Meow Wolf’s Shelley The Shrimp Strikes Again … With Advice.

Hey Shelley, have you ever had to live far away from someone you deeply care about? And if so, how do you deal with missing them??

Love that must surpass distance is a love worth cultivating! Consider this distance not to be a breaking apart but an opportunity to come together even stronger. Write them love letters about how they have made an impact on your life, how their presence — regardless of how that presence looks — is a delight and a privilege. Send them nice hot meals. Send them flowers. Think of all the nice things you two will do once you both reconvene. Put photographs or other significant objects of meaning around your home so they have a physical presence in your space. Utilize the technology of face-to-face calls and profess adoration through the screen. 

To the point about coming together stronger, consider that you have an opportunity of gifting your loved one something that only you can gift them — and that is the gift of self-love. The gift of prioritizing your own autonomy. This person loves you, not what you give them, not what you do for them, not the favors and objects and trinkets, but you. And one of the most precious and underrated gifts you can give to a loved one is them being able to rest comfortably knowing that you are okay, that you are able to handle strong emotions, that you are able to tell them when something is not okay between the two of you. Autonomy of self is the most beautiful and cherishable trait — it allows you both to become a relationship of agency, that you are both choosing each other, not out of a co-dependency, but out of a deep and impassioned love.

If I get the opportunity to become a shrimp for a day, what should I do first?

Commit an elaborate, Danny Ocean-level heist! Fun fact about shrimp: we have no fingerprints, and are also not held to human carceral laws!

Hello Shirley. How do I know that I’m following the right path for me?

Hello friend, I am Shirley, who is definitely not Shelley in a wig and sunglasses and a false mustache, I am a wholly different shrimp. 

To answer your question as Shelley is indisposed for this one, sometimes there is a vast array of paths that we can take, and none of them foretell what lies ahead. Some are winding and elaborate, some are short and sweet, some are booby-trapped, some will allow you to discover it was really about the friends you made along the way. When considering which path is the correct path, consider the following:

Are you waking up and going to sleep content with your life overall?

Are you emotionally and spiritually fulfilled?

How does this path affect your important relationships?

Are you lying about these answers because of how it may affect your important relationships?

What happens to us after this life is wholly unknowable, which makes how we spend our time now, in the present, infinitely more important! Weigh out what the true transaction of the path is and go from there!

Why does the moon never leave the sky?

She loves you far too much to ever not cast her gaze at you and only you.

Shelley, is a haunted house a body?

No two bodies are uniform, and a body can be a multitude of things. Within the body, there is a spirit of some kind, memories of some kind, the ability to love, the ability to hate, the ability to laugh and cry and feel big feelings, the ability to live comfortably, and the ability to survive. A haunted house also experiences these things. Sometimes you are the haunted house just waiting to be loved and cherished again.

A trait about haunted houses that I, a shrimp whose home is the vast and ever-changing sea, struggle with understanding is what if the house was shown love? What if the house was not singularly defined by the one Event that has been done within it, and instead was radically altered back to being a place of love and warmth when given the opportunity to do so? The house has a whole life to live too — it should be allowed to change itself as we change ourselves. A haunted house is an impermanent body, the body is an impermanent haunted house. There is always an opportunity to love and be loved.  

Keep up with Shelley The Shrimp’s sage advice & other Meow Wolf creatives on their BLOB.

Visit a Meow Wolf portals near you: Convergence Station in Denver, CO; House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, NM; Omega Mart in Las Vegas, NV; & The Real Unreal in Grapevine, TX; and coming soon: Houston, TX and Los Angeles, CA!