Instead of Doomscrolling · 2026-08-17 · 14 MIN READ

What to Pay Attention to This Week Instead of Doomscrolling - Dispatch #1

notes on irl><url connection

Mapu

Read original ↗

notes on irl><url connection

Mapu

Aug 17, 2026

169

Welcome to the first installment of

Dispatches

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately about

what it means for me to create

—especially living in a disabled body—and

what it is I want to build toward the future.

This space began with my media roundups, but eventually, those felt too constrictive. I’ve experimented a lot with formats and what I share with you (

which I’ll likely continue to do because this is always a WIP and so am I

), but I realized I started losing sight of the core of what I seek to accomplish:

finding connection through our attention—merging both the digital and the physical.

Beyond media consumption, I believe that showing you the whole spectrum of what I attend to, and subsequently, connect to throughout my daily life felt a lot more meaningful than just a media list.

In this segment you’ll find my documentation of anything and everything from books, art, websites, essays, lectures, podcasts, and videos, to what I buy, places I visit, anecdotes, quotes, memes, shows, films, games, and whatever I find worthy of sharing with you.

IOD is an imprint of my life through everything I interact with, so I thought this would be the best way to illustrate this, both on good and not so good weeks.

This one is free, but going forward, Dispatches will be for paid subs.

That said, I find the subscription model as it is too thin for me. Right now it mostly means access to my writing, which is the smallest version of what I want to build—

I want it to be closer to access to a room rather than a ticket for a seat in an audience.

A space where you can access tools, community spaces to interact, share your work and interests with others, and of course, reclaim our attention together.

Beyond unlocking posts, your paid subscriptions are what make the hours of reading, research, writing, and work behind all of this possible—and now, the room I’m building around it.

If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, I invite you to come and build this with me <3

i included all of the resources from this dispatch on a Sublime collection so you can save and explore with more ease :)

explore the collection

10% of the earnings from Substack are going to earthquake relief efforts after the tragedy so many of my fellow Colombian brothers and sisters are currently going through. If you want to know where to donate yourself, I put together a list of verified organizations and foundations where you can do so from abroad<3

Where to Donate to Earthquake Relief for Colombia

Mapu

Aug 11

Yesterday, at 7:34 am local time, Colombia was struck by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter was in San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó—one of the most vulnerable and neglected areas of the country, where most of the region is only reachable by boat or plane.

Read full story

William-Adolphe Bouguereau,

L’Éveil du Cœur

(1892)

edited by me :)

spent way too much time making this gif oop but i wanted to start off with this painting because it is part of the composition of the back tattoo i’m currently getting! on friday i had the first session of the most special—and biggest—tattoo i’ve ever gotten with the incredibly talented

mantequi.lla

(she’s going on an EU tour so check her ig out if you’re interested in booking her). here’s a

PI rec

where i shared how it’s going so far:

the face is Psyche’s and there will be the angels (Eros/Cupid/Love) on either side

i’ll likely write an essay on this piece and what it means once it’s done, but here’s some context on my choice. Greek mythology has been so important to me throughout my life, and especially after doing a

deep dive into eros as a creative force

, the myth of Eros and Psyche has become one of the most meaningful ones to me. once we landed on this specific painting, i decided to revisit the story through a different lens than previous readings.

i’m still making my way through it, but this 1952 book by psychologist

Erich Neumann

explores Psyche’s journey as an archetypal and analytical account of the development of the self. as i was reading, i noticed so many of the themes i unraveled on my project on

Cultivating the Garden of the Self

(pls read it if u haven’t it’s so special to me i pinky promise you won’t regret it)

encapsulated in his commentary.

i’m really looking forward to finishing it to write all of my thoughts down, but in the meantime, here’s the PDF:

click the cover to go to the PDF or

save it to your Sublime library here

i’ve always been fascinated by everything that has to do with archetypes and symbolism as a way of sense-making in this insanity that we get to live through. funnily though, i didn’t quite know what this podcast episode of

The Nature Of

was about, but if you look around here you’ll realize

i am absolutely not normal about spirals

, so the title was enough to draw me in.

so many people believe tarot is this scary or cursed practice, while some others are just kind of skeptical of this

woo woo

stuff. however, that’s not how i see it, and

this ritual is now intrinsic to my way of being in the world

. what i particularly appreciated about this beautiful listen is that this aligns exactly with my vision of what tarot is supposed to be.

i included a little excerpt from

my Sublime library

(made with

podcast magic

) so that you get an idea of what i mean :)

Save to your Sublime library here

speaking of archetypes and eros, these have been a recurrent theme for me over the last couple of months, and as an avid playlist maker, i made one that represents these very concepts. i would describe it as the current soundtrack of my life.

i understand attention as fuel, and fire as eros

, so that’s how the title came to be.

a beautiful visual on desire and its triangulation <3

save to your Sublime library here

this playlist is definitely a language and genre blender, however, i do believe that it’s carefully curated based on the vibes each song gives according to me—plus, i’ve been on a quest to figure out why i’m so incessantly drawn to this fire (

i sound like a moth lol

). i’ve been doing so through

books, research papers, images, poetry, and of course, music

if you give it a listen, i hope you get to discover some new music to enjoy <3

unsurprisingly, i have a slight obsession with candles. i collect candle holders, have different kinds of candles scattered all over my room, and i’ve gone as far as to get one tattooed on my arm forever.

now that i’m living in Bogotá again, i made sure to stop by

my favorite multi-brand concept store

(

Paisaje

here on Substack) which curates pieces exclusively by Latin American brands. on my latest visit i got this cute little candle snuffer made with recycled glass and i have been loving it! it’s not available on their website but

here’s one by the same brand

in case you’d like to check it out :)

if you’re enjoying what you see so far, you can upgrade your subscription to get more like it (and much more hehe)

there’s such a growing sense of hopelessness as we witness what the future being currently created is going to look like, it can feel as if there’s no future to look forward to. this is something i carried for way too long and that still very much lingers. however, this very feeling is what prompted me to start this space. since i couldn’t change the world, at least i could change myself—and through sharing what this has looked like, i know it has made a lot of you change yourselves as well.

this leads me to this phenomenal book:

click the cover to go to the Becoming Press website if you want to buy a physical or digital copy or

save it to your Sublime library here

i’ve been slowly making my way through it, making sure i can explore and digest each sitting. starting with music, it begins to build up layers of wider and wider scopes of possibilities for the future through philosophy, theory, speculative design, and more.

here are a few of my highlights so far:

save to your Sublime library here

the triangle is the symbol i use whenever something is related to eros on my readings!

save to your Sublime library here

whenever i run into a concept or term i’m not too familiar with, i don’t like to stay with that blank—that’s why i try my best to do some research and get a grasp on them.

this always leads me into some interesting rabbit holes, such as the one i started below:

click the image to go to the Wikipedia page or

save to your Sublime library here

another way i believe we must approach future-building is through business models and financial governance—no sentiment alone can ever create systemic change. so much of

turning feeling into action

is starting to be curious about the possible alternatives that have been imagined.

a note i wrote about this

Aeon is one of my favorite publications because it often explores what the possibilities could be:

click on the image to go to the essay or

save it to your Sublime library here

still, so much of what we're looking at every day is so disheartening and overwhelming, so getting rid of screens, enjoying some music, and literally touching grass can help a little—especially now that i've started growing my cassette collection.

the other day i did exactly this. i went for a walk around my neighborhood, played my newly acquired

The Sound of Music

tape, and took some pictures of the landscape with my mom’s old camera. i had a great time reminiscing on all the songs i’ve known since i was little—while taking in some well-needed fresh air.

played with my

Retrospekt CP-81 cassette player

one of the pictures i took on the walk <3

on the other hand, when i still want to be online but not feel an impending sense of doom, i often end up bouncing around the indie corners of the internet. this week, one of my favorite finds—while

wandering through them

—was this text-based, multiple ending game called

16 Ways to Kill a Vampire in McDonalds.

folks, you guessed it, it’s about 16 ways we get to kill a vampire in McDonalds.

click the screenshot to play it on the website or

save it to your Sublime library here

explore all of the resources :)

on another one of my recent strolls, this time through are.na, i came across this course syllabus about rituals of technology.

click the screenshot to go to the Notion page or

save it to your Sublime library here

it links a couple of

Are.na

channels (

Are.na Editorial

here on Substack) with the course material, and as i went through them, i felt as if i had just discovered a gold mine. i’m always looking for new ways of discovery so

i even wrote this note down to make sure i keep exploring

on one of the course channels i found this meme and i thought i would share lol:

click on the meme to go to the are.na block or

save to your Sublime library here

thinking of the importance of teaching, this reminded me of this quote i had saved from

The Overview

newsletter by

Atmos

—one of the constant highlights in my inbox. this reflection explores the paradoxes of life and their connection with ecological frameworks.

save to your Sublime library here

one of the greatest polarities i find myself observing and analyzing is the perception of technology as inherently harmful, or at the other end of the spectrum, technology as we understand it as the only option. i was speaking with the lovely

Charlotte Rubesa

, founder of

Quiet Media

, earlier today and this is something that kept coming up. there is no universal answer, and the uncertainty of this grey area—especially when so much has been commodified—makes us hold on to the ends of this spectrum for the comfort of a false sense of certainty. it subconsciously dissolves the possibilities that exist, or could exist.

something that has had my brain buzzing the entire week is this report by

It’s Nice That

where this sort of liminal space is explored. what we need the most right now if we want to build technologies that are pro-social and ecologically centered—understanding humanity’s role within our surroundings—are nuance, imagination, discernment, and collaboration.

if this sounds interesting to you, i highly suggest you take your time to read the full report!

click on the image to download the report or

save to your Sublime library here

the observable often allows for this sense of certainty to form. that’s why empirical sciences are often held in higher regard than the humanities and theory. don’t get me wrong, i believe both are equally as important, and i love finding ways to understand the two simultaneously.

Aperture

usually delivers when i want to scratch this itch. in this particular instance, i decided to give this video essay a go given that dreams—both metaphorically and literally—have been at the front of my mind lately. i go back and forth between regular-ish dreams i don’t fully remember once i’m awake, and increasingly as of late, insanely vivid, realistic ones that seem to last years. the latter are one of my current subjects of inquiry.

i swear i could stay here forever and write a full-length novel just from one of these dreams, but instead i’ll leave you with this video:

beyond these crazy mental adventures, sleep has been a thorn on my side ever since i can remember; moving from periods of severe insomnia to ones of hypersomnia. i feel i’ve gotten a better handle on this lately, but some days, i still really struggle to fall asleep.

despite everyone’s—probably smart—advice of staying off screens when dealing with sleeplessness, i often can’t help myself. i get anxious and restless just tossing and turning along with the thoughts in my head. so when meditation, reading, and sleeping pills don’t do the trick, sue me, i go on my phone. regardless, i try to be careful about what i decide to do with it.

on a particular night like this one a few days ago (

as documented on the 3:13am time on the screenshot lol

), i stumbled upon this website. i took this screenshot given that it felt ironically well-timed to my circumstances at that moment.

i’m not gonna tell you more than that because i think it’s more fun to explore it if you go in blind:

click the screenshot to go to the website or

save to your Sublime library here

would love to hear your thoughts <3 if you’re on email you can always just reply to it as well if you want to send me a message!

What stayed with you?