SurroundedByBooks

MY BAGELS JEWISH

MY CITY PARKS THRIVE

eliott: i have a tragic history being entangled in the mafia and even now i could kill the most dangerous fighters without firing a gun

You have Parker, who has been designated as bad and wrong since she was a very young child and who has let go of any expectation of being anything else, so that identifying and doing what she thinks is the right thing is consistently an overwhelming and scary experience for her;

Then there's Eliot, who can point to exactly when and how he became irredeemable in his own eyes and whose highest ambition now is to do the wrong thing for the right people this time at least;

Nate, who is clinging to all of these ideas about morality and legality and good and bad that are completely inconsistent both internally and with his behavior, because his very normative view of the world was shattered and he never put the pieces back together in any kind of coherent way;

Sophie, who sees right and wrong as primarily about relationships between people, like she does everything else: right and wrong is in how you engage and who you hurt interpersonally, anything more abstract is irrelevant. But within that, there's also this weight to how she engages, this sense of regret at how she's treated people in the past that we never really see the full scope of;

yeah our covid safe hour. for the first hour of our event we're asking everyone to wear masks. obviously everyone who needs protection from pathogens can arrive exactly on time and won't take longer than an hour to go through our whole event. not like they've got anything else to do, or any sort of time restrictions.

It is absolutely immoral, completely counterproductive to the goal of learning things, and turns out incredibly subpar work.

change the color used to highlight text on your laptop

move the pictures on your wall

stack whatever clutter is in your room into piles even if you don’t have time to clean it all

slightly vary your commute, even just by one street

change where you sit and scroll aimlessly on your phone even if it’s only to the chair in your room instead of your bed

drink water or juice out of a wine glass in the morning because nothing is real

shower with the lights off, without music

buy $3 flowers at trader joe’s—they look bad next to the more expensive ones but they look so good in your room

start typing things you don’t post into your notes. your thoughts can be worth documenting even if you don’t deem them worth sharing

wake up super early just once. you don’t have to make it a habit it’s just extra satisfying to go to bed that night

The other day I was feeling miserable, so I hopped on a bus and rode it all the way back to where I’d started, and my brain, which had finally had some proper stimulation via new environments, was suddenly ready to go again!

Existing in my body is very painful. I lift weights to minimize that pain. I eat fruits and veggies and protein and fiber and carbs and fats within an enjoyable balance because my body is physically more pleasant to live in when I do.

I work out to maximize how good I can feel in my body. I eat nutrients and seek adequate hydration and prioritize rest to maximize how good I can feel literally just existing in my body.

Which again, is a baseline painful experience. I love fitness because it's a series of tools I can use to maximize how good it's possible to feel existing in an otherwise painful existence.

This is why I see red when I see "no pain no gain" mentalities. That is fundamentally the opposite of what I'm doing here. I hate seeing fitness popularized as a way of increasing suffering.

I pursue fitness for the exact same reason I smoke weed and make decadent desserts:

Because it makes me feel fantastic.

There was a lot of things I could have done with my day, but this is what I did.

Oh no, not again.