brennendaniels

Staying slow and cozy in my favorite @levis this December #LevisPartner

i’m writing mini essays on things I don't understand everyday (most things!!🙃) here is an abridged version of some! 1.) money. it comes slow and leaves quick. the more you have the more you think about it! you’re told to save it but then everyone is also trying to get you to spend it. this random number on my screen says i can have this, i can stay here, i can eat this. 2.) hottness. i was recently informed that i am hot which is not new information but something i still don’t quite understand, especially because the ways i hear of this come mostly from people who don’t know me. i think if i heard that random people found me kind as much as i heard people called me hot i’d be much happier. Maybe that says something about my relationship with kindness which most of the time feels so fleeting. what i’m trying to say is i’m quite bored with the idea of being hot but maybe that’s because everyone in California is hot or wants to be. or maybe it’s because this hottness always seems to come in some form of micro or macro exoticfiaction of my skin and eyes which makes me look so “unique”, or “rare”, or sometimes people just straight up say “exotic”. and i can’t help but wonder what is hot about things you don't understand (exotic). what i’m trying to say is have you ever experienced the feeling of understanding, of being understood. what i’m trying to explain is the hottest person i’ve ever seen wasn’t naked or someone who is on billboards. and the moment i realized it i wasn’t looking at her body. i was looking at her eyes and i realized she wasn’t looking back, she was seeing back, and can’t remember a time i’ve ever been more turned on. 3.) social media. i had this shower thought, one of the glorious, even holy spaces, that have remained deviceless, that if i did a survey of what people like about social media and compared it to what social media companies are investing the $$$ and energy into, it probably wouldn’t add up. i guess this has to do with something about money, and the perceived idea that hotness is derived from things we think are rare but don't actually know. and i don’t understand those things so i guess i probably won’t understand any of this.

The only thing better than rocking some cozy new @levis goodies is doing it with one of your best buds! #LevisPartner

Do you still remember that feeling of the first time you ever surfed? — It was new, it was potent, and it was something that likely changed your life that day. That all being said, we’d like to introduce you to the San Diego-based non-profit @un.mar.de.colores . “It’s always been about more than just teaching them to ride waves; it’s about the confidence they build, the healing they find in like-minded communities, and ultimately the discovery of their role as stewards of the ocean,” executive director @marrioo tells us. Tap the link in bio for the full spotlight on the incredible work of Un Mar De Colores (“an ocean of colors”) at Surfer.com 📷: @brennendaniels

Love, light, and library cards

Finally beginning to feel like Fall in Socal which means I can break out my favortie @levis jacket! #LevisPartner

questions, notes, wonderings.

Staying cozy this fall with lots of outwear from @levis #LevisPartner

I fell in love with writing because of the note. That soft, small potent artifact. Words crafted, distilled, so powerful exactly because they are meant for a specific person. In high school I’d pass notebooks and notes back and forth between my group of friends between classes. In college I’d write letters to friends around the world. Today I have email chains, and shared notes with some of my favorite people. Words for me have always been a labor of connection. I started sharing my writing to a small group of people back when Substack was actually a writing app and not a social media app. I just posted to my close friends and I’d get calls and voice memos and texts about certain segments of words that spoke to them. Then I started writing these long Instagram captions and surprisingly people read them and talk to me about them all the time. And to be honest almost every time I write something I’m like “this barely makes any sense” and then so many people are like, “your writing speaks to me so much,” and I just am like, “damn I wonder in what language.” I guess this is a very long and Brennen way of saying thank you to everyone who takes the time and energy to read this stuff and even bigger thanks to everyone who takes the time and energy to respond because to me that’s all that matters. I decided a while ago that my main objective in writing is to connect with other people. Forget the subscriber numbers and likes I just want to have at least one good conversation from something I’ve written, even if it’s just with myself. And almost every time my expectations for that are blown out of the water. If you haven’t read anything the link is in my bio if you’re into that. Please send me a voice memo or text or dm about your thoughts and feelings it doesn’t have to be about anything I’ve even written. I just think being human is terrible and awesome and I want to learn more about it. -love bren

Just some really special people, places, and trees that make me feel at home in a world bent on displacement.

sometimes grief feels like a hole, sometimes it feels like a clear November sky, so blue and empty that you can’t tell where it begins and ends. sometimes grief feels like a locked door but maybe that’s because we are trying with all our strength to budge it open when really it’s just one of those doors that craves a gentle touch, a little wiggle of the handle in the right way and pop, you’re crossing the threshold. i guess what I’m trying to say here is that maybe grief isn’t this big bad monster. i’ll be the first to admit i don’t know a lot, or even enough to say that. if i have any talent, its to imagine, and i like to imagine, sometimes, that grief is a friend, leading me deeper into what i love, and helping me let go of a lot of things i don’t. i guess what i’m trying to say here is maybe your grief doesn’t have to make you hard, or wanting to fight everyone who has wronged you. maybe, and this is a huge maybe, your grief just wants to make you so soft that you can’t help but feeling alive, that you can’t help but finding love in all those streets you thought turned into dead ends. maybe grief is just asking you, “what if it was worth it, what if it still is?”

It’s October and the tree in my neighbors yard is dropping leaves and we live in a world where the first metaphor I think of is a bomb. I’ve been in 6 countries in the last four weeks. I met kindness in such unexpected ways that returning to my country I don’t quite understand how so much hate exists and no one seems to want to diffuse it. I guess that’s what you call privilege. As I cross borders with ease the people of Palestine, humans who hold dreams and hopes and love and laughter are being bombed and gunned into oblivion. I cannot make sense of a world that gives so much beauty and brutality. I cannot make sense of a world where I have the freedom to leave my country, while a whole people don’t have the freedom to stay in theirs without annihilation. I cannot make sense of any of these phony fucking justifications for ending lives we had no part in beginning. Why wasn’t one child’s life enough to stop it all. Why isn’t the thousands enough now? I want to live in a world where the people of Palestine watch the leaves tumble off the trees in the peace of their homes and write a hundred poems that don't include a single metaphor of violence.