I feel like I often use this blog to post about self-care and survival, and this time is no different. I've mentioned before that 2016 was, for the most part, hell. 2017 has, so far, been better. I don't know why, exactly. The world is still just as fucked up, the daily news just as full of dread. And my own life is imperfect as always. Part of it is that my mental illnesses have so far been (knock on wood) less extreme than they were last year. And part of it is that I am trying very, very hard to live for joy, and to focus on the positive. If I see a news article that is only going to send me into a doom spiral, I just don't click on it. I'm not burying my head in the sand; I'd still consider myself a well-informed person. But last year I had the tendency to overload myself with terror-inducing information, to the point where I was in a near-constant state of anxiety attacks and ugly crying. Now, when I see a headline, or read a small passage from an article, I ask myself two questio...

Your skin like dawn

Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning. 

-Maya Angelou, "Passing Time"

Rest in Power, Maya.

I still think the revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small…

-Rebecca Solnit