images by Kira Cyan
i love you visible brushstrokes. i love you glue warped scrapbook pages. i love you awkward poems. i love you junk journal with faded receipts. i love you poorly composed journal layout. I love you unintentionally blurry photographs. i love you asymmetrical beading. i love you curling freeform crochet. i love you fingerprints on pottery. i love you reused materials. i love you improvised instruments. i love you mistakes. i love you bravery to make it anyway. i love you creativity that hasn't been wiped clean of every drop of humanity and sanitized and commodified.
Hey. You know what they taught me in my environmental studies classes, about how to work in this field and be able to keep doing it without burning out and crashing? And also about how to get the general public to care about what we do?
Ragebait isn't actually a very good strategy. Hope is. Showing people it's possible to make a difference is. Imagining a better future is. I think other movements need to learn this.
For years the strategy was to show people horrible things so they'd be angry and want to do something, but it turns out it's really easy to cross the line into them thinking 'oh god it's all horrible and we're doomed' at which point they get paralyzed with hopelessness. So that's not the recommended strategy anymore and instead we try to connect climate issues with things people care about and show them how they can help in concrete, achievable ways. Anyways, I'm still in this field three years later and I don't feel crushing despair about it so I guess it's working. Y'all should join me. Put down the images of sad polar bears and other assorted horrors; pick up something hopeful and useful instead.
journal of an ordinary grief, mahmoud darwish
Victoria Chang, Obit
I’m sick of just trying to get through things.
I want to enjoy things. I want to look forward to things instead of just dreading being tired and in pain.
Ada Limón, “To Be Made Whole”, On Being with Krista Tippett
Reblog if you understand that disability is not a monolith and two people with the same disability do not have identical experiences ✨
I think so many people forget making the world a better place isn’t just about having all the ‘correct’ sociopolitical opinions and beliefs and knowing all the theory it’s also hugely about actually being a good person… everyday acts of kindness and empathy, going out of your way to help others, small moments of connection in a cold world, loving thy neighbour all that