アオバト

a groove-billed ani doodle digital / photoshop 2025

Chameleon by Mansur Mughal, c.1612

Gute Sheep/gutefår. Värmland, Sweden (April 24, 2020).

Window bench with wood work that matches the exposed ceiling. Bench aligned with adjacent steps.

Spangle-cheeked Tanager

javier.chaves.photography

the problem with being fair-minded is that when something is hurting your feelings but it's something you've previously done yourself you kind of just have to be like. welp.

"Fig. 44. Butterfly" from the Priscilla Irish Crochet Book No. 2" edited by Eliza A. Taylor

[frustrated? that] i can't seem to encounter comments/attitudes that feel weirdbad* to me without feeling a need to seek reassurance that i'm being reasonable in finding them weirdbad

like yet again this is presumably a leftover artifact of the incessant messaging i got growing up that none of my re/actions were ever reasonable

but it's like. well. (a) it feels like weakness of character to me. like. why can't i just have the courage of my own convictions without needing someone else to reinforce them. (see previous para.) (b) even if we accept that this is an understandable ['if undesirable,' i immediately mentally add, but. table that question for now ig.] urge in the abstract, in practice it's like. well. my social situation lately is such that the various people towards whom i tend to direct bids of this kind will reject them at least half the time. so whether or not it's understandable: it's not viable

plus then of course it also feels like. why do i have to be SO quick to shrug off whatever the weirdbad opinion is, instead of just. sitting calmly with it for a little while. experiencing it. practicing some calm curiosity instead of agitated rejection, like that one post suggested.

unfortunately i think a lot of this stuff is like. well it's about how unsafe and insecure i feel all the time. like it's a bit idiotic to be sitting here going 'huh why am i acting so anxious when. my most crucial social bonds are as attenuated as they are and my current situation doesn't remotely lend itself to forming more.' like. obvious answer is obvious and also quite frankly i'm correct to be anxious about that!! if i were more securely socially enmeshed i could probably Practice Chillness better because these interactions would take up only the tiny fraction of my mental social map they ought to be taking up, instead of looming enormously large in a barren landscape and becoming disproportionately high-stakes as a result!

so like. diagnosing myself with shit life syndrome ig, lol

⸻ * using this as a very broad catchall term for a range of things that spans, like, 'actual bigotry' on the one end and 'someone being imo-too-flippant abt something in a way that makes me wonder if they realize i'm personally impacted by it' on the other end

holy shit turkey on the deck. god they’re SO beautiful and SO shockingly large. junoesque