298 - the hole in the curtain 🐈⬛🪟
both literally and metaphorically. also it's about gandalf.
Hey there, !
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You like where your life's at? I think I do.
You see this reading nook right here? It looks a little ratty, but it's one of my favourite places in my house. It came to my mind fully formed as soon as I moved in, and it's one of the only things that I've set up with an actual vision in mind.
I've set up so many routines and I've grown up to a stage where I'm pretty certain about what I like, what I enjoy, what will bring me happiness, and the people I want to be around. I think this is what they call life experience?
But as we grow older, that knowledge also makes us become a bit more set in our ways. We calcify into the things we do or don't enjoy, and we know pretty well what we want from life. And we start to accept our limitations...though that's a topic for another time.
I sometimes worry that my enjoyment and comfort with my own life gets in the way of finding a significant other, because I just want everything to be the way it is now, y'know? And there's not always the impulse to change that - in most cases, you don't really change until it's forced upon you.
At the same time...change can be so GREAT.
This little boy here has been the source of so much joy in my life, and he's one the main things in my house that does not and cannot be tamed. He'll do whatever he wants to, and I just gotta work around that. He wants to chuck stuff off my front room table? BANG! while I'm in the middle of a meeting. He wants to sleep in a sunbeam - nawww. He wants to EAT?! NOW VINCE NOW!!! then I just have to get up and at least move him away from his feeder.
If you go back to the picture of the reading nook, did you notice the hole in the curtain? That's where Gandalf messed it up so that he can stare at me when I drive home from work and meow at me to come inside. MY HEART.
I like to think of that hole as the little yang in the yin - the chaos in the order and ritual of the...curtains(?) of my life.
I mean, I didn't realise how big of a change it would be, but the change was good.
Embracing change doesn't come super naturally to me. Or at least, I feel like I need some time to really get used to an idea before it settles in. Case in point - it's taken me like 12 years to decide to switch to an iPhone instead of staying with Android LOL.
I don't change quickly, and I don't think that that habit of not changing quickly will change quickly either (lol).
I'm privileged, and lucky, that a lot of the change in my life is in the positive, rather than negative, direction. There are so many things that could happen from a health, wealth and life perspective that are non-ideal, and that static feeling I feel sometimes is because I feel like I'm constantly preparing against these things happening.
But I also need to remind myself that that level of planning and anxiety for the future needs to not take away from the present. I try my best to focus on the 'what would happen if it went REALLY WELL' rather than 'what if everything goes wrong'.
I just want to roll more nat 20's than nat 1's, y'know? But I think I'm just consistently rolling some 12's and 13's.
And honestly? That's a pretty good life, too.
Chat soon :)
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📋Today's Question
Not really a survey, but what's your hole in the curtain? A good change in your life that you didn't expect?
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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A View from the Stars - by Liu Cixin (who wrote Three-Body Problem), a collection of short stories and essays. He's such an interesting author - he has these grand interesting frameworks and ideas about the future, but can be hit and miss in how he comes across with them. However, in this collection I really enjoyed two stories in particular - Butterfly, a tragic story about a scientist who has found out that the butterfly effect can be used to influence weather around the world, specifically, using it to create fog in his war-torn country while he's away from it; and Heard it in the morning, a story about balancing knowledge of the absolute truth of the universe, versus death. Fascinating and mindbending stuff - absolutely love it.
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Weapons - 3 stars I fear - it's a great idea, insanely good marketing, a very interesting first 2/3rds of the film, the story structure is really interesting, some really well executed horror tropes (jumpscares, sound design, creepy kids) but the big third act that they were hoping for just didn't hit. Recommended just to see what the hype's all about, but perhaps not one for the cinema.
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Blocky Planet — Making Minecraft Spherical - I love a breakdown of something super specific, y'all know this :D
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Neuralink surgery changed this guy's life - as much as we might hate Elon Musk, the technology that his companies make can be pretty life-changing!
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I spent 6 years building a ridiculous wooden pixel display - AND IT'S REALLY COOL!!