stayandsea-blog

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I lived in these PJs w their too-short pants 4eva awkwardly they were a handmeup from little bro #keikou

#10yearchallenge https://www.instagram.com/nickkroll/p/BsttlMqHZ_d/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=e32j53tijxzn

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2019 guidelines

ideals

tumble daily @ night or whenever brain is buzzin’

have 3 $0/days a week

in bed, drink only tea and eat only big bowls of fruit’

go grocery shopping spend max $36, ideally 20/each

- 1x a week to sprouts: eggplant or zuke, creamy soup, chickpea pasta, check sales first, fresh herbs, tomoto, some kind of treat 

- 1x a week to fresh grocer: eggs, turkey, turkey pastrami, spinach / arugula / lettuce bag

charge phone, moisturize, brush teeth 2x, nails

bike 2-3x a week; run 1x week (weekend mornings + tv; after 12 do work)

Don’ts

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attention

the ability to focus the mind on the present, to be absorbed in one’s immediate environment or a bodily sensation, to prioritize one stream of information (inside or outside you) above all others

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partners

i would rather be with him than be alone but there are other people whose company I enjoy more. that does not mean they would make better partners - often the opposite bc as a team, when I’m more optimal & clear-minded, we are an amazing team.

[stayandsea-blog]

the difference between sensing and feeling: affect

Somatosensation is particularly interesting because the sensing aspects of touch are tightly bound to affective aspects of the experience. When your eyes see, the act of visual engagement is itself rarely responsible for the feeling of pleasure, but rather, your brain is responsible for translating what you see into a pleasurable experience. There are exceptions that come to mind: when your eyes linger over a particularly appealing curve (whether the curve belongs to a highly symmetrical sculpture, a windy road or a desirable human), the shape itself can be inviting. Also, in gazing at masterful artwork that rouses emotion or witnessing landscapes that inspire awe, vision itself can evoke feeling, such that the sensation of seeing is bound up in feeling. Finally, emotion can entwine with vision upon “drinking in” the sight of a familiar face after a long absence, such as when reunited with loved one whose face you conjure regularly in your mind but rarely witness externally, in the flesh. Music also lends itself to affective-evoking sensation in the auditory modality - in engaging with the rhythm of sound, your ears or better yet, your brain engages in a guessing game based on the existing temporal information (tempo), finding delight in its predictability or in its defiance of expectation.  

In somatosensation, affect is more often than not bound up in perception.  Think of slipping on a cozy wool sweater after a drizzly, long walk or the warmth radiating from a hot cup of tea when you’re ill; think of the divine pleasure of cool water on hot, parched skin during the summer. Although those sensations are so fleeting and specific, they are also universal and fundamental, such that my words should illustrate for you a very personal instantiation (a memory?) of these sensory experiences. I couldn’t picture your experience of it even though my words evoked it, because that would be mapping visual onto somatosensory and the disconnect between those is interesting and highly individual. Now why are somatosensations so fleeting? Habituation happens particularly fast and thoroughly in the somatosensory modality, such that once you’ve been in your clothes more than a minute it’s hard to isolate the sensation evoked by contact from their fibers, but that’s not the full answer...

It’s also funny that sensorimotor experiences are wrapped up in your feelings, because when you sit on a chair, your sense of comfort is informed by how the chair envelops your posture, how its material and structure support your sense of balance, and how long you can be still yet maximally at ease in a given position. 

I now love talking about what people feel. I think it’s so fun to use the puzzle pieces of language - words, which are a culturally-defined abstraction - to reenact previous sensations that are often difficult to communicate. It’s applying a social tool to a personal experience. With my friends I do it in conversations all the time and learn more about them,  prying the nuances of their experiences in order to mentalise - or to feel? to picture? - what it’s like to be in their skin. That’s the interpersonal mapping of sensations  from one person to another using words. Touch, art and music allow us to communicate individual perceptual experiences. They allow other people to understand what we mean without words, expressing what we feel inside, in the visceral, bodily sense.

[stayandsea-blog]

Hand and Stone Ad

Yeah people really don’t understand what stress is.

The massage ad that features a woman talking about perfectly normal everyday activities - completing paperwork! running around! commuting! - and claiming she needs to destress ‘like me’. FUCK YOU WOMAN. if that’s all I had to do I wouldn’t be stressed and in actual fact these endless never happening deadlines make me less stressed. I need more stress to structure my around, or I need more routine in my daily life to allocate dedicated unstructured time instead of working till I’m hungry/miserable then doing nothing. you need to make & stick to a goddamn routine woman! don’t be overwhelmed by your whims, tame them & yourself into the person you want to be. that’s how ya live your best life

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write

‘fanfiction’ - unpack psychological mechanisms of self-destruction & freedom from in actions of 

play: anthony weiner saga 

novel/play: becca bachelorette

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whisked

redemption rye $$

rittenhouse rye (my og) $$

windsor canadian $

famous grouse $*

basil hayden $$$

laphroug $$$$

lavalughin $$$$ *

won’t drink bulleit, four roses is mediocore but effective

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freedom from

my peers simply don’t recognize the value of restraint; in it there is certainty; in confinement there is greater constancy. the selection of specific, determined options eliminates other and lays a foundation for stability, predictability & comfort, which are not valued by my generation. 

with the introduction of capitalism, freedom from the social confines of the middle ages led to insecurity, inequality & unease in previously content middle classes, even as upward social mobility, competitive, challenging work and self-determination become (newly) possible. this is not unlike the malaise of working class, rural adults who support trump; in their own inability (or disinterest) to navigate the increasingly open market of social choices, they find a need to justify their own selection of existing models. outdated  

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my work is made entirely possible by my fluid connection to the internet, dynamic access to work which isn’t original to me but can be accessed more quickly than I can generate an original thought. when properly leveraged, int-wining ones mind with the internet is as revolutionary to patterns of thought as developing fluency in language, written or read; it opens new possibilities, which provoke new, previously-unthinkable or unable repertoire of actions... I’m so grateful I guess but there’s something unnerving - unnatural - about a central repository of knowledge changing what I am a capable of. reading changes people’s will, its introduction changed many individuals and society at large, opening their souls to religion and changing the tenets of their daily life, their social hierarchies, their assumptions about themselves. the internet has the same function, but it’s the closeness of machine and mass influence that hits my uncanny valley. that’s why paper books are vogue with hipsters. 

what would I be without the internet?

not a PhD student. for all its distractions it facilitates my productivity more than my procrastinating. I just wouldn’t have the rapid, free, limitless access to information that has supported my intellectual development, from wikipedia binges at 6 making me a curious rat to google scholar making me a doctor(8) to the New Yorker making me a cosmopolitan yet ever-complaining citizen. 

yet I think it’s pernicious somehow. it isolates me away from others - absolutely necessary for my work, but not at all for my play. it embeds constant, burning want (envy?) within me - absolutely motivating my ambitions, but not at all my self-image. it keeps me company when I am lonely, draining my desire for social contact with its myriad of entertain options and substituting the unexpected surprises generated from spontaneous interactions from the predictable, reliable stream of machine-generated content, instantly yet emptily gratifying my every query. 

I sleep curled around my laptop every night, my peaceful features illuminated by its harsh blue glare until I wake up startled, face to face screen with my partner, time lost, more hours than I slept lost, with a sad netflilx notification asking if I’m alive, because it cares…right?

[stayandsea-blog]

what would I be without the internet?

not a PhD student. for all its distractions it facilitates my productivity more than my procrastinating. I just wouldn’t have the rapid, free, limitless access to information that has supported my intellectual development, from wikipedia binges at 6 making me a curious rat to google scholar making me a doctor(8) to the New Yorker making me a cosmopolitan yet ever-complaining citizen. 

yet I think it’s pernicious somehow. it isolates me away from others - absolutely necessary for my work, but not at all for my play. it embeds constant, burning want (envy?) within me - absolutely motivating my ambitions, but not at all my self-image. it keeps me company when I am lonely, draining my desire for social contact with its myriad of entertain options and substituting the unexpected surprises generated from spontaneous interactions from the predictable, reliable stream of machine-generated content, instantly yet emptily gratifying my every query. 

I sleep curled around my laptop every night, my peaceful features illuminated by its harsh blue glare until I wake up startled, face to face screen with my partner, time lost, more hours than I slept lost, with a sad netflilx notification asking if I’m alive, because it cares...right?

#anticipation

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the indignity of daily life as a woman

Yesterday on a short megabus ride, a woman - a mother sitting behind her children - was licked on the shoulder and neck by a perfectly normal looking fellow, who claimed he ‘woke up and thought he was in the car’. What fucking car rides are you falling asleep on that you wake up and instinctively lick the nearest body? Yikes.

So heres the thing - when I date guys out of my league, they treat me as disposable. It makes me feel like shit. When they actually reach or exceed my standards for smart and cute (we already know these are atypical and based on personal preference, not talking about me chasing divine brilliant hunks) I have to text them to make them remember I’m alive, be on the receiving end of their horseshit about themselves while they never bother asking me anything about myself, or accept that I’m a default, low-priority, last-ditch option, below friends and every fucking other thing. Even when they live 2 minutes from me. It’s degrading.

But...I also ignore/delay response/only consider when very free texts from a guy who I thought was decent company, smart and checked some boxes, but not cute enough to date. So am I perpetuating what I receive? Do I need to tell him I’m not keenly interested in him? I kinda do this to Scott too. Am I reaping what I sow?

Why is it that all the half-decent looking mates are -shitheads -self-involved -superficial -empty husks of humans? Why am I bothering to write a damn post and feel disappointed in someone I already established was a hunky, empty husk? Why do I make believe people who slight me like me because they give me, in Rebecca Bunch’s lingo, love kernals, meaningless to them but ‘awww-worthy’ moments or compliments to me? And then I build relationships - imagined personalities - imagined inner lives - for these empty husks, who won’t even take the time to invest back in me to figure if I’m worth a lay.

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lorette

I research the development of touch using brain imaging, statistics, and robots to learn how we physical contact changes our social interactions, but my real interest lies in understanding how we as humans feel connected (and "engaged") with one another and construct meaning by sharing experiences - really, a life - with others. Biology, neuroscience, psychology are fairly shallow tools to study these deeply personal emotions and habits I see in my parents and other life partnerships; I love the way, after almost 40 years together, my dad is able to anticipate my mom's needs - she's now recovering from successful surgeries, learning how to be taken care of after investing her life in raising us to be original, opinionated, independent thinkers, remembering and preparing each family member's favorite meals down to the smallest details, and working full-time as a true crime editor. She's the one who introduced me to the Bachelor: I've been watching from the first season as a child and it's undoubtedly warped my views of love, womanhood and expectations that if I 'keep my heart open' I can find someone to take care of, and to care for me. It's not been that easy, I'm a little high-strung, consumed by a love my work, and probably get my hopes up too easily, imaging every person can be right for me if I just adjust my standards to accommodate them. I'm hoping to meet someone who wants to commit to a meaningful life together full of the expected and unexpected, where we remain committed but never stable, growing and changing together as a unit. I also can be fun, I promise - I love spontaneous travel, nature adventures (long distance biking, kayaking & swimming are passions of mine) and used to play electric bass in a band.

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The Library of the Château du Champ de Bataille in Normandy, France

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"You don't get to have a career...or leave the world a better place without experiencing stress and discomfort. Discomfort is the price of a meaningful life."

All emotions have value and you're in control of which ones dictate your behavior but that doesn't mean that negative emotions are always 'bad' or positive emotions always 'good' - there's no need to apply moral labels to what you feel. And in this body-mind-system  of mine I find stress at times motivating and sometimes that bliss can hide complacency. Self-improvement nor positive self-presentation don't always need to be your immediate goal. There's (some?) power to be found in representing your experience realistically to yourself, others & social media, despite pressure to streamline it into a pretty, marketable product digestible for public consumption.