What do I do with my life
Can you please hand out any hope I can cling to?
I have notifications on for your posts and yet can't bear to open each one because I know it will hit me so hard I'll want to sink into earth
and I don't wanna die just yet
I want to live life vibrantly and with joy, grass, green, wonder, sunlight, all of the things that make it easy to breathe or at the very least, easier
pero I'm so lonely and achy and whiney and shaky I hate who I am and all that I stand for, I'm a fraud and a fake! I say I love love and then live in my hate I can't stand myself and my existence
I wish I could live inside poetry like a blog, like your blog, like a tiny post existing as it is, not real but real anyway, not real enough to touch but real enough to touch
What do I do with my life what do I do with my life why am I spending my days alienated and tested for things I'm no good for why am I doing this to my life who let me do this to my life what do I do with it now
hello, my friend! I guess we're on the same train now, plagued by the same guilt of being alive but not really living ... reading your message felt like a soliloquy, my own soliloquy for you so gently grazed your fingers on my bleeding wounds.
I myself am trying to make me live, if that makes sense. No one really tells you that you might have years when you have to actively convince yourself to stay alive, no one teaches you how to do that.
By clinging to the littlest of things is how I operate. a song, a poem, a photo, a minute, a memory, a tasty snack or a warm cup of coffee, an idea, a painting, a stupid joke I've heard somewhere — I gather all these things in my hands to keep them occupied, so that they wouldn't do something unrepairable, irreversible.
What I've understood so far is that we go through seasons of (1) living despite, (2) living for and (3) simply living.
You and I, it seems, are at the mercy of the first one. To live despite is what we should do — despite the alienation, despite the loneliness, despite these spiteful thoughts and horrors. Once this season is over, we'll move on to the second one: to live for. This one, I think, will be much easier to travel through because the days here are full of little droplets of hope that attach themselves to your skin and don't leave your side until you reach the final season: simply living. Living here is as easy as it is to breathe. This is our destination.
I know that I didn't answer your questions and that I'm not capable of doing so. I'm sorry. I myself have decided not to seek answers anymore. As Rilke said, Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that — but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself.
I'm accepting the happiest days of my life (that are yet to come) as my lighthouse and I'm sailing toward them. Hopefully you'll do the same.
Take care 🧡🌼
The birds have vanished into the sky
and now the last cloud drains away
We sit together the mountain and me
until only the mountain remains
~ Li Po
the vocabulary of loss is the dictionary
starry night
Albertine Bookstore, NYC
By: bv_k Instagram: @artwoonz
Dark academia subjects: Chemistry
staying up late to read one cool paper
which turns into reading another cool paper that the first paper referenced
that turns into getting to lab mid afternoon because you woke up at noon
staying in lab late into the evening because there’s just so much to do
wanting to be aesthetic, but knowing that wearing nice clothes into lab is a bad idea (:’()
blue light glasses to protect your eyes from strain as you analyze data
going back to lab late at night to rerun an experiment because the data sucked and you have group meeting tomorrow
the wonderful feeling of finally troubleshooting that one experiment correctly
having science idols that you gaze wonderingly at when you see them at conferences
struggling through a class even but you enjoy it because sometimes learning is just hard
students emailing you with questions about the class you’re TA-ing causing you to wonder when you became the Adult In Charge who Knows Things
talking with your PI/ older grad students and realizing that you definitely are NOT the Adult In Charge who Knows Things but that’s a good thing because it means that you’re in the right place to learn
when your NMR shows your expected product and the MS shows high purity (tears of joy)
being the nerd in all your conversations with non-Science people and pulling out fun facts about solubility rules, thermodynamics, or the ultimate crowd pleaser: molecular quantum mechanics
getting really excited meeting another person your age from your field even if your projects are totally different
remembering even that when science is kicking your butt… you’re doing something cool that will have an impact and that no-one else has done yet!
― Virginia Woolf
'Tis the season for books and cuddles
the physics students
as requested by the wonderful @starferns
the chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall, covered in equations and graphs
visualizing a problem in your mind, step by step
cold water with ice cubes and a slice of lemon
diagrams drawn hastily on the corner of your paper, scribbled lines and half formed thoughts
replicating famous experiments and demonstrations
watching youtube videos late at night, picking apart complex theories
having an instinct for force diagrams and direction of motion
rushed, messy handwriting
finding beauty in motion and calculation and precision
seeing the universe as unimaginably small and unimaginably large at the same time
a well-worn grey sweater, frayed a little at the sleeves
equations scribbled on your arm until you know them by heart
studying newton and meitner and plank, all those who went before
talking with your hands, forming the shapes of arcs and trajectories as you work through a problem
long hallways and cold, sunny days
late night study groups
staring up at the sky, knowing exactly why and how the planets move as they do
trying einstein’s thought experiments
an old grandfather clock, pendulum measuring the passage of time
pages filled with calculations and precise strings of digits