The Receptionist

Here Are Some of My Collages

I've been making collages! Here are some of my faves:

Collage art. The main feature is a flying saucer with a beam of light pulling up into it a cupcake, globe, front of a pig, and a candy heart that says "be true" on it. There are a few more flying saucers around. The background is abstract, a mottled pink and yellow.

A piece of collage art. The background is a photo of a lake with glass-still water and some trees on the far side. In the foreground is a woman with a helmet over her head holding a doughnut in one hand and a black rabbit on her shoulder. In the background is an astronaut horizontal over the water, like they will smack into it with their whole front. There are three doughnuts above them, attached with strings like maybe they are balloons that will hold the astronaut up.

Collage art. The background is a flat shot of water, like a lake or ocean. The top of a giant salt shaker emerges into the image from the top left, and coloured lines come out of it as if it's salting the water with colour. There is a woman floating in the middle of the water. On the bottom right is a cat, just its eyes and ears poking out of the water.

Collage art. It's a still lake with some slight waves on the water and trees on the other side. In the centre of the lake stands an astronaut on the water, with some flowers behind its back. Emerging from the water is a green hand holding a crystal ball and next to that is a very small cactus. The text on the picture says "it is real"

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I'd never heard of poet John Girono, but now I'm sad I never got to hear him read one of his poems. (I guess I probably could look something up on YouTube). The man's work reads like a deadpan, angry rant and I've never encountered poetry like that.

I don’t
know
what
you’ve been
doing
today
I don’t know what
you’ve been doing today,
but today
was one
of the worst
days
of my life
but today was one
of the worst days of my life
but today was one of the worst days of my life,
and you’re walking
down 2nd Avenue
coming to
St. Mark’s Place
-Excerpt from Eating the Sky by John Giorno

Like... COME ON!!!!

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This Week's Gratitude & Delight

An animated gif illustration. There is a black background and a white speech bubble with the text "thank you" inside it that blinks on and off. Around the speech bubble are two white stars that wiggle back and forth.

Ivo Adventures

The last week I have been grateful for:

My coworker putting my biking clothes in the dryer (with hers) because we both got caught in the rain on the way into work and air drying wasn't going to cut it.

Happy hour in the park with a friend who I deeply enjoy but don't see very often, and also the fact that she remembered we had set the date with the intention specifically of discussing some mental health practices and not just to hang out, so I got both!

The car co-op I am a member of because I needed to buy more flour (in the giant bag) and it is so much easier than transporting it on my bike.

A meeting of the new book club I've joined that is freaking awesome and full of some very smart and cool ladies.

The fact that camping is allowed right now, so I got to spend some quality time with my friends and their kiddos. (Also, do you realize we are entering a world where we won't have to think about what we are "allowed" to do socially and just... have to make decisions???? Weird.)

THIS WEEK'S DELIGHT: I awkwardly put out there that I miss my old nickname and maybe people could call me that again and I instantly got a reply from a woman I work with being like, "Done!" and it felt so good!

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Warm Your Dang Heart

Someone sent me this meme and it warmed my cold, dark heart like the sun.

A meme photo that has two red raccoons on a path besie some grass. They are facing each other both standing on their hind legs with their forepaws up in the air. One is labelled "me" and the other is labelled "also me cheering for myself because everything will be fine." It's so sweet!

Apparently these sweet lil' red raccoons are residents of Oregon Zoo.

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Sometimes, You Can Do Things Just Because You Like Them

A friendly reminder:

Just because you are good at something doesn't mean you have to do it.

Just because you enjoy doing something doesn't mean you have to get good at it.

In neither case do you have any obligation to try to make money off of it.

Sometimes, you get to just do the things you like to do because you like them.

An animated gif illustration showing a vintage record player with a record spinning and musical notes coming out of it. The record player is one of those suitcase ones, it's green and the inside is lined with a flowery pattern. The background to the whole thing is pink.

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Weakness of the Flesh

I was hypnotized by this short dance film featuring Emma Rosenzweig-Bock dancing in a sea of... herself. Weakness of the Flesh.

An animated gif video clip showing multiple versions of a woman standing and lying down on the concrete (like she's been cloned and turned into various mannequins or frozen in space). There is a real version of her that is lying on the ground, spins on her stomach and raises her head up in an incredible backbend. She is wearing a long black skirt and a black long-sleeved crop top.

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Fear Will Find a Way

Sometimes it feels like fear is its own entity all together. A persistent climbing ivy that, once planted, takes over your entire house. You can prune back one tendril only to find another has pushed up through the floorboards.

A friend of mine is afraid of the vaccine.

As far as I know, this isn't typical of her. She's definitely on the hippie-dippie spiritual side of things (one of the reasons we have connected over the years) but I wouldn't peg her as anti-vax, anti-science, or anti-medicine.

But then fear happened.

I don't know who first planted it, but someone gave her a reason to be afraid. Now each time a fear is addressed, getting pruned back with thoughtful, evidence-based reason leaving her assured that the vaccine is safe, another justification for the fear slips in and it grows right back.

I'm told it is next to impossible to get ivy out at the root and it's at least as hard with fear. Unless you can reject the central premise all together, all it takes is one little "what if" and bam! You're surrounded by scary vines. And that central premise? Chances are it's connected to something deeply important to you (that's how it gets in there in the first place), so good luck there.

This isn't a very hopeful post, is it? Okay, here's the hope: it is possible to overcome your fear. I have done it a couple of times. Once, it took the near-dissolution of my faith. Another time it took me realizing that I could prioritize a different value over the one that was driving the fear. In both cases, it was a big shift in how I saw myself and/or the world, but it happened.

There is another way, of course. As my heart-niece reminded me this weekend: sometimes you have to act from your brave self instead of your scared self and just do the thing that scares you.

Or I guess you could just become the Poison Ivy of fear and make it do your bidding (if you figure out how to do that LET ME KNOW).

An animated gif clip from a cartoon. It shows Poison Ivy, a character from Batman, emerging from the ocean, with ivy growing beneath her to lift her up out of the water. She is controlling the ivy.

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Why Aren't You Listening to Amanda Sum RIGHT NOW???

You know when someone recommends the BEST BOOK EVER to you and you read it and it's incredible and then it turns out the book is in a series and the series isn't complete yet and now you just have to... wait... for the author to finish it?

Get ready for the musical version: AMANDA SUM.

Full disclosure, I know her and I like to think of her as a friend but really we're more like friendly acquaintances and people who worked together once and now are on social media together, but I have a big ol' giant crush on her and her work and you should too!

She's got three singles out, this is the first one, and the rest are also incredible. She just released Hot Headed Egos and ooooooof.

Listen! Watch! Fall in love! And then waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait with me as she slowly releases more singles! (I think an EP is coming!!!)

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The Will

This is called The Will by Seamless and I am in love with it.

An art photograph of a woman ascending up in a blue sky. She is very small, the photo is mostly blue sky with some clouds at the bottom, and she is wearing an orange dress and holding a pink balloon. Her body is positioned upright, as if she is standing.

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Wild Idea: YOU Are the One Who Knows What Feels Good for You

It's another Instagram take down!!!!

A friend of mine shared this post from an account called natural.medicine.index recently, and I'm here to nitpick about it:

A cream coloured square with two lists presented in columns next to each other. The first is energy givers and includes sunlight, dance, whole foods, hydration, sleep, nature, music, movement, resting, fresh air, decluttering, future planning. The other says energy takers and says inconsistent sleep, focusing on the past, junk food, negativity, mess and clutter, overworking, no physical movement, screens, dehydration, stress, alcohol, fear, resentment

The truth is, I resonate with most of the items on these lists. HOWEVER. What gives energy and what takes it away FOR YOU is kind of YOUR CALL. It's not up to anyone else, certainly not some random company trying to increase its Instagram clout.

There's also something called context and balance.

For example, a consistent sleep pattern might generally be important to maintaining (or generating) energy, but following it so rigidly I don't do other things that bring me joy? Not so much. Overdoing alcohol will definitely sap energy, but sometimes having a drink sets me free. A good decluttering spree leaves me feeling energized, but constantly keeping on top of clutter feels like a drain.

Also, I hate the "whole food" / "junk food" judgment so much.

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Do Not Forget That You're Hot

Like many Elder Millienials (yes, I reject the 'geriatric' ridiculousness), I was very late to the TikTok game, not understanding "the point" for a while.

Well, I'm here to tell you that SHOCKINGLY, thanks to TikTok, my self-esteem has never been higher.

First there was the "we're all 10s" trend, handily compiled for us here on youtube:

Then there's this video, helping elevate my feelings about my tallness:

FINALLY, there's this affirming shower witch:

I have sent this video to most of my friends at this point and even written the quote on my whiteboard. And then, of course, I got all philosophical about what it means to always remember that I'm hot.

Here's what it means to me:

It means that I take care of myself. Not as a code for staying thin, but actually to just take care of myself. Hot people give themselves what they need when they need it.

... that I expect to be treated well by others.

... that I don't obsess over what someone else might be thinking of me.

... that I dress up when I want to dress up and don't when I don't and if I am having a low-effort day it doesn't reduce my hotness. (This reminds me of a line from a book I read when I was young about how the pretty girls can make weird faces with ease because their innate prettiness means that can make themselves temporarily ugly without fear and that resonated with me then as a self-perceived ugly duckling who was insecure about everything but could have a lot to say about embracing hotness.)

... that hotness is an attitude far more than anything physical and it is the attitude encapsulated by the all of the above.

Turns out that seeing people express completely over-the-top, uncomplicated, unnuanced self confidence is really inspiring. Let's all try it!!!

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I Don't Know if You've Heard of Her, But This Olivia Rodrigo is Actually Pretty Cool

Olivia Rodrigo

I finally listened to Olivia Rodrigo's album and... is it a problem if a teenage girl's processing of her breakup actually corresponds directly to my nearly-middle-aged experience of heartbreak???

I mean, have you HEARD the song Happier???

It's the perfect encapsulation of the, "we're broken up and I'm pretty enlightened about it and I do want you to be happy but also I am just petty enough that I want to be doing better than you" mood that I know I carry and at least it's me and Olivia even if no one else will admit it.

Driver's License makes me cry.

Good 4 U has just enough of what I guess are now old school pop punk vibes that my still-beating teen-angst-heart wants to mosh and scream along.

Anyways, I guess I'm still seventeen and I'm so happy this exists.

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Why Does Everyone Think I'm Going to Punch Them?

A memory:

Comedies when I was young that had a consistent trope: a guy approaches a girl to ask her to dance or on a date, and instead of just saying no, she slaps him or dumps water on his head or something semi-violent or humiliating.

(It's worth noting that usually these guys were not being inappropriate or creepy, they simply gave an offer that was not reciprocated.)

Another memory:

It was about a week after my sixteenth or seventeenth birthday. One of my guy friends, who had come to my party, made a comment that he almost bought me some kind of perfume as my birthday gift, but he didn't know if I would like it and "didn't want to get punched."

Something current:

This post from one of my fave Instagram accounts, Not a Wolf:

An image of a tweet with the text "probably a good idea not to comment on anyone's post-pandemic appearance unless you want to get acquainted with their pre-pandemic ability to bite down at 1200psi"

What do all these situations have in common?

MEN!

Men used to almost exclusively write for TV and movies, and they featured women responding aggressively to unwanted male attention.

Then, a boy I knew watched those shows all growing up and got it into his head that if he gave me a gift I didn't like I might... PUNCH him???

Finally, a grown adult man today makes a joke that the reason you shouldn't comment on other people's bodies isn't because of human decency but because of the violence they may inflict on you in return.

I get that the first and last things here are JOKES and the whole point is that they are exaggerated FOR THE COMEDY.

The question still stands: how much of men's understanding of how women should behave do you think is filtered through the things a bunch of dudes in the 90s thought would be funny?

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