I Got Lost on TikTok

When my important habits tremble, anxiety feasts of me like a whale on plankton. At least it used to anyway. I have a larger, more conceptual habit outside of the physical-based habits that saves me from losing any of them. I simply replace one thing with another. This past week, specifically, I asked myself, “Well, if you aren’t going to post a blog post today, what are you going to do?”

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So I painted, went for a bike ride, drew in my journal, called and texted friends who I haven’t talked to in a while. At one point my cat, Peaches, screamed at me until I realized she wanted me to join her outside. So I put on a jacket and shoes, as she watched intensely, and followed her into the woods behind our house. She led me to a fallen tree, which she used as a scratching post. She rubbed her soft, little body against my legs until I got the clue that she wanted me to sit. So I sat on a fallen tree, with my cat purring loudly on my lap, in sight of all my neighbors’ backyards, and I listened. I felt a presence near me, as if a human was leaning over my left shoulder. Peaches kept making eye contact with the presence, so I knew I was safe. In fact it seemed more likely than anything else that this presence had specifically asked Peaches to bring me outside. Which all really reminded me of a poem I had written the day before:

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i heard a chainsaw in the distance

and the trees all waved goodbye.

the wind swept through in that instance

because the trees all knew it was time.

when i wrote those words they spoke again

from beyond the rows of colorful canoes,

and if i was brave enough to jump in and swim

the lake would wash away what i’m afraid to lose.

every year it gets a little easier

and every year i ask the trees more,

because being alone is at least for her

and i already know what my friends have in store.

i sit on a gravestone of an ancient god,

in front of a trunk bent and half missing.

since i was a child, of me the trees are fond,

but all i really do is just sit and listen.

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At the time I wrote this poem, I was also making a TikTok.

Here’s the link: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3Xqq2y/

Today I painted an old longboard that I had ripped the grip off a couple of months ago. I made a TikTok for the event.

Here’s the link: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3Xby16/

I also have ongoing projects as a way of practicing patience in order to experience quality content created over time. One example is my video that has one second from each day of 2021 so far. Yes, it is currently fifteen seconds long. I’ll probably reveal it month by month just to get some satisfaction of the longest project I’ve ever set my mind to. That’s right, I never work on anything that requires multiple years of my life 😎

I never really get lost on TikTok, not for entire days at a time anyway. I mostly watch TikTok like it’s my personal Pinterest app. You see, when I was a younger internet user, Tumblr was my main source of inspiration. However Tumblr had the ability to be a depiction of someone’s aesthetic without requiring original content. When I first started using TikTok, and finally made my way to the side full of creatives, I felt like I was experiencing that same inspiring euphoria of 2014 Tumblr, but this time everything was original content. That meant that if I wanted to be a part of it, I couldn’t just share other people’s posts anymore, I had to share things that are my own. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent the last fourteen years of my life posting to the internet. I think it’s mostly the transition of how fast TikTok really is, both watching and creating. You absolutely have to let go of your strict standards for yourself, and it’s easier to because you’re only committing to, at most, one minute of yourself.

So I’m trying to post once a day. I’ve noticed a correlation, throughout my entire life, between my overall mood and the amount of content I create as well as share. In the past I could maybe manage a YouTube video once a month. Being able to put out one original piece a day really changes my entire mindset on life. That’s why I didn’t beat myself up for not posting to this blog for four days, either. I knew that at least I was creating something. I allowed myself to choose whichever medium best suited me, which made me create the most authentic art on my mind, as well as not burn out my passion for the things I thought I had to do every day.

I hope you keep this in mind about yourself, too. Please let yourself express yourself however the expression manifests. No rules.

I only just started practicing this mindset, though. It’s a very 2020 concept to me, but a year just happens to be long enough for a habit to feel like the natural way of doing something. For example, I still feel unnatural in my personal experience expressing my erotic artistic perspective. EDIT: When this was originally posted, I included links to the art I’m about to talk about. After about an hour or two, the shame of sharing these pieces encouraged me to delete the links. I would love to share them one day, but I’m working on the courage. In any case, I began the process by painting naked women. Following this, I was drawn to drawing phallic images with a ballpoint pen. If you can get past the trauma soaked fantasy our modern world has created, you can find some beautiful things in phallic images. It was only last week that I began drawing scenes including multiple people, a way of expressing images that have intrusively come to mind before. And in case you’re wondering, how can she transition from talking about TikTok to talking about sex? I’m twenty-one years old, this is basically all my life consists of. It’s an awkward stage, I’m aware.

I’ve found through this exploration that sex cannot be fully experienced as a spiritual act if it’s only experienced as the physical event itself. When expressed through art, in any medium, it becomes something else. You see where you fit into the equation more than you do when your decisions may be biased, whether because of love or attraction. What would be a better way to really know how we feel about sex than to turn our sexual experiences into something else? And when we see it in that lens, we can decide whether or not we like what we see. But when we are there, in the moment, we can only see a role we are playing with another human. A deeply intimate role, no matter what the context is.

In any case, no matter what aspect of life you need more help expressing, I am here to help. I love doing a reading in every single one of my blog posts because I love letting people take away something truly personal and motivating at the end. Especially since you went through the trouble of reading my thoughts and maybe even processing them for later use.

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TikToks I Really Like… Reading for the Signs

Look, one other aspect of reintegrating a habit back into my life after a momentary lapse in motivation is to take it as breezy as I can. And yes, that means I’m not whipping out the tarot cards just yet. Reading cards makes me so tired sometimes… I forgot to prevent tarot reading burnout last week. So that’s why I’m just doing the signs as my favorite TikToks.

Readings apply to Sun, Moon, Rising, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

ARIES ♈︎

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3V7K1k/

TAURUS ♉︎

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3Vxeuo/

GEMINI ♊︎

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3VyvTL/

CANCER ♋︎

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3VLW6L/

LEO ♌︎

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJ3VPkL5/

VIRGO ♍︎