Art, Journaling, & Other Things

Another sword, another cairn. Cut up an old necklace for the chain. The background fabric is scrap fabric from a thrift shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo doesn't do the fabric justice! It's very pretty!

our lives matter more than your fucking nostalgia.

you can browse the collection here

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Today is the first day of the trans rights readathon!

I decided to go through some of the books I've read in the past few years and highlight some with trans main characters or authors. I've summarized them all with one short sentence, but a few have appeared in other posts with more in-depth reviews:

These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs

The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater

Don't Let the Forest In by CG Drews

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

|| prompts:

꩜ what if your favorite song was a place

꩜ a letter to your future self (I would use this for the first page tbh)

꩜ movie tickets/receipts and how you liked it

꩜ favorite movies or tv shows and why do you like them

꩜ celebrity crushes

꩜ the little and random things you love

꩜ your favorite childhood memories

꩜ about your childhood stuffed animal

꩜ a vision board

꩜ a doodle/sketch page

꩜ your dream life

꩜ a list of fictional places you’d visit

꩜ do random collages

꩜ describe how love should feel like

꩜ this one is gonna sound confusing but think of yourself as an other person and

write what you love about yourself but as if you weren’t yourself, you know?

꩜ how you actually feel, go as deep as you can with this one

⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔

⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔

|| things to add to make it prettier

𓏲ּ𝄢 doodles, any doodle

𓏲ּ𝄢 glitter

𓏲ּ𝄢 do like scrapbook style

𓏲ּ𝄢 drawing

𓏲ּ𝄢 collage drawings

𓏲ּ𝄢 post-its

𓏲ּ𝄢 printed photos related to the topic

𓏲ּ𝄢 flowers or plants

𓏲ּ𝄢 watercolor paintings

𓏲ּ𝄢 beads

𓏲ּ𝄢 those bedazzling thingys

𓏲ּ𝄢 pearls

⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔ ⏔⏔⏔

An ode to whimsiness ‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

My recently discovered favourite word is “whimsical.”

A simple trisyllabic word, and although it does not make use of the entire alphabet in the English language, it appears pretty diverse. Whimsy would be a close second; it’s shorter and sweeter-sounding.

Not because I’ve never heard it before, but because it never meant anything to me — until now.

Think about how many times you could use a word like that (not too many times, that’s for sure.)

When I finally looked it up, I expected something simple. The internet, of course, disagreed.

Whimsical is peculiar, playful, fantastic, but also volatile, capricious, and impulsive.

The same word that evokes sunshine and daisies also implies instability.

That duality fascinated me.

If whimsy were a person, I’d love to get to know them.

What draws me into this is how everyone knows that the world is on fire, people across the world starve, laugh, cry, and some days it feels like the only rebellion available is joy.

Embrace your whimsy and invite magic into your life with open arms, because the fact that all of us are alive is a statistical miracle.

Think about what whimsy means to you. I think of big smiles, the kind that makes your cheeks hurt, ladybugs, golden hour, green grass, the smell of hay for some reason and goosebumps.

This year, especially, the way news is being presented, the way monocultures barely even exist anymore, and a thousand other signals seem determined to tell us we are doomed, but at the end of the day, all you have to do is make a bit of money, help people and have fun.

Lost a job? It hurts, but it isn’t your identity.

Someone stopped talking to you? Painful but survivable.

Haven’t paid your taxes?

Okay. Please pay your taxes (:

(But seriously, pay your taxes.)

You see,

I’m not promoting being irresponsible but if we have a problem in our lives, half of it is the actual problem and the other half of it is this ego or persona that we desperately clutch on to, the person that we believe has never failed, that is a good person, that does charity, that is beautiful and kind and never ever messes up.

Every time we do something that proves to us that we are not entirely this person, we destroy ourselves with our bare hands.

I believe your whimsy is loving your messiness, along with everyone else’s. It lies in loving the fact that you’re a good person, you’re disciplined and also the fact that you’re lazy and you can be inconsiderate at times. It’s giving yourself the grace of being a person, a fully functioning or partially functioning human being.

The whimsy of always being late, or perpetually forgetting to put the cap back on your toothpaste and a million other idiosyncrasies can drive us insane, but they coexist with you being an eloquent dancer and someone who makes great breakfasts or gives great advice.

So, give yourself grace, give others the same grace. The human beings you listen to, you watch, you agree with or disagree with, deserve the grace of being human. (Maybe grace should be my favourite word.)

To clarify, “whimsy” to me is not irresponsibility but the courage to hold your flaws gently.

Allow whimsiness to embrace you, to cover you in its blanket of glittery powder, cotton candy, and the smell of the back of a baby’s head.

Sprinkle glitter on your tears, allow yourself stay in bed till noon but, let whimsy exist not as escape but as mercy.