#crafting ourselves
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It takes an excessive amount of self-confidence to say "I Do", to mean it, and then to assume it's a done deal. BAM. There's your Forever.
Of course we were young, we were in the throes of young love, and seriously. What more did we need?
So I said "I do", she said "I do" and then.
All hell broke loose.
Much like that book "What To Expect When You're Expecting" there's a metric ton of stuff you're not led to expect when you're teeing up a marriage. For sure there's what you do expect. For sure there's stuff we shoulda expected. And absolutely, uncategorically, without apology, there's stuff that in no way should we have expected.
There's stuff that should not have happened.
And then thirty one years later, here we still are. We definitely bent along the way... but we did not break.
We did not.
Break.
Believe it or not, we were asked as recently as last night by our bartender how you do that. How you last thirty-one years. And in a nod to both the romantics and realists out there, the answer I'm leaning toward is that from Day 1 ( if not sooner) you're actively crafting yourselves into individuals who really are meant for each other. The idea that we were both perfect and perfect for each other as twenty-somethings is simply naive. There's so much growing up as individuals, so much growing you do and continue to do as you gain experience and knowledge.
We are not now, for example, who we were when each of us said "I do". Those versions of us are now preserved in time capsules stashed away in our memories, our writings, our videos, and our photographs.
We were, obviously to each other, within the same ballpark as human beings. We were both creatives. Both photographers. Both writers. Both passionate about our careers. We both shared some of the same habits, humor, and intellectual interests. We had projects that overlapped and friends who overlapped. We had a common view of the world along with opposing views of the world that we declined to make deal-breakers. We had young love, laughter, fun, and chemistry.
And then yeah. In retrospect, even though I don't think this was something we did intentionally, we crafted ourselves into individuals who really are meant for each other and who really can prevail against Time and Circumstance and heinous Plot Twists.
So much of life is having to make The Call without all the information you need. Definitely parts of life spring surprises on you as a couple that are treacherous and breathtaking. You have to learn how to navigate both profound ambiguity and massive emotional turmoil.
Together.
You have to do that together.
And whoever we started out as, each of us, we grew through several iterations of ourselves leading to who we are today. And each of those iterations of Me, each of those iterations of Her, were sufficient to prevail against what we had to prevail against at the times we had to prevail against those things.
Even so, the experiences themselves were brutally messy. The most important thing, though, is that we bent.
But we did not break.
I won't lie. Marriage is the ultimate test of character. There are so many personal and professional abilities you're required to put in play even though you don't have all those abilities when you say "I do" and she says "I do". There's so much you have to improvise, learn on the fly. There's an Everest of things you learn about each other and what you do with that knowledge is the difference between success and failure. Between something you endure and a Life you cherish. Between being stuck and growing up.
Into your best self.
Into your best selves.
Which didn't just happen, by the way.
I know because for thirty-one years she has challenged me and continues to challenge me to be my best self. I did not and do not go quietly into that best self but it's a helluva thing I ended up pursuing that version of Me anyway.
So.
It takes an excessive amount of self-confidence to say "I Do", to mean it, and then to assume it's a done deal. BAM. There's your Forever.
But there you are: we're thirty-one years into this adventure and we are well on our way to Forever.
☺️
#wedding anniversary#marriage#love#perseverance#friendship#family#celebration#saying i do#crafting ourselves#growing up#maturity#intellectual curiosity#creativity#passion#chemistry#humor
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the petrified drow
#probably forgot one of them not sure#i reloaded a save because i only had two basilisk oil to spare so i could get to know all of them#i wish we could craft that shit ourselves :(#anyway i kinda love them#dnd drow#bg3 drow#bg3 spoilers#bg3 dhourn
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rounding up the pieces i've drawn this past month and documenting my progress :] the project theme is pretty loose, but along the lines of growth / leaving the comfort zone / exploration
prompts are either art related (composition, lighting, study etc.) or entirely based on vibes and i tend to jump between WIPs a lot LOL there's around 80 more drawings on the to-do list now and i'm in relentless pursuit for them 🕺🪩💃
#eliane#dimitri#dimiliane#moonbow's crown (dmln project)#pancake (art tag)#fe3h oc#not to get weirdly intense abt art in da tags but#paraphrasing ian mccaig we work on our craft until we can say the things we can imagine and then take it even beyond that#for the things we don't know about ourselves yet but we're about to find out#all that to say. i think art is neat
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🥺❤️ to old friends renewed
#visited my friend today and cried at how beautiful the life we have both crafted ourselves#she and i are the two pinnacles of our grad program and#i love her sm#she was more of my dissertation advisor than my actual dissertation advisor/PU#*PI#she taught me so much more#she made me a chemist#her students are so lucky
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Love that every app in my phone has an "add stupid fucking bullshit" button now.
#ai#shit#my descendants won't believe that used to craft our stupid fucking bullshit all by ourselves word by stupid fucking word
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in case anyone’s wondering how it’s going i just chose to take my break on the floor (floor time good and i have a little comfy spot) and as i laid down two of my lumbar vertebrae popped just from the tension of my muscles. dear god
#marzi speaks#i am TIREDDD#why did we choose to make paper crafts. we could have just made blocks of ice and pushed them around campus. it would have been so easy#why did we make it hard on ourselves. why did we do this#‘why do you keep saying we’ THIS IS A GROUP PROJECT. HHHHHHHHH
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happy write badly monday everyone! 🥰🧃🎉🍩✨
#every time I take a lecture/read a book about the craft of writing I want to hide in a corner and cry#but today we're fighting the feeling of inadequacy by putting ourselves out there and trying harder#if this sentiment has literally evolved into one of the main character arc threads of my wip. . . don't think too much about that#miaing
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i know you teenagers dont have fully formed brains yet but can you be silly in a way that doesnt inconvenience the 70 y/o man who zones the paint department thanks
#eyes#this was yesterday and i couldnt fix it myself bc i was off the clock#i know how that sounds but if u work at walmart u know. theyre incredibly strict when it comes to that#i couldnt even pick up the frozen meal that someone left in the craft supplies that i saw right before this#its so mf frustrating#and he probably had to fix it first thing on the morning like please stop#dont be annoying to customer service folks in general maybe we all would rather kill ourselves than deal with more annoying customers
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I'm thinking again on the fact that so often comments, criticism and readings on Jack dwell a lot on how he is barely human/a person/doesn't have a personality at the point of the story and, while I somewhat understand these points, I find them so lacking. I find them... ableist? I'm always doubtful to use the word here because I'm not sure if it's applied in this kind (mental health) of context, but something like that. And I find them extremely simplistic.
However, honestly, a big part of the reason for these readings being so popular is that the manga itself words it that way. But that's one of the problems I find in the manga. When I say P.andora Hear.ts is very good but unfortunately it is very manga-like at times, besides the 2000s homojokes and the like, I'm usually thinking about things like this. I feel like often characters and situations that are (potentially) very intricate instead of getting insightful deep overviews often get screwed by the writing itself, which falls into very manga tropes a lot in a bad way (not that every manga has to fall into them, or that every manga trope has to be bad or written badly).
I don't know... For instance, I'd argue R.askolnikov's capacity for love in Cr.ime and Punishmen.t is debatable, but it's never treated as if it made him less of a person, a human being or made him not have a personality. I'd say not even Svidrigailo.v, who is as much a Bad Guy™ as a character can be, gets that treatment by the writing. I'd say that even him or Mikol.ka are written as fully fleshed human beings with their intricate internal lives and feelings. Svidrig.ailov's last scene with D.unya is fascinating for both characters and spins the whole dynamic and makes you question the entire narrative and veracity of not only those two characters, but brings to mind several other conversations among different characters and throws light (and doubt!) on the main plot between R.askolnikov and Porf.iry.
In similar situations, Jack's humanity, personhood and personality are debated, doubted and even full on accepted as vanished. No one reads Crim.e and Punishmen.t and comes to the same conclusions about Raskolni.kov, Svidrig.ailov, Sony.a or Razu.mikhin. The writing doesn't allow it. The writing doesn't allow you to forget that humanity is diverse and multifaceted, that it can be sad and cruel and loving and monstrous, even all at the same time, or that a person may struggle with feeling at all; and one is still a person.
#This honestly is one of the things if not The Thing that frustrates me the most of P.H#I've seen this kind of 'that's not a person/human/doesn't have a personality anymore' readings with The S.tranger by Camu.s#And they were imo also simplistic (and that's coming from someone who didn't like the book)#They were also made by my Ethics professor in college who was from the O.pus De.i#Anyway this is a post because I imagined I wouldn't be able to fit everything in the tags#I should probably delete this later#but I wanted to get it out of my system first. I've been thinking about this a lot again after reading the guides and I got angry again#I don't think manga as a medium necessarily has to treat characters this way#but there's often a big simplification of characters in general in a particular flavour#And I think Jack (arguably Vincent too) suffers from this. The exact same thing happening with Jack could be written slightly differently#and cease to have that shonen manga for edgy teens flavour it gets in like two pages#that doesn't ruin but definitely stains a 104 chapters characterisation that was so well crafted#(especially given most fans take everything at face value without thinking much about anything like vacuum cleaners of text)#I don't know. Despite how this manga is a lot about humanity being able to exist or take place#beyond the conditions of one's existence being “fake” through our actions and relationships with others‚ ourselves and the world‚#I don't like how characters like Jack are treated in that context#I understand why it's done and what it's trying to say‚ the Jack/O.z foil is super interesting in that regard. I don't even think#the writing fully falls into the mistake of 'thinking' Jack is not human/a person. But I find very unfortunate some of the writing choices#when dwelling on this‚ and even so distasteful at times#And as a consequence many fans just take the slippery slope and make a cardboard mimicry out of some great characters#But the manga/writing concedes a bit with that angsty teen air. And it's frustrating#I talk too much#Trying to pseudocensor words for the first time#to see if this way my 4am soliloquies won't appear in the tags of people just living their lives#Tumblr please let me rant about nothingness that interests only me without disturbing anyone please#I'm already mad I can't tag these at all anymore in my own blog for organisational reasons without them appearing for everyone everywhere
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my life is spiced with heavy lies and the longer i live the greater grows my art of forgery and the truer it seems. artificial flowers seem more and more natural, and the growing ones seem hand-made.
yehuda amichai
#the craft of content of life#and the lies we tell ourselves#what we believe#and what we buy into...#yehuda amichai#travels#1986
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just realized a lot of what i did for myself this morning without even thinking abt it would take like herculean strength & energy from me. like. 2 years ago.
#t.alk#ive decided its all gonna be ok and we're all going to craft fulfilling beautiful lives for ourselves alright ?
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i learned about the devil’s hole pupfish and it made me see the world like a child again
#i don't know if i want to write a poem about this.#don't you see? don't you understand? we are one planet but we are still infinitely vast and irrevocably beautiful#we are our own contained universe! those fish are so small#you can look at almost their entire habitat in one picture.#but... i don't know. i wanted to be a marine biologist as a child#it was so important to me and i wanted the world to be peaceful to itself and then i got older and it stopped being peaceful#i raised money for charities doing bake and craft sales as a kid. all i wanted was to understand the exact nature of what i had#been born into.. but i think i did. i think i understood it better as a child than any other time#the peace is found in the population surge. the peace is found in the sea in the places where light can no longer touch#but life keeps touching out of blind faith.#i don't know. i feel a maternal sense of protection over these fish. it is such an amazing phenomenon that they exist around us#it is a gift we have been given. and it is terrifying to realize that the planet is so animated beyond just ourselves. that humans are not#the only complex and interesting forms of life on earth. but it is so important to understand.#we are all here together. the meaning of life is inextricable from its fragility. we are all here together.#i'm not high. i just really love fish
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I'm sorry are people MAD that other people are reblogging their text posts???? I know there are a lot of new people here but. since when. is that why there has been a rainstorm of likes-only notes around?
the purpose of tumblr is not to be a nicely put shop window. it's community. you see something funny or that you agree with, you reblog it to pass it around. other people see it, if they like it they pass it around as well. and we create an environment for everyone to participate in.
#how can you come into a new space and not look around to see how it works#the artists that suddenly don't reach anyone anymore because of this#the almost-empty dashboards if you don't follow instagrammy amounts of people#this is not how it's supposed to be#this is not the environment we have crafted for ourselves#tumblr
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i just watched a video essay about the decline of paper mario and now im sad and mad thinking about paper mario again. can we have a violent overthrowing of nintendo
#i hadnt heard some of these quotes from ppl at nintendo before. ''it's no longer possible to modify mario characters or create new#characters that touch on the mario universe'' ''paper mario is all about paper'' can we all kill ourselves#THAT LAST ONE IN PARTICULAR MAKES ME SO MAD OHHHH MY GOD WHAT DO YOU MEAN#PAPER MARIO IS NOT ALL ABOUT PAPER. IT HAS BEEN FOR THE LAST 3 ENTRIES BECAUSE THATS WHAT YOU'VE TURNED IT INTO#BUT THE FIRST 3 GAMES THERE WAS BARELY ANYTHING TO DO WITH PAPER!!!!!!!!!#THERE WERE SOME MECHANICS AND STUFF BUT IT WASNT EVEN A PART OF THE WORLD?????????#THE FIRST PAPER MARIO WASNT EVEN CALLED THAT IN JAPAN. BECAUSE THATS NOT THE FUCKING POINT#PAPER MARIO HAS A STORYBOOK PAPER CUTOUT ARTSTYLE. ITS AN ARTSTYLE.#IT HAS NEVER BEEN THE *POINT* OF THE SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#THE POINT OF THE SERIES IS A RPG OR AT LEAST RPG INSPIRED EXPERIENCE THAT PUTS A FOCUS ON STORY AND WORLDBUILDING#THE POINT IS FLESHING OUT MARIO'S WORLD AND TELLING COMPELLING STORIES WITH THE CHARACTERS#NOT THE FACT THAT EVERYTHING IS PAPER!!!!!!!!!#so much of the dialogue and in-universe stuff in the newer games being ABOUT everything being made of paper makes me want to kill people#playing the first 3 paper mario games you could imagine that this was all taking place in the usual mario world. YOU WERE KIND OF SUPPOSED#TO???? LIKE THE STAR SPIRITS APPEARED IN MARIO PARTY TOO!!!!! IT WAS THE NORMAL MARIO WORLD JUST TOLD VIA A PAPER ARTSTYLE#but now they've made it so it's an entire like alternate universe where everything is made of paper and everything revolves around paper an#arts and crafts and everything. and thats ''the point'' according to them. holy fucking shit im gonna explode#it makes me so mad and frustrated that not only is this just the case at all but the fact that they seem to not care and even take PRIDE in#this. it's awful augugurrghrghghhrhgh#no hate to the newer entries btw. as games on their own they're fine! it's just one of those things where its more about what they represen#and what they represent is. a very unfortunate decline#serena.txt
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im ngl to u i miss the days when itd feel like tumblr was just nic and i's little corner...
#like we had a lil space crafted for ourselves here and we even got married and linette was our little raccoon kid and i even made a wedding#art for us....... im getting emotional dont mind me#so much has changed since then like its truly baffling...#danyl talks
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I’m about to stop being the bigger person and just telling people hey dipshit go fuck yourself
#worked for three fucking days on that mask just for my brother to insult it and call it goofy#maybe to someone who dresses like an old navy commercial it is goofy lol#but some of us dress to make ourselves happy#anyways go spend your day being nice to all ur discord friends and then come over and insult me and my crafts#go fuck yourself
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