A happy August to you!
Those of us who aren’t summer people are hanging by a thread, elevating prayers in hopes that we can survive the next two months and arrive to a cooler October. The countdown is real.
They do this thing in my neighborhood called Summer Stroll, and it’s always cool to walk through and hear live music and watch the giant block party unfold.
I will soon start a deeper seasonal cleaning to prep for autumn. Took some days from work to just focus on running errands and to get the apartment in shape and get it to where I want it to be.
I finished my Pvolve challenge! Proud of that. I continue to focus on my Ladder/Pyro split. I can’t remember a summer in recent time where I have sweat as much as I have this year. It has been brutal.
I am sort of over the Hume pod. I have gone down rabbit holes with this and most people on Reddit have had a bad experience— mostly women. It seems Hume was created with men in mind (like most things in this world). Women get some weird readings off this thing. Sigh. Nothing new there. According to my Hume pod, I am quite literally dying.
Here are some of the things that caught my attention this week, while I sweat profusely and ran to shower for the 100th time:
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” Ray Bradbury
“Feeling healthy and beautiful, fitting in your clothes and slightly vain (okay, mega vain) is something that can only be lived, never ever explained and understood.” Garance Doré
“We organise our lives around stress.” Nadia from Nouri Paris
“The women I admire most have one thing in common: they’re completely themselves.” Jeanette Aranda
“In the interview, we talked about writing as a survival tool—the page becoming the first place I ever felt witnessed, back when there was no steady adult to bring the grief to, no one to say I see you, I believe you, this really happened.” Jessy Easton
“The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken.’” C.S. Lewis
“Identity follows the habit.” Rainier Wylde
“Transmutation.
Originally, it described changing one substance into another. Alchemists sought to turn lead into gold.
Life keeps happening and hands us the same raw materials: joy, loss, fear, love, disappointment, hope.
We don’t choose what arrives.
We choose what it becomes.” Tracy Anderson
This interview made me laugh, but it also inspired me. Mike Tyson is not someone to play with. His childhood was pretty tragic (they discuss how absurd poverty is and how one can always find humor in it). Two things struck me— Theo (everyone’s favorite cousin) asked Tyson who he would have been had he had a normal childhood and been given a child’s basic needs. Tyson responded, “No, I don’t want that. I would be a bitch.”
Then, there was his mentor, the man who took a kid with an extensive criminal record and believed in him. Tyson would tell him, “I am a crook and a thief,” and his mentor would reply, “You are the greatest fighter in the world. Only say beautiful things about yourself because your mind and body don’t know when you are playing.” The power of words, and more than that, a person in your corner who believes in you— it’s priceless. It transforms you from a juvenile delinquent to quite literally one of the greatest fighters of all time. (Ali will always be GOAT to me, but Tyson comes pretty damn close). Check it out for yourself. There is sadness, grief and also joy. The best kind of conversation. Props to Theo for such a warm and hilarious interview.
This week’s song (stuck in my head from Summer Stroll Fridays):
GABRIELA YARELIZ 