Moonshyness - In Between Worlds

Fragrance Of Lost Souls

Watercolor On Black Cotton Paper

2025, 22"x 30"

White Lilacs, Syringa vulgarus var. alba

Emily Dickinson, from her poem titled "1188," featured in The Emergency Poet

Everything is so hard all the time has anyone else noticed that

they need to invent somewhere where I belong

actually there's one thing i haven't had since the breakup...anxiety. huh, funny how that works

a couple thoughts on self-improvement

we need to understand that not giving ourselves enough time to kick a bad habit and establish a new better habit is a form of self-sabotage.

humans always want a quick solution for everything but our nervous systems were not built to adapt so quickly. that's why quitting a bad habit cold-turkey or starting a new good habit in an extreme way rather than easing in slowly usually doesn't work. (not saying it never works, but even if it does it's not the most optimal way to do things).

think about it this way: most addictions don't go from 0 to 100 immediately. since this is something that most of us struggle with, let's take for example phone addiction: you didn't just become addicted to consuming brainrot after watching a couple of reels. it's a learned behavior that develops from repetition and reenforcement.

i was already addicted to social media and the internet long before i had a smart phone. i watched hours of youtube and scrolled endlessly on tumblr. the problem just got worse and worse as I got more exposure to it and my brain became used to the sensation of that particular, easy dopamine reward. of course shortform content taking over and apps becoming more and more predatory in their design made the problem worse.

another thing that we tend to forget is that creating a better habits means making a conscious decision to do so on a regular basis. the fact that this too, is hard on our bodies and minds needs to be taken into consideration. that's why it's important to celebrate little successes. you managed to go a week without instagram? that's great! you managed to delete an app that you've been wanting to delete for a long time? there's more good things waiting if you keep going!

and if we mess up? if we re-install it or binge-scroll after a week of no social media? -we immediately feel like failures. instead of drowning in this feeling of failure, which reinforces us to go back to our addictive behavior, we need to encourage ourselves to keep trying.

and when we keep trying it's important to observe why we went back to the behavior we are trying to stop and what we could try to do better next time, so that we don't try blindly. what we perceive as failures are actually just experiences to learn something new and do better the next time.

the importance of gently and steadily building resilience and making your body and mind get used to trying again cannot be understated when it comes to forming better habits.

insta rotted my brain so bad that scrolling tumblr feels like dancing barefoot through a meadow

Everything is exactly as it should be…

i'm miserable because i keep pulling in people who take risks and live in uncertainty to achieve their goals. well i'm not like that and i never was. i like safety. i like stability. i'm not obsessed with reaching some big goal in life. i just want to live in peace. and i'm tired of constantly being made to feel like that is somehow not the right way to live. that i should be wanting more. i come from generations of women who had to live in uncertainty. who had to run away, who had to stretch the horizons of their lives not because they wanted to, but in order to survive. silence and peace. i want nothing more. and if i never find someone who shares this wish with me, then i'd rather just be alone for the rest of my life.

i hope this reaches the target audience:

hold on for one more night, one more day. appreciate all the little things keeping you connected to the world. tell yourself the end can wait one more day. see how you feel tomorrow. see if you can keep going a while longer.