bbyolivier

[bbyolivier]

the simplest anti-hangover regimen.

“we’re drunks, not alcoholics. alcoholics are quitters.” thats a running joke in my family. at least it was what they said when i commented on their drinking habits growing up. now that i am grown (and several years past being legal), i get why they were drinking so often. life is stressful… as hell.

need not fear: though i don’t have the solution for life, i do have a recipe for limiting the consequences indulging in the devil’s juice.

one of my biggest pet peeves when i am out celebrating with somebody, i remind them to stay hydrated, and somebody else them talks over me, encourage them not to. to get trashed. so what if they pass out or black out. that’s what’s supposed to happen.

um, excuse me … that how people dies. so no, i will never encourage that type of thinking bc i actually care about myself and those around me.

Olivier’s drunken tips and tricks

drink a glass of water for every 2-3 drinks: its important to dilute the alcohol in your system. yes, you will break the seal, but you will wake up feeling better when alcohol is not the only thing in your system.

don’t have more than 2 drinks without food in your system: listen, if you want the liquor to hit, drink it on a empty stomach, but if that is the only thing in your system and you keep throwing them back … that is the quickest way to end up with your face in the toilet.

break the seal: i mentioned this before, but its super important. alcohol serves no purpose in your body. you have to pee because you’re peeing out the liquor. get it out of your system so it doesn’t wreak any more havoc.

most importantly, keep eye on your drink and surround yourself with people you trust: there is nothing better than bar hopping and knowing that you don’t have to worry about your purse and key’s because somebody gotchu. now, if someone hasn’t made it explicitly known that they are willing to take care of you, drink responsibly, but if you plan on getting trashed, have a buddy. preferably, a relatively sober one.

i was invited out by a friend a month ago and her boyfriend kept buying us drinks and i kept throwing them back bc why not. i had to get carried into their condo that night lol woke up at 5 AM in the morning alert and ready to go to my 7 AM shift, all because i made the effort to take care of myself.

[bbyolivier]

Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, published in Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

[bbyolivier]

neurodivergent women and being more than a triple threat.

triple threat. we’ve all heard it before—someone who possesses a multitude of assets that could intimidate another person. for women, that often includes being pretty, smart and funny. it’s the magical trifecta that allows one to possess a certian level of je nai se qoi. you can’t put your finger on it, but when she walks into the room, her presence is known and respected. OR her presence is felt as domineering, and those who do not react well to their self-possessed feelings of intimidation result to passive styles of aggression to cope with her existence. considering i am apart of this group of women, i find it so funny to watch this play out in real time.

what does this have to do with neurodivergence; women who struggle to innately play into the status quo have this sense of magnetism that is hard to explain. they are weird, unpredictable, eclectic, off putting. it’s hard to put them into a box of how they should act and who they should be and because of that they effortlessly capture attention.

that doubled with the fact that their hyper-fixation breeds them into being chronic self-learners, they also have a high degree of competency, eager to understand they components and mechanisms of how things work. it is hard for us to actively want to do something that we don’t feel like he have a strong conceptual understanding of, through and through.

so here we are, pretty (since most women are), smart (hyper-fixation), funny (our eclectic personality), confident, charismatic, charming, ambitious, self-reliant, and most auspiciously, self-centered. we didn’t have much of a choice but to stand out. for me, this resulted in a lot of bullying growing up. but that gave me the added bonus of learning how to validate my own experiences; a skill that few adults have developed for themselves.

[bbyolivier]

ADHD management is energy management

no doubt, anyone who wants to be more productive has gone down the time management rabbit hole, but how does one manage their time when they struggle to feel it’s permeance? that is my struggle as a woman with ADHD. most days, i feel like there is not enough time for me to do everything that i feel needs to be done. other days, i feel like i have so much time, but i struggle to decided what i want to do. what an interesting conundrum to put myself through.

i had to reframe my perception of productivity. instead of managing my time, which i am subconsciously rebellious towards, i want to focus on maximizing my energetic output. when i’m in the mood to get stuff done around the house, i’ll knock three or four things off my checklist. when i feel like using my brain, i have a stack of books i’ll rotate through. when i noticed that it is the middle of the afternoon and I am caught in a doom scroll / bed rot mood, i have a media menu to help me be more conscious about my consumption. the goal isn’t to make myself do things at a set time, it’s to better understand when i feel like doing the things i tell myself that i want or need to do.

energy management, starts with creating some sort of structure within my day. structuring my daily routine allows for me to know when I have gaps in my day so i can fill that time with the things that i want. time management tells us to schedule something to do for each moment of the day, where energy management allows for me to have free time to get distracted because i know that is inevitable (my brain works best when i allow myself to get distracted from time to time).

my daily structure looks like

4:30 AM - wakeup and get ready for work

5:30 AM - leave for work

6 AM - 1:30 PM - work

2:30 PM - back @ home. reset and prepare for the next day.

between 3PM and 7PM i can choose between the option of mini-essays, novel writing sprints, reading, self-studying and need be, taking a nap. whatever i am in the mood fore that day.

7 PM - dinner

8 PM - shower, then evening journal

until bedtime - more reading or self-studying

this is a loose structure. i don’t shame myself for not following any it of these activities on the dot. sometimes i’ll eat earlier in the day. sometimes i’ll shower at 9pm instead of 8pm. the goal for my daily structure isn’t discipline. it’s to allow myself to have enough time in my day, to do the things that i want to so i can see the progress that i want to see in my life.

[bbyolivier]

[bbyolivier]

olandria carthen

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[bbyolivier]

as a Black Woman, i refused to be afraid of my tears.

“cry baby.” that was a taunt i heard time and time again all throughout my childhood and adolescence.

here’s the thing, as an adult, crying has become my superpower. not in a malicious “i can burst into tears at the drop of a dime” type of way, but in a “once i release the waterworks, there is no turning back,” type of way. i take my tears veryyy seriously. as sensitive as i am, i don’t enjoy getting overly emotional, but i won’t apologize for it like so many of the Black Women i know personally have a tendency to do.

its quite frustrating actually. these women will start to get teary eyed, appropriately so, and the first thing they will say is, “i’m sorry. i don’t want to cry,.” spare me, please. this is a moment where you should be open to being vulnerable because for you it is a sensitive subject, but you’re deciding to sideline your own feelings because you believe you are making me uncomfortable? i mean, i get it because i’ve see how my tears make others, especially non-black women, uncomfortable time and time again, but we deserve better than that. in a world where white women will weaponize their tears in an instant, we aren’t allowed to have a moment for ourselves. again, spare me the bullshit.

as “strong” as i am, i refuse to be strong enough to bottle up my emotions for others comfort because i know myself, i know my heart, and i know i have a sound head on my shoulders, so if i choose to reveal a more emotional side to myself, best believe there is a valid reason for it.

[bbyolivier]

astrology 101 (aka who you are destined to be)

astrology is for the girlies who feel like the world never poured into them, so they decided to gaze onto the stars to find meaning within themselves.

i am the resident astrologer at my job. whenever somebody is a little curious about their astrology, they open their snapchat, hand me their phone and eagerly listen to me give them a breakdown of their entire personality.

i have never had any complaints. actually, i have always had rave reviews; my coworkers are always in shock and awe about how i know so much about the side of them that they do not see when are at work.

with that being said, what the hell are us astrology girlies talking about.

your big 3

when an astrology girlie wants to get to know you, one of the first things she’ll ask is “what is your big 3?” your big three is a pretty good indicator of your personality. i would say, she has a good 80% read on you once she knows this.

your sun - ego. consciousness. what do you want to experience in life?

you moon - emotions. how your body processes your life experience.

your rising - how you see yourself and how the universe interacts with you. this sign set the tone for your entire life.

let’s say i am talking to someone with a Taurus sun, Sagittarius moon and a Pisces rising … people may say that they a bit persistent and stubborn, but thats because they know what they like and you’re not easily convinced otherwise. they require a deep sense of self-comfort in your day to day life, finding joy and luxury in the little things. this is especially reflected in their close relationships, which more than likely stem bonds you created during your childhood. these people are familiar, they know the Taurus at their best and the Taurus feels like they don’t challenge them to be somebody they are not. they can also handle the Taurus’s slightly unhinged and chaotic nature, which may rub others the wrong way. they have a blunt way of processing things that may feel abrupt to others, but because of how well the Taurus knows themselves, they know that deep down you are making the right decision, even if the right decision doesn’t have any evidence to support it.

i do $5 readings for your big 3 with the option to ask a question about your career or love life. DM me if you are interested.

[bbyolivier]

PPG is the closest we’ll ever get to “girl’s girl”

we all saw it happen in real time; with the rapid success of season 6 of Love Island USA, the cast instantly shot to superstardom before they were even out of the villa. most of this due to the plethora of clips of three women in particular. JaNa, dubbed as America’s sweetheart, Leah and her queen bee energy, and Serena, who became an overnight icon after rightfully popping off on her now boyfriend. what did all three of these women have in common? they were unapologetically themselves, not caring to filter their behavior because the cameras were around (something that was overly present with the cast members of the most recent season).

known around the villa and to the audience as PPG (referencing The Power Puff Girls), these women moved through the villa as a unit and considering two out of three of them are still in healthy, committed relationships with the men the coupled up with in the villa and all three of them have had flourishing careers as influencers since, it’s safe to say that the girls play the game right. so how’d they do it?

they didn’t give a fuck about the men lol.

that’s the simplest way to put it. time after time, these women were raw and expressive about what they wanted while they were in the villa, and when things weren’t aligning in their best favor they acted accordingly, speaking their truth and popping off when necessary.

throughout season 7, people were making a lot of comparisons between Leah and the current cast member, Huda. i feel as though those comparisons were surface level, considering both of the women are of Arab decent, but anyone who exercises critical analysis can see that the two are not alike.

while Huda was popping off on bombshells, Leah laughing at the fact that of course a bombshell would be interested in the man that she picked. while Huda was begging for a man to act right, Leah cut herself off when she realized that she was going back and forth with a man who couldn’t care less to do right by her. and most importantly, while Leah was checking anyone who had something negative to say about her besties Serena and JaNa (explicitly calling out the racism and anti-blackness they were receiving), Huda has been noticeably silent, aside from bashing the other women of her season whenever the opprotunity presents itself to counteract her villain edit.

to compare the two … there is no comparison.

back to PPG being the most accurate representation of girl’s girl. though the women has moments where they didn’t always agree with each other, when it mattered most, they went out of their way to be by each others side. if anyone in the villa had and issue with one, they were gonna have an issue with all of them. they were loyal to themselves first, to each other second, and the men came dead last. as they should.

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source

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[bbyolivier]

some people cant handle your shine, so pay them dust.

a little under a year ago, i had to initiate a friendship break up (womp womp). it sucked. so much 😭, but in the months following (and still to this day) the lessons i’ve learned as a results of this breakup have been priceless. mostly because after years of wrestling with my self-esteem, i’ve finally found a sense of grounding within that and my self-worth.

i love who i am, but more importantly, i like who i choose to be. listen to that carefully: i like myself because i make choices in my everyday life that allow for me to like myself. the problem with society nowadays is nobody likes themselves; almost everyone has spent the entirety of their lives living up to other’s people expectations for them. whether they are on a pedestal or they aren’t worth the time of they, they have allows for those outside of them to decide who they are and who they are supposed to be, instead of exercising their free will to be whoever they want to be.

four years ago, i had changed jobs and shortly after that i had found a space of belonging in a new friend group, but after a year, being apart of the group felt more self-sacrificial than accepting. i felt like every time i was with these girls, they would always having something to nitpick, usually, expressing that i was “too much” in some way, shape or form.

in hindsight, i realize that those girls were unhappy with themselves. their circumstances in life and the choices they made for themselves. they were playing life small, shrinking parts of their personality and seeking misalignment, and they had the nerve to chastise me when i didn’t treat myself the same way. saying things like, “You can’t argue with her,” or “she makes everything a competition.” behind their words was a telling story: though they may not have felt similarly, they saw that I placed myself on a pedestal and felt a type of way that I had the audacity. maybe if they had felt that ways about themselves, they wouldn’t see an issue with me.

having distanced myself from one particular friend, the group fell apart. i only keep in contact with one of the girls to this day, someone who i consider to be a close friend of mine, because she has always accepted me for the whole of who i am. yeahh we may jokingly pick on each other sometimes, but we don’t dig into what we know are soft spots. i wish i would’ve learned that acceptance means nothing without sovereignty, and those who want to stomp on yours aren’t worth the time of day.

[bbyolivier]

the fuck is a “girl’s girl”

this phrase has been tossed around a whole hell of a lot recently. notably, during this season of Love Island USA, with Huda particularly, and I want to note that she is the epitome of why the term “girl’s girl” has no universal meaning and is simply a cop out for women to not take accountability for themselves or their feelings.

all throughout the season, we watched Huda throw around “girl’s girl” when she wanted to police other women’s behavior for her sense of comfort. particularly, with Iris, saying that she is not a girl’s girl, because Iris did what a bombshell was supposed to do and piqued Jeramiah’s interest. instead of directing her frustrations with soley Jeramiah, she wanted to pit Iris as the villain because now that she was a variable at play, Huda realized that she no longer had control over how Jeramiah conducted himself in the villa. then came the “standing on business” challenge, where Huda was called out on her hypocritical behavior. as Chelley said, she was tweaking on bombshells and then wanted to put her ass in Ace’s face. but if one of the girls had did that with Jeramiah … ??

the idea of a “girl’s girl” seems to be a response to men’s “bro code” where men have a set of unspoken rules for how they conduct themselves with other men, friends and strangers alike. conceptually, it sounds like a great idea—women standing in union with each other for their best interest. in practice, that’s not how it plays out. the reason why “bro code” works is because all men have a mutually vested interested in maintaining a patriarchal and misogynistic status quo, where women are seen as objects and treated as property. among the community of men, this plays out excellently, but when you start to dive in to men’s psychology, it has its flaws. insert the male loneliness epidemic *cough cough*. they can all get on the same page about the mistreatment of women, but that doesn’t mean that they treat each other with any sense of deep care and affection.

this is why being a “girl’s girl” is misshapen concept. firstly, many woman enjoy the benefits that they receive from playing into patriarchal standards. they are content with the idea that they could never measure up to a man. they believe that their are certain spaces that women shouldn’t fit into. then there are women who may not necessary have those ideals, but they are quick to throw another woman under the bus if it means that they can get a leg up in a man’s eyes.

Huda is that girl. When Jeramiah choose Iris, she was quick and swift with airing out all the things he said behind her back. having already believed him to be a liar, she still threw his word in Iris’s face, in front of all the islanders, on national television without any care or regard for how Iris might’ve been impacted. Huda didn’t even consider that Iris might’ve felt an ounce of the same degradation that she must’ve felt. Not to say that women are too emotional to stick to a code, but in that moment, Huda let her emotions cloud her judgement and foresight, and she purposely went out of her way to hurt another woman so she could feel better about herself in that moment.

That doesn’t sound very girl’s girl to me.