If You're Going to Destroy Something, Learn Its Name First

 

Todd Deimer

"Not only knowing the names but getting them right is a duty to other living things on this planet, I think. Certainly towards humans, at the very, very least. But I would even say more so to the inhabitants of forests. If you’re going to cut them all down, have the decency to know which animals you’re destroying their land—not just call them brown birds, or birds even. Know that there’s blue warblers there. Know that there’s cerulean warblers there. Know that there’s pine siskins there. Know there’s a bird called a titmouse there. Just have the decency to know what’s around you."

-Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Those of us who are colonists (aka: anyone living in North America who came here by choice as a result of colonialism) could really take this to heart.

If you're going to destroy anything, know what it is you're destroying. What specific species of animals or plants, what specific land, what specific cultural practices, what specific people. Name them. It's the least you can do.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

This Week's Gratitude & Delight

Ivo Adventures

 

The last week I have been grateful for:

Getting super quick results on a COVID test so that I didn't have to sit around in isolation for very long and for the friends who were on the ready to deliver food and anything else I needed if I did have to stay in isolation! (And also that it was negative, babeeeee!)

Getting my first COVID vaccine!!!!!! For all the scientists and healthcare workers and other workers who dropped everything to make this happen and even for the governments who knew to prioritize this and that they made sure Indigenous communities got it before I did.

BC announced its restart plan and while aspects of it did freak me out a bit, it was really comforting to see a plan that is based on clear markers and science instead of a reckless rush to re-open.

My beloved soulmate bestie with whom I am as silly as can be and then super deep and we go on our anti-racist journey together and also she made a ridiculous Hamilton sign to celebrate me getting the vaccine.

The fact that I baked myself a cake!

THIS WEEK'S DELIGHT: I was going for a jog (I know! A JOG!) around the track in a nearby park and a bunch of dudes were standing around and then, all at once, started leaping into the air like frogs. (Okay what they were actually doing was an interval workout and the jumping squats started, but it legitimately looked like they just said, "Hey! Let's act like frogs!" and then started chaotically jumping around.)

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

The Distinction is Very Important But How Do You Tell The Difference???

 

Jamie Street

How do you tell the difference between a detour and a roadblock? (The metaphorical kind, not the actual ones on actual roads that are usually pretty clearly marked.)

 

As per this Instagram post, a detour is a challenge (or five) along the way that tell you it's going to be harder and take longer to get to your final destination. A roadblock, on the other hand, is a signal that you're never going to get there.

It's the difference between "this is still possible for you, it's just harder," and "it's not going to happen for you."

 

The post goes on to affirm that most of the time we think things are roadblocks when they are actually detours.

But it doesn't tell us HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE which is kind of a big part of the whole thing, right????

So, how do YOU tell the difference? How do you, as Dr. Eilers of Instagram recommends, "practice discernment between detours and roadblocks"?

 

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

The Most Important Questions: What Jeans Were Being Worn the Year You Were Born?

I know what question has been burning in your heart for a while now: what did jeans look like the year I was born????

Elle Magazine has answered the question. It's really just a great excuse to click through vintage fashion photos.

Here's 1984:

 

Elle

Also, let's appreciate that anyone wearing tighter-fitting jeans prior to the late-90s is doing so with ZERO STRETCH in those jeans. They are pure denim with comfort to match.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Questions For When You Don't Know What the Heck to Do

Coming to America

For when things feel off or bad and you don't really know why: Catherine Andrews, of the Sunday Soother, has a list of questions to help figure out what's going on.

 

Here are some of my faves:

• Am I attempting to mind-read somebody else's intentions in this situation?
• How could I give myself what I'm hoping this other person will give me?
• What if what felt right to me, was right?
• Is it true?
• Do I want to keep thinking this thing? Why or why not?

You can see all the questions in her post here.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Self-Awareness May Be Too Much Work Right Now But At Least We Have Global Self Hypnosis

As per yesterday's post, I'm currently in a place where I feel like most self-awareness and self-work is too much effort and just kind of exhausting. I'm still interested in it and have a host of saved articles and ideas to share on here, though.

 

So just know that while I'm going to keep sharing these things, I'm probably being a huge hypocrite and not doing them myself. 😊

 

One thing I AM doing, however, is loving the affirmations Instagram account Global Self Hypnosis. They post affirmation memes that are just unhinged and discordant enough that they really speak to my soul and, honestly, leave me feeling kind of affirmed. (They also have merch!)

 

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Near Miss

I came across this gif and just really felt like it needed to be shared. Here you go.

Giphy

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Sometimes, Growth is Gross

 

Bankim Desai

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before."

- Alice Walker

This reminds me of chrysalis time and the fact that we think of cocooning as some cozy time of warmth, self-protection, and growth, but really it's messy, painful, and kinda gross.

I want to say that this is an encouragement to use those feelings (the anger, weepyness, agitation--let's use a different word than hysteria) as a signal and start looking at your life to see if this is an instance of growth and where you might be going, but honestly? I'm feeling way more laissez-faire about this kind of thing these days.

 

If you want to analyze your feelings and your growth, by all means. But if you are feeling chaotic and confused and don't feel like digging into it, chances are the growth will still happen. I don't know that we need to be aware of the process for it to work. After all, it got you to the point of feeling like crap, didn't it? Maybe you can just experience it and see what happens on the other side.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

This Week's Gratitude & Delight

Ivo Adventures

 

The last week I have been grateful for:

Having dinner with my mom and dad outside in a park! It was so lovely, even though we got takeout Indian food and forgot to order rice with the dishes and also didn't have plates so we ate off the lids to the takeout containers.

Giving blood for the first time ever (I guess I'm grateful to myself for that?) and the technician doing my needle was very friendly and nice to talk to but also there was a finance bro across the room from me also donating he was very interesting to watch.

A board member at my work who is going ABOVE AND BEYOND to help us develop a strategic plan and it is killer.

The fact that it was supposed to rain this week but it was mostly sunny instead.

To Nicki Minaj for Super Bass which I spent an evening learning the lyrics to so I can do a really good job lipsyncing along to it.

As always, calls and visits with friends because friends are everything I could possibly want.

This week's delight:

 

Teen punk band The Linda Lindas who wrote the song Racist Sexist Boy and I was agape with joy watching it!

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Halfway Houses

When new owners purchased half of a duplex in Ruhrgebiet, Germany, disparate renovations and paint jobs began to emerge. Wolfgang Fröhling has photographed these two-faced houses and they are kind of incredible to look at!

(Via Colossal)

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

When Your Big Mood is No Mood at All

Ruffa Jane Reyes

I shall spend my moods
Like a rose discards leaves

And die without moods. 

-Lewis Grandison Alexander

Is it just me, or is this the moodiest little haiku you've ever read?

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Your Life is Your Own (But Also You Owe Us)

DBS Bank Ltd.
(I honestly can't tell you why I am using this gif for this post, it just feels right.)

 

"Your life is your own."

-Brianna Wiest

Just reading this sentence makes me feel a kind of restful confidence that's really quite lovely.

It comes from a very long quote (poem? Sometimes it's hard to tell) that ends with a push to claim this life of yours so that it doesn't pass you by, your glorious potential lost to the world.

On one hand, yes. Of course, yes. Very much yes. Absolutely yes. When we just let life happen for us or follow someone else's plan for our lives we wind up missing out on so much.

On the other hand, do these inspirational urgings ever feel like pressure to anyone else? I love love love the simple statement "your life is your own" because it clears away a lot of clutter in my brain. It rejects all the pressure I may put on myself to achieve or earn or make sure I look good to other people and reminds me that I don't belong to anyone but myself.

The next part, though? The "claim it so it doesn't pass you by"? I am no longer relaxed. Now my life that I thought was mine, that I could live as I wished, is running away on a conveyor belt and I'm Lucy stuffing chocolates in my mouth because I can't keep up.

Suddenly, there's an assignment. I have to achieve something or offer something to the world and it feels like there's an implied standard of good enough. I have potential that must be realized.

The mental clutter returns. What's the potential? What if I pick the wrong thing? Am I aiming high enough? What if I die before I achieve it? What if, even worse, I give up and my potential dries up?

 

It takes the somewhat-revolutionary reminder that my life is mine and mine alone and places it within a framework of achievement. Of noticeable glory. Of a debt owed to the universe. It's capitalism, but for dreams.

Maybe you find the reminder to achieve your potential as calming and confidence-boosting as I find the reminder that my life is my own. In that case, take it.

Personally, I'm going to just hold onto the part where my life is my own and leave it at that.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---

Please Hold For the Ambulance

The other evening I was walking with a friend through Gastown, one of the neighbourhoods in Vancouver where the wealthy and the unhoused overlap considerably.

We turned a corner and encountered a person, passed out, appearing to have fully collapsed in the middle of the sidewalk. They didn't respond when we called out to them, so we decided to call an ambulance.

As I was on hold (ON HOLD!) to talk to an ambulance dispatcher, a plainclothes police officer arrived. They began a first aid assessment and called it in. Within seconds, a marked police car showed up with two more uniformed officers and an ambulance was on the way.

Once my friend and I left the scene, our conversation circled around policing for a while. Our experience demonstrated how valuable it is to have someone who is physically present in a neighbourhood with the training to step in and save a life.

 

Right now, those people are police, and if they hadn't been there who knows how much longer I would have sat on hold with the ambulance? But what if we had people trained in life-saving and perhaps community services out and about, ready to happen upon someone in need who weren't also looking for crime? What if we invested in health and safety in the same way we invest in finding criminals?

On a related note, Mennonite Church USA has put together a curriculum for police abolition that is available for free. (One of the main tenets of being a Mennonite is pacifism, so it is actually a direct extension of the church's purposes.)

The curriculum is very American-focused, so if you are American, definitely get in there. Canada is different, but also kind of the same. I would love to see similar resources looking at it from our context.

---

The Receptionist Delivers!
Sign up for my email newsletter for a bi-weekly digest and bonus content!

---