, but not giving into to hopelessness, recognizing the roadblocks that are in the way and coming up with alternative routes. 

I am not ready to despair despite everything and I will cling to this, even if I am in a sinking ship.

Thoughts Around Crafting a New Life

Originally written in October 2024...

I'm sick of the putting things off, especially when one used to enjoy them. It has been years since I've written a blog post. I did it many times as a teenager. I am familiar with my way around Wordpress and Blogger, and researching the pro's and con's between the two. 

I have been having many deep thoughts as of late and I think it has caused where I am where I am. I've been thinking deeply about age and how I'm here now, realizing the change with people and media I used to enjoy seven, eight, hell even four years ago. The passage of time changes everything and sometimes I just want to grip and make it freeze, but then if you freeze time how do you then measure the moment you make it freeze?

I think about the things I am so grateful for. My mind is one of the most amazing things, and well, everyone probably thinks of that. Since I've done my rebirthing ritual it's like the pieces in my life are clicking into place and everything is adding up.

Through the trial of finding myself newly single, I am going through fire and coming out cleansed. The depth of craving for nostalgia runs deep. The needing to return to my own roots of who I was before this two year relationship. The gut feeling that I am meant to live a creative awakened life. And the knowing that life is going to ease up.

I've been through hell the past fourteen years and soon I am going to be able to take a deep breath. The amount of growth I've had in those years is astounding. I do not recognize where my mindset was at even six years ago. I recognize the innocent girl I see in pictures but my heart breaks for where her mind was at.

And now, that I've been rebirthed, I'm not going anywhere. I am going to speak my truth. I am going to film my Youtube videos, I'm going to self talk to myself out loud at work, I'm going to release my books for free on my website, I'm going deep with craftivism, I'm chasing my goals with absolute abandon. I am romanticizing my 8-5 and my life in general while I deal with the realities of living alone with chronic illness and neurodivergency in an world that has so much stress.

I am done being a victim to life. I'm taking my power back and alchemizing my pain into something absolutely breathtakingly beautiful and it's this: I'm crafting my life how I want it.

No truer words have been spoken when Qi Ghan said "Your focus determines your reality." Now of course this doesn't mean ignoring systemic blocks that need to be tackled. But continuing to live your life despite the absolute ravages life can put us through.

I have been through the ringer and I'm don't letting it take me willing. I will cry and mourn when I need to, but it is not forever. In fact it isn't and shouldn't be long.

Just the idea of crafting my life gives me such a sense of grateful fondness that fills my heart full. Like eating a warm apple pie with a cold serving of french Vanilla ice cream and you're all cozy near a crackling fire. 

I live a life of intense physical pain. Now of course there's the emotional, but that is easier to manage than the physical pain. I've been told by doctors my conditions make it as much as the top three most painful conditions in the world and honestly, I'm so used to the pain that I'm scared if this partial numbness went away.

My brain is fried from handling all the signals that go to my brain around the clock. Then there's the neurodiversity that tackles my brain again and again. 

My brain is done being a victim.

It's time to say fuck Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and fuck society for the constraints they put on neurodivergency and make it seem like a curse. It is not a curse, society is for the way it is constructed. 

Fuck the trauma from how I was raised. Fuck the trauma of navigating the world how I am. Fuck the rejections and the hate. Fuck my goals waiting.

This is my time to pursue...myself.

When thinking of my life as a whole and crafting and of course with my newly single status: I'm thinking I'll plan to stay single the rest of my life, it'll be my focus and priority to remain in this status. I've found since my breakup, I really enjoy it. I love being single. Yes there are hills I'm mourning but I am overcoming those bitches good.

I will not roll inside myself because I am hurt because of how vulnerable and raw I was. No, instead I'll still hang with my guts out and won't apologize for it. I'm done saying sorry for things that do not need apologies for. The way I talk. For people taking my beliefs or words the wrong way when I meant how I meant them. For how society has told me how I need to communicate and I don't listen. For my pain.

I'm done owing smiles through the pain. The way it was branded into me by my own blood to pretend. I'm breaking those chains now. I'm done censoring myself with my likes. Done being embaressed for my interests.

I'm done holding the heavy exhausting mask that is masking. 

A Love Letter to Being a Loner

Originally written March 2025...

Being a loner. It's something I've experienced my whole life. Never quite feeling like there was space/community that took me in and nurtured me. I always felt like I was ping ponging amongst groups growing up. 

There were groups I've grown in, ones where I felt betrayed, ones where it just seemed like no matter how hard I tried no one wanted to seek me out. 

Everyone I wanted to talk to I actually had to go and seek them out, it never seemed to be the other way. I never felt sought out just because a person was truly interested in learning more about me.

I've always looked up to other loner women: Joan of Arc, Megan Thee Stallion. Marilyn Monroe, Artemesia Gentilisthi, my holy diamond of lone wolves.

Always misunderstood. Smarter than anyone took for at face value. Always underestimated. 

We have our happiest most serene and peaceful moments of our lives spent walking in our own solitude. We  take care of ourselves as best we can because we know at the end of the day we are the only ones that will truly be there for ourselves.

Our creativity sets us on fire. We may or may not believe in love, but when we do we dream of the best love stories for ourselves. 

We have such a passion for how our mind works and the creation of the collective that comes from them. Feeding into that collective throughout the centuries, even though they may be vast between us.

I have such a bad understanding for if I'm truly thought of when I'im not activly engaging with someone. But am I striving for the wrong things? Just for people to care about me? I'm okay with me knowing myself best not someone else. 

I know I need to shift to a not harmful psychologically. How people like me and express that is not up to me so I shouldn't make any assumptions. I am the only person that will be able to 100% believe in myself when it comes to my goals.

I feel like I'm finally truly living for myself. Not for good things that may happen to me in the future. But getting up and claiming that happiness for myself rn no matter the consequences or if I feel like life is going shitty. I am trying my hardest to live a life I'll be proud to eventually leave behind. IDK I think I'll miss being a human.

My worst fear. Dying alone. This fear drives me to partnering up with the wrong people. Making excuses for leaving behind my goals like moving to Europe.

When have I challenge myself like when I built my PC three years ago? When have I put myself out there with learning like that and starting ground zero? I need to do that with music.

I know I can be great. I will be. I want to experience it all, the raw creation of it, the screaming out all the shit that builds up, I want to see how I can expand my voice and range and make different sounds just with my throat. 

The joys of you having nothing served to you on a silver fucking platter. So you have to get up and do it all yourself kind of satisfaction. 

... am I a loner or do I hold people at a distance? I know I've been guilty on relying others to help maintain my emotional state but I am done with that, I've been made aware and it's time to take it a step down. 

I'm my own best friend but I sure as hell don't know how to shut the fuck up and stay mysterious. It feels odd. Cause in one way I feel as if I'm reclaming back the label of being shy and I'm unmasking and on the other hand I feel like when I open my mouth to other I'm speaking under water. 

I feel misheard and misunderstood. This must be peak Autism experience I swear. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get married, because I am not sure I could be understood on that deeply of a level of knowing someone. I feel incapable of it or just not really wanting to spend my energy on making it become a completed goal.

I think if it's meant to be, then it will find me. But I always have FOMO feeling like I gotta chase cause no one will do it first. Is that a good thing? But I want to feel wanted.

I think the saddest thing about dying is all the things you left behind suddenly don't have any importance to anyone else, okay maybe some things have shared memories and thus importance, or economic worth, but what about the rock I was given on that walk? Who is there to remember that and preserve the rock? I'd wanna be burried with my favorite things.

I need to live for myself. Not others. Not their opinions. Not to give in to society trying to tear me down. But for my inner child, inner teen, my early 20's, future me, and most importantly current me. The one who is trying her hardest despite life being so weird and different yet familiar.

Looking Over Our Shoulders

Why do we cast looks over our shoulder? Afraid of being seen, judged, and rattled out of our creative and curios spirits. We live in this hunched and scared feelings, worried people will give the wrong kind of fuck of what we're about. 

All this does is grate our output to a halt. Or make us put out non-authentic works. In such an effort to push out and keep at bay anyone else's opinions we also forgo the chance for someone to love our work we do.

And we end up ostracizing ourselves in the process, the community gets further away, we understand other humans less leading to less empathy for others' struggles and our own.

This is something I've struggled with my entire life. How do we even start by putting a stop to it? Is it affirmations? Hypnosis? A bubble bath?

I think it starts with practice. Practice being vulnerable with others especially creatively. Practice easing up on how tight your muscles are when you do your art. Being okay with being a beginner. Aiming for the love of the process, not the end of it. 

Fall in love with your process and how messy things can get in your creative pursuits. Try a releasing meditation before you begin and end with gratitude.

I'm speaking to the choir here. This is something that is no easy task. Always feeling like you're not good enough, and sometimes it's something that isn't just in the creative parts of our lives but is deeply ingrained in our pasts and other aspects of our lives like relationships or school.

But embrace yourself as you are now. 

Humans and Our Trinkets

We collect, scavenge, accumulate, and grange. Our baubles, our tchotchkes, our curios. They have been apart of our lives for a very long time now. I won't claim to know the history or the psychology of this phenomenon of humans and their silly little items they adore, rather my perspective on it all.

Their is something primal here though. We tie our identities in the things we surround ourselves with, the things that strike out against all the muck of the world. Why did we choose to collect and keep care of the thing we picked up in 5th grade on the sidewalk?

Our treasures and why we pick them are very much apart of us. I believe when it comes to our personal type of trinkets we hold dear it surpasses what materialism stands for. We do put emphasis on the things we have emotional ties to.

I think for the majority it is the tactileness of a memory or feeling that is anchored within an object. The analog nature of an object is really what encompasses it. Seeing it again, holding it, can bring back what may have slipped in the past simply by our memory alone. The bauble is quite literally magic in that regards. 

Our memories and emotions may graduate an object and transfer onto another and that is quite okay. It's common for many of us to keep onto things that are sentimental just for sentimental sakes, almost shells of what they used to do for us.

I'm not minimalist in any regards nor do I advise that you toss these items, that is a sacred decision between you and yourself. But we must make sure we don't hold onto so many of those almost shells or actual shells and have no room for anything new to remind us of more recent experiences. 

There is also an aspect of the customization of our personality with our objects. To stand out from the beige and bland of life with things we feel represent what lies inside of us. Keychains, stickers, our clothing and especially our accessories, and it goes even beyond the physical realm. The words we choose to engrain in our lives, the music we listen to, the movies we watch. 

Nostalgia must not be something merely reflected back to you in pixels. It must be tangible to fully experience those waves of memories and novelty. But I do caution against the rise in the capitalization and entrapment of holding memories hostage for monetary gain. While there is a merit of finding items back to restored and revitalized conditions under an economic throw back, not all of the items from our past need to be sought through those methods to reclaim them.

Too many of us put our photographs in photo boxes, our childhood items in attics, and toss the things you collected as a child out of embarrassment. We've become ashamed of them out of fear of what others might think, or even not want to be reminded of the emotional attachments with the items. The rigid self imposed decor laws prevent some from proudly displaying what their heart adores.

This is what minimalism pushes for. Or at least one of the things. I'm not denying that there are some who have a hoarding problem, but I believe there are some not so good philosophical errors within mainstream minimalism. 

With the rise of sleek modern technology we've started to drop tactile and analog methods. The trends of bare walls and beige paint have flooded the various aesthetic industries. We've rather look at screens of what we like rather than experiencing them in person. Instead of collecting little physical reminders of our trips, we download more data to fill the void cheaply. 

We need to use more beautiful things in our everyday lives. Since the industrial age, craftsmen have faded into the background. And hey I get it, hand crafted objects are more expensive then cheap massly produced items. Therefor I urge a focus on second hand, borrowed, repurposed, etc. If you already own a good spoon but it's plain, paint it, claim it as your own and treat it well and it will treat you back well. 

There is a human need for interacting with the world on a more grounded level. Use physical CDs. Read paper books. Get back into nature and physically ground yourself. Collect and care for plants you enjoy looking at, not just on a screen. 

All of this is not to say we shouldn't be viewing our physical possessions as more important than other things. People and yourself will always be more important. It's not worth going back into a burning house for a memory, when your own future memories are at stake.

There is balance to be found in everything- but shed the shame and guilt over being a human with baubles. They are apart of us. There are stories and quantum energy in everything we hold dear in the physical realm. Do not waste your life on digital experiences and materials that drain you slowly over time. Not to say you can't have a digital life, it is one of the most nearly inevitable parts of living in our day and age.

Seek the joy your human side wants.

Ideas About Why We Crave Nostalgia

 At one point does the things we do start to become nostalgic? For me I'd say I felt it at age 20 in very small hints, then more at 22, then a shit ton at age 26. They all pretty much consisted with major events... the first major events of my 20's. Where I was literally being reborn.

From a spiritual and psychological one, I would say for me at least, craving nostalgia brings me great comfort when I'm going through the most uncomfortable and rebirthing into a new person moments.

Hell I crave nostalgia I never even lived through or was too young too remember, or was aware but couldn't participate (hello Myspace!) Okay actually Myspace isn't a good example because its not like I couldn't have gotten onto Myspace, it's just my childhood was strict.

But you hopefully get the point.

The most recent one for me, I went through a nasty breakup and it made me look at my core self, and what do you know I'm craving the decade I was born in but have no memories of. And honestly all the parts of me, my childhood, my teen years, my early twenties. I'm craving it all, wringing all the nostalgia out of the goodness of my memories in them. 

Therefor I think what I need to do is indulge the 90's nostalgia.

Then with 22, I was going to ages 5-10 version of me with nostalgia searching. Really decorating my room pink how childhood me would have dreamed of. Y2K clothing. Experiencing some of the most vivid joy of my life.

Then 20, looking back and realizing my teen years were really gone. Realizing my teen years were nostalgic. Thinking of my Tumblr I had, pre-chronic illness me body feelings, the mustache accessory phase I had (I had suspenders and a ring lmao).

So I think nostalgia can be a spiritual experience, it's dealing with the good parts of memories and reliving through them by thinking of the item of nostalgia (buying it, playing with it, listening, watching, etc). 

Talking to others about nostalgic shared experiences can be a healing process as well. There's no wonder there's such a focus on generations (Zillenial here, Millenial/Gen Z, yes I don't fit in either 100%). 

However I do wave a hand of caution towards going into your nostalgia. Know that it's become capitalized with the rise of TikTok. Capitalism has gotten its grimy fingers on it and waved things above our heads shouting nostalgia from the rooftops. So be careful about your purchase and attention consumption.

It's also good to make sure you stay grounded in reality, remember we cannot go back in time. Move in the present with gratitude and excitement, but also cherishing the current moment. Our time now will be nostalgic to us later on (or at least I'm hoping it will be!). 

A Birthday

 What I'm Grateful for the Past Year

the spring budding blooms of my sociality

the way the sun kisses my face amongst commutes

the choices, though endless, are present

bags gathered, an onion atop a post

the daily synchroneities when one slowly ponders

the crisp sound of a page being turned

the self-parenting prides in my choices, however minute

exploring and mapping the vastness of my creations

the clutching with whitened knuckles upon hope

the needles inside my bones twisting but never breaking

the taking of my ink to a new page

curiosity holding my hand guiding me through all

the way I am shifting the mask away

the paths of all tied together creating

the way my lips part to reveal my soul smile

another year blessed to me