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It must have killed my mother inside when I had my massive growth spurt at 7. I grew over a foot. And I got heavy.

Then I stayed heavy. But I was never fat. I was a thick girl built for moving hay bales and feeding calves. I was literally active for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for the entirety of summer.

But I wasn't the slim, perfect teenager she had been. I was a size 16/18. And she made sure I knew it. So many snide comments, only half in my direction but absolutely meant to sting.

I spent the entirety of my teenage years thinking I was fat. I didn't want to do anything where someone might see any part of me. But the girl in those pictures was healthy.

I had a brief period in my 20's where I was almost thin enough. It was... Not good for me in a lot of other ways. Now, it's the nagging knowledge that I managed to get the weight off once, I can do it again.

I'm still unpacking it all. Still trying not to hate myself after having my son via emergency c-section. Then massive PPD. Because I know I'm never going to get rid of all the fat around the scars. But that voice, that sounds so much like my mother, wants me to feel bad.

Every time I hear someone much older than me talking about how their shame about their bodies and weight have robbed them of all kinds of fun experiences and simple joys and delights in life, it breaks my fucking heart. Older women, in particular, have been shamed into and forced into (and perpetuated themselves) so many stupid narratives about what one "can't do" if you look a certain way. Sometimes they don't even notice it...they'll just casually be saying something like, "I would have loved to play volleyball back in school but this big ass wasn't going to look right in those shorts tee hee" and I'm like that's??? actually??? tragic???????? Especially when it's something they COULD still pursue or try but they've got a fixed mindset about it.

My 84 year old aunt really spent all of her 30s-60s believing that she COULDN'T just put on a swimsuit and enjoy the water in the summer. I have so many memories of this mindset affecting her all summer. Just casually existing by a pool in a swimsuit was something that women who looked like her Could Not Do. This is someone who broke so many gender barriers in her field, who was a pioneer and a bad ass, but who held herself back from something she truly enjoyed for DECADES because she's fat. A couple of years ago she told me how stupid she feels having thought like that now that her age has changed her mobility and safety in going to a pool and it's no longer literally possible for her to do so.

She bought the bullshit and deprived herself of happiness when it was possible, so she lost her chance at hundreds of moments of simple enjoyment she now looks back on sadly.

Really sadly.

I think this is a topic where we can literally see a huge generational change among society right now. The bitchy boomer who says something like, "oh she should NOT be wearing that" when a happy, chunky Gen Zer bops by in a crop top sounds like the death rattles of an ancient relic to most of us in younger generations. After we get over the overt hate that surges when we hear things like that, most of us can see right through that prickly exterior into the deeply damaged, sad, and vulnerable person inside who is the one that's the real problem in the equation.

And yet, while it can be easy to think, "Thank god I'm not like THAT" none of us are truly immune to the messages that are blasted in our faces all the time that still shame fatness and make us feel like we owe society a certain kind of "beauty."

Just keep an eye out for any limiting beliefs you have that are depriving you from joy and delight you want and need. As anyone like my aunt could tell you, you won't someday look back and think, "I sure am glad I didn't do what made me happy all those years!"

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A novel. By Beef Biltong.

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I am really proud of myself for taking a small batch approach to querying this time around. The first set was all "no"s. I changed my letter and pitch.

I got some personalized rejections. No bites. But still, improvement! So I don't think the letter needs to be changed again.

I just finished looking at my first three chapters and tidying them up. Because the book is done and complete but I will always find things to change. Sometimes without looking all that hard.

Which means, I get to send out the next batch of queries. And we'll see what happens.

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Hey, writers.

You are not morally superior to tradpub authors because you go indie. You are not morally superior to indie writers because you go self-pub. You are not morally superior to self-pub writers because you go trad. There is no means of publishing that completely removes you from a system designed to devour its own young, just different means of being eaten.

I am a tradpub author. This means I get paid rarely, by corporations that will take any excuse they can find not to pay me at all. It also means my books are not dependent on my having the personal executive function to design them, format them, commission cover art, and post them for sale. There is so much effort in self-pub. I have sold books to indie presses. I experienced most of the same issues I did in tradpub, just magnified, and with big buckets of guilt poured over any complaints, because suddenly I wasn't asking a big corporation for my money, I was asking Susan, who had bills and a sick cat and needed a new roof.

Tradpub is the way to go if you don't have the skills/energy/function to do all the work yourself. Indie is the way if you're willing to give up some control in order to talk to Susan instead of AuthorBot #87. Self-pub is the way to go if you want to know everything is done the way you want it.

Please stop trying to make the way someone publishes into a moral judgement. We're all just trying to survive here.

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Constantine wants to help. By super not helping.

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doggo's first day of work after a week off

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Having your own personal blog is honestly quite a nice change of pace compared to Reddit. I could put a funny GIF of George Bush getting hit by a shoe on here and the worse case scenario is that no one even notices.

You put that on a big subreddit and you get your eyes gouged out and a heap of political discourse underneath your post.

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When I was 12 I was going to be married and have two children - Kathryne Elizabeth and David Chase.

When I was 9 my mom told me that when she was pregnant with me and took a bath, I’d roll around in her stomach like a dolphin. The thought made me sick.

When I was 17 I was in love with a boy who was a good childhood friend, and I wanted to marry him so bad I chased him away (we haven’t spoken in 13 years).

When I was 15 I kissed a boy for the first time. We dated for six weeks. I kissed him twice more, and the first time he put his tongue in my mouth I gagged.

When I was 16 I told my best friend that I didn’t understand the big deal about sex. In fact, I thought it was kind of gross. She laughed and told me to grow up.

When I was 6 I licked a boy’s desk in school because I wanted to give him cooties. I thought it was something like chicken pox.

When I was 18 I kissed a girl for the first time and thought “oh”.

When I was 14 my friend stayed the night and wanted to know if I wanted to kiss her. I told her no, because she had a boyfriend. She said it didn’t count because we were girls.

When I was 20 my stepmom told me that she thought asexuals were broken or mentally ill in some way. I stormed off to my bedroom and cried, but I didn’t know what I was crying for.

When I was 18 I had sex with two girls. After it was over I lay by myself at the edge of the bed, cold and hollow inside, and didn’t understand what I was so upset about.

When I was 11 I wanted to be a stay at home mom when I grew up.

When I was 19 I had sex with a guy for the first time. I didn’t hate it, was my first thought. My second was that I needed a shower as fast as possible.

When I was 7 I was hugged by someone and screamed because I didn’t want them to touch me. I didn’t have the words for it back then.

When I was 20 I had a panic attack before my fiancé came over to visit, because I knew we’d be alone and I knew I couldn’t tell him no.

When I was 20 I told him no and it didn’t matter.

When I was 15 I got caught looking up porn on my dad’s laptop. I got in worse trouble because it was gay porn. “You’re just upset with boys right now, you’ll grow out of it.”

When I was 5 my dad would read parts of the Bible out loud every night. He paid special attention to the parts condemning homosexuality, like he knew somehow even then.

When I was 19 I heard the word asexual for the first time, and dismissed it out of hand.

When I was 25 I cradled it to my heart like a balm.

When I was 20 I decided I was never going to have children.

When I was 19 I thought I was pregnant, and decided to kill myself if I was.

When I was 26 I said the words ‘asexual lesbian’ for the first time to myself, and crawled under the covers to hide.

When I was 28 a friend sent me a comic about aromanticism. I saw all the parts of me that were on display there and decided I wasn’t strong enough to acknowledge it just yet.

When I was 27 I told my friend that the only time I wanted to be married was when I was sick and wanted to be taken care of. The rest of the time the thought terrified me.

When I was 15 I told myself that no one would ever love me.

When I was 29 I decided that I didn’t care.

When I was 13 I thought I knew exactly what my life would be like when I was 30.

When I was 30 I was relieved to have been so wrong.

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Ok just for curiosity reasons

I genuinely hate to say this but please reblog if you hit the like button for a larger sample size thank you <3

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I forget what we were doing now, but the nitric acid burns I got under my fingernails from tipping the watch glass on top of a heated solution of nitric acid and probably some metal we were dissolving are why I HAVE NEVER TIPPED A LID SINCE.

It's been, sweet Jesus, 17 years. Condensation from under a lid shall not touch my fingers.

sdxfcgvzdxfcgvhzdxfcgvhbjnkmlcgvhbjnk science

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I am absolute rubbish at naming towns.

And scaling maps.

But, hey, it matches what I wrote, so there's that.