I Forgive Myself

Forbidden whack-a-mole

(via)

Do I exist

Like I know I am here

I feel my body, I see everything around me

I smell smells

I hear things

I feel feels, I love and I am loved

But sometimes it doesn’t feel real

It’s hard to call it dissonance

But I feel untethered from time to time

Like most times I am not here

But the real me fights through the haze and I am me

In that moment

But that makes all the other moment not feel real

Okay it doesn’t sound coherent

Maybe it’s not

Maybe that’s the whole point

Do you ever ask the question why you?

Or maybe even “why not you?”

I think it’s futile to question a situation like that

Because it’s just what it is

It’s either you or it’s not

The real question is how to make peace with that tea

Spinoffs: Space Station Innovations in Your Cart (and Heart!)

You might think NASA technology is just spaceships and telescopes, but did you know the camera in your cell phone is, too? It’s one of many NASA innovations now found everywhere on Earth.

The International Space Station has had crew living on it for 25 years straight. In that time, the space station has enabled a tremendous amount of research, helping NASA and scientists better understand long-term living in space – but it’s not just knowledge coming back down to Earth! Technologies developed for the space station and experiments conducted aboard the orbiting lab also benefit people on the planet below. Here are a few of these inventions, or spinoffs, you can find in your everyday life.

A Sunscreen That Blocks Radiation in Space – and on Your Face

After surviving for 18 months outside the International Space Station, an extremely hardy organism is now improving sunscreens and face cream products from a cosmetics company, which licensed use of the organism from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Build Muscle With or Without Gravity

Muscles atrophy quickly in space, so when astronauts began long stays on the International Space Station, they needed some specialized exercise equipment. A resistance mechanism made of a coiled metal spring formed the basis of the first way for astronauts to “lift weights” in space. Soon after, that same design became the heart of compact home gym equipment.

Fresh Greens Every Day of the Year

The need to grow fresh food in space pushed NASA to develop indoor agriculture techniques. Thanks to the agency’s research, private companies are building on NASA’s vertical farm structure, plant-growth “recipes,” and environmental-control data to create indoor farms, resulting in higher crop yields and better-quality produce while conserving water and energy and eliminating the need for pesticides.

Cultivating Hearts and Knees in Space

Gravity is a significant obstacle to bioprinting cells and growing human tissue on Earth because heavier components settle to the bottoms of petri dishes. In the absence of gravity, each cell layer stays in place, which is how it’s possible to grow heart and knee tissue on the space station. The same principle also allows mixing of complex pharmaceuticals on orbit.

Storing Oodles of Energy

NASA chose nickel-hydrogen batteries to power the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station because the technology is safe, reliable in extreme temperatures, and long-lived. NASA’s improvements brought down the cost of the technology, which is now used by large-scale utilities and renewable power plants that need to store energy generated by intermittent sources.

You can read about many more products sourced from the ISS on spinoff.nasa.gov.

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In the quiet,

in the spaces that are far apart,

in the days before we meet again.

I feel a sense of simple acceptance and then you drift in again, i get excited and disappointed,

which is why I yearn to be in the quiet

Being there for someone who is struggling is exhausting, the ups and downs and constant cycle of presence and absence can be overwhelming

So here’s a poem

My heart beats rhythmically when the skies of your mind are clear, I can see your laughter light up your eyes with a slight twinkle of mischief in them, I recognize you I think to myself you are right here

But without warning the skies darken, it creeps up on you like spring comes after winter, it’s been brewing underneath, under that thick hearty smile, under the jokes and the occasional glances

As I watch you sink, struggling to breathe, I reach out my hand but it misses yours and I know then that all I can do is wait in your line of sight so you see that I am the light at the end of your tunnel but my heart beats like a horse racing for it’s life as I am screaming at the top of my lungs “breatheeeeee”

Into the well

On the floor of my room, curled up as far as my hips will allow, wondering if in a years time I would be in a different place were everything worked out, were everything came together so beautifully, so when I look back in my minds eye and I see my self on the floor of my room, trying to hold it all together, I might in that moment think of this moment as resilience

Musings part 209

Is loving a part of hurting or is hurting a part of loving

We meet someone who makes us smile and happy and excited but they also make us sad, hurt and upset

It’s like a dance between two souls, is it a forever dance? Where we find each other and do the dance in every single life time?

Or is this life time sadly not the forever after one but the dance one

I’ll never know, all I know is, in every moment that I am not with you, I long to be.