#i want to want normal things but ive also spent a life reclaiming being a little freak so which one wins am i ignoring self reflection

[youve-always-had-me-cas]

[eleven deleted draft vents later] dae asexuality kinda fuckin weird

[four-alligators-in-a-trenchcoat]

What do I do without a smartphone?

When I got a dumbphone/flipphone, I immediately started living a super cool super fulfilling life! I travelled a ton, ran a marathon, immediately got good at art, read 4 books in a day, and now have 22 close friends! Thats exactly how it works, i'm not lying AT ALL, trust me ;)

...ahhh okay you got me, thats not actually what happened.

Yes my life did change, and all for the better! I do have a cooler and more fulfilling life now, but not like that, I just started living a regular life? This little post is about what that looks like these days (for me)

First, a little bit of math. My screen time with a smartphone was 5.5 hours on a good day and almost 9 on a bad: about an average of 7.25 hours a day. Ive been smartphone-less for a little over about 5 months; just about 170 days.

Average 7.25/hrs a day x 170 days = 1232.5 hours total/24hrs

51 full 24-hour days I got back.

ALMOST TWO MONTHS OUT OF THE FIVE

- Alright, i've never done that math before, holy shiitake mushrooms thats insane. Back on topic, oh my god I would have spent 2 months out of the past 5 entirely on my phone

What do I do instead? What consumes the hours? Or the in-passing minutes?

I live normally, just without a phone honestly, it didn't make me suddenly want to run a marathon or just turn into Picasso day one. It just gave me back the opportunity to live.

I turned to my hobbies, like ceramics, reading, journalling to bring the simple joys back into my everyday!

I stopped being able to distract myself from how icky I felt when I didn't move my body, so I slowly started swimming again!

I started to blog a little! Thanks for reading :D

I got bored at home, so I started seeking out social spaces and hanging out in person with friends and prioritizing making them!

Those are huge things, really big, hour by hour things that take up my life now. I am still a student, in a demanding major, who tries to study 5 hours a day, and I work part-time. Is that the most prominent change? Absolutely, but in the minutes passing between tasks, before I leave somewhere, waiting for something there is also a little mojo added back into my day. I would have been spending those little snippets of time pacifying myself on a quick scroll, 20-30 reels on IG that I would never remember. Instead those morsels are spent...

Doing nothing! Sitting around is a forgotten joy, don't be afraid to be alone with yourself, its the only way you will get to know you.

Sudoku! If i've got 5-10 mins waiting somewhere and feel up for the task, a quick sudoku from the little book I carry around is great.

Tidying up/cleaning! I mentioned this in a past blog post, but it's easier to keep the space around you tidy when you reclaim those little minuets while your breakfast is cooking or your waiting for the water to boil. Bagel still in the toaster? Why not give the kitchen a quick sweep! Coffee is steeping? Wouldn't you know it, thats how long it takes for me to unload the dishwasher! (still a student living at home, that dishwasher is a FULL 4-person dishwasher man)

People watching, takin' a quick ol' gander at your surroundings. Make sure you haven't forgotten what life looks like, or what the general population is up to.

I still spend some time on Tumblr, Reddit, and Pinterest, its not like I went cold turkey or that I'll never see social media again. Its easier to live your life when you have the time, and its easier to have the time when you don't have a monster algorithm in your pocket built to addict you. You can do it! Do it at the pace that is good for you, but get those two months back!

☆ a photo of my cat for good luck ☆

[ohkimani]

y’all mind if i....?

that “venting” thing i need to do every now and then...and usually in the middle of the night.

it’s been a while since i’ve self reflected and i think this point in time is as good as any. after having long and incredibly insightful conversations with two of my cousins this weekend while visiting home, i’ve learned a lot about myself. speaking to dawn the other night showed me that not everything has to be in line or planned right off the bat. it made me realize that i might want to take some time and do community work like volunteering during the beginnings of my career. i’ve always wanted to work with the arts and making people less afraid of expressing themselves through visual art because it’s a fantastic way to put the mind at ease. 

i also talked to dana (dawn’s sister/my cousin). during our talk she constantly stressed the importance in finding “my happy place” and i’ve always had people tell me that but it seemed....different coming from her. some days i feel like i don’t have a real passion. my mom doesn’t realize it but she has kind of always stressed to me that a hobby is a waste of time if you cant profit off of it. what’s the point of loving something if it cant pay your bills. that’s always stressed me out and it’s probably one of the main reasons i’m always up at night. as an artist to the core of me, i know that in a perfect world, all shit aside, i want to make art and make people happy. simultaneously or exclusively, those are my ultimate goals...biggest my dreams. i make art because i love it first. that is always first.

 if i tell my mom “i’ve been painting and listening to music all day” her first question is always something along the lines of “did someone commission it? how much are they paying you?” and i don’t want to explain to her that i needed to take a day to isolate and paint because i had spent the previous week crying day and night or not sleeping and eating and i NEEDED this. and that’s the base of it all. i love it when people love my work and i appreciate it when they buy it from me but art is, essentially, my ultimate purpose. that is what i know i was made to do. 

but one thing dana did make me realize was that it was okay for taylor’s music to be my happy place. people judge so much. they don’t understand having that much appreciation for another person and what they have helped you through, even if they aren’t aware of it. when people bring up taylor’s music or let me talk about her music (or any music for that matter) without dismissing the joy it brings me, i feel....alive. and that’s so rare for me. not many people know this but im more numb than i am ‘living’. i focus so much on making everyone else happy because i stopped feeling anything months ago. 

months ago when i would wake up every morning and cry just because i woke up....again. when having a breakdown and isolating, not to be heard from for days, was completely normal. when i lied about how my mirror broke because i didn’t want to worry anyone about how i was really doing, even when i acted like i was on top of the world. 

but at the end of it all, there was always the same thing that would bring me back to where i should be and that would be taylor’s music or even just re-reading my own experience with her. it reminds me that i’m not the terrible person i make myself out to be....to myself. it reminds me that i have felt happiness before and i can feel it again. and i have! 

the combination of taylor being back, being able to connect with my family like never before after years of being the black sheep and having the most wonderful boy in my life just makes everything so much better. taylor having to close herself off the way she has is absolutely horrible, but the act itself is so inspiring. she is reclaiming possession of her being and her happiness. i want to do that. i want to be able to take my life and my happiness back because it’s MINE and I DESERVE THAT. 

every night mowgli makes it a point to ask me “what would make you happy right now?”. some nights it’s something small and meaningless like “i’d love a cup of strawberries” and some nights it’s things like being with him or knowing if everything will be okay in the end. but it didn’t dawn on me until last night when he told me he loved me for the first time that he asks me that to be sure i still know what happiness is. all he ever wants for me is to be happy and that’s so far off of what ive known of relationships in the past. we’ve been through so much in this year and we’re still learning about each other but there is not a doubt in my mind that i wouldn’t go through it all again.

i would go through the days of brutal silence

i would hear nothing but his soft breathing in my ear again

i would throw my phone again

i would laugh until my throat hurt again

i would have 50 million more awkward moments over and over again if it meant i got to have them all with him.

but overall, im not sure where im at right now. it feels like something big is going to happen and it’s brewing in the distance. it’s not this hurricane. it’s not this album. it’s not the start of my senior year. no....i think it’s something much bigger than all of that and even though some days im too afraid to face it and id rather face death itself, i know it’s coming.