#so unrelated i have committed to TRYING to learn C++ ........

[springcatalyst]

i have a disease that makes me start new projects i have 0 of the skills for and yeah. it's incurable

[awiola]

Normal update, winter XXIV

BUT IT'S NOT WINTER ANYMORE HA! Happy after-equinox to y'all. I planned to write the update in march and it's still technically march but, like, y'know, it's the first day of spring so it feels kind of late, ig? Not that it really matters here and I drew Morana on fire so all is good.

This is not completely [un]related but I'm trying to complete the 'draw sth for 100 days straight' challenge and rn it's going okay though I have to admit I'm being a lazy ass. But hey, a bad sketch a day is still a drawing. Not sure if that's the reason I wasn't able to complete my easter sketch dump but knowing me it wouldn't be finished anyway so whatever ig. AND YES, I WILL DRAW FATHER DAKI ON TIME. I planned to do it when I was drawing Agatha for thug in PE's style but oh well... You'll see both ot these pics on the first of april.

Also, like, in case anyone was interested, I finally decided to learn how to adult and might open comms this year? I tell myself I'll open them since, like, 2020 so yeah. Maybe. I think I will, tho.

Current game stuff

Mushroom game... Yeah... It exists and I technically haven't dropped it but yeah... Yeah... Tbh I even hid the link from my page but it's still public and all... But yeah... It goes into the "finally finish it in 2024, you stupid fuck" list - which, incidentally, is a mouthful so from now on it's gonna be "24 >:C" - together with Enmity and all.

Remember the golem game? Yeah, we don't see its non human form but I did technically draw it. Humanoids are, like, so last decade. It's called Sorcerer's golem and because I was not the lead, we managed to nicely finish it on time ✨ [Unrelated but I wonder what happened to the old unicode emotes, I need to look into it]. There's not really a lot I have to say here, tbh. It's short, it's wholesome, I'm totally not gonna go almost fully lineless again. I almost died and it was only two sprites. Never again proceeds to do that again later anyway.

Some time after, or maybe during, I can't really remember, I heard of Queer Vampire Jam and ofc had to join because I wouldn't be me if I managed to stop myself from joining yet another jam. It just so happened I both felt like shit and read something from my SF gods at the time so I commited this open ended 3k long story and it's, like, really obvious how I felt and what I was reading but then I decided to go yolo and publish it anyway, especially since I got an editor and made laby draw for me. Just had to publish it at that point. Enough about that, though - let's see what is it all about. Vani vani, because Tas tatum was deemed too lame of a name is a story about a [queer obviously] vampire who's kinda dead inside and it shows. I did say it was obvious I felt like shit. I'm not sure if it ended up being too edgy or not... I mean, I made it really obvious it's, like gestures vaguely y'know? I don't wanna spell it out but, like, the theme and everything there was so obvious I'll be disappointed in you if you didn't get it based on the pun title [the other two layers of puns there aren't as obvious] and the page/thumbnail. Unless, of course, you never heard about it at all which might be the case for people from other continents, I wouldn't know. I realise that doesn't say a lot about the contents but I mean, it's more of a progress update, I'm not actually trying to market anything here lol So whatever. It might be the only game ever where I put a whole nsfw scene of a sexual nature... Or it might just be the beginning of my unsexy h scene adventures. I even asked others how to make it as unsexy as possible and I hope I succeed. Going into gore or kink migh be sexy for some but boredom? Probably to no one who actually reads it. And, as is the case with my other personal games, not a lot of people read them. So I think I succeed at that. It's just the beginning of my SF adventures, though. Be prepared.

Now for the thing that might interest the potential reader the most because I saw the statistics and I bet all the follows are alse due to that - Impostor Syndrome. I know the page is pretty much silent but we are working on this. The common route received a lot of notes to make it longer, more cohesive, funnier and possibly better for all the gremlins that wanted a troll mode. Or at least that was the plan. Route wise we had something but after some consideration, it had to be basically scrapped. I won't go into all the details here as for why, but the rewriting of the outline is proceeding. Slowly cause it's kinda hard to find the best time to talk when you have multiple people from different timezones to consider but I think it's looking good. There's a sliiight possibility it might be a bit less vanilla than, like, your typical sfw otome but I don't think any vanilla lover would think it's too much or anything. Not nearly kinky enough for that. I think labelling it as having a soft dom MC might even be false advertising. Maybe. Hell if I know, I suck at tags. But yeah, it's proceeding. Obviously it won't be out during winter but I do think it will be finished this year. Most likely.

From other game stuff... I might have a monster type project made with Ameena for you. Or I might not. The designs are done but is anything gonna come out of them? We'll see. Leaving the possibility open.

I helped Doibats [who I helped with Cool Days before] with some art. This time it's an rpg, currently still in development. The cool art direction is still there so I think it would be worth a play when it's out. I think I'm more of a guest artist than an actual member of the team, though lol But yeah, check it out when it's done, I'll link it then.

Yet another game where I didn't do much - The Villainess Just Wants To Eat!! had its full, official release 🎉 Congrats to the team [check out their gui, btw]. I was mostly helping with this or that due to the usual jam team stuff that happens but yeah. Syd wrote afterstories for the charas, too. They're technically linked on the game's page, too, but you can read them on her tumblr, too.

I kind of forgot to mention, which also ties with my next point, but she hosted the Ossan jam again which I planned to join with my nano project about Wedding crashers but I overestimated my ability to write energetic chaos so... umm... Well, it's not dropped and while it won't get done in time for nano, I think I'll manage before Ossan jam ends. It started as a loose idea that kinda parodied romcoms and then the protag became an AAA battery but also aplatonic and then I got some concepts from tea[? - dunno how they want to be called 'officially' and this one seemed safe but?] and yeah. I'm trying to work on this, though. Even though I feel so stupid attempting to write an anthropologist. Should've stuck to writing mostly what you know like with Vani vani, eehhh... Wish me luck o3o

The last thing, or two, probably, is more of a... forecast? I happened to help with the editing of a certain 18+ otome game but I'm not on the team or anything so I can't really tell you more since I don't know how much should I reveal to the potential player but from what I've seen, the development goes well since they started making it for nano and might actually be finished before Otome jam ends so I'll link it then.

The other thing is that in an unspecified future I might have a yet another AAA battery protagonist, this time replacing the MC of an otome isekai story. I'm not sure how much I'll help with [maybe just editing, maybe we'd become a two person team, who knows] but it has a hight possibility of being developed eventually. No set dates or anything, though.

Pariiish noootiiiceees

Remember Tentacle jam and Insect [adjacent] jam? They're still happening, I'm just being lazy setting the pages up. The working date is from around the middle of august to the middle of october due to all the other jams happening at the time. I think it's the final date, though. It's come to my attention there's also the Monstrous Desires jam that also shares the timeframe almost perfectly so, y'know, why not make a game that lets you join all three of them? Just a thought.

---

My god, this thing became so long. Like half the length of my typical personal project orz I had to add all the Ps and BRs manually. Damn you, html shakes fist

Over.

[swansong-if]

i am taking a page from my pal portmuralis's book so here are some rules. please read carefully before interacting with this blog.

╭───── g e n e r a l

be respectful. be mindful that there’s a person on the other side of the screen. tone and intent are often hard to read through text, and i don’t know you, so please try to be decent (this goes for asks as well as comments/tags)

occasionally checking on the story’s progress is okay, but please don’t obsessively ask me about it; it can get demotivating. if you start being rude and demanding updates, i will give you my ko-fi info & demand payment ♡

i am not comfortable with minors under the age of 16 interacting with this blog; obviously i can’t always check but reminder that respecting other people’s boundaries is important.

if you want to chat about personal/unrelated topics, i would prefer if you did that either via direct messages or on my personal blog rather than here (since i’m trying to keep this strictly for if development)!

if you’re sending asks about potentially sensitive/triggering topics, i would appreciate if you asked beforehand to check if i’m comfortable with that particular content. and it goes both ways- i try to tag all cw, but let me know if i missed something.

╭───── R O / s t o r y  a s k s

asks about the characters/lore/worldbuilding are always appreciated & encouraged. unless stated otherwise in my bio, my inbox is always open.

if i don’t answer your ask the possible reasons are, 1) i haven’t had the time and will get to it later; 2) i haven’t received it; 3) i'm not comfortable replying for any reason; 4) the answer would be spoilers. if you think the ask was simply eaten you can resend it!

please do not gender the ROs or the MC in asks. mistakes can happen, just don’t let it become a habit because it makes other players feel excluded, so please stick to neutral terms whenever you can. [obviously this isn’t the case if you’re telling me about your playthrough experience/your own mc!]

generally speaking, i won’t be answering asks with overly specific scenarios (as in, requesting ‘personalized’ reactions catered to one’s mc)- i appreciate the enthusiasm and commitment to the story, but if it’s a custom fic for your mc you want, you can commission me!

topics i might avoid (you can send asks about them but know that there’s a chance i won’t reply): jealousy/possessiveness; cheating; pregnancy; [tbd].

╭───── n s f w / s p i c y

spicy asks are accepted. i will answer under the cut and tag as #ss: nsfk

again, use gender neutral terms whenever possible.

not a ‘rule’ but, while i’m very hardly bothered by nsfw content that’s not the same for everyone, so if you’re sending a very explicit ask try to word it as tastefully as you can!

keep nsfw asks about the characters. do not send me self-insert asks, for the love of god. we are strangers, and this is a deeply weird thing to do in any case- i don’t need nor want to hear about your s*xual preferences.

*sigh* let’s get this out of the way: i won’t answer spicy asks about the MC in swan form. sorry @ birdf*ck*rs out there. if you send them i will simply have a good laugh.

if by chance i catch a minor interacting with 18+ posts/stories, they will be blocked.

╭───── d o  N O T

first of all, do not come here to tell me you don’t like my story or me. mostly because i don’t care, but also, life is too short to waste time reading stuff you don’t like! just move on and find something better ♡

lots of people on this site seem to think they’re anton ego or something and go around offering useless & unprompted ‘advice’. i am ALWAYS here to listen and learn if someone tells me “this particular thing you wrote is harmful” or “would you consider changing this thing to make your story more accessible?” but outside of that, unless i’m asking for opinions about something don’t come here saying “i don’t like how you did this” “i prefer when authors do this” “you should change x thing about this character because i don’t like it” etc... as i am not here to please a rude stranger on the internet. shoo, go write your own story!

if you bring any kind of bigotry here, i’m blocking you and you now owe me money.

if you send me negativity about other devs, you now owe me and them money. ♡

under no circumstances send me asks about: noncon/dubcon scenarios; inc*st; predatory relationships involving minors.

[paintedrecs]

For the fandom talk meme thingy: C (not trying to start drama I swear), I, K, R, and X. =D

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Hmmm, there are a few ways of answering this. One is by listing all my NOTPs, which would be excessively long and ultimately boring because it essentially boils down to “anyone else with either member of my OTP.” I monoship my primary pairings, so I’m pretty strict on what I do and do not like. 

(With the way fandom is now, I should clarify that NOTP means that I personally do not like a ship and I therefore go out of my way to avoid it - by muting terms, carefully filtering tags and search results, curating my own space, etc. It doesn’t mean I think the ship is badwrong or that anyone else should stop shipping it. It just means I do not ever want to see it.)

This feels a little less specific on that front, though, maybe more just: people like this and I’m meh about it?

So Allydia comes to mind. I don’t hate it, and if the Sterek’s good enough I’ll still read a fic with them as a background pairing, but I don’t ever like it as a romantic ship. While I ship Lydia with lots of different characters, including Cora, I’ve always seen Allison as straight, so I suppose that’s part of it? And I love Lydia & Allison as bffs - I see them as entirely platonic, like Scott & Stiles, so introducing romance just doesn’t work for me.

Another one is Sheriff Stilinski/Peter Hale. I...I don’t understand it. Unlike the last answer, this background pairing will prevent me from reading a Sterek-central fic.

I - Has Tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?

This turned into a complicated and kind of roundabout answer, so I’m putting the rest of the questions under a long-post cut!

I stopped frequenting tumblr for two main reasons:

that whole weird purge thing that made me think everyone was leaving, so I just gave up, which might’ve been premature cause it seems like folks are still going strong on here

the emergence of antis, specifically within the Voltron fandom (although they’re everywhere at this point)

There’s a saying in fandom now: 

“Why is the younger fandom generation like this?!??” “Tumblr raised them.”

For me, for years, tumblr was a really wonderful space where I had a lot of great conversations and read very thoughtful threads that helped me to learn some important things about myself, other people, and a world much wider than my own.

But I was an adult when I joined this site, and it really does seem like there’s a whole new crop of kids who have no actual context for ideas like social justice, the need for canonical representation in our media, and a lot of other things that eventually got folded into a big ball of disconnected rhetoric that they now fling as hard as they can at the heads of fandom creators who are committing the ultimate sin of creating content for ships they don’t like.

It’s late, and I don’t feel like getting into a whole Essay Rant about all that.

So on an entirely personal level, I quit running appreciatejack (my Check Please/zimbits/Jack Zimmermann blog) because someone sent me really vile hate for daring to ship Shiro/Keith from Voltron (two unrelated adults in a cartoon). It’s why I turned my ask boxes/anon/chats off on most of my blogs, and then eventually just...got tired of running them.

When I started up appreciatederek, I got a couple asks from people who wanted to know if it was going to be multiship or just Sterek, and when I said it was Sterek, they presumably went off to find other things they were into, because I never heard from them again. Y’know, the reasonable reaction. And then the rest of it was wonderful: finding content for it, and getting responses from people who enjoyed that content.

I thought appreciateshiro would be similar, but it was all so messy from the very start. The Sheith tag was FULL of hate. I was initially checking it every day, trying to find artists and writers and gif-makers to reblog and encourage and support, like I’d done in Sterek fandom, but instead I’d spend literal hours blocking people who came into that tag just to talk about how much they hated the ship.

Every day, I’d look for content for my OTP, and every day I’d come away from it angry and sad and frustrated. I never seemed to run out of people to block. And they never, ever seemed to run out of hate.

It was exhausting. It made me reluctant to go on tumblr at all. And eventually I just...sorta stopped.

So the answer to this question is more, I guess, “fandom made me stop liking tumblr, and in the process I stopped liking most fandoms.”

I’m sure you can kinda tell from the fandoms I’m currently the most invested in.

I love Sterek, and I will always love Sterek. Part of that’s the ship itself, of course, and part is because I had an incredible fandom experience with it. People within this fandom are still really great - always so welcoming and super excited about new content, even so many years on.

Otherwise, my current fandoms are kiiiiinda tiny:

Xanatowen (Gargoyles), which currently consists of exactly 2 people and 12 fics (3 of which are mine).

Trevorcard (Castlevania), which only has ~200 fics on AO3.

Taibani (Tiger & Bunny), which is an oldish fandom with only ~600 fics on AO3.

Remember, I came from a fandom that has SIXTY THOUSAND fics.

So while I feel very lonely and very sad about the low content levels in these fandoms, they’ve also given me the space to let go of some of my fandom hurt & anger and remember what it’s like to just...peacefully love something. I really miss just loving things and talking about loving those things and searching for other people who also love those things without running into....thousands upon thousands of people who HATE that you love that thing.

(Until I wrote all that out just now, I actually hadn’t realized how much this had still been hanging over me, or why I was so hesitant to come back to “reclaim” a space I’d once been super active and happy in. Essay over! Next questions.)

K - What character has your favorite development arc/the best development arc?

Answered here!

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

Answered here! 

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Found family. This is probably a big part of why Sterek was my first real fandom, because the idea of Pack makes it incredibly natural to build out relationships beyond just the central romantic pairing. 

It doesn’t have to be a werewolf thing, though. I’m honestly not hugely fond of the whole puppy piles concept - I’m less interested in “biological urges make characters literally physically all snuggle up together in bed” than I am in the actual build of the friendships, and the concept of choosing people who will become the family you’ve been missing for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s reconnecting with biological family, or maybe it’s discovering that your friends have been filling that space for you all along, without you even fully realizing it. (The concept of “home” is another big one for me. Home is where your heart is etc etc.)

And hey! Now I can pull back in another question from earlier: about “pairings” that I might not have initially considered. As I suspected, I do have more! Mostly platonic.

For instance: Derek and Sheriff Stilinski becoming bffs. I thiiiink I can probably tie my ABSOLUTE LOVE of this concept back to HalfFizzbin’s can't be hateful, gotta be grateful. And then Cupboard Love really has to be the source of ALL my alive!Hales feels, which also includes folding Stiles into their family.

Fic is largely responsible for building out Derek’s relationship with Boyd, Erica, Isaac, his sisters...making them into an actual pack and friends and family in the way the show never bothered. And frankly while I don’t like canon!Scott at all at this point, I love his friendship with Stiles in fics, and I absolutely believe Stiles and Lydia would be amazing friends once he got past his crush on her. I’d point to another fic here, owlpostagain’s will to follow through, as the ultimate source for major Team Human feels.

So yeah. I’m always going to be drawn to stories about family, in whatever form that takes, particularly if it’s one that’s a little bit off the normal white-picket-fence path.

In Tiger & Bunny, it’s Barnaby joining the Kaburagi family, and learning how to be a dad and a friend to his new husband’s daughter.

In Gargoyles, I’m completely obsessed with the (canonical!) idea of a family that consists of a man, his wife, their son, and the chaotically loyal fae babysitter/tutor/third parent. It is not a stretch to tweak this the tiiiiiiniest bit to turn it into a nontraditional family structure of a man, his wife, his son, and his fae boyfriend. Honestly.

In Castlevania, the fic that made me sob my eyes out at one point does something the show would absolutely never. It gives Alucard the time to rebuild his physical home while befriending the people in the little town that crops up around it. It’s about Trevor and Alucard falling in love, but it’s also about them making a place for themselves in a world where that kind of comfort and stability and friendship is so badly needed.

I think we all kinda need that in our world right now. So I love being able to find it in fic, for the characters who’ve grown to mean something to me.

[cvtalinvs]

val mercado, cisfemale, she/her. → look out, there’s CATALINA REYES. you know, the 21 year old SISTER of DELTA DELTA DELTA. you know, i overheard someone say that they were SELF-INDULGENT, INTRUSIVE, ARDENT, and AMBITIOUS. but that’s just rumours. EMPTY WINE BOTTLES, A RED CURSE JAR FILLED TO THE BRIM, AND THE SOUNDS OF A PIANO IN THE EARLY MORNING come to mind when i think of them. what about you? [ lily, she/her, 21, est  ]

° . ☽ . hit me up if you’d like to plot ! TRIGGER WARNING; DEATH !

ballet shoes she’s never worn, father’s phone number long forgotten, hands aching from stardust dreams, converses untied and mind unrelenting, & black sheep of a fallen family.

✩ ° . ☽ . ballet shoes barely hanging on. brinley was originally supposed to follow her mother’s footsteps. she was raised to be respectful, proper, and disciplined in order to be a great professional ballerina, just like her mom. it wasn’t that her mom wanted her to be one—her father did. when her mother passed away brinley was only ten years old. ballet was never something brinley thought of trying. yet, her father wanted her mother’s legacy to live on. for her mother was part of a long line of women who reached the highest rank in the royal ballet school--prima ballerina assoluta. so, no matter the fact that it wasn’t what brinley wanted, she tried it. she tried it to make her father happy and surrendered her happiness for his.

✩ ° . ☽ . father’s phone number long forgotten. it took about eight years of ballet for brinley to realize her life was based around something she didn’t love. calloused feet and ice baths became her new reality. competing was her new way of life and routines were her every day. everything in her life was structured and always planned ahead. but one day her friend told her to take a risk--go on a drive to wherever she wanted. there was no planning involved and that was brinley’s worst fear at the time. unfortunately for her, she was swayed and it was the best decision she ever made. that evening she realized there was a whole world out there she had yet to discover. polaroid pictures of mountains and the sun dipping into the horizon kept her company that night. those pictures kept her warm and when she returned home the next day a smile was on her face. and she came to the realization that she liked ballet but didn’t love it enough to commit her entire life around it. her father’s disappointment spoke louder than she ever could. even on the day she decided to finally make a rash decision for herself, he couldn’t even mutter out a single ‘good luck’ or ‘i love you.’ it’s been years since the two have had a conversation that wasn’t seconds long.

✩ ° . ☽ .  black sheep of a fallen family. her father absolutely despises that she gave up ballet. the one thing he wanted to do was keep brinley’s moms’ legacy alive. it was the one thing he could do and he failed to do so. unfortunately for brinley, he blames her. to this day he hasn’t heard her play piano.

✩ ° . ☽ .  hands aching from stardust dreams. when brinley was about nineteen years old she realized her passion for the first time. it took her longer than she had hoped but one night she just knew. one night when alcohol lightly fluttered in her veins, she listened as a performer sat in the middle of the room playing piano. the way the pianist’s fingers danced across the ivory keys to create an aura in the room enticed her. ever since then, she’s been convinced she could to the same. so, she started taking lessons. while it was incredibly hard at first she got the hang of it. within a year of practicing every day, she was able to perform some incredibly tough pieces. brinley was even able to play the song that started her love in the first place. now rather than planning her life with ballet, she’s been playing her life with piano. one day she hopes to be a composer but it’s not easy.

running on nothing but slim jims and cherry cola. her veins filled with liquor her body never handled.

✩ ° . ☽ .  converses untied and mind unrelenting. ever since she stopped living her life by routines she’s been a w i l d one. she gets drunk and high quite often. she spends her days off with no plan. the only thing scheduled in her life are her work schedules, classes, and piano practice. she talks a whole lot and thinks she’ll live forever off of slim jims and cherry cola for breakfast.

will talk anyone’s ear off about piano. like no joke--will tell you about composers and how long it took her to learn liszt love dream.

thinks she’s hilarious and will always laugh at her own jokes. comes into everyone’s life like a very LOUD h u r r i c a n e. 

[howtohero]

#245 The Power of Stories

Stories are a powerful thing. A skilled storyteller can take a story, be it real or fiction, and use it to influence great change in the people or the world around them. Stories can be used to teach lessons; to give warnings; to bring joy; to bring sorrow; to bring pain and to alleviate it. In the right hands stories can be used to do damn near anything. As a superhero, your life is essentially a series of wondrous and fantastical stories, (interspersed with hilariously embarrassing ones about getting your cape stuck in revolving doors or getting suck in what’s known as a “revolving door loop” where you just keep going around and around and getting increasingly panicked) and that makes you very fortunate indeed. Having so many incredible stories under your belt gives you yet another opportunity to do good, albeit in a more unconventional way.

Understanding that the strange things that happen to you, or that you happen to, can be used later on to do some good can actually do wonders for a superhero’s morale. If you’re forced to fight a giant mud monster for the fifth day in a row (different, completely unrelated, mud monsters believe it or not) at least you can take solace in the fact that you can later use this terrible time to inspire others to clean up after themselves, or not to lose hope when faced with the same problem over and over again. Every bad day can be turned into a good and valuable story later. And nobody faces more bad days than superheroes. (The idea that supervillains face more bad days than superheroes stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a supervillain tick. Supervillains are often the product of a single bad day that sets them down a path of horrible villainy. Any other defeat or setback they experience after that initial bad day is not viewed as a bad day by these villains, but rather as further excuses, which they desperately crave, to commit outlandish crimes. If a villain were ever to succeed they’d lose any and all motivation to do things and that’s the last thing they want. Which means that you’ll never be happy, and they’ll never be satisfied. Thus the battle between good and evil is the world’s one true never ending story.)

It should come as no shock to you, my superheroic reader, that the stories of your life can be used to inspire and intrigue others. Superheroes, and other larger than life or awesomely powered figures, have loomed large in fiction literally since the beginning. Our oldest recorded story, The Epic of Gilgamesh is about a man with incredible strength, stamina, and endurance fighting monsters and seeking immortality. That’s like a regular Tuesday for you and yet it is humankind’s most enduring tale. If you’re any good at your job, you yourself have been the subject of many comics, movies, sitcoms, internet puppet shows and one fascinating Japanese gameshow/car wash. Now, it’s time to take control of your own stories! Stop selling the rights to every instance of you scuffling with the Exit-Sign Swaparooner or spearfishing the venom-whales of the Kludachrom System. Instead, you can use these stories to inspire people or inspire change or simply to entertain young children so their hardworking parents can get some much needed sleep! When you’re a hero no good deed is too small! (The Exit-Sign Swaparooner is a devilish fiend who takes exit signs and puts them over doors that are not in fact exits. You may think that this makes him more of a prankster than a supervillain but 1. The line between those things is much thinner than you might believe and 2. Let’s see if you’re still laughing when you’re trying to leave your local coffee shop only to find yourself falling right into a pit full of crocodiles!)

If you’re going to start utilizing your vast array of stories though, it is important to know your audience. Not every story is suitable for every listener. If you’re new to this whole story telling thing, you’re going to need to train at matching stories and audiences and so we’ve devised a quick practice exercise for you:

If your audience is a group of excited school children the story you should tell is:     a. The time you thought the Sentient Cloud of Expletives!     b. The time you fought the Blowzo the eternally puking clown who exclusively pukes on children.     c. The time you traveled back in time and invented math accidentally.     d. The time you traveled back in time and invented math on purpose.

Now, if you picked any of those answers you’re obviously incorrect. Unless you truly know your audience and can prove us wrong. In all honesty, all of these stories might be suitable for a group of excited school children, it’s simply up to you to know what kind of school children these are, and what kinds of stories they want or need to hear. The Sentient Cloud of Expletives story is great if you want to teach kids about proper language, as long as you understand that you need to censor much of the Cloud’s dialogue for this particular group. (It’s also a great story to tell if this particular group of kids thinks they’re too cool to listen to a story from a superhero. Using a ton of swear words in a story is the number one way to get too cool for school children to listen to what you have to say.) The story about Blowzo is a great story to use if you want to scare a bunch of children into doing the right thing. (Fear is often the best tactic to use when dealing with children. I’m quite sure of this.) [This is wrong, don’t scare any children!]. Teaching children that a super cool superhero invented math is a great way to encourage children to learn it! And teaching children about going back in time and inventing math a second time teaches them that they shouldn’t be afraid to admit when they’ve made mistakes. (Even if your plan to fix your mistake is to erase an entire timeline, only to just invent math again but on purpose this time!) 

In reality, any story can be adapted for any audience as long as you understand the motivations and attitudes of the people the story is intended for. If you miscalculate, you can end up boring your audience. Or even worse, upsetting them and causing you to give your stories bad reviews. Honestly I don’t think you can handle scathing reviews from story critics. They can be very mean. And I know you’ve actually fought Charles T. Mean, the inventor of mean, but let me tell you, these people are out for blood. I once wrote a story and some critic told me, to my face, that the story made him hate the person who invented words. So. (And it wasn’t even the historical fiction story about Deirdre Word, inventor of the word, being a serial killer who only invented words so she could leave threatening messages to her would be victims during the Revolutionary War!) 

In addition to knowing your audience it is also important to know your stories. You need to look back through your life and understand the various uses of each of your many stories. Stories of great triumph can be used to inspire people to surmount impossible odds, or to intimidate your enemies by showing them that you’ve faced greater threats than they can ever hope to be. (You can honestly win a lot of fights this way.) Love stories can be used to demonstrate the lengths people will go to for love or as the lead up to a “spontaneous” musical confession of love! Scary stories can be used, as we’ve said, to terrify children into doing good deeds or to win the annual superhero halloween ghost story competition which my sources tell me is a thing. If you can understand that every experience you have can serve you in a number of different scenarios some time down the line, limited only by your own creativity, you’ll certainly feel better about having to fight your way through the Mobile Murder Mountain the next time it arrives in your city! 

Stories can be quite versatile. They can be used to calm down or distract scared civilians. They can be used to generate goodwill with our galactic neighbors. They can be used to build people up or tear them down. Your job as a superhero is to wield your stories in a way that will make the world a better place. Good luck, and happy storytelling! 

[sparklyjojos]

[Disco Wednesdayyy part 13/?] ---Disco illustration overload edition, in which we learn what Hongou’s reasoning was. Somehow it involves a Natsukawa, the Cube House, and Urashima Taro. [tw: murder-case-typical-gore]---

Last time we’ve seen him, Hongou Takeshi Takeshi has just stabbed himself after getting his reasoning wrong. Fortunately the doctor reacted fast enough that Hongou could be still kept alive if unconscious, in a room next to the one with Sakurazuki.

Fukushima, the leader of the Angel Bunnies, tells our leads more about Hongou. It seems the Angel Bunnies have a tendency to get involved in murder cases in Nishi Akatsuki, and Hongou solved some of them. As it turns out, these old cases may be relevant to the problem at hand. Let us go 7 years back in time...

1) March 1999: The first case, in which Hongou figured out that the giant plate on which the victim was positioned was cooled with ice to make everyone think the body was kept in a freezer.

2) April 1999: The body was moved back and forth between two buildings with use of wire and a Bell Rocket Belt.

3) Summer 1999: One of the Angel Bunnies, Kawabe, witnessed a murder being committed and the culprit escaping, but when he tried to give chase it turned out the culprit had fled in an entirely different direction. The murderer had put a mirror between two buildings, which fooled Kawabe’s sight. The incident took place on site of 9 cube-shaped bungalow-like houses, which were treated like one connected community building and called the Cube House. [Lore note: Yep, like the Cube House from Jorge Joestar!]

4) September 1999: The victim was cut to pieces like in the pic. Apparently the victim had killed himself, and then another person cut him to “fulfll his wishes”.

5) In Tanokura district, four people were killed like in the picture, each one with just one slice of a katana.

6) Winter 1999. The victim’s dying message was altered to show an unrelated sentence (“stop AIDS”) instead of the culprit’s name, にしの (Nishino)

After that, the Angel Bunnies moved their headquarters to Tokyo and Hongou couldn’t do cases in Nishi Akatsuki anymore. This next one was solved by Daibakusho Curry.

7) January 2000: An interchange murder (ie: A wants to kill B and C wants to kill D. The two wannabe killers A and C copperate, so that A kills D giving C an alibi, and C kills B giving A an alibi). A copycat murder happened later, though the situation was a little different. Daibakusho Curry drew these Amidakuji diagrams to figure out who could kill who (details don’t really matter, the pic is important):

8) Soon after that, Daibakusho himself became a victim of another case. He was struck in the head and pulled along a hallway leaving a bloody trail behind (sounds familiar?). It was this head injury that first caused his mental health problems to manifest. The incident happened in the Pine House... or rather, in the building that stood here before the Pine House, called Natsukawa Cottage [!!!], that Mitamura was the only inhabitant of and eventually bought and rebuilt in 2000. Natsukawa Cottage had 12 rooms on each floor, much like the Pine House. Before Mitamura bought it, it belonged to a certain politician by the name of Natsukawa, who apparently really liked to put a lot of weird buildings in Nishi Akatsuki -- among others, he also built the Cube House. [Lore note: Natsukawa Maruo and Natsukawa Ichirou were both politicians in Smoke, Soil and Sacrifices. Okay, something interesting’s going on here...]

The person telling our heroes the details of the last case is the doctor currently busy keeping Sakurazuki and Hongou alive. The doctor was apparently the specialist taking care of Daibakusho after the attack, but they knew each other in private too -- the doctor, Daibakusho and Mitamura were all classmates many years ago.

The doctor finally reveals that his name is *drumroll* Taniguchi Tooru. [Lore note: His name is spelled 谷口透 and not 谷口徹 like in Closed Rooms. Note that in this book the name of the person who allegedly kidnapped Mitamura is still given as 谷口徹]. Taniguchi claims he didn’t kidnap or kill Mitamura. He was born as Aoki Tooru, and only took the name ‘Taniguchi’ after marriage. Since it was Mitamura who introduced Tooru to his future wife in the first place, Tooru thinks that maybe Mitamura was just trying to create a real ‘Taniguchi Tooru’ to go with his fake story. Mystery writers are just weird like that. ...maybe weird enough to attack their own best friend, Daibakusho Curry, just to be able to leave the bloody trail on the floor?...

As Hongou’s reasoning went, all those cases we just learned about were orchestrated by Mitamura in order to create a certain message... [marvel at my paint skills]

...a set of numbers counting down (9; 8; the kanji for 7; the kanji for 6; a tally mark meaning 5; an old way of writing 4; Roman numerals for 3, 2, and 1). If you numbered the crime scenes accordingly and marked them on the map of Nishi Akatsuki, you could put them in a grid like this (the winding line is the river Hoshinogawa):

As soon as Nils sees this, he yells “Oh, Urashima Taro!”. Since Disco (and the reader) can’t grasp the ultra-quick association of symbols that Nils did here, Fukushima explains.

That grid is a magic square -- the sum of numbers in each row and column is equal 15. To be specific, t’s the Lo Shu Square, found on the carapace of the magic turtle in an old Chinese legend. The turtle symbolism brings to mind the concept of a World Turtle carrying the world on its shell, as well as the Japanese folk tale in which Urashima Taro rode a turtle to the underwater Dragon Palace. [Lore note: In Jorge Joestar, Hakkyoku’s body was posed on a stuffed turtle to symbolize Urashima Taro. I have no idea if this is important.] You could say that the grid symbolizes Nishi Akatsuki being carried on the back of a giant turtle, maybe something to do with universal harmony? 

Either way, the numbers are clearly a countdown to something. The last number, zero, is found in the current case -- it’s the round hallway of the Pine House. After Mitamura built it in 2000, he changed his penname to Anbyouin Owaru, “owaru” meaning “to end”, which is quite suspicious in hindsight. What’s more, Hongou suspected that Daibakusho Curry hadn’t really been a good detective, but that Mitamura was the one solving the cases -- he had created his own great detective much like he helped create a ‘Taniguchi Tooru’.

What happened yesterday according to Hongou: Mitamura visited Daibakusho Curry and stabbed him in an attempt to cure his mental health problems via lobotomy [yeah uh, I don’t think it works like that, mate]. Maybe Mitamura wanted to apologize for that 2000 attack, both by mitigating the effects of the resultant injury, as well as renewing Daibakusho’s reputation as a great detective by giving him a splendid case to solve right afterwards. Maybe even it was Mitamura who asked Daibakusho Curry to shoot the killing arrow, thus ‘creating’ a case...

But wait, didn’t we already establish that it was Mr. Tanaka who first shot Mitamura out of ‘mercy’? Well, Fukushima says, errr, it’s a little awkward, but... The Angel Bunnies lied.

In reality, Tanaka didn’t shoot anyone. They didn’t move the body in a circle either. The behavior and lines of the Angel Bunnies during Kiyuu’s reasoning were just a performance, which is what they’re best at.

They lied because Kiyuu had asked them to -- because Kiyuu intended to purposefully give a wrong explanation to lure out Esesuneinpina and give the other great detectives a chance to catch it, his own life be damned.

[Excuse me while I tear up for a moment.]

So what actually happened, according to Hongou: Daibakusho Curry shot Mitamura. Then he pulled the body through the hallway, or maybe Mitamura managed to crawl through it, to draw the ‘zero’ and end the countdown. Since Daibakusho Curry had been injured, he ended up dying, which lured more great detectives to the Pine House and resulted in the situation evolving into a giant important case. Just like Mitamura wanted.

We know, of course, that Hongou had to be wrong somewhere. But where?...

---

It’s now 11:25 PM -- a day and a minute to the time in the Pine House horoscope, or maybe just a minute to Ragnarok? -- and Mikami Nils, the last great detective in the Pine House, takes the snake-snake-staff Caduceus in his hands once more to continue his explanations.

[astrolocherry]

Saturn can be difficult to generate satisfaction or ‘good feelings’ out of. Often the tasks we set with Saturn are admirable goals. But Saturn turns these dreams into concrete and resulting expectation. This is an area of life where failure is not an option. It can make the resonance very harsh and create obstruction through our own fears and self destruction. Saturn accepts nothing less than accomplishment. And when we accomplish his outstanding feats, we are not immediately gratified or rewarded or celebrated. Life seems to go on as normal, all the work we have done seems invalid, so much energy, effort, and pain expressed to feel nothing? I guess that’s the ‘expectation’ quality of Saturn. It’s the internal vision of greatness. Saturn knows our true potential beyond the self consciousness, complexes, and worry. The area of life where Saturn touches can feel like a non negotiable contract.

Saturn in the 1st house: Forced to constantly challenge ferocious critique from the ego, trapping the spirit in caged form, the individual can be forced through isolation and rejection and heartbreak to wake the inner alchemist. Saturn in the 1st is the late bloomer. It takes many years for the ancient spirit to come to grips with its human attributes 

Saturn in the 2nd house: Life, stability, and security can remains in constant fluctuation or threat. It can seem like no matter how hard the individual works, saves, or commits themselves they never catch a break. It can feel as if they are forever sacrificing their own self pleasure 

Saturn in the 3rd house: The individual must pass their exams. And they must do exemplary well - even if it’s not their subject of choice. Saturn in the 3rd has to fight a difficult battle with their own minds and generating focus, self belief, and confidence, academic failure is spirit destroying. And no matter what the score, the forbidding voice in the back of the mind, ‘you should have studied more’ 

Saturn in the 4th house: There can be a constant fight for security, stability, and safety. The individual charters through haunting inner territory to find the lost inner child. And it can seem like no matter how hard they try to nurture the inner child she is unwilling and traumatised, intense inner work is done with Saturn in the 4th and there is typically no one there to see it 

Saturn in the 5th house: The individual wages a battle on the ego, but the swords are raised by the ego. The expression of personality is pressured and bound by insecurity but forced into blinding light to perform a script that seems alien 

Saturn in the 6th house: Honourably committed to larger-than personal causes, the individual works tirelessly in the background, offering heart, mind, and talent to everybody in need of assistance. But they rarely receive commendation or recognition, the work is laborious and thankless 

Saturn in the 7th house: Relationships are commonly demanding, challenging and seemingly unforgiving. The individual may be forced into partnership with intensely difficult or critical people, those who echo their critical inner thoughts out loud as insult and become more isolated as a result, forced to wade through shadowy projections 

Saturn in the 8th house: The physical form and ego grips the spirit in stranglehold, the reticence to enter non physical states such as through meditation, union, enlightenment can be inhibited by the unrelenting fear of ‘letting go’. Often the individual will be expected to manage other people’s resources

Saturn in the 9th house: Achieving academic, theological, philosophical accreditation is vital. The individual faces exceeding pressures undertaking higher education and getting their works out into the world. When they finally graduate, publish the book, or learn the reading there is little or no credit from Saturn 

Saturn in the 10th house: The individual is forced to stare down intimidating and discouraging authority to achieve the remarkable vision set by Saturn. There is pressure to leave an imprint in the world, but the world is unwelcoming 

Saturn in the 11th house: An outsider pretending to be one with everyone, or so they think. The individual is forced to acquire, withhold, and release sacred and higher wisdom that can be mocked or branded by an unready society, the individual must continue to share their truth regardless of its loneliness 

Saturn in the 12th house: There is a powerful contract written in the theme of sacrifice and salvation. The individual’s duty to the collective are severe, the development of spiritual awareness and gnosis can sweep the individual into madness like a riptide. There are intense, invisible obligations undertaken for the spiritual nature of humanity

-C.

[myycamp]

Guest Blog: Barath on his camp experience

The following is excerpted from Camp Counselor Barath Vrishabhendra’s recent paper for English class. Barath is a sophomore at the University of Kentucky.

“You should definitely sign up, it’ll be worth it”, my friends told me. 

Before then, I had done only day camps, or at most a single night stay. My older brother had never even done overnight camp. For these reasons and many more, I was extremely hesitant. But it seemed like such a good opportunity, and I suffered from F.O.M.O., or the “fear of missing out”, too much not to go.

I distinctly remember the thirty-minute drive feeling like hours. I started getting extremely nervous and told my parents I did not want to go anymore. We got to Cabin I, my cabin, a cool half-wooden, half-metal place where the older campers got to stay for the week. I unloaded my tub full of clothes and essentials, made my little twin bed, and got ready to endure the week’s festivities.

The next week, my mom and dad drove up at around 10am, looking for me in the mess of 14-year-olds running around everywhere. I ran up to them, looking tired, but high on the adrenaline from the past week. The entire car ride home I told my parents about all the new things I got to do: go ziplining, ride horses, go down a 100-foot water slide, along with an endless amount of other things. I made a hundred new friends, all from different backgrounds, from all different sides of the country. I remember the weather being perfect the entire week, which added to the euphoria.

Fast forward... (now as a counselor) I have had over 200 campers, ages ranging 6 to 14, from all different corners of the tri-state. I have worked side-by-side with amazing people from whom I have learned valuable life-long teachings, and people who have left a lasting impression on me. This is what made leaving this summer incredibly bittersweet. On one hand, it was very difficult to let go of the childhood memories I had created at this place. It had opened me up to new opportunities, growth, and friendship. On the other hand, I was eager to take the treasures I had gained and move forward in life reminiscing on a place I once called home.

I wanted to use my narrative and my years of experience at a summer camp to stress the benefits for children at these particular camps. The ACA, or American Camp Association, highlighted four “C’s” as areas of growth when in a camp community, these being compassion, contribution, commitment, and character.

 Kids learn compassion for other people, animals, and wildlife, being in a mostly outdoor space for over a week with their peers. This compassion is a cornerstone in their growth as individuals and will define their character for many years to come.

Regarding contribution, teamwork is a key aspect of childhood summer camp, and working as a cabin allows for collaboration from every team member. There is a sense of belonging on these teams and will show that every person has a contribution to a cause. 

Commitment is the third “C” and refers to the dedication a child has to a place and an activity. This helps children discover their love for the camp experience and drives them to become counselors and staff members. They become people who want to pass their positive childhood experiences onto children and want them to continue the cycle. 

And finally, character. Character is who we are to others. As children, we are not aware that the character we have represents us as a whole and can be perceived negatively and positively. At camp, we learn to interact with others, develop our character, and treat everyone with the kindness and worth they deserve. Character combines compassion, contribution, and commitment, as well as many other factors that give a summary of ourselves.

Every person who comes through a summer camp has something new to offer, and children are the greatest benefactors. Being in their formative years, summer camps allow for new and exciting experiences to help shape a child’s future and allows them to consider others in addition to themselves.

Parents sometimes do not have a full understanding of the benefits that a summer camp gives to a child. The old joke is that they are sending their kid away for a week so they can avoid responsibilities and relax. However, the advantages are vast. 

The Journal of Youth Development, or JYD, conducted a study titled “Understanding the Role of Summer Camps in the Learning Landscape”…to find attribution between experience at summer camp to development as an adult. Individuals who were in one of these (camp) programs at an earlier age reported a higher level of independence, responsibility, appreciation for difference, and teamwork. “This study reaffirms that camp is an important learning setting and that many of the outcomes associated with camp participation last into adulthood”. So, even according to scientific research and data collection from hundreds of unrelated people, the answer is always the same.

If I could sum up this essay with a letter inspiring parents to send their children to a summer camp for at least one week a summer, I think it would read something like this:

Parents, as a previous camper and staff member at a summer camp, I know first-hand that your child is the most important thing to you. It can be difficult to let strangers take care of your child for a week in the middle of the woods with 300 children they have never met before.

Additionally, it is hard to realize the true benefit of a summer camp before sending your child. I am here to tell you: it is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. 

Going to a summer camp gave me a sense of belonging and acceptance. It was able to broaden my horizons and allow me to try things I would never have dared to do. It allowed me to open myself up to new people, and realize they are not as scary as they seem. It gave me the greatest job I have ever had. 

Your child will be able to do all this, then continue to share it with future campers. They will carry the learning objectives of teamwork and contribution with them fully throughout their lives. They will develop an appreciation for nature, history, and sociology. 

Lastly, and most importantly, it will make them a better person, and teach them that one’s character is their greatest asset. 

***Want to share something you’ve written about your camp experience? Email it to Eli: ecochran@myy.org for possible inclusion in this blog!

[francesderwent]

Moana and Catholicism, Part I: desire and vocation

The story opens when our young protagonist, constantly at odds with the authority figures with whom he/she grew up, finally breaks free of the ties which have bound him/her and pursues the longing of his/her heart.  After facing much adversity and going through a great adventure, he/she finds that the fulfillment of his/her desire is real and has been the answer all along.  The protagonist is revealed to have been a kind of chosen one, his/her rebellion at the outset of the story is vindicated, and a new form of life is inaugurated.

Described like this, it doesn’t seem that the desire-to-vocation narrative is all that rare.  Plenty of modern films are about the importance of following your desires, being true to yourself even when the whole world doesn’t understand - in fact, it seems to be one of Disney/Pixar’s favorite narratives, featuring in a major way in A Bug’s Life, Mike Wazowski’s arc in the Monsters movies, Ratatouille, High School Musical, and now Moana.  There’s a reason the main takeaway from Frozen was the solitary song “Let it Go” - we’re tired of managing our desires as we’ve been taught to do, and when we give them full rein we want to believe we can accomplish amazing things, like building a giant castle out of ice or creating a sentient snowman.  We hope for the revelation that we were right all along, and for the people who questioned us to be relegated to the wrong side of history where they belong.

But the narrative I’ve been describing so far is not about call or vocation so much as it is about progress.  Destiny, qua destiny, is always about moving forward in this worldview; it’s about rejecting what is given in favor of what can be worked for or won, and this rejection is a choice which is largely self-motivated - there is no higher power granting “chosen one” status, the protagonist is the hero simply because they’re braver, smarter, or in some way more forward-thinking than everyone else.

But this is not nearly adequate to describe the narrative which is played out in Moana.  Moana, as a whole, is shockingly anti-progress, or at least non-progressive, which allows her story to genuinely say something about desire and vocation: the task Moana finds herself drawn to is is not one that she creates for herself, and her journey leaves nothing behind of her former life.  Rather, Moana is about the call and the return.

First, let’s examine basic plot structure.  If we look at her motivations and actions, Moana reveals herself to be a different kind of rebellious princess than Ariel or Jasmine.  While we see Moana turning again and again to run to the water in the opening sequence, she isn’t trying to leave, as becomes evident in the next couple of scenes.  She’s actively trying to be a good successor to her father, and she wants to incorporate sailing past the reef into that given task.  She isn’t trying to reject her responsibilities, she’s only chafing against what seems to her to be an arbitrary restriction preventing her from flourishing in the life she’s already living.  And additionally, her father’s objections to her desires are not based on a refusal to consider new ideas, but out of a wish to spare her from a painful experience like one he had chasing the same desire.  Even when she disobeys her father to set off on her quest, it is because she wants to preserve the way of life on the island, and it is at the instruction of her grandmother, who is a kind of higher authority (“I’m his mom, I don’t have to tell him anything”).  Furthermore, Moana’s choosing to return to her island at the end of her quest is not a surprise - she only leaves so that she can come back, all that she does, from the very beginning, is for the sake of home.  Overall, Moana is an extraordinarily mature and responsible protagonist, there is nothing of the “rebellious for the sake of being rebellious” in her.  

Moreover, although in the beginning of the film it appears that the desire for the horizon wells up within Moana mysteriously and without cause, the whole point of the “How Far I’ll Go” recurring theme seems to be to show that this is not the case.  The first time we hear the theme establishes what the desires are, the reprise signals that the reason she has the desires is because she was chosen by the ocean for a greater purpose, and the third instance of the theme in “I am Moana” shows that this call is not at odds with the rest of her identity, but rather founds it.  She can be both the girl who loves her island and the girl who loves the sea, because she was chosen for this greater purpose.  (The line “And the call wasn’t out there at all, it’s inside me” still gives me some trouble, but if you interpret it along the lines of “my self and my vocation are not at odds” and not “I give myself my vocation”, then I think it works, barely.)  This kind of narrative is extremely rare; I can only think of one or maybe two other films where desire is so clearly tied to something given rather than something chosen, and it’s one of the factors which makes Moana so Catholic.  The emphasis on the connection between desire and being chosen, and her committing to follow the call even when her immediate desires and fears conflict with it - this is what keeps the “follow your heart” narrative from being shallow or relativistic.  

The theme of call and return is brought to bear again in an overt way when Maui teaches Moana wayfinding.  “It’s not just sails and knots; it’s seeing where you’re going in your mind, and knowing where you are by knowing where you’ve been.”  It may seem like a little thing, but it’s oddly one of my favorite points in the movie.  The fact that all three stages of the journey - origin, present state, and end - are explicitly included is sneakily anti-progress.  Progress reduces the three stages down to two: there is the “this” and the “next after this”, and each is absolutely relative.  In a series of A, B, C, D, E, etc, each one takes a turn at being “this”, and then “next after this”, each one doesn’t understand itself based upon its relation to the others except to automatically assume each “next” is better than the “this” that came before it, and the series can never end, because it’s not going anywhere.  There is no end, there is only another “next after this”, which will itself eventually be replaced, so there can never be any existential rest.  With the three stages presented in wayfinding, on the other hand, there is a clear goal in mind the whole time.  And, where you are at present is defined and understood both by its relation to where you’ve been and where you’re going, not in the sense that you know you’re doing better because you’re no longer where you’ve been, but that you understand your place based on its relation to the larger journey.  The line that Moana repeats throughout the film is a perfect example of this: “I am Moana of Motunui. You will board my boat, sail across the sea, and restore the heart of Te Fiti.”  She is defined by her home, her goal is clear, and all that she does in the meantime is shaped by both her origin and her end.  

The most extraordinary example of this theme, however, is in the discovery of her people’s origin early on in the film.  Moana rushes out of the cave exclaiming “We were voyagers!”  The fact that she had a name for it means that she already had some concept of that kind of life; she already knew it was logically possible for her and her people to build boats and leave the island.  In fact, some part of her may have desired this.  If this were a different movie, she would simply have left the island successfully on her first go, become a master wayfinder more or less on her own steam, and upon her return everyone from Motonui would have just gotten on board with the new world order of voyaging: this is what progress looks like.  But she doesn’t even consider the possibility that this is what life could look like until she learns that this is what life once was.  Her pitch to her father is that BECAUSE they were voyagers, THEREFORE they can be voyagers again.  It is not a rejection of tradition which allows her to pursue her destiny, but a return to a deeper form of tradition, which is further symbolized by her mentor figure being her grandmother rather than someone unrelated to her or even one of her parents.  

So, at the heart of the film lie two discoveries: true origin, and given call, and Moana’s desires speak to both.  There is something like Aristotle’s causes at play here: when she knows where she came from (daughter of the village chief, descended from voyagers: efficient cause), and where she’s going (to restore the heart of Te Fiti and save the world, final cause), then she knows who she is (formal cause): “I am Moana”.

What does this have to do with Catholicism?  Well, the interplay between call and origin revealed in desire is one of the major themes of Saint John Paul II’s catechesis on human love, aka theology of the body.  JPII writes that our desires speak to our “original experiences”, our metaphysical-existential memories of what we were made for and what we were supposed to be before the Fall.  We tend to think that those desires are pointing to the things right in front of us, and that those lesser things, like a quick trip past the reef, are going to satisfy our desires.  But ultimately our desires point us beyond that to our intended destiny, to cross the great ocean, to give the whole of ourselves in love and in pursuit of a vocation.  Thus, desire should not be repressed or rejected, rather it must be deepened.  Go to the root of desire, and there you will find rest.  And we’re able to aim so high because this is what we were made for in the first place, this was always the plan.

There are absolutely tensions within the film between the Catholic-vocation narrative and the modern-relativistic-individualistic-progressive narrative, but I think the main themes are actually Catholic, with the progressive bits being the aberration.  And even with the tension, the fact that Moana’s call is given to her rather than chosen and that tradition is taken as something normative rather than something to be thrown off, this film has some great Catholic themes that you’ll be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

Next: Moana, Eden, and the culture of life

[ofgoldenblood]

I had to take the time to come fangirl in your inbox because I am truly in love with your writing. I read your latest update for the 'more than a ghost au' and you managed to make me commit to the story despite my not shipping Lightstar. It's a true testament to how talented you are. My jaw dropped at the quality of this verse. I think your insight into the inner workings of Jonathan's twisted mind is extraordinary and

your portrayal is nothing short of brilliant. You make him human and it’s all that I could ask for when he is the most misunderstood character in this fandom. I especially look forward to every update of your abo verse and your hooker au since Jalec is my otp. These stories make me genuinely happy and there are no words that could possibly express how grateful my Jalec heart is for having such a wonderful writer pen my favorite pairing. From a fan <3

First of all, thank you so much for this lovely message. Your words really cheered me up & I loved hearing that you enjoy my portrayal(s). There’s a lot of controversy about Sebastian and it’s always nice to meet someone else who appreciates him, despite his obvious shortcomings & villainy!!Tbh, I will never understand why people watch shows like SH & then non-stop point out ‘bad’ things and complain about the bad guys. If you want drama-free & entirely harmless then maybe you should watch something like Dora the Explorer instead of hating on people who enjoy a good drama-driven story. Drama requires villains or at least people fucking up, otherwise there would be no conflict and conflict (& its resolve) is usually what makes a story thrilling or interesting. I’m sure most of us want drama-free lives, but who wants to WATCH that, really? BUT I AM SORRY FOR RANTING… so I will continue to rant under the cut.

I agree with you that Sebastian is misunderstood, even if most people in this fandom immediately start fuming when someone says that. Because they think misunderstood = poor mistreated little cupcake. That is not what he is. He is a killer, he is cruel & merciless and he knows no remorse for the things he does and the lives he takes. I am not excusing those actions.He is, however, deeply disturbed and a victim of tremendous abuse. He was drugged literally before he was born, with something that altered his very being & gave him no chance to grow up a ‘normal’ boy. His mother abandoned him because the only other choice she saw was to kill him. As far as he knos, she never even considered trying to save him. His father never loved him, called him a monster that nobody could ever love & literally whipped him (& probably other things, lbr). He isolated him from any healthy human contact & effectively stole his entire childhood. This is severe emotional and physical abuse and I wish people would stop disregarding that and instead only focus on the fact that Sebastian kissed his sister.

Valentine turned him into not a soldier but an (almost literally) soulless weapon. He made him the possibly loneliest person alive. I once saw a post in the Seb tag where someone said something along the lines of ‘I can tolerate Valentine but Sebastian is just pure evil and needs to die‘ & it pissed me off so much, because it blatantly disregards the fact that it was Valentine who made Sebastian the way he is. We’ll never know for sure, I guess, if Jon/athan Christopher hadn’t turned out to be a sociopath too (you don’t need demon blood for that), like Maia’s brother Daniel for example, but he certainly wouldn’t have been the monster that we see in the books. I really like drawing the connection to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in Seb’s case. The monster - as the Doctor himself calls it - is presented as a vile nightmare that haunts Frankenstein and destroys his life - but really all his negative & frightening features are a result of Frankenstein’s treatment, neglect & horror. He created the monster AFTER bringing a dead person back to life. We don’t know how much of Seb’s cruelty comes from his demon blood& how much is Valentine’s influence, but I like to remind people that warlocks are half demon too, and nobody would go around saying Mag/nus is at least 50% evil.

A key thing about Seb for me is that he doesn’t understand himself. He is literally misunderstood in that way. He’s never had a chance to figure out who he is or what he wants without someone’s influence in his ear (Valentine or Lilith). He grew up with a distorted understanding of right/good & wrong/evil, so how is he supposed to agree with the ‘good guys’ when they say that it is not okay to kill someone who poses a threat to you & your plan (which is, essentially your entire life’s purpose??)? Or that desiring your sister in a way that this society finds wrong is despicable? (We literally can’t even agree here on tumblr how ‘bad’ inc/est is!!) He never experienced love, never received, felt or understood it, so he tries to bind people to him to fight his loneliness any other way possible. He is a drowning man who can’t ever escape the water but desperately struggles to stay afloat, because there is literally no alternative.

When his hate & jealousy for Jace (who is not even Valentine’s real son but somehow ends up getting everything that’s supposed to be Seb’s - his father, the illusion of a childhood, time to develop, Clary, even Jocelyn for a while, a parabatai, LOVE) threatens to destroy him, he turns them into the opposite and starts obsessing. He binds Jace to himself, tries to consume him, perhaps to somehow make Jace’s life his own. He will never get love anyway (he doesn’t UNDERSTAND IT, it’s like wanting something you don’t even know) so he’s content to have Clary & Jace with him, even if he has to keep them by force.

Now, none of this means I excuse what he does or did. I just like to think about what makes him tick & try to understand him. I love complex villains. My favorite villain is probably Hann/ibal Lec/ter (more in NBCs Hann/ibal than in the books/movies), who absolutely deserves to sit in prison for all eternity, but still is one of the most fascinating characters ever created, imo. His world view, his morals, his motivations to kill and his excuses for it need to be looked at outside any moral judgement if we want to understand human nature better, I think. You can love a character for their complexity and still judge their actions - and I think that is what most people in this fandom don’t accept. Liking Sebastian does not mean I cheer for his murders and ra/pe attempt.

AS FOR THE MORE THAN A GHOST AU, it’s one of my absolute favorites, atm, because it actually goes against my firm belief that death was the best option for Seb at the end of COHF. He’s not prepared to survive & nobody else is either. He is forced to face the consequences of his actions but suddenly lacks the conviction that they were necessary, good or even acceptable. For the first time he recognizes himself as the villain. Not as a monster- which is something wrong & unlovable - but as someONE who did horrible things & has to take responsibility for them. He is willing to do that, even if he feels like a different person & it’s actually Alec in that verse who kind of allows him to adopt that thought of Sebastian being a different person from Jonathan. That gives Jonathan hope, but at the same time it is his ultimate kryptonite. Whenever he is disappointed in his own inability to be ‘Not-Sebastian’, he regresses to telling himself he can never be anyone other than Seb. Jonathan is an idea without an anchor in reality & on his bad days Jon is convinced Alec is just telling himself & Jon a lie everyday to not feel guilty about loving his brother’s murderer.

I also headcanon that Jon doesn’t immediately become a nice person in the beginning of the verse. He ‘learned’ how to be ‘good’ so he could be able to impersonate Sebas/tian Verl/ac, but he never really internalized it. He is still impatient, more easily angered, looks to violent solutions faster than to peaceful ones. He is used to calculating damage against gain & will choose the most effective way, not matter the cost. Since he has feelings now that he didn’t have with the demon blood (presumably) and also a conscience he wouldn’t wage a war for the hell of it or to get what he wants, or sacrifice innocent people.. but he has yet to LEARN who the innocent people are. If there was a young werewolf struggling on their first full moon, threatening to hurt people, Jon would choose to kill them, whereas Clary & Co would try to help them. He still has to unlearn the rac/ism against Downworlders Valentine nurtured in him. He still has to learn how to take and deal with rejection in a way that doesn’t completely destroy him. There are just so many aspects to this scenario & that’s why I love it so much!!

I AM SO SORRY about how long this turned out, and you didn’t even ask for ANY OF THIS *hides, ashamed*

Thank you again for your message & your kind words. I currently also really love the hooker AU and the a/b/o AU, so I’ll hopefully get to continuing those soon c:I have a drabble planned for the hooker AU in which I’ll write about the first time Jace took money for se/x, if you’re interested in that.Unrelated, Andy & I also talked about a short drabble based on ‘The Other Side’ by Ruelle, so if you enjoy having your heart broken, you have that to look forward to.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.:*

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF ATTITUDE

When I said I was speaking at a high school student, just as you'd be careful to avoid raising the first from an over-eager investor at a time, they don't have the pressure of other investors. So I seem to have begun by trying to solve.1 You can measure this in your growth rate.2 It should be a lot more money than a job, but it's an everyday thing in Lisp.3 Nearly all your attachment to it comes from it being attached to you. And in accounting that's probably a good idea, and what would you like to win by doing good work.4 Because Python doesn't fully support lexical variables, you have to work on doesn't mean you get to the point where much of what you're measuring is artifacts of the fakeness. I was only going to use the Internet twice a day. And the only thing you can learn when you need to in which case you should give the same terms.5 And the combination is not as critical as it used to be.6

I could only keep one. Sometimes it's because the writer only has very high-level language. Like a lot of implications and edge cases. And they'll help people they haven't invested in too. This is yet another problem that afflicts the sciences: math envy. So why do universities and research labs continue to judge hackers by publications? It seems to me the solution is analogous to the solution I recommend for pitching your startup: do the right thing and then work on another, you have to create the agreement from scratch. In server-based applications on Windows. They don't define what evil is, but how fuzzy it is. Code size is important, because the practice is now quite common. But the good thing about that is that no one now even remembers, and so on. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a media company instead of a technology company.

We know from Google and Yahoo that grad students can start successful startups. All these guys starting startups now are going to be good at what you do? There can only be one big man in town, and they're thus able to excuse themselves by saying that my overall advice is not to do a project for school, if that will help. Just make sure that you and the startup should have lawyers.7 There is actually some data out there about that.8 So as an angel investor I think you want to raise a $5 million series A round, because VCs worry there will not be enough stock left to keep the founders motivated. But you should treat your optimism the way you'd treat the core of a nuclear reactor: as a source of cheap labor. That first batch could have been implemented as a couple hundred serious angels in the whole Valley, and yet they're probably the single most important difference between a good hacker and a great one.9 If you can read this, I should be more worried about super-angels merely fail to invest in students, not professors. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to make Web sites for galleries—that's the ticket!

But in fact you shouldn't. Many investors will ask how much you can raise. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will rot your brain.10 Without the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. They feel as if they're doing something completely unrelated.11 Instead treat school as a day job as a waiter. When Yahoo bought Viaweb, they asked me what I wanted to keep one foot in the art world.12 Who are all those people? And then at the other makers. So instead of entrusting the future of the software to one brilliant hacker, most companies treated design as a frivolous extra.13 But you have to carry your weight.

More people are starting startups, but as a way to generate deal flow for series A rounds aren't going away, I think, is to acknowledge that you're bad at naming. There's plenty of empirical evidence: armies, religious cults, and so on. That was not, in Leonardo's time, as cool as his work helped make it.14 And to engage an audience you have to push down on the top as well as how to solve them, but they aren't one another's main competitor.15 We were after the C programmers. But if they don't, the US could be seriously fucked.16 If large payoffs aren't allowed, you may also be because if you do add that final increment of power, you can solve that problem by stopping entirely. Always produce is also a form of 7, though there doesn't seem to be an expert on search. Switching to a new idea every week will be equally fatal.

Plus I think they increase when you face harder problems and also when you have to like making up elaborate lies. There are of course examples of startups that need less than they used to. And he has to do is write checks. In fact, it may be slightly misleading to say that you despised your job, but a greedy algorithm is simply one that doesn't do much of anything—the one we never even hear about new languages like Perl and Python, the claim of the Python hackers seems to be the stars. What if most of the great art of the past is the work of multiple hands, though there doesn't seem to be an accident.17 To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. What you don't often find are kids who react to challenges like adults. It's exciting that there even exist parts of the world where you win by doing good work.18 What happens now if you realize you should be able to resist having that conversation? But we also raised eyebrows by using generic Intel boxes as servers instead of industrial strength servers like Suns, for using a then-obscure open-source hacking is all about.

Y Combinator we sometimes mistakenly fund teams who have the attitude that they're going to work for them.19 He just wanted to talk to you about investing. Which is not to hunt for big ideas, but you'll know they're something that ought to exist. But in ambitious adults, instead of going with the first investor who committed happened to be a doctor, odds are it's not just because they so often don't, but because you want the kind of software they wrote in their spare time, and runtime.20 But when you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as Micro-soft. But if you're in the same department. How much should you take? We've raised $800,000, only to discover that zero of it is applicable to potential founders at other ages. Now I know a number of people with the necessary skills.21 The easiest program to change is one that's very short. Work with people you like and respect.

Notes

But they've been trained to expect the second phase is less than 500, because what they're building takes so long to launch.

Make sure it works well to show them how awful the real world is boring. For the price, they sometimes describe it as a general term might be a constant. Ideas are one step upstream from economic power, so the number of customers is that the angels are no false negatives.

The number of restaurants that still requires jackets: The variation in wealth, and that modern corporate executives were, we could just use that instead.

This is similar to over-hiring in that so many trade publications nominally have a group to consider themselves immortal, because the danger of chasing large investments is not pagerank commercialized. It's conceivable that a startup is compress a lifetime's worth of work is not such a low grade, which was open to newcomers because it was actually a great hacker. According to Sports Illustrated, the best approach is to carry a beeper? You'd think they'd have something more recent.

Source: Nielsen Media Research. At the time they're fifteen the kids are probably not do that.

It's hard for us. The function goes asymptotic fairly quickly, because the remedy was to reboot them, and a little too narrow than to call them whitelists because it is to seem big that they consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and would probably be the only function of the next Apple, maybe 50% to 100% more, are better college candidates. There may be the more educated ones.

Watt reinvented the steam engine.

Associates at VC firms regularly cold email startups. Startups Condense in America consider acting white. When you fix one bug happens to compensate for another.

Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, would increase the size of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a hard technical problem. I'd say the rate of improvement is more like Silicon Valley. Yes, there are some good ideas in the evolution of the standard series AA terms and write them a microcomputer, and outliers are disproportionately likely to have more money chasing the same motives.

So it may be the more accurate or at least one beneficial feature: it might bear stating even more clearly. And that is exactly my point. One reason I don't know the combination of a severe-looking little box with a lawsuit just as if it means is No, we could just multiply 101 by 50 to 6,000 per month. More precisely, while the more corrupt the rulers.

I realize this sounds like the one hand paying Milton the compliment of an early funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the investors talking to you.

The first alone yields someone who's stubbornly inert. Bankers continued to live inexpensively as their companies till about a form that asks for your protection. But the change is a fine sentence, but to do that.

Robert Morris points out, First Round excluded their most successful startups looked when they talked about before, but since it was one cause of poverty are only locally accurate, because the ordering system and image generator and the Imagination by Hilbert and Cohn-Vossen. Some genuinely aren't. Everything is a meaningful idea for human audiences. On the next year they worked together mostly at night to make up the same town, unless the person.

If you want to sell services than a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and when you say is being able to raise five million dollars in liquid assets are assumed to be significantly pickier. Even now it's hard to game the system? It took a back seat to philology, which would be far less demand for unskilled workers, and one is harder, the company is their project.

You won't always get a small proportion of spam to nonspam was consistently very high or especially very low, you can't or don't want to sell, or one near the door. Publishers are more repetitive than regular email.

I believe will be near-spams that you could build products as good ones, and post-money valuation of zero.

Ii.

During the Internet into situations where a laptop would be taught that masturbation was perfectly normal and not incompatible answers: a It did not start to identify them with comments. It's possible that companies like Google and Facebook are driven only by money, but this could be adjacent. What's the connection?

What has changed over time. I'm not saying option pools themselves will go away. 339-351. Ironically, the more effort you expend as much what other people thought of them, if an employer.

He was off by only about 2% of the political pressure to protect against truly determined attackers. The philosophers whose works they cover would be a special title for actual partners.

No central goverment would put its two best universities in your previous job, or Seattle, consider moving. That case the money. The ironic thing is, it was so violent that she decided never again. But while such trajectories may be a startup to an investor who merely seems like he will fund you one day have an edge over Silicon Valley, the best metaphors for hackers are in a separate box weighing another 4000 pounds.

[riichardwilson]

It’s Good To Talk: Thoughts And Feelings On Creative Wellness

About The Author

Jhey makes awesome things for awesome people! He’s a web developer with almost 10 years of experience. Working with and for names such as Eurostar, Uber, … More about Jhey …

With so much pressure to be our best selves and use every waking moment to develop skills, it’s easy to lose track of our own wellbeing. Self-improvement and commitment to your craft are great — but only if you find the right balance.

In fields as fast-paced and technical as web design and development, it’s easy to lose sight of our own wellbeing. For many, there’s a constant sense of trying to keep up or ahead. We may not even realize we’re doing it.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you stepped away for a day and didn’t think about coding or design for a day? For me, that’s very hard to answer. For many, it’s a vocation that we can’t switch on and off. We can’t turn it off at 5 or 6 PM. Let’s talk about that and ways we can deal with it.

It’s important to start right off the bat by saying this article isn’t a dictation. The aim here is to spark interest, engagement, and discussion. These are things that sometimes get lost in the whirlwind industry we are a part of. Different things work for different people, and these words are written with the best intentions.

Why now? I’d planned to write something about this topic at the tail end of last year. I was making my way back from my first NodeConfEU and feeling inspired by a talk I attended, “Building Open Source Communities with Tierney Cyren”.

I made a bunch of notes, then life and other commitments cropped up and the article made its way to the backburner. But, that’s OK. And that’s kind of where this post leads us to. It’s OK if you didn’t write that post, work on that side project this weekend, and so on.

Pressure Culture

If you’re reading this, odds are you’ve seen or experienced pressure culture — that constant, nagging expectation to dedicate every waking hour to skills development and side projects, even if your heart might not be in it. This pressure can be self-imposed, and whether we like it or not social media also plays a big part. If we aren’t careful, it can eat away at us.

Pressure culture isn’t something that’s popped up recently. It’s been around a long time, a constant looming external force. Left unchecked it can fill you with guilt, anxiety, and other feelings we aren’t fond of.

Work/Play balance by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

This is a common result of the idea of ‘The ideal worker,’ with pressure coming from those higher up in workplace hierarchies. These ‘Never say no’ employees feel obliged to wear themselves thin in order to progress in their careers. There’s a great Harvard Business Review article called “Managing the High-Intensity Workplace” that explores this mindset.

Social media pressure is also very real. The tendency to idealize our online lives is well documented. We often forget that we are likely only looking at someone else’s highlight reel. That is true of work as well as play. If we forget that and spend a lot of time-consuming content from those we idolize, that pressure creeps in. We want to be as awesome as the people on our feed, but at what cost?

There was a period a little while back where tweets like this were quite frequent:

Get home.

Watch Netflix or do more coding learning?

Seems like a small decision.

For one night it is.

But multiplied over a year, this decision defines your future.

— 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗚𝗲𝗲𝗸 (@WellPaidGeek) November 6, 2019

The message is completely understandable. Time is valuable. The hard truth is that if you want to get far in your career, prepare to put in the hours. Nothing gets handed out. Self-improvement and commitment to your craft are great, but only if you find the right balance.

Messages like those above put you under an enormous amount of pressure. That pressure isn’t healthy, and can actually hamper your development. It can lead to things like burnout and potentially, even depression. What is burnout? This study phrases it quite well:

“Burnout is a psychological syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and reduced personal accomplishment.”

It’s not a nice place to be. I can speak from experience here. Feeling as if things are bearing down on you and you need to keep up. “I need to make that new thing or learn that new framework to keep up with my peers.” I remember seeing tweets from people. They’d say things like, “I missed a day of my bootcamp course. I’d better do double tonight.” This makes for sad reading. You don’t want to end up resenting what you do for a job.

Burnout cannot only impact your personal wellbeing, but can also affect other areas of your life. Does your work suffer as a result? Do you still have the energy to give it your full attention? How about that creative spark? Is it gone? We’ve all heard of writer’s block. Well, creative’s block is a thing too!

The above tweet was a great example of how social media can influence us. Read the responses and engagement. There’s an almost 50⁄50 split on how it’s perceived. This response from Chris Coyler was great:

I don’t mind the sentiment here, but don’t burn out!https://t.co/Ho7CPcamEb

Just last night I had some stuff in mind I really wanted to get done on the ol laptop but I was just too tired after putting the kid down so I literally watched Netflix and everything will be ok

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) November 6, 2019

And it’s so true. It’s OK to sit back and not force yourself to work on things. It’s fine to take the night off, the week off, and so on. Those projects will still be there for you. They’re not going anywhere. You might even decide you don’t want to return to them at all, and that’s fine too! It’s all about balance.

With the pandemic and many of us in lockdown, this trend has reared its head again. I’ve seen my fair share of messages implying if you haven’t picked up new skills with your new free time, you’ve wasted it. As if it’s some kind of opportunity. Not that a global pandemic is exhausting enough right?

Hopes and Dreams by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

Even now, pressure culture is not black and white. The free time gained where we had other commitments is an opportunity. An opportunity to try something new or do something we haven’t had the time for. It might be that that thing is ‘rest’. For me, my weekend commitments halted, so I decided to finally start streaming. And, I’ve loved it! Still, I try not to let it take up more time than my other commitments would. If it gets too much, I take a break and step away.

Handling Pressure Culture

Getting AFK (Away from keyboard)

How can we combat these feelings of pressure? It sounds like the opposite of what our minds tell us, but one way is to get away from that keyboard. Disconnect and go do something else. I’m not saying lock up your laptop for a week and go cold turkey, but a break does you good.

Go for a walk, read a book, do nothing! We already saw that Chris enjoys a night with Netflix! I myself recently picked up a stylus for the iPad so I can go chill out on a bean bag and sketch doodles. There’s also a 1000 piece puzzle laid out on a table downstairs that’s quite good to sit next to zone out with.

Yes, it’s difficult at the moment. We can’t make a trip to the theme park or the cinema or even hit the gym. But, we can still get AFK. Even sporadic breaks throughout the day can do you wonders. I often get up every once in a while and do a few handstands!

This is true even when the world isn’t in crisis. Getting away from things can be great for you. It’s not healthy to tie yourself to the same thing 24 hours a day. Step back, broaden your scope, and appreciate that there’s so much more on offer for you. Close this tab and get away now if you’d like. I’d prefer it if you stuck around until the end, though.

Getting AFK pic.twitter.com/tXSxB52gLk

— Jhey (@jh3yy) June 14, 2020

It might not even be a case of getting physically AFK either. There’s a Slack community I’m in that has this notion of ‘fun laptop time’ which is an interesting idea. Have a separate machine that you can unwind on or do other things on. One that isn’t logged in to social media perhaps? One that you can do ‘fun’ things on. Maybe that is still coding something or creative writing or watching a live stream. The possibilities are endless.

Give yourself space to live away from your work. This article on Lifehacker cites the case that taking up something new can help with burnout. I can relate to that too. Scheduling something completely unrelated to work is quite good at this. For me, I know when the season is in full swing, I’ll be spending some of my Saturdays AFK running around a field.

Footballlll! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/0c1XEIQMBu

— Jhey (@jh3yy) July 14, 2020

With AFK, we’re mainly referring to sitting at a desk with a physical keyboard. Odds are, if you have a smartphone, the little digital one on that isn’t far away. A FOMO tip that might seem counterintuitive is to share being AFK. Share what you’re up to with people. It might surprise you how much people appreciate seeing others getting AFK. Rachel’s been plane spotting for example!

Just picked this up on my PiAware tracker and watched it go overhead. https://t.co/MHPoXlPzmZ

— Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) May 28, 2020

Please Talk

And that leads us to the title of this post. It’s good to talk. Is there a stigma attached to talking about our feelings and struggles? Yes. Should there be? Hell no!

FOMO, burnout, depression, anxiety, and so on. They’re all real things and likely touch more of us than we know. I listen to various podcasts. I remember one in which the speaker and guest spoke about almost an obsession with chasing goals. When you reach that goal, you hit a low. Maybe it didn’t fill that void you were hoping for? But, although I wasn’t having a conversation with them, hearing that did me some good. It was relatable.

I’d had this feeling inside, never expressing it. Now I knew it wasn’t uncommon. So I spoke about it with other people, and they could relate too. One big example for me was buying my house. It had been a goal for a year or so to get on the property ladder. Once I got the keys, it was a bit deflating. But, I should’ve been super happy about it.

Return of Me by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

We could all bottle those things up. But, speaking about things and getting your thoughts out can go some way in taking the pressure off. Another perspective can really help you out! It might be hearing something as little as ‘I do that too’ or ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re doing great!’ that can go a long way. It’s not that you’re fishing for compliments, but it sometimes takes that other perspective to bring you back to reality.

Now don’t get me wrong. Talking about things is easier said than done, but the results might surprise you. Based on my own experience and others I’ve spoken to, here are some things you can do to combat those negative feelings.

Be willing to take the first step. Interaction doesn’t have to be a dying art. It won’t work for everyone and you can’t force others to embrace it. There will be those who do, though, people who feel exactly the same and were looking for someone to talk to.

Speak more openly. I’ve personally been terrible at this and I don’t mind admitting it. I’m getting better though. I speak more openly with those I engage with both on and offline and I’m happier for it. The takeaway being that there’s no shame in being yourself and doing what you want to do. If you’re being made to feel that way, it could be a good time to shift your circle or change up those you engage with. One nifty tip if you work remotely and feel isolated during the day is to set a reminder for yourself. For example, set a reminder every day at noon to reach out to people. This is quite effective. Most IM services can do this. For example, with Slack: /remind me "Reach out to people!" every weekday at 12:00 pm

If it can’t be offline, take it online. You don’t have to speak to people in person. Hop on a call with someone. Or even a video call. There are also so many online communities out there now too. If you don’t want to talk about how you feel, it’s great to even talk about what you’re up to or hear what others are up to. You soon realize people aren’t churning 24 hours a day like social media might have you think. I’ve recently joined an online community of creatives on Discord. I must say, it’s been brilliant. The Party Corgi network has been a game changer for me.

Broaden your scope. It’s so easy to lose track and become so focussed on your own little circle. I ended up randomly hopping around Twitch the other day. And I sat there and thought to myself, “This is brilliant”. There are so many creatives out there doing fantastic things, things I wasn’t even aware of. Why do I get so fixated on my own little bubble?

One tip that trumps all others? Be humble. You gain more from being positive. Good vibes breed good vibes. Plus, no one likes a hater.

To Conclude

It’s completely normal to feel a sense of pressure or get that horrible ‘imposter syndrome.’ But, don’t let it get to you. Do what you can and what you want to. Don’t sacrifice your health to get ahead. It’s OK to step away sometimes.

The next time you feel a little overwhelmed with things and feel that pressure coming for you. Have a chat with a family member, reach out to a colleague, even an online acquaintance. Maybe share it with folks at Smashing? I love seeing what people get up to.

If this is a career you plan on sticking with, what’s the rush? You might be doing this for tens of years. Embrace your journey. It’s not a race. For one thing, you might not even be on the same road.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

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source http://www.scpie.org/its-good-to-talk-thoughts-and-feelings-on-creative-wellness/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/623913046870507520

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It’s Good To Talk: Thoughts And Feelings On Creative Wellness

About The Author

Jhey makes awesome things for awesome people! He’s a web developer with almost 10 years of experience. Working with and for names such as Eurostar, Uber, … More about Jhey …

With so much pressure to be our best selves and use every waking moment to develop skills, it’s easy to lose track of our own wellbeing. Self-improvement and commitment to your craft are great — but only if you find the right balance.

In fields as fast-paced and technical as web design and development, it’s easy to lose sight of our own wellbeing. For many, there’s a constant sense of trying to keep up or ahead. We may not even realize we’re doing it.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you stepped away for a day and didn’t think about coding or design for a day? For me, that’s very hard to answer. For many, it’s a vocation that we can’t switch on and off. We can’t turn it off at 5 or 6 PM. Let’s talk about that and ways we can deal with it.

It’s important to start right off the bat by saying this article isn’t a dictation. The aim here is to spark interest, engagement, and discussion. These are things that sometimes get lost in the whirlwind industry we are a part of. Different things work for different people, and these words are written with the best intentions.

Why now? I’d planned to write something about this topic at the tail end of last year. I was making my way back from my first NodeConfEU and feeling inspired by a talk I attended, “Building Open Source Communities with Tierney Cyren”.

I made a bunch of notes, then life and other commitments cropped up and the article made its way to the backburner. But, that’s OK. And that’s kind of where this post leads us to. It’s OK if you didn’t write that post, work on that side project this weekend, and so on.

Pressure Culture

If you’re reading this, odds are you’ve seen or experienced pressure culture — that constant, nagging expectation to dedicate every waking hour to skills development and side projects, even if your heart might not be in it. This pressure can be self-imposed, and whether we like it or not social media also plays a big part. If we aren’t careful, it can eat away at us.

Pressure culture isn’t something that’s popped up recently. It’s been around a long time, a constant looming external force. Left unchecked it can fill you with guilt, anxiety, and other feelings we aren’t fond of.

Work/Play balance by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

This is a common result of the idea of ‘The ideal worker,’ with pressure coming from those higher up in workplace hierarchies. These ‘Never say no’ employees feel obliged to wear themselves thin in order to progress in their careers. There’s a great Harvard Business Review article called “Managing the High-Intensity Workplace” that explores this mindset.

Social media pressure is also very real. The tendency to idealize our online lives is well documented. We often forget that we are likely only looking at someone else’s highlight reel. That is true of work as well as play. If we forget that and spend a lot of time-consuming content from those we idolize, that pressure creeps in. We want to be as awesome as the people on our feed, but at what cost?

There was a period a little while back where tweets like this were quite frequent:

Get home.

Watch Netflix or do more coding learning?

Seems like a small decision.

For one night it is.

But multiplied over a year, this decision defines your future.

— 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗚𝗲𝗲𝗸 (@WellPaidGeek) November 6, 2019

The message is completely understandable. Time is valuable. The hard truth is that if you want to get far in your career, prepare to put in the hours. Nothing gets handed out. Self-improvement and commitment to your craft are great, but only if you find the right balance.

Messages like those above put you under an enormous amount of pressure. That pressure isn’t healthy, and can actually hamper your development. It can lead to things like burnout and potentially, even depression. What is burnout? This study phrases it quite well:

“Burnout is a psychological syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and reduced personal accomplishment.”

It’s not a nice place to be. I can speak from experience here. Feeling as if things are bearing down on you and you need to keep up. “I need to make that new thing or learn that new framework to keep up with my peers.” I remember seeing tweets from people. They’d say things like, “I missed a day of my bootcamp course. I’d better do double tonight.” This makes for sad reading. You don’t want to end up resenting what you do for a job.

Burnout cannot only impact your personal wellbeing, but can also affect other areas of your life. Does your work suffer as a result? Do you still have the energy to give it your full attention? How about that creative spark? Is it gone? We’ve all heard of writer’s block. Well, creative’s block is a thing too!

The above tweet was a great example of how social media can influence us. Read the responses and engagement. There’s an almost 50⁄50 split on how it’s perceived. This response from Chris Coyler was great:

I don’t mind the sentiment here, but don’t burn out!https://t.co/Ho7CPcamEb

Just last night I had some stuff in mind I really wanted to get done on the ol laptop but I was just too tired after putting the kid down so I literally watched Netflix and everything will be ok

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) November 6, 2019

And it’s so true. It’s OK to sit back and not force yourself to work on things. It’s fine to take the night off, the week off, and so on. Those projects will still be there for you. They’re not going anywhere. You might even decide you don’t want to return to them at all, and that’s fine too! It’s all about balance.

With the pandemic and many of us in lockdown, this trend has reared its head again. I’ve seen my fair share of messages implying if you haven’t picked up new skills with your new free time, you’ve wasted it. As if it’s some kind of opportunity. Not that a global pandemic is exhausting enough right?

Hopes and Dreams by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

Even now, pressure culture is not black and white. The free time gained where we had other commitments is an opportunity. An opportunity to try something new or do something we haven’t had the time for. It might be that that thing is ‘rest’. For me, my weekend commitments halted, so I decided to finally start streaming. And, I’ve loved it! Still, I try not to let it take up more time than my other commitments would. If it gets too much, I take a break and step away.

Handling Pressure Culture

Getting AFK (Away from keyboard)

How can we combat these feelings of pressure? It sounds like the opposite of what our minds tell us, but one way is to get away from that keyboard. Disconnect and go do something else. I’m not saying lock up your laptop for a week and go cold turkey, but a break does you good.

Go for a walk, read a book, do nothing! We already saw that Chris enjoys a night with Netflix! I myself recently picked up a stylus for the iPad so I can go chill out on a bean bag and sketch doodles. There’s also a 1000 piece puzzle laid out on a table downstairs that’s quite good to sit next to zone out with.

Yes, it’s difficult at the moment. We can’t make a trip to the theme park or the cinema or even hit the gym. But, we can still get AFK. Even sporadic breaks throughout the day can do you wonders. I often get up every once in a while and do a few handstands!

This is true even when the world isn’t in crisis. Getting away from things can be great for you. It’s not healthy to tie yourself to the same thing 24 hours a day. Step back, broaden your scope, and appreciate that there’s so much more on offer for you. Close this tab and get away now if you’d like. I’d prefer it if you stuck around until the end, though.

Getting AFK pic.twitter.com/tXSxB52gLk

— Jhey (@jh3yy) June 14, 2020

It might not even be a case of getting physically AFK either. There’s a Slack community I’m in that has this notion of ‘fun laptop time’ which is an interesting idea. Have a separate machine that you can unwind on or do other things on. One that isn’t logged in to social media perhaps? One that you can do ‘fun’ things on. Maybe that is still coding something or creative writing or watching a live stream. The possibilities are endless.

Give yourself space to live away from your work. This article on Lifehacker cites the case that taking up something new can help with burnout. I can relate to that too. Scheduling something completely unrelated to work is quite good at this. For me, I know when the season is in full swing, I’ll be spending some of my Saturdays AFK running around a field.

Footballlll! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/0c1XEIQMBu

— Jhey (@jh3yy) July 14, 2020

With AFK, we’re mainly referring to sitting at a desk with a physical keyboard. Odds are, if you have a smartphone, the little digital one on that isn’t far away. A FOMO tip that might seem counterintuitive is to share being AFK. Share what you’re up to with people. It might surprise you how much people appreciate seeing others getting AFK. Rachel’s been plane spotting for example!

Just picked this up on my PiAware tracker and watched it go overhead. https://t.co/MHPoXlPzmZ

— Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) May 28, 2020

Please Talk

And that leads us to the title of this post. It’s good to talk. Is there a stigma attached to talking about our feelings and struggles? Yes. Should there be? Hell no!

FOMO, burnout, depression, anxiety, and so on. They’re all real things and likely touch more of us than we know. I listen to various podcasts. I remember one in which the speaker and guest spoke about almost an obsession with chasing goals. When you reach that goal, you hit a low. Maybe it didn’t fill that void you were hoping for? But, although I wasn’t having a conversation with them, hearing that did me some good. It was relatable.

I’d had this feeling inside, never expressing it. Now I knew it wasn’t uncommon. So I spoke about it with other people, and they could relate too. One big example for me was buying my house. It had been a goal for a year or so to get on the property ladder. Once I got the keys, it was a bit deflating. But, I should’ve been super happy about it.

Return of Me by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

We could all bottle those things up. But, speaking about things and getting your thoughts out can go some way in taking the pressure off. Another perspective can really help you out! It might be hearing something as little as ‘I do that too’ or ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re doing great!’ that can go a long way. It’s not that you’re fishing for compliments, but it sometimes takes that other perspective to bring you back to reality.

Now don’t get me wrong. Talking about things is easier said than done, but the results might surprise you. Based on my own experience and others I’ve spoken to, here are some things you can do to combat those negative feelings.

Be willing to take the first step. Interaction doesn’t have to be a dying art. It won’t work for everyone and you can’t force others to embrace it. There will be those who do, though, people who feel exactly the same and were looking for someone to talk to.

Speak more openly. I’ve personally been terrible at this and I don’t mind admitting it. I’m getting better though. I speak more openly with those I engage with both on and offline and I’m happier for it. The takeaway being that there’s no shame in being yourself and doing what you want to do. If you’re being made to feel that way, it could be a good time to shift your circle or change up those you engage with. One nifty tip if you work remotely and feel isolated during the day is to set a reminder for yourself. For example, set a reminder every day at noon to reach out to people. This is quite effective. Most IM services can do this. For example, with Slack: /remind me "Reach out to people!" every weekday at 12:00 pm

If it can’t be offline, take it online. You don’t have to speak to people in person. Hop on a call with someone. Or even a video call. There are also so many online communities out there now too. If you don’t want to talk about how you feel, it’s great to even talk about what you’re up to or hear what others are up to. You soon realize people aren’t churning 24 hours a day like social media might have you think. I’ve recently joined an online community of creatives on Discord. I must say, it’s been brilliant. The Party Corgi network has been a game changer for me.

Broaden your scope. It’s so easy to lose track and become so focussed on your own little circle. I ended up randomly hopping around Twitch the other day. And I sat there and thought to myself, “This is brilliant”. There are so many creatives out there doing fantastic things, things I wasn’t even aware of. Why do I get so fixated on my own little bubble?

One tip that trumps all others? Be humble. You gain more from being positive. Good vibes breed good vibes. Plus, no one likes a hater.

To Conclude

It’s completely normal to feel a sense of pressure or get that horrible ‘imposter syndrome.’ But, don’t let it get to you. Do what you can and what you want to. Don’t sacrifice your health to get ahead. It’s OK to step away sometimes.

The next time you feel a little overwhelmed with things and feel that pressure coming for you. Have a chat with a family member, reach out to a colleague, even an online acquaintance. Maybe share it with folks at Smashing? I love seeing what people get up to.

If this is a career you plan on sticking with, what’s the rush? You might be doing this for tens of years. Embrace your journey. It’s not a race. For one thing, you might not even be on the same road.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

(fb, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/its-good-to-talk-thoughts-and-feelings-on-creative-wellness/

[laurelkrugerr]

It’s Good To Talk: Thoughts And Feelings On Creative Wellness

About The Author

Jhey makes awesome things for awesome people! He’s a web developer with almost 10 years of experience. Working with and for names such as Eurostar, Uber, … More about Jhey …

With so much pressure to be our best selves and use every waking moment to develop skills, it’s easy to lose track of our own wellbeing. Self-improvement and commitment to your craft are great — but only if you find the right balance.

In fields as fast-paced and technical as web design and development, it’s easy to lose sight of our own wellbeing. For many, there’s a constant sense of trying to keep up or ahead. We may not even realize we’re doing it.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you stepped away for a day and didn’t think about coding or design for a day? For me, that’s very hard to answer. For many, it’s a vocation that we can’t switch on and off. We can’t turn it off at 5 or 6 PM. Let’s talk about that and ways we can deal with it.

It’s important to start right off the bat by saying this article isn’t a dictation. The aim here is to spark interest, engagement, and discussion. These are things that sometimes get lost in the whirlwind industry we are a part of. Different things work for different people, and these words are written with the best intentions.

Why now? I’d planned to write something about this topic at the tail end of last year. I was making my way back from my first NodeConfEU and feeling inspired by a talk I attended, “Building Open Source Communities with Tierney Cyren”.

I made a bunch of notes, then life and other commitments cropped up and the article made its way to the backburner. But, that’s OK. And that’s kind of where this post leads us to. It’s OK if you didn’t write that post, work on that side project this weekend, and so on.

Pressure Culture

If you’re reading this, odds are you’ve seen or experienced pressure culture — that constant, nagging expectation to dedicate every waking hour to skills development and side projects, even if your heart might not be in it. This pressure can be self-imposed, and whether we like it or not social media also plays a big part. If we aren’t careful, it can eat away at us.

Pressure culture isn’t something that’s popped up recently. It’s been around a long time, a constant looming external force. Left unchecked it can fill you with guilt, anxiety, and other feelings we aren’t fond of.

Work/Play balance by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

This is a common result of the idea of ‘The ideal worker,’ with pressure coming from those higher up in workplace hierarchies. These ‘Never say no’ employees feel obliged to wear themselves thin in order to progress in their careers. There’s a great Harvard Business Review article called “Managing the High-Intensity Workplace” that explores this mindset.

Social media pressure is also very real. The tendency to idealize our online lives is well documented. We often forget that we are likely only looking at someone else’s highlight reel. That is true of work as well as play. If we forget that and spend a lot of time-consuming content from those we idolize, that pressure creeps in. We want to be as awesome as the people on our feed, but at what cost?

There was a period a little while back where tweets like this were quite frequent:

Get home.

Watch Netflix or do more coding learning?

Seems like a small decision.

For one night it is.

But multiplied over a year, this decision defines your future.

— 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗚𝗲𝗲𝗸 (@WellPaidGeek) November 6, 2019

The message is completely understandable. Time is valuable. The hard truth is that if you want to get far in your career, prepare to put in the hours. Nothing gets handed out. Self-improvement and commitment to your craft are great, but only if you find the right balance.

Messages like those above put you under an enormous amount of pressure. That pressure isn’t healthy, and can actually hamper your development. It can lead to things like burnout and potentially, even depression. What is burnout? This study phrases it quite well:

“Burnout is a psychological syndrome characterized by emotional exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and reduced personal accomplishment.”

It’s not a nice place to be. I can speak from experience here. Feeling as if things are bearing down on you and you need to keep up. “I need to make that new thing or learn that new framework to keep up with my peers.” I remember seeing tweets from people. They’d say things like, “I missed a day of my bootcamp course. I’d better do double tonight.” This makes for sad reading. You don’t want to end up resenting what you do for a job.

Burnout cannot only impact your personal wellbeing, but can also affect other areas of your life. Does your work suffer as a result? Do you still have the energy to give it your full attention? How about that creative spark? Is it gone? We’ve all heard of writer’s block. Well, creative’s block is a thing too!

The above tweet was a great example of how social media can influence us. Read the responses and engagement. There’s an almost 50⁄50 split on how it’s perceived. This response from Chris Coyler was great:

I don’t mind the sentiment here, but don’t burn out!https://t.co/Ho7CPcamEb

Just last night I had some stuff in mind I really wanted to get done on the ol laptop but I was just too tired after putting the kid down so I literally watched Netflix and everything will be ok

— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) November 6, 2019

And it’s so true. It’s OK to sit back and not force yourself to work on things. It’s fine to take the night off, the week off, and so on. Those projects will still be there for you. They’re not going anywhere. You might even decide you don’t want to return to them at all, and that’s fine too! It’s all about balance.

With the pandemic and many of us in lockdown, this trend has reared its head again. I’ve seen my fair share of messages implying if you haven’t picked up new skills with your new free time, you’ve wasted it. As if it’s some kind of opportunity. Not that a global pandemic is exhausting enough right?

Hopes and Dreams by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

Even now, pressure culture is not black and white. The free time gained where we had other commitments is an opportunity. An opportunity to try something new or do something we haven’t had the time for. It might be that that thing is ‘rest’. For me, my weekend commitments halted, so I decided to finally start streaming. And, I’ve loved it! Still, I try not to let it take up more time than my other commitments would. If it gets too much, I take a break and step away.

Handling Pressure Culture

Getting AFK (Away from keyboard)

How can we combat these feelings of pressure? It sounds like the opposite of what our minds tell us, but one way is to get away from that keyboard. Disconnect and go do something else. I’m not saying lock up your laptop for a week and go cold turkey, but a break does you good.

Go for a walk, read a book, do nothing! We already saw that Chris enjoys a night with Netflix! I myself recently picked up a stylus for the iPad so I can go chill out on a bean bag and sketch doodles. There’s also a 1000 piece puzzle laid out on a table downstairs that’s quite good to sit next to zone out with.

Yes, it’s difficult at the moment. We can’t make a trip to the theme park or the cinema or even hit the gym. But, we can still get AFK. Even sporadic breaks throughout the day can do you wonders. I often get up every once in a while and do a few handstands!

This is true even when the world isn’t in crisis. Getting away from things can be great for you. It’s not healthy to tie yourself to the same thing 24 hours a day. Step back, broaden your scope, and appreciate that there’s so much more on offer for you. Close this tab and get away now if you’d like. I’d prefer it if you stuck around until the end, though.

Getting AFK pic.twitter.com/tXSxB52gLk

— Jhey (@jh3yy) June 14, 2020

It might not even be a case of getting physically AFK either. There’s a Slack community I’m in that has this notion of ‘fun laptop time’ which is an interesting idea. Have a separate machine that you can unwind on or do other things on. One that isn’t logged in to social media perhaps? One that you can do ‘fun’ things on. Maybe that is still coding something or creative writing or watching a live stream. The possibilities are endless.

Give yourself space to live away from your work. This article on Lifehacker cites the case that taking up something new can help with burnout. I can relate to that too. Scheduling something completely unrelated to work is quite good at this. For me, I know when the season is in full swing, I’ll be spending some of my Saturdays AFK running around a field.

Footballlll! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/0c1XEIQMBu

— Jhey (@jh3yy) July 14, 2020

With AFK, we’re mainly referring to sitting at a desk with a physical keyboard. Odds are, if you have a smartphone, the little digital one on that isn’t far away. A FOMO tip that might seem counterintuitive is to share being AFK. Share what you’re up to with people. It might surprise you how much people appreciate seeing others getting AFK. Rachel’s been plane spotting for example!

Just picked this up on my PiAware tracker and watched it go overhead. https://t.co/MHPoXlPzmZ

— Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) May 28, 2020

Please Talk

And that leads us to the title of this post. It’s good to talk. Is there a stigma attached to talking about our feelings and struggles? Yes. Should there be? Hell no!

FOMO, burnout, depression, anxiety, and so on. They’re all real things and likely touch more of us than we know. I listen to various podcasts. I remember one in which the speaker and guest spoke about almost an obsession with chasing goals. When you reach that goal, you hit a low. Maybe it didn’t fill that void you were hoping for? But, although I wasn’t having a conversation with them, hearing that did me some good. It was relatable.

I’d had this feeling inside, never expressing it. Now I knew it wasn’t uncommon. So I spoke about it with other people, and they could relate too. One big example for me was buying my house. It had been a goal for a year or so to get on the property ladder. Once I got the keys, it was a bit deflating. But, I should’ve been super happy about it.

Return of Me by The Awkward Yeti. (Image source: theawkwardyeti.com) (Large preview)

We could all bottle those things up. But, speaking about things and getting your thoughts out can go some way in taking the pressure off. Another perspective can really help you out! It might be hearing something as little as ‘I do that too’ or ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re doing great!’ that can go a long way. It’s not that you’re fishing for compliments, but it sometimes takes that other perspective to bring you back to reality.

Now don’t get me wrong. Talking about things is easier said than done, but the results might surprise you. Based on my own experience and others I’ve spoken to, here are some things you can do to combat those negative feelings.

Be willing to take the first step. Interaction doesn’t have to be a dying art. It won’t work for everyone and you can’t force others to embrace it. There will be those who do, though, people who feel exactly the same and were looking for someone to talk to.

Speak more openly. I’ve personally been terrible at this and I don’t mind admitting it. I’m getting better though. I speak more openly with those I engage with both on and offline and I’m happier for it. The takeaway being that there’s no shame in being yourself and doing what you want to do. If you’re being made to feel that way, it could be a good time to shift your circle or change up those you engage with. One nifty tip if you work remotely and feel isolated during the day is to set a reminder for yourself. For example, set a reminder every day at noon to reach out to people. This is quite effective. Most IM services can do this. For example, with Slack: /remind me "Reach out to people!" every weekday at 12:00 pm

If it can’t be offline, take it online. You don’t have to speak to people in person. Hop on a call with someone. Or even a video call. There are also so many online communities out there now too. If you don’t want to talk about how you feel, it’s great to even talk about what you’re up to or hear what others are up to. You soon realize people aren’t churning 24 hours a day like social media might have you think. I’ve recently joined an online community of creatives on Discord. I must say, it’s been brilliant. The Party Corgi network has been a game changer for me.

Broaden your scope. It’s so easy to lose track and become so focussed on your own little circle. I ended up randomly hopping around Twitch the other day. And I sat there and thought to myself, “This is brilliant”. There are so many creatives out there doing fantastic things, things I wasn’t even aware of. Why do I get so fixated on my own little bubble?

One tip that trumps all others? Be humble. You gain more from being positive. Good vibes breed good vibes. Plus, no one likes a hater.

To Conclude

It’s completely normal to feel a sense of pressure or get that horrible ‘imposter syndrome.’ But, don’t let it get to you. Do what you can and what you want to. Don’t sacrifice your health to get ahead. It’s OK to step away sometimes.

The next time you feel a little overwhelmed with things and feel that pressure coming for you. Have a chat with a family member, reach out to a colleague, even an online acquaintance. Maybe share it with folks at Smashing? I love seeing what people get up to.

If this is a career you plan on sticking with, what’s the rush? You might be doing this for tens of years. Embrace your journey. It’s not a race. For one thing, you might not even be on the same road.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

(fb, yk, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/its-good-to-talk-thoughts-and-feelings-on-creative-wellness/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/07/its-good-to-talk-thoughts-and-feelings.html

[ilovefunreading-blog]

The Art of Preaching and the Anointing

You can learn how to preach and teach by listening to tapes. I have not been to Bible school and did not have the privilege of being taught how to deliver a sermon. But there are many ways of learning the same thing.

When I was practising medicine, I learnt a little phrase from the surgical department. The phrase is, “Watch one, assist one and do one.” What does this mean? It means that if you want to learn how to perform surgery, you watch one operation, assist one, and then you actually attempt one yourself.

Everyone can learn how to preach by listening to preaching. In fact, the best thing you can do is to listen to other ministers all the time. The prophet Daniel studied what the prophet Jeremiah had taught. The prophet Jeremiah ministered from 685-616 B.C. and the prophet Daniel took over from 616-536 B.C. Daniel said very clearly that he knew what he knew by studying the books written by Jeremiah. Why are you afraid to learn from somebody? Even a great man like Daniel was blessed by another prophet – Jeremiah.

In the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.

Daniel 9:2

Open up your heart and become a learner and receiver. After all, we all learn from somewhere. It is the insecure people who are afraid to show that they learnt what they know from somewhere! Become so receptive that you receive the knowledge of the Word! Open your spirit so that you learn how to preach yourself! Open your heart so that you receive the anointing!

Levels of Receptivity

I want you to notice these levels of receptivity that I have listed below and ask yourself where you fit!

Level A:The Word has no impact. You do not understand the message. You probably did not even like the message.

Level B: The Word has an impact on you. You are excited and think that it is a good message. However, you only retain about eleven percent of what was preached. This is usually what happens when a person listens to a tape only once.

Level C:You absorb the Word even further but cannot reproduce the message.

Level D: You absorb the Word so much that you can reproduce the message.

Level E: You begin to learn how to preach and teach in the same anointed manner.

Level F: You absorb the Word and at the same time begin to absorb the anointing and Spirit of the message.

Level G: At this level, the transfer of an entire ministry gift takes place. Often an anointing which is on the speaker is transferred to you. Like John the Baptist and Elijah, similarities emerge between your ministries because the same anointing has been transferred.

Notice These Signs

These are signs that you are on the road to catching the anointing.

1. You are able to follow the trend of the message; even when it is confusing and disorderly.

2. You receive additional lessons that are not the main message.

This is an important sign if you are catching the anointing on the minister. You begin to understand the mind and the heart of the person you are listening to. Most of these additional lessons you receive may be unrelated to the topic that is being taught. You begin to learn so many little things which may include a principled character, how to speak, how to analyze Scripture and how to overcome problems.

3. You unconsciously begin to use certain phrases and points in these messages.

Unknown to you, you begin to walk and think like the person you are listening to.

4. You are able to minister the message with the same results.

For instance church growth, miracles, people commenting that they were blessed, people buying your tapes and people wanting to hear part two and part three of your message. This is different from dry imitation, when you become an exact replicate of what you hear, but do not get the same results.

Avoid These Mistakes

I am not teaching you not to study the Bible for yourself. I am not teaching you to neglect personal Bible study. That is a great mistake! I am an avid listener of tapes but I study the Word of God everyday. I have a personal quiet time everyday. Many of my mess

Avoid the mistake of not reading the Bible and doing Bible study for yourself.

Avoid the mistake of thinking that it is a man that is going to anoint you. It is God who anoints you through a man.

Avoid the mistake of only listening to tapes when you are going to preach. Listen to tapes all of the time whether you are going to preach or not. I listen to tapes all the time.

Avoid the mistake of not doing further study on subjects or tapes you listen to.

Avoid the mistake of preaching about things you do not practise. Do not preach about things that you do not understand or believe in (Ezra 7:10).

Avoid the mistake of simply imitating and copying someone without understanding the whole mystery of catching the anointing through soaking in the Word.

Avoid the mistake of leaving out the video dimension. The video dimension helps you to catch things that you cannot catch on an audio tape: posture, attire and gestures. Soaking in videotapes, helps you to learn how to minister the Spirit and to minister with signs and wonders.

Ignore the Ignoramuses

Listening to tapes over and over does not mean that you are engaging in mindless memorization. Some people call this, “chew and pour.” I just laugh to myself when I hear such comments.

The most difficult time for me in the medical school was during the second year. During the second year we had to study physiology, anatomy and biochemistry.

Of these three subjects I found biochemistry the most difficult because it involved a lot of tedious memorization.

I am not teaching you to become a copycat. I am teaching you how to catch the anointing. I am teaching you to walk in the steps of anointed people. When a young girl is learning how to cook, she is taught to follow a simple routine. As she does this over and over, she is able to cook the food as well as her mother. With time she will develop her own variations and style. Would you call that daughter a mindless copycat? Would you say that she is engaging in senseless memorization? Certainly not! She is a humble learner.

What Is a Clone?

Dear friend, the devil wants to keep you from the anointing. I have heard people speaking sarcastically about this method of catching the anointing. Someone once said that I was producing clones. What is a clone? Why do some people try to confuse God’s sheep with clever sounding phrases? Quite frankly, I would rather hear my dogs bark in the morning than to listen to such stories!

When a doctor is learning to be a surgeon, he has to closely observe what his professor does. Then he assists his professor several times. Soon he gets an opportunity to do the procedure himself. He gingerly follows the procedure that he has seen his professor do. He may make a few mistakes, but soon he can perform the operation perfectly. If you watch this new surgeon closely, you will realize that he is doing exactly what his professor does. With time, he develops his own additions or improvements to what he has learnt. Has the professor produced a clone? Certainly not! He has trained another competent surgeon.

When Paul was training Timothy for the ministry, he wrote to him and said, “My son preach the same things that I have preached to you. Spend time sharing the same things with the faithful brethren that you have.”

Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:1, 2

Paul told Timothy to preach the same thing that he had preached. Was Paul producing a mindless clone? Watch out for people who try to re describe godly things and make them appear stupid.

When you “soak in” tapes many good things happen to you. You learn how to preach and you catch the anointing. It is funny how some people see things. Someone once said that he did not want to listen to tapes because he did not want to “lose his personality”. How would you lose your personality by exposing yourself to the anointing and the influence that comes from special men of God?

When the choir in my church sings a song by Andrae Crouch or someone else, are you telling me that they have lost their personality? Do you know that they would have to rehearse the song for several hours in order to get it just right? As they soak in this music over and over and as they try to do exactly what they are hearing, are you telling me that they are losing their personalities? As I said earlier, I prefer listening to my dogs bark in the morning to listening to such comments! Remember what Paul said to the Corinthian Christians; he told them to follow him!

Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

1 Corinthians 11:1

It is okay to follow people and to soak in their tapes as long as they are following Christ closely.

by Dag Heward-Mills