| Time | Moon | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| The Last Hours of 2023 | Waning Gibbous in Virgo | Scaredcited |
I can't resist the allure of a new year. Sure, we can choose to have a new year on any of the 365 days we want, but the collective hum of everybody's hopes and wishes and desires is delicious. It devours me. The promise of a fresh start is something I'll always take.After meditating on it, I've decided that my word of the year is "commitment." I want to commit to not only my loved ones and goals, but to myself. Commit to take care of myself, to doing what's right in a given moment, even if it's hard. Commitment is something I want to shake my fear off and learn to embrace.
So let's take a look and see the intentions I'm committing to, shall we?
| Time | Moon | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| Afternoon Naptime | Full Moon in Capricorn | Content |
A Christmas in this part of the state means wishing for a rainy gray day, and we have one today. Indoors feels all the more cozy.My brother, sister-in-law, and nephew are visiting us for the holidays. It's my first time meeting my nephew, who was born earlier this year. He's SO cute, and SO big--and always has been! The (not-so) little guy is gonna grow up to be a moose. The Little Guy's hobbies are, at the moment, flipping through board books, rolling toys around, crawling with great intensity, and doing pterodactyl screams to announce his presence.
When I was younger I was never around babies much, so I'm learning so much between my family and friends with children. One example: everything you do turns into a larger production when a baby is involved. Let's say you want to go to a store. Well, you have to think about who is going to the store, when, how, why... all minutiae is planned around the baby's needs. Which makes sense, considering how vulnerable humans are at a young age. But it really is the baby's world with everybody else just living in it.
While I would like children in the future, I'm way too young for it, with too much life I want to experience independently first! So someday, but now.
I hope you've all had a merry Christmas, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, then well, I hope you had a nice day! Everyone deserves that much at the very least.
My next entry will be my resolutions, goals, and intentions for 2024. Regardless of what happens in it, there's a rosy aura around the year for me.
| Time | Moon | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| Almost Bedtime | Waxing Crescent in Aquarius | Puzzled |
Today was chilly, and now at night, chiller still. Earlier this evening, as I peered out my friend's window, I was struck by the sky's color at twilight: a grayish blue, traces of a cold sun leaving dull yellow in the lonely wisps. Sunset is so lonely during winter.I spent the afternoon with a dear friend and her children. It's amazing how much a child can develop in the span in a few months, and how fast. No wonder time moves slower when we're younger––there's an immense amount of information to process.
Often I wonder why we don't give change the same level of acceptance as adults and our adult peers. There's almost an expectation that we will remain static beings until the day we die. To be quite honest, this thinking freaks me out quite a bit in a few levels! I'd go as far as to say it's a dangerous attitude to have! Imagine if we were never forgiven for our previous transgressions, that you will always be assumed to do the same in the future. How can anyone live or grow?
The world itself constantly changes. Look at the cycle of the seasons. We bud, bloom, brown. Leaves are shed. A star is born, and then burns and blow itself apart within billions of years. Each day is not the same as before, and the next isn't guaranteed anyway. Humans live and learn and die. The cells within our bodies have their own life cycles; they divide and conquer, rebuilding themselves until we're literally, physically new people. Sometimes in the matter of weeks--our skin cells regenerate in only a couple weeks.
It's presumptuous to think of ourselves as unchanging monuments to a static self-perception. So why do I feel the need to explain myself?
For example. Tonight, I'm thinking much about my spirituality and how I want to define certain aspects of it. Like everything else, it too is in flux. So why do I feel the need to confess to friends and loved ones about these developments? Why does it scare me to think that they are assuming that I am whatever I am before? It's terrifying in a way that I can't explain. And this is just one instance too, there are other times where I feel this odd desire to confess for simply changing my mind about something. Or growing and learning more. Or simply letting myself be.
It's easy to pin social media on everything these days, huh? But there might be a relationship between it and this feeling. A person's Instagram account can come across as an "unchanging monument" to the self. Photographs capture one particular moment, and the memory of it is relived when we engage with it. However, it's just one piece to the wider picture.
The brain is plastic. Malleable, in whatever ways we want. Flexible. Things like trauma changes the brain on a physiological level, not to mention the everyday activities we engage in. Joy as well. And how beautiful it is to know this! That we're not beholden to we once were, just as our future selves are not to our present (though, we are to them). Evolution is what it means to be alive, to partake in existence itself. Though it can be frightening, change is something that should ultimately be celebrated and accepted on a wide scale. Why should we pretend otherwise?
| Time | Moon | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| All aboard the ship of dreams! | Waning Crescent in Virgo | Impassioned |
A group of friends and I watched Titanic on Sunday, including two who had never seen it before. The rest of the entry is going to be me gushing about it because I forget how to be normal every time I see that movie.God tier movie--like, it's a god tier movie.
Where to begin?
WELL, ANYWAY: spoilers for Titanic below if you haven't seen it!
Tbh this movie is going to get the most 90s kitschy shrine in my cottage at some point, but here's what stands out to me on this rewatch:
And in an age where media consumes itself in the Ouroboros of irony and cynicism, often for the sake of reaching towards ""intellectual"" ideals, isn't it wonderful to watch something that's almost painfully sincere? 
On a similar note, the way that Jack treats Rose is just... agh, it's wonderful. It's what everyone wants: somebody who respects you for who you are and your agency. In my opinion this is a key reason why the romance in Titanic has resonated with so many. It's less about Jack being a dreamboat (pun intended) and more so about how much he values her--though it is intertwined. His insistence that only she can make her own decisions, and his want for her to live a good life above all else. It's how GOOD Jack is to Rose is what has made the character so attractive.
What's fascinating about Titanic is that it's heralded as one of the great love stories of the modern ages, almost to the point of being cliched, when it 's actually quite subversive in its depiction of romance. So often romances fall into one of two categories: the pairing living happily ending, or the couple both meeting a tragic fate and reuniting in death. Titanic does neither.
When Jack dies, Rose doesn't shrivel up into a husk. Rose is given the rare gift that is life and the opportunity to continue living. And she takes it by the horns! She lives a rich, fulfilling life, finds love again, marries, and has a family, and is able to be true to her values. When considering that Rose and Jack met while she was attempted suicide, there's an extra meaning to this decision. His love inspired her to escape a life of toxic societal standards and sexual abuse. That's one of the reasons why she treasures their time together so deeply. Why she continued to love him.
Moreover, it makes me (more than) a little irritable when people are like "ugghhh why does Rose see Jack in her dream/the afterlife instead of her husband :///" which like no!! You're missing the point of how the relationship functions in her psyche!! And denying the complexities of humans and love too!! People are capable of loving more than one person across their lives, and each individual represents something different, too. These loves can represent different things. Who and how we love will vary across our life! Rose's love of Jack does not negate the love she has for her late husband. I have no doubt about this.
Titanic is all about memory. How memory informs who we are and our lives, including our relationships. When we remember, the people, places, and things spring alive once more. It's why memory, along with love itself, is more powerful than death. And endings themselves can act as little deaths within life itself too. It's okay to care and learn and wonder and think about these endings, which is to say our previous loves. Even when you have moved on passed a particular point, and grow and transform yourself as a person, it's okay to still allow these things to inform you! It's what it means to be human. And that is what I think Jack and Rose's relationship is all about.
Man. It's no wonder I love Cloud/Aerith so much lol. Both relationships center around similar themes, and both ruined my life when I was approximately 12 years old. 
The things you adore when you're 12... do they ever really leave you?
| Time | Moon | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| Dreary Afternoon Blues | Waning Gibbous | Pensive |
New month, new layout! I'm pretty happy with it! After September and October (RIP November) I wanted to do something simpler, and these are the results! Do you think I should add more green, yellow, or red touches though? I wanted to go for a winter night with a few pops of colors from the other graphics so let me know what you think!
Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a childhood friend whom I had not seen in almost 20 years. We first became friends in first grade when she moved here from Argentina. After a few years of living here they moved back, but my friend and me stayed in touch sporadically over the years. And then lo and behold, she happened to be back in the States visiting family!
It was wonderful, really. A blessing. Something so special and unique in every sense. We had a delicious lunch and recreated childhood pictures, but ohhh do I feel wistful now!! The power of life's currents are incredible to be behold. People, places, and things are pushed and pulled to and from us at different stages. So easily this river can drift in another direction, which leaves us wondering how things would have turned out otherwise. Chance meetings and circumstances always make me wonder.
Hmm, what else... WELL, on a completely different note, my current fixation is on the use of indoctrination techniques people within high control groups such as cults. I began reading Steve Hassan's book Combatting Cult Mind Control along with listening to some podcasts he's been on, and tbh it's all pretty enthralling. What I find the most fascinating though is how these psychological "mind control" techniques that are utilized within not just religious cults, but within political spheres, propaganda, self-help and therapuetic groups, and many other organizations. Take NXIVM, for example. Nonreligious, yet preyed upon idealists who wished to improve themselves. And this isn't to say that EVERY group inherently predatory and deemed worthy of suspicion, but quite a few are and you have to be conscious of what tools they use.
It's sooo important to learn the warning signs of such so you're not inadverently sucked into an abusive situation. In an age where misinformation is constantly shoved in our faces across like... EVERY platform, we're more sucestible than ever to be influenced by stuff that's on the surface, innocuous. So much content found on social media is designed to be manipulative––not to mention the addictive nature of SM, too. Toss these things in a pot, There's so much insecurity about the world too, and it can be easy to find meaning and safety in somebody's Objective Truth(tm) that has All The Answers(tm).I'm sure I'll have more to say about this after finishing th book, but it's no wonder the pot has boiled over. Systems around us keep turning up the heat. Let's hope that by learning critical thinking skills, the world can cool off.
