Updated: Dec. 9, 2020
Welcome to my little home (er…bird’s nest) on Medium!
Bio
Hello. I’m Lark Morrigan. Many of you know me from my poetry and personal essays. A lot more of you know me from Yang Gang. And a few of you know me from way back in my Thought Catalog days when I was just starting out writing on the Internet. Allow me to re-introduce myself:
I work in math education by day (remotely because of the pandemic), so that means I do not write full-time. As a writer, I’m currently in the stage where I’m just trying to put myself out there, overcome debilitating resistance, prove to myself that I can write, and become a better poet and writer than I was when I started out — nothing more but certainly nothing less. Sometimes you’ll find a few mental health and personal growth articles because they can be practical in navigating struggles like resistance, self-doubt, and fear of not living up to your potential, but my heart lies within more poetic, artistic writing, so you’ll see more of that here. …
I don’t know how exactly I came across Romanian philosopher and writer E.M. Cioran, but I somehow ended up on Amazon looking for something philosophical to read by someone who wasn’t widely discussed.
It seems like everyone in the self-help world had at least one go-to philosopher to draw life lessons from, but I didn’t have one (and didn’t care to have the same favorite ones as other people did).
While I do find great insights from those who are more popular, I haven’t really resonated with one particular philosopher on a deeper existential level.
But upon reading a brief summary of who Cioran was and what he thought about life, I knew that his writings were what I needed to read. …
Two things are painfully true about me and I have been trying and failing to resolve them. One, I am excessively indecisive and this causes me to waste a lot of time, both in the macro and micro decisions of my life. Two, I am terrible at thinking on my feet and am prone to freezing up whenever anything unexpected occurs, which also explains why I am terrible at answering questions that I cannot prepare for and confrontations in general.
They are the root causes of perpetual mental resistance and though it has affected me in every area of my life, the one that bothers me the most is how it has limited me creatively — the area that I deeply want to excel in but haven’t reached a caliber that’s to my liking. …
Song Lyrics
Most of the time, I wonder
if I can reach beyond what I see,
or am I only a wilted rose
in a garden with no more red to bleed?
Whenever I look into the mirror
I fail to see what I want to see,
with every flaw and fault exposed,
but I just want to be beautiful for me.
I look into the mirror of lies,
only to be shown the truth,
yet I can’t help but over-romanticize,
even when they disapprove.
I look into my fearful eyes
and I witness all that fell through,
yet I can’t help but see bluer skies
in a beautiful place I never knew. …
You might feel misguided and pushed towards several different directions that keep building tension within you.
Whenever you’re daydreaming, you wish you could spend an extended period of time alone, so much more than what you get in your daily life. You love the idea of sitting in a cabin surrounded by nature, unplugged from the rest of the world, and completely alone in your inner world, where you can simply be.
But you’re busy. You have obligations and you don’t have the luxury to stop and ponder your next steps and overall trajectory, at least not for as long as you believe would be ideal. You want to optimize everything, but things that need to get done immediately push the process of thoughtful optimization and self-reflection by the wayside. …
