listen to your inner voice ⁣ ⁣ Some people have never talked to themselves before and it really shows. ⁣ ⁣ When I meet new people and we talk about a bunch of stuff, I am often reminded that I live my life at a level of intensity, honesty, and eccentricity that some people are truly not used to. I talk fast, and impassioned, and often reveal the multitude of thoughts that we’re often taught to hide or cover up (like talking about existentialism, race, politics, anything in a non buzzword-y way). I realize that sometimes... that also scares people. ⁣ ⁣ I think the pursuit of living in your truth really comes from listening to yourself and challenging the outside motivations to discover why you do what you do, and how you want to move towards that version of yourself. ⁣ ⁣ One time, I was hanging out with some people and they asked me something along the lines of “how do you think of all these things?” And I responded, “well, I try to make an effort to talk to myself.” I’ll look in the mirror or up at a ceiling or stare at nothing and talk through a subject, an idea, a dilemma (sometimes even practicing random voices). And one of the people responded that that was so scary, they could never. ⁣ ⁣ Talking to myself helps create a sense of clarity while also realizing when my inner critic is coming out to play EVEN THOUGH I ASKED THEM TO GO HOME. Talking to myself is a good way to re-center and find the threads that I really want to delve deeper into, and address the thoughts that don’t serve me. ⁣ ⁣ I think the notion of talking to yourself is also generally about the idea of listening to yourself and your needs. We can get so caught up in things that we live reactively day-to-day, it feels like some problems are inescapable when sometimes, we are merely off course for ourselves. ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first line in black bubble letters with starbursts and stars on green paper with green and blue circles]
you did it! you exist! congrats! here’s a smiley for u! u deserve it! brighten ur day if the internet and 🌎🌍🌏 feels like a dumpster fire! brighten ur day even if it doesn’t! ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of a smiley face on yellow paper]
🕊⁣ ⁣ “I envy the birds high up in the trees⁣ They live out their lives so purposefully”⁣ ⁣ Artist: MARINA⁣ Song: Handmade Heaven ⁣ Album: LOVE + FEAR (out April 26th!) ⁣ ⁣ “Thanks for your love on Handmade Heaven. I wrote the song at a time when I felt very out of sync and lost in the world. One thing that helped me at that time was taking time to look closely at nature everyday.⁣ ⁣ In someways we live in a very unnatural world - our brains are constantly trying to adjust and adapt to a lot of social and technological change - and I think that can cause a lot of suffering. So many people have anxiety, whilst the natural world has less of a role in our lives.⁣ ⁣ That’s why this song is important to me. It’s about the sadness of feeling separate from nature. Handmade Heaven is an imagined paradise.⁣ ⁣ The song is also about a connection with people who are on the same wavelength as you - and how special that feels when that happens. 🕊” - @marinadiamandis ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first song lyric in black bubble letters on green paper with painted green and blue circles]
You are valued. Your worth is not based on whether or not you have a significant other or lover. ⁣ ⁣ PSA on Valentine’s Day and every other day. Wild how having a significant other is often seen as a tool for validation from the outside world; as if to say “congrats on being desirable” or “congrats on being generally tolerable in a relationship.” ⁣ ⁣ Instead of striving for titles, would it be better if we strive for human connection? Perhaps. ⁣ ⁣ Realizing that I say a lot of things don’t define your self worth (monetizing your creativity, outside perceptions, significant others), almost as if we are held to unnecessary standards that we forget our humanity and don’t embrace the idea of being fallible. ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first sentences in black bubble letters with hearts and circles on pink paper]
luv u ⁣ ⁣ @r29design made Valentine’s Day stickers for the NYC office with proceeds going to Children of Promise. ⁣ ⁣ [slide 1: red heart that says “luv u” in white bubble letters with a red background // slide 2: photo of a pile of sticker sheets with designs from the @refinery29 team]
✨⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ “Oh, all the time that I have wasted⁣⁣ Chasing rabbits down a hole⁣⁣ When I was born to be the tortoise⁣⁣ I was born to walk alone”⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Artist: MARINA ⁣⁣ Song: Forget ⁣⁣ Album: Froot ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the quote in black bubble letters on persimmon colored paper with starbursts, sparkles, and circles]
no one can give you the green light to go and live your life ⁣ ⁣ Have you ever felt yourself waiting for someone else’s validation to move forward? ⁣ ⁣ Why is it that we’re conditioned to believe that we need someone else’s permission to do what we feel is right to do? Permission to be who we are meant to be?⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first line in black bubble letters on green paper with starbursts, stars, and circles]
“Don’t you know what you can do if you have faith in you?” ⁣ ⁣ Song: Good and Broken ⁣ Artist: Miley Cyrus⁣ Album: Hannah Montana 2 / Meet Miley Cyrus ⁣ ⁣ Yesterday I woke up with this song in my head. I think a lot about how the music we listened to in our teenage years stick with us, the songs that inevitably help you recall pieces of your life when you’re foraging into the world of self identity and future selves. ⁣ ⁣ I know all the lyrics to this album and sometimes it makes me self conscious... how do I love the Hannah Montana persona so much? She was constructed as part of the Disney machine to inspire young minds with pop rock music laced with positive affirmation and the reassurance that your life will change in time. ⁣ ⁣ This song speaks to running your own race and being your own person — breaking free of the constraints of who we have been. ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the quote in black bubble letters with stars and circles on persimmon colored paper]
“let it go, lose control⁣ feel it in your soul”⁣ ⁣⁣ Song: Good and Broken ⁣⁣ Artist: Miley Cyrus⁣⁣ Album: Hannah Montana 2 / Meet Miley Cyrus ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Yesterday, woke up with this song in my head. I think a lot about how the music we listened to in our teenage years stick with us, the songs that inevitably help you recall pieces of your life when you’re foraging into the world of self identity and the possibility of more advanced future selves. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I know all the lyrics to this album and sometimes it makes me self conscious... how do I love the Hannah Montana persona so much? Well, she was constructed as part of the Disney machine to inspire young minds with pop rock music laced with positive affirmation and the reassurance that your life will change in time. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ This song speaks to running your own race and being your own person — breaking free of the constraints of who we have been. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ [illustration of the quote in black bubble letters with stars and circles on pink paper]
“find the magic, go and grab it”⁣ ⁣ Song: Good and Broken ⁣ Artist: Miley Cyrus⁣ Album: Hannah Montana 2 / Meet Miley Cyrus ⁣ ⁣ Yesterday, woke up with this song in my head. I think a lot about how the music we listened to in our teenage years stick with us, the songs that inevitably help you recall pieces of your life when you’re foraging into the world of self identity and the possibility of more advanced future selves. ⁣ ⁣ I know all the lyrics to this album and sometimes it makes me self conscious... how do I love the Hannah Montana persona so much? Well, she was constructed as part of the Disney machine to inspire young minds with pop rock music laced with positive affirmation and the reassurance that your life will change in time. ⁣ ⁣ This song speaks to running your own race and being your own person — breaking free of the constraints of who we have been. ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the quote in black bubble letters with stars and circles on persimmon colored paper]
Imagine who you could be in you spent your time living your life instead of talking about someone else’s. ⁣ ⁣ Imagine who you could be in you spent your time living your life instead of engaging with / following / stanning / critiquing / dreaming about / wondering about someone else’s. ⁣ ⁣ Do you ever hang out with someone and realize that you’ve collectively spent most of the time talking about someone else’s life... not yours or theirs, but a complete third party that is no where near the conversation? Sometimes that happens because someone needs advice, a second perspective per say. Other times, it happens because you’ve gotten so entranced in the subject that it’s hard to disengage. ⁣ ⁣ Being online can feel like that at times, too. You see other people living their lives and it feels like it becomes accessible enough to be your own. Trade in your own IRL interactions for relationships that transpire on the internet. ⁣ ⁣ Last year I had to cut out watching YouTube videos because I realized it was a form of escapism where watching these online lives made my own life feel a little bit more full, yet the repercussion was that I also felt empty because I was lacking real human interaction. ⁣ ⁣ Look into the things you do, share, and say. Do they add value to your life? Do they make you feel like you? If we get so used to living through other people, we can forget who we want to be deep down. ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first sentence in black bubble letters with stars and circles on pink paper]
friends ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of suns with faces // one large red circle has closed eyes // a smol yellow sun has open eyes // a smol red sun is upside down // a smol orange sun with open eyes with cat eye makeup // decorated with stars and swirls]
新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ 新年快乐!⁣ ⁣ Happy lunar new year! Shoutout to all those celebrating and especially my Chinese bbs! Wish you lots of luck and prosperity in the new year! 🌹 ⁣ ⁣ Happy year of the pig! Earth pig! 🐷♥️⁣ ⁣ [illustration of “新年快乐” in black hand lettering on pink paper with painted circles in red and orange]
sleepy sun ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of three suns // one sun is large and red and has closed eyes // another sun is smaller with open eyes and freckles // the other sun is faceless and behind the bigger sun // red and orange paint on a gold paper]
Does this make my life more meaningful? ⁣ ⁣ How many things a day do you do that don’t feel true to you? Almost like you got looped into a process, idea, or a mode of thought somewhere along the way and now you just can’t shake it. ⁣ ⁣ I’ve been trying to clear out the aspects of myself and actions I take that don’t necessary to my life — asking myself if things feel meaningful to me beyond being societal indications of necessity. Does spending hours on Instagram add meaning to my life? Sometimes, yes sometimes it leaves me in a haze. Does drinking alcohol bring meaning to my life? Mostly no. Does binging the latest popular show bring meaning to my life? A veces, pero often not beyond a couple days of relevancy. ⁣ ⁣ And perhaps, not everything can (or needs) to have meaning. You can do whatever you want for whatever reason. Learning to find that meaning for yourself is where the work is. ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first question in black lettering on pink paper with circles painted in red, orange, and yellow // with little stars and circle designs]
“I am mild, and weird, and boring, and loud, and quiet, and scared, and brave, all at once. And that is what’s actually normal. Complicated people with more sides than we’re able to see.”⁣ - @emiliafarts ⁣ ⁣ I went on YouTube yesterday and ended up watching “Turning myself normal for the first time in 11 years” by @emiliafarts where Emilia does an experiment to try and answer the question: “what will I look like and how will I feel if I attempt to make myself look more conventionally attractive?” I found it really refreshing and poetic and Emilia’s words resonated with me, someone who often also feels “loud and weird and noticeable and layered and not digestible to some.” ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of the first line of the quote in black hand lettering on a persimmon colored paper with circles painted in red, orange, and yellow (and a yellow curl on the right)]
finding the light⁣ ⁣ [illustration of two circles with faces / one face is a sun with open eyes and a mole / the other fave is only half visible, peeking onto the paper with two eyes on one aside / there’s another circle with a closed eye / yellow and green circles and shapes with blue pen]
sometimes, the real me wants to kill the internet me, thinking maybe then I will be free⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Do you need to post a trigger warning when you talk about deleting your internet self? Your internet self is not a real person and yet it is a persona you created, birthed from you, maybe an extension of you. In regards to the death of your internet self, it’s a grey area where you actually can’t. Yes, you can delete what seems to be the physical existence... and yet everything is still online, somewhere, in a server in the World Wide Web. Also I know people don’t use the word “web” really but that’s what it’s supposed to emulate, something that brings us closer and more together, right? ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I feel like the more I exist in online communities, the more aspects of myself I seem to lose. Lose empathy. Lose the ability to regulate my nervous system. Watch comment battles online of people within the same ideologies trying to one up each other. Find myself calling people out. Find myself asking myself, WHY am I doing this? How did I get here? How did we get here? What is this performance for? ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ The internet was meant to connect us, right? Was it meant to be the beacon of innovation? Now it seems that all these platforms do is sell us things. Buy this shirt, buy this lifestyle. I tried to be thoughtful online and now it feels like I’m wading in deep water of toxic sludge. Did I do this to myself? Was I always like this? Was the “web” always like this? ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Then I think, maybe I’ll stay offline. And I try. And then I realize I’ve been talking to these platforms for as long as I can remember. At least ten years of my development has been addicted to these algorithms. Makes me feel like a hamster in Marks hamster wheel factory. Idk that anecdote but honestly, what even is this for. ⁣⁣ ⁣ I know there are positive aspects to the internet. I KNOW THAT. The opportunity to give people access to information and community and to imagine something bigger than themselves. And yet, big data has consumed us and we’ve fed into this monster. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ I’ve been feeling very #websistential ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ [illustration of the first sentence in black lettering on persimmon colored paper]
self portrait of sorts ⁣ ⁣ [illustration of a person with a buzzcut (that looks like a helmet almost) and asymmetrical earrings (a sun and a moon) in black marker on persimmon colored paper with yellow circles]
It is not your responsibility to change other people. We are all on different paths of discovery. Focus on your own self first. ⠀ ⠀ Continuously being reminded that we are not all going to be the same, see the same, or act the same. We all work on ourselves and determine what change is good or bad or whatever for us, on our own terms. When we try and take that responsibility of change from someone else, we negotiate individual agency. ⠀ ⠀ It can be hard because change feels so necessary. Feels like we need to hold everyone accountable, and maybe we start with ourself. Feels like the internet makes everything too out in the open, hard to have the pieces of ourselves to ourselves. And yet, we must honor the spaces between ourselves and others and recognize that maybe the ways in which we want to change does not fit how other people want to grow. It is not their change to claim because it is your own. ⠀ ⠀ [illustration of the first three sentences in black bubble lettering on persimmon colored paper with yellow and green circles + black circles and stars]