#Setting Priorities

[heartbreakincident]

nothing but respect for our troops (smut writers) but listen. i dont want to be the person to tell you this, but not every character is going to be a dom or a sub. some people. and i know this is hard to hear. but some people do have vanilla sex. and some of those people might even be The Character.

[essentiallybetterliving]

Achieve Work-Life Balance as a Teacher

Over the years as a teacher, I have observed my colleagues stay at school way into the night hours, take stacks of work home, and complain they have no time for themselves or their families. Some even come to school to work on the weekends. They struggle with home-work balance, finding time to be a great parent, teacher, friend, family member. Their workload takes its toll on their mental and…

[goodoldbandit]

“You will always have the time for the things you choose to put first in your life.” - Brad Turnbull.

Sanjay Kumar Mohindroo Sanjay Kumar Mohindroo. skm.stayingalive.in Prioritize Your Life: Unlocking the Power of Intentional Choices Discover how prioritizing your values can transform your time management, productivity, and happiness. Learn actionable steps for a balanced life. A Fresh Perspective on Time Management Time is life’s most precious resource, yet we often feel like there’s never…

[therandomavenger]

The Art of Winnowing

It’s been a rough couple of months. Sometimes, I have a real ‘my eyes are bigger than my stomach’ thing going on when it comes to things I want to do and accomplish. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it does lead me into situations where I am stressed and overwhelmed and wondering why. I read something lately, I think it was in Ali Abdal’s ‘Stress-Free Productivity,’ that focus is as much about what we decide not to do as what we decide to do. In the past few months, my focus has been all over the place.

The semester started, and I had two in-person classes, both of which started early in the morning, as well as two online classes, which could be done whenever. For the first week or so, I was handling this well, but eventually my anxiety, always a challenge to deal with, started to get out of control to the point that I started not being able to sleep. I would sleep for something like four hours every three days, then missing classes because it was dangerous for me to drive. I would be a zombie during the day and still not be able to sleep at night, and it was definitely the fault of the anxiety. All night long, I would find myself drifting off to sleep, and then I would have a mini panic attack, and I would be wide awake again. This cycle would repeat several times.

I didn’t know where it was coming from. Everything seemed fine, otherwise. I said this to my psychiatrist, and she said, “Well, gee, let’s look at this. In the past year you’ve left your volunteer job, you’ve lost your house and moved in with your parents, you started going to school full time, and you broke up with your fiancé. Have I missed anything?’ and I was like ‘oh. I guess that is a lot.’ She told me to double up on my sleep meds and to see her again in a week, to see if that had helped.

I realized that I was in a toxic feedback loop. I was anxious, which was making me not sleep, which was making me more anxious, making it even harder to sleep, repeat, repeat, repeat. Thanks, I hate it! What I realized is that this was kind of a gordian knot. I had to do something drastic to cut through it because this was seriously bad for both my physical and mental health. The main problem was the stress I was putting myself under trying to sleep, and that was necessary because I had to be functional at 8:00 in the morning four days a week.

There is a process in farming, where you take your harvested grain, and in order to separate the grain from the useless husks, you drop it from a little bit of a height, and the wind takes away the much lighter husks, leaving you with just the grain. It’s called winnowing because you’re using the wind to accomplish the process. These days we have machines for this, but this is what they did in the ancient world.

I needed to winnow down to the things that were the most important, and somehow remove the pressure I was under. I didn’t want to quit anything important, but I looked at what I was doing and realized something. The classes I needed for my digital art and design certificate were the online ones, which could be done anytime. The two in person classes, I thought would be a fun challenge, they weren’t strictly necessary. I needed to winnow down.

So, I dropped the two in person classes. They were supposed to be fun, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t enjoying them, and they were kind of a side quest. Nothing wrong with them, but they were outside my core mission. If I didn’t have to go to them, I could remove the pressure around sleep, and just sleep when I slept and not have to worry about being on anyone else’s schedule. This was my way of slicing through the gordian knot.

I wish I could report that this solved the problem, and I immediately fell into a deep, restful sleep, but it took a couple of days for that to happen. It did happen, however.

I also realized that I needed to get on my body’s own sleep pattern, which is to sleep from 12-9am or so. When I was going to bed too early, not falling asleep quickly kicked up my anxiety and began the feedback loop that would keep me up all night.

Over the course of the next couple of days, I started to sleep, and actually wake up refreshed, which had never really happened before. The anxiety is not gone but is better than it was. I started going to the gym again, which helped a lot. I was able to get all my work done, and even get back to writing, which had been on the back burner for a while, something else that was causing me stress.

As a person with ADHD, I want to do so many things. I forget that just because I have the hours free on my calendar, that does not mean the new activity will fit into my life. I only have so much energy and executive function to go around. The fact that I can’t run full peed in every direction at once does not make me a failure. I needed to winnow my activities down to the essential ones, and maybe eventually I can work another class at a time into the schedule. We all have to do that from time to time, pare down our activities to a manageable level. I am in an immense position of privilege that I don’t have to have a crummy day job, or kids at home, and can make these decisions for myself. I can build a life that works for me. Some people don’t have that option, though some winnowing is usually always possible.

So, that’s what we need to do. Figure out what our core mission is, and winnow until we are able to handle it without having a breakdown. It sounds simple, but it’s anything but, I know. But give yourself permission to say no to things, and to realize that now might not be the time in your life when you can accomplish all the things. There will be time later, especially if you don’t burn yourself out.

[hmdavis02]

Homeschool Advice Part 4 | Practical Prioritizing

Now that I’ve emphasized the importance of prioritizing school, I thought it best to offer some practical advice on how to do this. Once you’ve reminded yourself that you are the parent and the teacher, it’s time to implement the actual “doing school” part. I promise this one will be much shorter. 🙂 Basic Prioritizing When my kids were young, we kept roughly the same school schedule as our…

[dreamy-conceit]

Getting to the summit [of Everest] is optional; getting down is mandatory.

— Ed Viesturs, high-altitude mountaineer

[mellosghosts]

oh to sleep in the warm embrace of your catboy coded boyfriend

[makeshiftloops]

Okay, stick with me here— Jonmartin if you aren’t a coward

(also go support the artist wtf look at how cool that is)

[bimmyjimmy]

Jimmy was given a choice between treat or spring…

He chose spring

[okjii]

one of my favorite things about aftg is that in any given conversation not related to about, like, three things (exy, Andrew, and the mafia) Neil is just. entirely checked out. he was there for the first sentence of that conversation and immediately clocked out once he realized there would be no Stick Ball Talk.

[psychotrenny]

Liberals of all sorts will confidently talk about what "indigenous peoples"* want in a way that makes it clear they've never studied a single anti-colonial movement in their lives. Like they can't conceptualise that the societies deemed "indigenous" are (by necessity of still existing) every bit as alive and part of the 21st century as any other people, instead preferring to think of them as nothing more than static museum exhibitions with any deviation from this being a lack of "authenticity". Nor do they imagine that resistance to colonising powers stems from the vicious destruction and exploitation these societies are invariably subjected to (by necessity of being classified as "indigenous"); rather they see it as a matter of idealistic preference for a "natural" and "primitive" life that leads them to resist the inevitable "march of civilisation" for its own sake

These sorts of foolish ideas are widespread, but groups will express them in more explicit terms than usual. Like Anti-Civs are really nothing more than the typical Liberal idea of the "Noble Savage" taken to a logical conclusion; if such people are so Noble then maybe we should aspire to Savagery. It's ultimately incredibly reactionary, whatever its adherents claim; a true progressive would reject the chauvinistic framing of "Civilisation vs Savagery" altogether

*nearly always as some sort of homogenous group, lacking meaningful variation both between societies and within them

[mephistoic]

hold on I need to get strangled by a tall vampiress first

[leilohsstupidgaystuff]

Charles: So, I met this guy...

Erik: You met someone? Who is he?! Who's gonna replace me?

Charles: ...

Charles: Peter. You can come in now.

Peter: *entering* Hi :)

Charles: Erik, meet your son.

Erik: Phew... I thought you're dating someone new.

Charles:

Peter:

Erik: Wait! Son?!

[steviesbicrisis]

If Steve Harrington was a shirt:

[deoidesign]

when your main characters start dating after years of writing so they finally get to be like this

[wherethemothsgrow]

Me at my graduation tonight thinking about jerejean angst instead of listening to the speeches