Effort

friendly reminder that you're really powerful

you can make people smile just by complimenting them, you can make them laugh by telling them a good joke, you can love and what really is more powerful than all this? you can make someone's day by telling them they're pretty you can make them happy in so many ways you're so powerful

wield that power wisely, my sweethearts

i love you

it's been in the pipeline for a while so i got around to replying to it now actually

ohh okay thought we were in the same board haha. best of luck to you too!! you'll do great i'm sure of it <33

(also realised i wasn't following you?? weird. anyway hope it's okay to send asks here)

we are not in the same board if it helps

every day is just can i be in love who will i be in love with it is so difficult but i know it has felt so easy i love you i love you i love you i love you i love people i hate people i love the world the world is despicable it is too much maybe it will all be okay if i fall in love it is horrible the world burns but can i— can just i be okay

meditation media

even though it's so inextricably linked to spirituality in the way i perceived it at first, i've begun to wonder of meditation and how i'm performing it. up till recently, it'd been a while since i'd been lost in a piece of art, the way i used to spend most of my time as a kid: buried in a book, and it's beginning to happen again, to my relief. art just horrifying enough (requiem for a dream) or perplexing enough (it's what's inside) or just weird (kinds of kindness) have been engaging in a sense i'd forgotten how to feel.

i'd call engaging with such art a weaker form of meditation, provided a certain degree of 'artiness' to the art as well. we see parts of ourselves in characters we see, and it teaches us things about us. would i have felt the same paralysing fear arjun felt on the battlefield? very likely, indeed. would even the geeta have helped me overcome it, could i have killed family for dharma? who knows! i was part of a conversation about reading the mahabharat at a certain stage of life (not mine), and the introspection it provides you with through the characters.

i have learned many things about me through art, it is awfully convenient to have people who are very good at verbalising feelings do the job for you. even though there is nothing new under the sun, and to a certain extent, i agree, there's always a new combination of existing stories that finds a nerve you didn't know existed. the bones may be the same, but the skin always morphs and changes and adds a certain quasi-citrus freshness to any story. maybe one day i'll graduate to actually introspecting, but for now, i'm very thankful for art for being my gandalf through middle earth.

You're rude

i'm the sweetest person wdym

okay so i do see this too now

OHH it's because we're mutuals on my side blog

i am so confused

hi hi do you have board exams right now too?

not rn !!! my board didn't do the split so im gonna have just one final board

best of luck to u !!! i am still studying my prelims start in a month

nice to meet you too !!! my aforementioned irl has started reading it so i'm waiting for him to get partway along so i can then start i'm very comfortable letting him find me fanart so i'm at no risk of getting spoilered

HAVE YOU READ WORM HAVE YOU HAVE YOU

HI YES I HAVE!!

my heart is lost adrift in a sea far from land oh, what I would give to float to a beach astray

there lies no comfort here out in the cold vastness of the water oh, what i would give to find a land to lay on

shouts to the sky are futile no god rescues me but to be honest anyone who would save me would be no less

change

the first part of changing yourself for the better is finding out the parts of yourself that you wish to improve on, and accepting them (and yourself) as they are. you can never be perfect, and that's okay. i've heard these sentences hundreds of times from different self-help sources, but you only realise that it's true when you actually feel it. you cannot hate yourself into being a better person. this ties into the conversations i've had about diets, and my personal belief that if you simply launch yourself into a hard diet (no scope for error, guilt when you can't adhere to the rules), a rebound is inevitable. love yourself, and change to a you that you wish to be (without hating the now). there's no better way. there's none healthier.

i've changed enormously over the past three years, and i don't believe i would recognise me of before too strongly, and i couldn't have done it alone. as i thanked kriti for the part she's played in this, she just told me: “it's just friendship”, and i'm always reminded of the massive debt we would owe our friends if they weren't all strictly non-transactional. i wouldn't have changed this much without my friends, and i would definitely not be the me i am. i hate all my friends that will call me out in an instant if i say something wrong, and yet i would be nowhere about them. there's no space for my ego there.

i can tally up my progress over the past three years, and almost none of it is academic. true, i did learn one very big thing: how to love what i learn, but the seeds for that already lived in me, germinating whenever i had the fortune of a good subject or a good teacher. i have learned much, much more about everything outside the classroom, challenging my understandings and beliefs. at the end of the day, a holistic me is who will be there to deal with the world. i hope i've done well with him. i hope he never stops learning how to live.