The Receptionist

Life is Actually Simple

"Life can just be lived.
You don't have to:
prove anyone wrong....
make anyone proud....
change the world....
leave a lasting legacy....
You can simply show up, find the joy, be good to you and be good to others, learn from the pain, hold yourself accountable, relish the wonder of it and ride this thing out."
-Rachel Elizabeth Cargle

First of all, does her list of things to "simply" do actually sound like a lot? She's like those foodies who lie and say, this is a really simple recipe, and then proceed to use 22 ingredients over the course of two and a half hours.

So I would argue that her overall point is right but you don't even have to do all those things, or at least not all the time.

Yes, life is better for us and everyone else when we are learning and growing, holding ourselves accountable to our mistakes and experiencing wonder. But these are not requirements either. You can spend an inordinate amount of time staring at screens and ultimately, that's fine too.

The point is that your life is your own. Do with it is you will.

(Also, a hilarious and tragic confession: when I was transcribing this quote, my brain read "find the joy" as "find a job" and I was just like, yup, that's on the list of things to do in life and didn't question it and I replaced JOY with a JOB that is capitalism right there, folks.)

A photo of a man reclined in a chair reading a phone book.

Gabriele Stravinskaite

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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 dad's surgeon for (it seems) doing a good job and that his surgery went really well and he is already feeling better!

Seeing my mom for breakfast and all the restaurants with easy outside patios that we can sit on.

My bank for cancelling a payment I made by accident to the WRONG CARD and would have been a whole big thing.

Having lunch with a really dear friend who I don't see very often and who truly embraces the notion of not needing to put in effort when we see each other.

The weather for becoming suddenly summer (please someone write a "Suddenly Seymour" parody about summer magically appearing) when it was supposed to still be a little rainy and now it's noooooot!!!

Being able to celebrate a good friend's birthday, even if it was at 9am on a Sunday (more due to the existence of children than COVID).

THIS WEEK'S DELIGHT: Waking up on mornings where I have actually gone to bed early enough to get enough sleep and wowwwwwwwwww it's so much better.

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Follow These Plates

Marie-Claude Marquis' decorative plates are generally wonderful and this one, in specific, is glorious.

A photo of a decorative plate with a picture of Jesus in the middle and the text says "follow me, I'll follow back." It's the white, Catholic Jesus and the plate is gilded with gold.

And honestly, I can see the youth group I went to back in the day getting really into this sentiment.

Expressing the opposite sentiment to my youth group is this next plate, another fave:

A photo of a china plate with the text "whatever floats your boat" on it. The plate is white with a delicate floral pattern dotted around the edges and also in the centre of the plate.

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Memes and Death Wishes

This made me laugh.

A photo of a page of a newspaper with the pull quote "my generation is going to be known for memes and wanting to die."

for you

It looks like the article is about millennials, but I've gotta say, it should be about gen z. Millennials may have "invented" memes or whatever, but gen z really bonded over them in a new and special way. Same with the whole wanting to die thing--they took our general comfort with dark humour and turned it up to 11, flirting on Tinder with murder-suicide pacts.

Listen, I'm not here for the culture war between millennials and gen z. Those kids are smart and intimidating as heck and credit where credit is due when it comes to the memes and the death wishes.

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What's Really Going to Happen to the Candles???

Honestly, this is a very good question:

Are vaccinated people blowing out candles on cake that everyone is going to eat or are we just never going back to that?
— Jenée (@jdesmondharris) May 24, 2021

Are you? Is this ever coming back? According to my friend in LA, handshaking is already back despite everyone's big talk about never shaking hands again so I'm already feeling a little betrayed by all our big talk of letting these traditions go.

You know what, I'll take the handshakes if my friends and I are able to taste each others' cocktails again. Not sure about the candles though. My friends and I did a birthday this past weekend where we each held a candle and sang happy birthday and then blew it out ourselves. It was kind of like a fun version of a candlelight vigil.

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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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That's Some Kind of Poem

A photo of an art exhibit of John Giormo poetry paintings. The wall has large block text on it that says "Space Forgets You" and then small square paintings are over it saying things like "the world just makes me laugh", "we gave a party for the gods and the gods all came" and "when the going gets rough the tough get gorgeous"

Photo by corno.fulgur75 on Foter.com

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

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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