a study on grief: cooper and colbert

 As I spend the next five days preparing and executing my move, I will try and take it as a time of research. So often I feel like if I am not actively creating something, or working towards a final product, I am failing. This leaves me feeling like a failure quite often because I am the first to stop myself before I even start. I've been looking through my pictures but lacking inspiration on what to do with them. But you know why that might be? I haven't been able to pick up my film camera in almost four months. Maybe I am struggling to write cohesively because I'm not taking the time to read. Maybe I'm hitting a musical plateau because I haven't set aside time to listen, really listen, to music I love. And furthermore, maybe I'm spinning circles in my head about what should be there because I haven't taken the time to really look at what already is.

One of my greatest coping mechanisms (and subsequent downfalls) is distraction. It's much easier to scroll all day at countless images than to turn that gaze towards myself. Vulnerability is something I celebrate while constantly dodging it. But I am working on a cultural reset, if you will, trying to pull my own story out from the depths of that which is much easier to digest. To exist in the world, afraid but trying anyway, equipped with everything that only I can bring. 

With this blog being the virtual house of my psyche, I want to put some of that research here. Yesterday's was a study on grief. My therapist recommended the video below two weeks ago. I happened to stumble upon it yesterday while diving down a "make-you-feel-too-many-feelings" rabbit hole, after forgetting she told me about it at all. It is a conversation between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert on the subject of grief, in all its parts. Parts you can conquer and parts that stick with you forever; parts that are made up of both. I've watched it multiple times already, starting and stopping and writing things down. Sometimes when we can't get the words out, or we can't keep a grasp on our thoughts the way we want to, we just need to hear it from someone else. Take time for the things you need. Sending love to all.