My brother was diagnosed with depression years before I was, and because of that he started therapy years before I did.
I still remember when I was a young teen and he was playing a Nirvana song and he stopped it at this one line: “I miss the comfort of being sad”
He told me that when you start to get better, there’s a part of you that misses being sad and that if you start feeling that way you have to be extra extra aware and careful because if you indulge the feeling you’ll go down a self-destructive spiral
And even though that was years and years ago, I think about it all the time. Especially when I’m reading discourse on the idea of getting so attached to mental illness as an identity that you don’t want to improve things because you feel safe in it and don’t know who you are without it
I always think of that line “I miss the comfort of being sad” and my brother’s warning
the funniest thing we do to alligators is duct tape their mouths shut when we need to handle them. imagine being a creature so ancient and undefeatable that you haven’t changed in thousands of years being rendered basically defenseless by a piece of plastic
i think one of the biggest problems i have with getting stuff done is i assume it’s easy for other people. like “she gets up at six every morning because she’s a morning person” or “yeah, he can run five miles every day but he likes running” or “she knows five languages, her brains just wired differently than mine” when in reality it’s all about discipline for everyone. like yeah, some people have natural aptitudes for some things but anyone that’s accomplishing anything is putting in the work. achievements don’t come easy, and i think if i start acknowledging that it’s like that for everyone i can stop making excuses
when you find an academic source that’s perfect for your paper but it’s behind a pay wall
Deciding to cite it anyway base on the abstract, knowing your professor probably won’t go through and look up every source in works cited
if you guys want to read academic papers but they’re behind a paywall, get the chrome extension Unpaywall. when you visit a site that requires you pay for their journal to view the article, the extension will look for other open access sites that will show you the article for free, and it’s all completely legal. all that money goes to the publisher, the writer of the paper gets none of it. https://unpaywall.org
If you can find out an author’s name, contact them. They may be willing to email it to you.For free.
Check researchgate.net and academia.edu! Also authors’ professional websites.
“Remember that you were art long before he came to admire you, and you’ll continue to be art even when he’s gone. A masterpiece is still a masterpiece when the lights are off, and the room is empty.”
