hey welcome back to the 20th edition of cool stuff i found! to catch you up, since the last time i posted my newsletter i publicly, i’ve actually written 14 new essays. you can view them in my newsletter’s archive. i’ll likely list them all out in a separate post soon enough. as i stated in a recent post, im heading back into publishing CSIF because a 1) emailing people 4 times a week feels rather belligerent (that’s a big word for elmo), 2) i found a happy medium where i’m going to start “silent publishing” (publishing articles without sending notifications or emails), and then include my recent works in this essays. this means i’ll have to be making a sliiiight change to the structure of this newsletter, but have no fear! the rest is mainly the same. let’s get to it then, shall we?
if you’re new here:
“Cool Stuff I Found” (formerly “Cool Shit I Found”) is a series where I create a highlight reel of cool stuff I’ve come across in the past week or just in general. I hope that this newsletter will inspire meaningful conversations and connections. As always, thanks for joining me on this journey of exploration and self-discovery.
This newsletter is broken up into the following:
I. My Work (NEW!)
II. Articles + Essays I’ve read
III. Visual Art + Media
IV. Music I’ve been listening to
I. My Work
featured essay:
this essay was written in a frenzy, and is a brief note on anxiety spirals. i hope you find it helpful, dear reader!
II. Articles + Essays I’ve read
push and pull by kasra
recently i got a chance to hop on a call with kasra, and he’s a really cool dude. so i was super excited to read his new essay after learning about his foray into therapy/psychology. this essay is of the fruits of the exploration. this passage caught my attention because its such a beautiful way of dealing with people. a lot of the times we hear our friends talk down on themselves, even as a joke, and we try to validate them by telling them they’re not what their self doubt suggests. but how often to we pull our friends in? as in, rather than pushing them to believe something other than they believe, how often do use conversations as a means of helping our friends investigate why they feel some type of way? i don’t, hence why this essay caught me off guard.
another year by ava
ava has a bunch of little mini notes that are sort of connected but are also stand alone. this note in particular made me pause because it made think of how i feel “loved.” for ava, it’s predictability and process-orientation. i don’t know who they are, but i take it that something in their early or recent life made them feel unsafe and the opposite of that is what they crave to feel loved. for me, love feels like validation and support of my dreams. i think it comes from a place where at different points in life i was told by someone i trusted that i wasn’t enough or wasn’t gonna be enough.
and kinda like that monologue by Carmy from the Bear, I went into a “fuck you” mode. i embraced the chip on my shoulder, put my head down, and try to out work that feeling. feeling loved for me is to feel that i don’t have to “out work” anything and that i can just be.
III. Visual Art + Media
old school japanese posters are mad beautiful. i believe this one is from a computer magazine (according to the tweet i stole this from lol)
REAL QUICK CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE:
every now and then i come across a landing page that just *captures* me. this website is so well design — not just from a visual perspective but also the audio *chefs kiss*
IV. Music I’ve been listening to
AP Dhillon, International Canadian/Punjabi superstar, recently came out with a wonderful documentary documenting his journey as an artist. as part of the documentary, he put out these fire songs.
A brief note: i wasn’t able to carve out time to write my usual series this week so i’ll have to delegate that to the weekend. but as you may notice, that featured essay i included was silently published. i intend to get more out the way.
Also, it’s important for me to include this: Free Palestine 🇵🇸
Thanks for reading this edition. Share this with your friends, your grandma, or your neighbor. And if you made it to the end of this essay and you didn’t just scroll, dm me a >:( on either twitter or instagram. or leave a comment! As always,
Sincerely,
Haroon
P.S. Check out my previous newsletter if you’re curious: Cool Stuff I Found #19