It could be the coffee.

Laurel Nakadate, “Stay the Same, Never Change”

While caffeine has its uses, sometimes I can’t help but feel that the chemicals running through my system are just fuel for excuses to do stupid things faster; that all this means is that it will take a lot less time before I screw this up–but that’s just me being cynical about things, and reading into actions that have no underlying meanings.

I’d like to excise the pretentiousness from my system and stop approaching everything as a closed text, but I can’t even be completely honest with myself anymore; as if speaking in code is the only way I’ll convince myself that it’s fine to go about this with one foot out the door. See what I did there? And it never stops. I’d like it to, because I’m sick of all this bullshit with carrying on and pretending it’s okay if things go nowhere.

I have my fair share of illusions: that I’m doing okay, that I’m focusing on my job, on my self, on my future; when in reality I too would like for something to supersede these things.

Despite the obscene amounts of coffee I guzzle each day, I still can’t seem to wake. the fuck. up.

Useful Feelings to Remember

• Work is one. No matter what it is, even if you don’t particularly enjoy it, just be awesome at it. Remember what it’s like to reap praises for things that are of no particular consequence and what it’s like to take the blame for shortcomings and mistakes with tasks that you can’t fully comprehend (I mean, you get the method, you just can’t give two shits about it).
• Being alone with someone you shouldn’t be alone with. Because it’s wrong. Because it’s beyond unhealthy. It’s the KFC Double-down, no bread, just bacon, of non-relationships and it takes the cake for all the cynicism and disillusion you’ve managed to rack up in the past months of non-dating. He puts his arm around you and you feel your whole body recoil involuntarily. You haven’t opened your heart to anyone since the last time, and it’s been a while, so you’ve probably forgotten what it looks like; what it looks like to fold into someone and just trust them. Because you’ve gone temporarily blind or you just know that it’s okay to wade in. The water’s fine. “I’m ready whenever you are.” But in this case you’ll probably never be ready.
  But you go with it anyway because it’s there. (Possibly the worst reason for doing something: “because it’s there”) It’s not a case of cold feet, you just don’t want the same things, and he probably senses this from you; which is why for every question you throw his way, you’re met with a flurry of uneasy shifting and non-answers.
• Remember what it was like to have a clean room and a back that didn’t hurt. Remember that for every step you take to care for yourself and your health. That it’s not just about your work or your connections. “Drink some of this, it will put color in your cheeks.”

Gulliver’s Travels

From London to Indonesia, JAMES GULLIVER HANCOCK sketches the urban world. His next stop—chronicling the world’s architecture one building at a time. Now here’s a guy living up to his middle name.

Recently settled in Brooklyn, James Gulliver Hancock has embarked on a mission to draw every building in New York. “I’ve only been here for a few months, so I’ve really just begun,” he says. James isn’t even sure where he’s going next. “This idea of collecting drawings that relate to a particular city has become a bit of an obsession,” he relates. “It’s like an obsessive visual journal.” Like children’s book illustrator Ed Emberley, whose works exhibit a sense of playfulness, James fills every available space with doodles of words, bicycles, and spray cans, and splashes liberal amounts of analogous and less saturated colors.

Although he is “typically engaged with an urban environment,” James still draws inspiration from nature, as seen in the giant tree he created for the album cover of his girlfriend, Lenka. “I’m a bit guilty of being a boy and wanting to draw engines and mechanical things, but I completely recognize that nature is completely awe-inspiring,” he says.

And after a decade of movement, it pays to stop and reflect. “I’ve tried to invent ideas of what ‘home’ can be, so I can experience that effortless state when you are really home.” Take it from the artist who planted roots wherever he landed. The mantra is: “make the world your playground” so that everywhere you go, it always feels like home.

 jamesgulliverhancock.com

I haven’t posted a life update in over a month

And I thought, “Wow, for a compulsive oversharer, that is so uncharacteristic of me.” I am so used to vomiting my whole life story on people, even people I just met, like “Whoops, looks like I got some of that on your shirt. Let me lean in and wipe it off because I have ZERO respect for personal space”.

Recently, I found that this whole oversharing-personal space invader thing isn’t entirely true. I do have my walls up, it just depends on the kind of person you are. Which I guess is normal, thus bringing us to the conclusion that I am normal. Go ahead and cringe, but lately I’ve had to entertain assertions that I am of a not-so-normal class of person. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but maybe if I spend more time with the people who like to think of themselves as “Normal” (with a capital N, like Theology with a capital T), I will eventually figure it out.