I was thinking about how hospitals are full of people going through shit helping other people going through shit. Then I realized that almost every profession is like that. We are a planet full of struggling people, making our livings providing for the needs of other struggling people.
I’m not sure if this is a happy thought or a sad one.
9 questions to ask yourself about your social media addiction
- Is it necessary to share this? Will it add value to my life and for other people?
- Can I share this experience later so I can focus on living it now?
- Am I looking for validation? Is there something I could do to validate myself?
- Am I avoiding something I need to do instead of addressing why I don’t want to do it?
- Am I feeling bored? Is there something else I could do to feel more purposeful and engaged in my day?
- Am I feeling lonely? Have I created opportunities for meaningful connection in my day?
- Am I afraid of missing out? Is the gratification of giving in to that fear worth missing out on what’s in front of me?
- Am I overwhelming myself, trying to catchup? Can I let go of yesterday’s conversation and join today’s instead?
- Can I use this time to simply be instead of looking for something to do to fill it?
Source: 99U
What changes when you lose your short-term memory? Everything, as this man’s story will tell you.
Oh, smile.
What an odd, charged, fascinating moment, this space of not knowing. It forces us to isolate the emotional toll into pure feeling, pure shared humanity, divorced of social or geopolitical wedge. Unable to aim our accusations at something, to find scapegoat or excuse, all our normal engines of intolerance and blame are momentarily rendered useless.
Make no mistake, we will almost certainly find out who did it. Then the frantic political blogs and talking heads will finally get to embark upon some heated, semi-intellectual conversation about insanity, or domestic terrorism, or racism, or some new form of the same old demons we haven’t considered yet.
Will it help? Will we learn anything new? Maybe. Doubtful. Maybe we’ll just re-learn the old chestnut that America must have its demons. We must have our enemies. If we can’t find any, we invent them. It’s what we do.
Meantime, we just mourn and grieve and collect ourselves. We just gather in. It won’t last long, but perhaps this is the most important moment of all. Perhaps this is where we find our soul.
COLOMBIA: ART: PEDRO COVO
I’m excited to share work for the first time from Colombia and especially from Pedro Covo. At first I was looking for a few pieces which show a theme within his reservoir, however I fell for the diversity of style. This is a mixed collection of Covo’s personal and editorial pieces.
Pedro tells me the inspiration for personal pieces comes from drawing, which is something he does every day in addition to doing live photo studies. And for editorial, his process “is to make an analogy or a connection of ideas to express an intelligent point of view about the text without falling in the most obvious solution.” His consistency lies in his unpredictability.
In case you were wondering what’s in his toolbox, he uses watercolors, oils or digital and sometimes all three. To see more of Covo’s work, visit his website here.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”
From March 7 – April 7, I documented everything blatantly sexist anyone has said to me. None of these comments were provoked, none of them were replies to something I said, none of them were at all out of the ordinary and the vast majority of them (an original count of 77 images) have been taken out so that this post isn’t as long as it probably should be. This is a 10-picture indication of what it’s like to be a woman who endorses game culture, every single month.
