On the grit you need to be an artist

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A post shared by Nick Mindjacket (@mindjacket) on May 6, 2017 at 6:40pm PDT

"You may not know this, but in terms of artistic endeavors or craftsmanship, people don't really think all that highly of shirt-makers. Not everybody, but when you're out there selling shit, people kinda talk down to you like "oh shirts, how cute" and sort of talk about how screen printing is this thing they could do some afternoon if they felt like bothering.

"And it's like, sure; screenprinting isn't heart surgery, and there are a million easier ways to get a shirt made these days than opening up shop; so when people ask me about getting into making shirts it's like, Do you really want to make shirts? Do you believe in your clever idea enough to see it through to fruition, to tear up half your place and buy a bunch of nasty chemicals and expensive equipment, to research technique and learn through practice, trial and error; is your shirt design good enough to work all night printing them out, in every size and shape and color, just in case! And after ALL of that, can you handle folding up your heart and soul and laying it bare on a sheet-covered table, and stand there and smile while people saunter by, sometimes for hours with only a scattering of pauses, points, and maybe a polite chuckle? CAN you swallow back all of your pride and fury in place of a resolve; that against all odds, your own thoughts and ideas, the ones you loved so much as to create them from nothing, will resonate with another person, enough they want to pay you for the privilege of wearing it on their body?

"Motherfucker do you really want to make t-shirts??"

~Nick Min D'Jacquette

Then you hold life like a face between your palms

Then you hold life like a
face between your palms, a
plain face, no charming
smile, no violet eyes, and
you say, yes, I will take
you I will love you,
again.

Ellen Bass 

"When you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation..." by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

"The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you." ~Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Everybody needs to be understood, by Sherwin Nuland

"When you recognize that pain — and response to pain — is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people’s behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word?

"Everybody needs to be understood.

"And out of that comes every form of love.

"If someone truly feels that you understand them, an awful lot of neurotic behavior just disappears — disappears on your part, disappears on their part. So if you’re talking about what motivates this world to continue existing as a community, you’ve got to talk about love… And my argument is it comes out of your biology because on some level we understand all of this. We put it into religious forms. It’s almost like an excuse to deny our biology. We put it into pithy, sententious aphorisms, but it’s really coming out of our deepest physiological nature."

~Sherwin Nuland

The old truth made you run, by Kaveri

The old truth made you run a 1,000 miles inside an arid desert,
desperate for an oasis.
Sit & close your eyes.
Inhale the breeze of kindness,
Exhale the toxic judgements
dehydrating you like a prune.
Feel the pain of old patterns
trapped in tense muscles.
Its ok to cry.
to taste the salt of possibility.
Just Be. Just Breathe.
Let waves break against the silence.
returning you to a new and deeper truth.

~ Kaveri