❝
True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.
And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.
It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.
❞
yourbigsisnissi:
the older i get the more it’s clear that being smart doesn’t get you very far if you’re not disciplined. there are tons of people who are brilliant but not disciplined. they have amazing ideas but cannot finish a project. they are creative and innovative but cannot execute a plan. i see how important it is to set deadlines and boundaries for myself an to be disciplined.
❝ 1. Go to museums alone. Seeing takes concentration and calm.
2. Don’t try to see everything. Pick a few rooms and choose one painting.
3. Minimize distractions. Pick an uncrowded room and work in good light.
4. Take your time. Sit, relax, get up, come back, expect that it may take a long time for a painting to speak to you.
5. Pay full attention. Give the work what Fried called, ‘absorption.’
6. Do your own thinking. Read, study, but when it comes to looking, just look and make up your own mind.
7. Be on the lookout for people who are really looking, not simply browsing and checking labels. Observe them without disturbing them. If you can talk to them without disturbing them, do so.
8. Be faithful. Return to paintings you’ve spent time with. ❞
——
James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (via
semperfeminae)
coffee-in-europe:
“Develop a sense of self. A solidness that can’t be attacked.”
— Sylvia Plath, from a journal entry featured in “The Unabridged Journals,”
(via violentwavesofemotion)
