Melancholia

they should invent a way to hug your online friends who live so so far away

when jenny slate said “domesticity is very sacred to me. making a home is… it’s just, like, the central thing in my life. when I cannot make a home, even in a hotel room, I feel really lost. putting everything in a certain place on purpose. not just, like, throwing shit down. but putting everything in a certain place on purpose and starting to sort of figure out how the trains run, basically. like, what are the paths? what are the paths in the house that you’re going to take the most and what can you line those paths with? or, in the hotel room, like, where are you going to put your journal and your book, so that you’re just starting to create little pathways in this garden and that they mark that space? I just take it really seriously. it’s sort of like… it’s so sweet, it’s sort of like when you see children playing a game and you know they’re marking out a world. and they’re like, “this is where the dungeon is! and this is where the kitchen is in the castle! and this is where the-“, and you can’t see anything but the backyard but they can see everything. that’s what i’m doing and i’m doing it all the time. all the time. and it’s always there. even when I get into a car, I think about where i’m sitting and how i’m sitting and what i’m touching. and I just try hard to do that.”

literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.