if it takes less than two minutes, do it now
always carry a water bottle!! you’ll (obviously) drink more water but you’ll also save money on buying drinks when you’re out on hot days
if you notice something you like about someone, tell them. genuine compliments are way too few and far between.
when you meet someone, repeat their name back to them. it’ll help you remember it (bc i am the worst at zoning out and immediately forgetting someone’s name)
give yourself a time limit to get work done. you’ll do more up against a 30 minute timer than if you have all day to get something done
also: be specific with your goals. if you want it done by winter, say you’ll do it one november 15. it’s easy to let time slip by.
no one’s forcing your friends to hang out with you. they want to be around you. don’t try to convince yourself otherwise.
never under estimate the power of a hot meal if you’re feeling unmotivated. take a break and make a grilled cheese dude
always keep $20 in your car for emergences
have a binder/folder to keep all your financial/important documents together. even if you don’t organize them beyond that it’ll make them so much easier to find when you need them
don’t sleep w makeup on!! keep a travel size thing of makeup wipes by your bed for nights that you’re too exhausted to wash your face for real
if you’re studying/working and can’t focus, go outside and take a walk around the building. stare at the sky for a minute. it helps.
networking: when you meet someone, put some notes in with their contact. remembering their kids’ names will make you stand out
fold your clothes while they’re still warm + you won’t have to iron later
get that chair out of your room. we all know your dirty clothes are sitting in it more than you are.
instead, stick some hooks on your closet door for those sorta-clean, sorta-dirty clothes that you wanna wear again
keep a running list on your phone of songs you hear that you like, books you want to read, etc
write down all your friends birthdays!!
if you can’t sleep, try to imagine something in great detail. design your dream house. plan your wedding. whatever makes you happy + relaxed
get dressed as soon as you get up, even if you aren’t going anywhere. it’s hard to feel productive in sweat pants.
if you don’t ask, the answer is always no
thrift stores are super trendy lately, but they really are great for finding high-quality clothing for cheap.
don’t read the comments section. especially if it’s something you actually care about.
fresh veggies go bad fast, so if you can’t get to the store often have a couple frozen bags of your favs on hand!!
also, pasta is crazy cheap and easy to make into a meal. add some olive oil and those frozen veggies and bam, grown up meal in no time.
be intentional with your friendships. if you want to see someone again, set a date instead of the old “let’s get coffee sometime!” that never actually happens
libraries exist!! and theyre fantastic!!!
if you’re buying anything, always google “_______ coupons” while you’re in line. you can usually find one, esp at chains!!
if it’s not something you need, put it back and sleep on it. if you want it bad enough to go back and get it a day or two later, it’s (probably) worth the money.
also, think if you’ll enjoy it for the same amount of time if took to earn that money. doesn’t work with everything (food, experiences), but for things like clothes/technology/home goods, it can help you save some $$$
you don’t have to do something if it makes you unhappy. sure, there are times that you have to suck it up and power through, but 99% of the time you have to option to say no and get outta there.
be kind. seriously you hear it a lot but it is so important.
naru1hana ‘s art trade came today!!! I am very excited to open it!
And I became 18 years old , :D nothing changed but a number , I hope this year and the next years go well insha'allah , :)
Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love
also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!
Literature + Writing
Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag
The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*
Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*
A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi
How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik
Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone
Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman
Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom
The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*
The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes
Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*
Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*
Why I Write - George Orwell*
Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*
Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)
Looking at War - Susan Sontag*
Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz
Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker
The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews
In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*
On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*
On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*
Kalighat Paintings - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri
Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past - Maël Renouard
Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel
Cities
Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash
Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*
Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur
The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur
From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective - Andrew Harris
The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay
The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel
Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan
A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp
The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne
The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*
The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour
Philosophy
The trolley problem problem - James Wilson
A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram
Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*
Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer
The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*
The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape
If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood
Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart
The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*
The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*
History
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan
The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*
From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*
Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*
All By Myself - Martha Bailey*
The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder
The sea/ocean
Rim of Life - Manu Pillai
Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery
‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*
The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*
Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti
Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*
Assorted ones on India
A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *
Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash
Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee
Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu
The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*
Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta
Our worldview is Delhi based*
Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)
‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*
Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh
When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger
Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*
Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha
MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*
Music
Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo
Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder
The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*
Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*
How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield
Concert for Bangladesh
From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen
Gender
Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane
The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin
Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*
Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe
Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*
Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack
Food
How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)
Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee
Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu
Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*
From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*
The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*
How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*
Pav from the Nau
A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes
Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)
Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)
Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*
Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua
The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*
Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*
Travel
The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism
Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan
On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose
On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*
More random assorted ones
The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*
In El Salvador - Joan Didion
Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee
Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell
Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*
What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*
The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith
Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*
Credibility and Mystery - John Berger
happy reading :)
One of the prettiest moments in winter is when the sun starts to come out again in like february/march but it’s still cold but that doesn’t matter because everything feels light and fresh and you walk outside without freezing because the sunshine is warming your face and everything is starting to wake up
♡
Happy Birthday Sasuke Uchiha♥ [7|23|15] (½)
One of the deepest human needs is the need to be seen. To be seen in our pain and in our struggle and to be seen in our relief and in our joy. And usually we reserve these moments for those closest to us because we know they will try their best to hold space for us.
So imagine when The Creator and Sustainer of the heavens and the earth, tells us He sees us, He witnesses all of us, with all of our complexity and all of our emotions, how validating and comforting this is.
You are not alone in your pain and struggle and you are witnessed in your relief and joy. You are held under the sight of A Most Caring Creator, He knows the innermost yearnings of your heart. He knows when no one else knows and understands when others can't.
Via Instagram || @amiehoor
😂😂😂😂😂 LOL
“I’m not Phantom Thief Yamaneko. I’m Phantom Thief Detective Yamaneko. Nya~!”
うちはサスケxサクラxサラダ
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Meet our family…
[Sorry this is kind of messy… I had to work all day and I rushed to finish it tonight. Ah oh well, please enjoy!]
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