Hey y’all,

First off this newsletter is LATEEEEE that’s on me I didn’t really know what to write about because this newsletter kind of hinges upon me having revelations and sometimes I don’t have revelations, or I forget about them before I can write them down ––

Which leads me to a new pivot, if you want to stick around for it: each week I’ll be show-and-telling pottery from a certain place at a certain point in time. I want to learn more about pottery in the past around the world (think Ancient Greek, Mayan, Navajo), so learning and writing brief explanations of it will help me do that. And hopefully be interesting for you!

If I have personal thoughts to write about I’ll write those too

I’ll do one more thought today and then tomorrow I’ll hit the inbox with the first global-pottery letter. Okay.

Lately I have been wondering what is the right amount of time to be around others versus to be alone.

As we all know, it can be hard to be around others, because they want to do different things than you. Being alone can also be lonely, but it’s usually more convenient and easy.

I would argue that the fact that it’s easy and convenient means it should be minimized, because that means it doesn’t make you grow.

I thank goodness for my pottery studio every day because it allows me to get better at pottery while being around other people.

I also think about the happiest days in my life, and a common theme among them is that I was around people pretty much the whole day.

Moments when I was the most down, I was alone. At the same time, it’s not super realistic to be around people all the time, you have to recharge––but I think that just like with drug tolerance, you can build up tolerance for being around people. (Which is maybe a better thing to do than building up drug tolerance)

Is it just me, or did all of our social batteries decrease after covid? Like not only did we get less social, but our capacity to be social went down. Our social bravery decreased. We approach people less, strike up conversation less, generally assume other people want to be left alone.

This leads to 1. Pretending people don’t exist: when you’re in the same physical space as someone and you don’t acknowledge them at all because you’re afraid they won’t react positively

This might sound harsh but to me this is like a form of lying, knowing someone is there but acting like they’re not

Idk I just think you should acknowledge people! Give them a dopamine boost!

And 2. False socialization: when you get the feeling of socializing from social media, Youtube, Tik Tok, but it didn’t actually happen. Filling our social quotas this way is easy, but it’s not good for us because it’s not real company. It’s like junk food. Rather than calling someone up, making plans, having a real conversation, you pull up Youtube and instantly watch someone talking to you, and maybe even feel seen… but that kind of false interaction doesn’t nourish your soul in any way.

I don’t like doing things halfway and that’s why I think if you’re in a space, be in that space: acknowledge the people you see, don’t look away; and don’t go for quick + false social fulfillment unless you really need to. If you’re working, just focus on the work; if you’re talking to someone, just talk to that person and don’t try to do work or check your phone at the same time. We can’t actually multitask, people.

I’m telling this to myself because I want to be better at being in community. I like going fast so that makes me try to go alone, and I don’t think going alone works. You can’t build anything that lasts alone.

I’m not a conspiracy theory person but it kind of feels like there’s a big conspiracy going on right now between government and big tech or something to separate all of us so that we can’t act collectively, and if we can’t act collectively, we can’t make any real changes. Y’all feel that?

Anyway, thanks for reading this very uplifting and positive message, talk to you soon

Lurv,

Liliana

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