vvvvevvveven

okay, so we all know these guys…blue footed boobies! the clowns of the sea!

but theres many other gorgeous boobies!

the magnificent red footed booby!

a gorgeous bandit…the masked booby…

the nazca booby with their bright orange beaks!

the brown booby…stunning, elegant and surprisingly goth…

and last but not least the peruvian booby…they look like blue footed boobies had offspring with a kookaburra

accepting criticism does not mean 100% always agreeing with the criticism people give you and it does not always mean automatically bowing down to what the person giving the criticism tells you you should think and do.

because the thing is that not all criticism is created equally, not all criticism is valid. criticism is not always based in empiracle evidence or sound reasoning, it is not always given in good faith, and people who give criticism are prone to being fallible and wrong the same way all people are because people are not perfect beings who know everything about everything. there are also plenty of cases where what a person is giving criticism about is a matter of subjective opinion where a thing that one person criticizes is something that another person will applaud, meaning that it’s impossible to agree with all takes on the situation equally.

someone can accept your criticism and still ultimately fundamentally disagree with it because accepting criticism means to listen to it and give it due consideration before coming to their own judgment about what they’ve been told—-key words there being their own judgment, which might not necessarily be the same as yours because they’re not you. they have a mind of their own and the ability to use it to reach conclusions and make decisions that are not the same as the ones you would make, even with what you have to say taken into account.

The people of Flint are trapped by the legal system. And it is only the most high profile case out many cities with a similar problem. 

Sometimes people hit a place in their life where things are going really well. They like their job and are able to be productive at it; they have energy after work to pursue the relationships and activities they enjoy; they’re taking good care of themselves and rarely get sick or have flareups of their chronic health problems; stuff is basically working out. Then a small thing about their routine changes and suddenly they’re barely keeping their head above water.

(This happens to me all the time; it’s approximately my dominant experience of working full-time.)

I think one thing that’s going on here is that there are a bunch of small parts of our daily routine which are doing really important work for our wellbeing. Our commute involves a ten-minute walk along the waterfront and the walking and fresh air are great for our wellbeing (or, alternately, our commute involves no walking and this makes it way more frictionless because walking sucks for us). Our water heater is really good and so we can take half-hour hot showers, which are a critical part of our decompression/recovery time. We sit with our back to the wall so we don’t have to worry about looking productive at work as long as the work all gets done. The store down the street is open really late so late runs for groceries are possible. Our roommate is a chef and so the kitchen is always clean and well-stocked.

It’s useful to think of these things as load-bearing. They’re not just nice - they’re part of your mental architecture, they’re part of what you’re using to thrive. And when they change, life can abruptly get much harder or sometimes just collapse on you entirely. And this is usually unexpected, because it’s hard to notice which parts of your environment and routine are load bearing. I often only notice in hindsight. “Oh,” I say to myself after months of fatigue, “having my own private space was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a scary drop in weight, “being able to keep nutrition shakes next to my bed and drink them in bed was load-bearing.” “Oh,” after a sudden struggle to maintain my work productivity, “a quiet corner with my back to the wall was load-bearing.”

Naturalia: Reclaimed by Nature by Jonathan Jimenez