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olesyaneve · 4 years

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Elsword – Eve: INTJ / About Add

Code: Empress.

Introverted Intuition (Ni): Eve’s entire focus is on creating her ideal kingdom, not being content to live with the flaws of the existing one. She knows exactly what she wants to accomplish, and takes actions specifically for this purpose.

Extroverted Thinking (Te): Eve views her ideal kingdom as an achievable goal, not a fanciful dream. She works hard in creating her kingdom, even to the point of building a new Nasod servant to assist her and Oberon in battle. Eve always speaks directly, even when she offends people (In the Time Trouble Vol. 7).

Introverted Feeling (Fi): Eve hides her feelings, tends to be rather reserved about most of her life. Eve doesn’t naturally understand other people’s feelings and can’t cope. At the same time, her principles and feelings are the primary motivations behind everything she does. She is opinionated and always does what she believes to be most authentically right and true to herself, no matter the immediate cost.

Extroverted Sensing (Se): Eve’s showcase her taste for aesthetics in many ways; Eve's fighting style is elegant. Her servants are named after characters from Shakespearean plays. Her Nasod servant tend to be beautiful in appearance. Eve also wants to look her best herself; her clothing is stylish, and her hair, particularly neat, has an elegance to it. Moreover, Eve’s good at handling technology, she takes photos too realistically (El★Star Profiles- Eve).

Eve notices details in her environment that need to be pointed out to other companions at El Search Party.

Beyond her exceptional focus, Eve takes the time to enjoy the beauty in her surroundings ("It is good to see diverse places and add various creatures to the database. …Though it is tiresome to fight anywhere I go… yeah…" and "A lake… it's been a long time that I am seeing a lake again. …I don't know anything about emotions but looking at a lake, I feel that my overheated circuits are being cooled."). She doesn’t dwell extensively on the past.

↓

Code: Nemesis.

Eve was a future, big-picture oriented person. Her focus was to revive the Nasod civilization, and did not allow anything to remove her from that path. (Ni)

Eve’s primary focus is on getting things done, and easily puts aside her emotions in order to make decisions. She doesn’t stop her plan to revive the Nasod civilization. (Te)

Eve’s internal principles are firmly laid out and she does not violate them to please others. She does what she feels is right, regardless of what Add tells her. She assumes an awkward poker face. She suppressed her emotion. At the same time, we can’t deny that she is extremely emotional. She has very few friends, but she would do anything for them, even sacrifice her life so that they could live. In the Time Trouble, the main way that Eve worried about Add is not through words, but by giving his a lemonade. (Fi)

[“I won’t go.” “You’ll only get attacked by demons if you remain in this time. Do you think I’m lying?” “Even if it’s true I won’t go.” Eve refused outright. She ignored the now stunned Add as she spoke coldly. “I have the mission to revive the Nasod civilization. I have no intention of stopping my search for El, or to travel to a different timeline.” “…..What about the demons that will attack you?” “Even if what you’re talking about is true. I don’t think it’s something that can be solved by running away. I must face them head on like Nasods should.” Add’s heart burned up because he knew all too well the result of what she just said. He just gave her all the information he had. He was even prepared to get treated like a crazy person. Despite all this effort Eve didn’t waver. Even if she believed Add’s words her decision wouldn’t change. Her course of action was firm. “…..Are you sure it’s not because you can’t leave Elsword?” “I don’t know why you’d bring up his name here.” ]

She understand her own emotions on a level that allows she to both put a name to them and to pin point exactly what she’s feeling, whereas an Fe user doesn’t always recognize immediately what they are feeling (or why they are feeling it). That’ s the difference between Eve (Fi user) and Add (Fe user). Check the Epic EP.41-42 Master Road Story Quest - Add & Eve (Bringer and Esencia)

Eve: Sigh... I already told Adrian I'm leaving. You don't have to overreact.

Add: O-over react? When did I?!

↓

I read the Time Trouble Vol. 6-7 Code: Empress's passage.

[Add changed the topic when the atmosphere inside the tent turned cold all of a sudden. “So why are you and Rena so wary of Lu? Although Lu is a demon she’s…..” “Isn’t it stranger to trust her?” Eve spoke sharply. “This case is different than Chung and Ara. Ara had her relative become a demon and Chung understood this. But Lu and Ciel are demon and her servant. Don’t you think it’s too much of an excessive request to ask someone who lost their own kind to demons to accept those two?” Add couldn’t answer because Eve’s response was very heated. “Demons destroyed the key to resurrecting the Nasod civilization. It was a really horrible event…. But I was alone in the first place anyways. But Rena is different.” “…….” “Demons brutally slaughtered Rena’s people. Asking her to trust and accept demons as comrades doesn’t make sense.” Eve continued speaking with an unusually passionate tone. She realized Add was only listening to her and lowered her voice a bit. “…..I don’t know much about people’s emotions and can’t understand them. But I think that Rena’s reaction is natural.”]

She's an INTJ with an extremely well developed Fi, and she doesn't feel their emotions the way an Fe user would. Her Ni lets she know intuitively what’s going on behind the lines and then she's able to logically put together what someone is feeling by using Te. She can understand, but she cannot empathize unless she has shared experience.

[“I won’t say that I know how you feel. I don’t know about emotions anyways. But what will you say to Elesis if you kill Lu like this?” / “Lu, what do you think you’re doing by provoking Rena? There shouldn’t be anything good for you even if you win or lose here.”] When it comes to arguments, the INTJ will more likely try to convince you using logical appeals, whereas the INFJ will use emotional appeals.

She’s also pretty cutting with her mode of speech, which isn’t necessary for Te, but it’s definitely more common in Te than Ti. Te prefers direct, blunt speech, while Ti is more concerned with exactness. The difference is subtle, but there.

Auxiliary Te: Eve was a planner. As soon as she knew what she wanted, there was a plan in place to fulfill that desire. Eve wasn’t particularly interested in kiss or anything even distantly hormonal. She was preferred to speak and type in logic, rather than feelings. Eve was consistent in her habits, blunt and honest in her speech.

Tertiary Fi: Despite the fact that Eve was extremely logical, she was deeply motivated by her feelings. She cares about Ara and Elsword. Eve will fully support Add in defeating D and returning to his universe. She had a strong sense of morality and didn’t trust Lu (a demon).

Elsword:El Lady

“Elsword. How can you trust those words without any proof?”

She thinks that Add needs to prove his words with actual evidence (Te).

To inexperienced typers who think Eve is an INFJ, please understanding sympathetic INTJs and stop stereotyping everyone. Thanks. An Fi is always less comfortable expressing his/her emotions than an Fe. Esencia is easier to mistake as INFJ because she was a warm and loving queen and she is the only Eve to be depicted expressing emotion in her artwork. (Mature INTJs do not hide from their feelings. They face them without allowing the feelings to control them.) Generally, you don’t see this in a stereotypical INTJ girl, but you do see it in INFJ girls. Eve trust in 'friendship' and 'belief' from her friends, she develops a need for companionship, a connect with people on an emotional level and a deep selflessness. Has Esencia become an INFJ? Absolutely not. She may contemplate the same things an INFJ would, but she processes the information using NiTe logic, not NiTi logic. She may reach the same conclusions an INFJ would, but reaches conclusions the way an INTJ would. Esencia is an INTJ with the perspective of an INFJ. She still processes INTJ style. An INTJ with a well developed Fi will care deeply about how his/her actions and words affect other people.

“...I want... as many of my people to wake up... and live freely without being used by anyone.”

At length.

Personality can change drastically as a result of trauma. It happens subconsciously, in a part of our minds that we have little control over. However, I don’t believe it’s possible to consciously change your personality.

Ultimate-Esencia-Sariel They haven’t changed personalities.

To be honest, Esencia strikes me as an extremely mature INTJ who has learned how to be emotional.

Add:

An ENTP who is depressed will very much likely either appear as though absolutely nothing is wrong, or will retreat into either an Ti/Si loop, or their shadow functions (INTJ).

Life experience often changes perspective without altering cognitive function.

He hasn't changed personality at all. By the end Dominator (initially ENTP) behaves more like an INTJ –he thinks about things that are more natural to INTJs, but his mode of thought still functions like an ENTP.

He hasn't changed thought processing style (personality type); he's changed perspective.

#elsword eve #elsword add #mbti

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cindyjane · 5 years

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where my deep gladness meets the world’s deep need: a remembrance of #teachingdiary

I’ve spent the last hour or so rereading old #teachingdiary posts and remembering all those sweet little details of my short teaching career. Some of those stories have already begun to blur in my mind as I’ve begun using my brain capacity to remember my clients’ stories, but thank God I have this Tumblr page as a time capsule for all those student stories.

Back in June, I shared a brief testimony at my home church to explain to everyone why I was leaving teaching and SF. I recently found the full transcript of what I shared at church (that I apparently typed up, grammatical errors and all, in my personal blog just to remember the moment -- good call Cindy), and I’ll share a snippet below:

... I love my students, and I really enjoyed being in community with them in the classroom, but I really didn't enjoy teaching. Even though people always tell me that I am a natural up there, that I have this presence that allows people to pay attention to me, I don't feel joyful teaching. I feel anxious and stressed out that I have to put on an act when I'm teaching. It felt fake, and it didn't feel like I was really connecting with the unique individuals sitting in my classroom. What I did enjoy, though, were the brief moments either before, during, or after class when I got to check in with individual students, to ask how things have been going, how is your family, did you get to talk to your dad, were you able to figure things out with your friends? Things like that. Things that seemed way more substantial, authentic, things that allowed me to give undivided attention to each person that I was having a conversation with. Being able to help my students individually, as unique people with individual needs and areas of growth, THAT gave me joy. That gave me life.

Last summer, I had an internship at a church called Great Exchange, or GrX for short, down in Santa Clara just because I was interested in shadowing the pastor and learning about church ministry to see if it was something I might want to pursue in the future. Pastor Scott had me read books as though I was in seminary, and I was required to discuss what I read with him. One of the books was called Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer, in which he talked about vocation (a word rooted in the Latin for "voice," and defined as your calling in life) and shared that true vocation joins the self and service, where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need. I thought about how unhappy I felt whenever I had to stand up in front of a classroom and teach, but how joyful I felt connecting with individual students and talking them through their challenges and struggles (and I'm sure you all know, immigrant students in particular struggle with so much, like depression, trauma, separation from family, anxiety and stress about learning a new language, etc.). Helping students find wholeness and happiness by helping them with their mental health felt like an avenue that was closer to how I wanted to help meet the world's deep need.

In August, I will be going to Columbia University in New York to study to become a mental health counselor. I'll be getting another master's in psychological counseling along with my master's in education, and I've had mixed feelings for a long time about my decision: I'm leaving my school and students after only being there for 2 years, I had just paid off all my student debt from my undergrad and graduate years, I have so much privilege to change career paths so quickly since I'm still young and I have no family obligations necessarily, and having the option to choose a job that "gives me more joy" when my parents never had that option to choose. Who am I to make such a privileged decision when my parents were never able to as immigrants in this country?

When I think about following God's will for my life, I know that he wouldn't want me to be miserable working in a job that doesn't allow me to use my gifts to their fullest potential, especially when I have the ability and privilege to choose something else. My parents didn't have a choice when raising me; they needed to simply find a job that paid them money so that our family could SURVIVE. With my basic needs covered, I want people like my parents to not only survive; I want them to thrive. I know that pursuing mental health counseling is a greater opportunity for me to be joyful in my work while answering God's call for me to serve his people, particularly the Asian immigrant community, and I hope that my decision to change career paths is a way for me not only to honor the gifts that God has given me. I think this is also my way of honoring my parents' sacrifice and taking advantage of this opportunity, this open door, to draw closer to what I believe is my vocation and my joy in life.

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I’m writing this post mainly to 1) thank all y’all for following my posts for so long (and for encouraging me to keep writing #teachingdiaries in particular) and 2) honor my journey the last few years. Sorry that I stopped posting after year 2 teaching diary #6... I do regret not posting more about that particular group of students; they were definitely special. But, more than anything, I’m so thankful that I learned so much about myself and the beauty of community in my teaching years. God really made us all uniquely beautiful to bring a different kind of light in this world, and my students were living proof of that. I still think about and pray for them, and some of them still surprise me with sweet messages and wonderful news (one of my students got married this past year!), and I just feel so honored that I got to briefly step into their lives for a year or two and join them in their growth.

Maybe I’ll start a #counselingdiaries soon (but probably not because of confidentiality purposes lol), but I really wouldn’t be the clinician I am today without all that I learned from my students. Learning how to be present with them in their victories and struggles, working through challenges and conflicts together, and providing a safe space of acceptance for one another in spite of differences or language barriers... these are all things that my students taught me. In the same spirit, these are all the things that I can now offer my clients in my clinical work, and for that, I am eternally grateful. That’s all! Thanks y’all for the love and support all these years :)

#teachingdiary #writing #counseling

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sherlywrites · 5 years

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Float

I am floating between the clouds and the sky. Beneath me is Venus, my spiritual home, a planet I’ve never set foot on but am always approaching. Above me, the sun, pricking at my skin with its fiery lashes. I feel it, on my stomach, my thighs, my breasts, my cheeks, my neck, the lids of my eyes. I can see the clouds swirling around me, spirits in a cauldron, coming together and pulling apart in the primordial heat like lovers in the notes of heaven. Below me, starting from my back, comes my shadow. It shrinks the farther it gets from me, until it reaches the planet’s surface, where it can hardly be said to exist at all.

Part One- The Unique

Back then, my job was to monitor drones and droids, to make sure that if they broke and caused some catastrophic error, some human being would be there to text everyone

“The world is ending.” I fantasized.

“Darn.” they’d send back.

It’s not a popular job, but I loved it. The pay was mediocre, but easily worth it to avoid talking to anyone. To be able to stand, more or less alone, on the rails of the dome, taking a break from the artificial sunlight and fake blue sky, turn off my augmented reality glasses, and watch the universe born anew as swirling orange clouds combined and eliminated in the Venus atmosphere, each time sewing a new thread in a rich living tapestry. I thanked the stars I would be dead before terraforming was completed.

It wouldn’t have stopped without me, but nonetheless I played some part in that slow moving murder, as well as in that ornate blindfold over the eyes of the city’s citizens. I, in some bulky protection suit sporting a large bug eyed helmet, crawled like a cockroach across my colony, despising the terraformers even as I dutifully made sure they continued sucking in gas, burning it, and dropping sludge to the ground below.

Despite how much I loved the job, nothing can stop routine from its slow march into monotony, and so in the moments before I witnessed a person I would later describe as the most beautiful woman who ever lived with half her body stuck in a terraformer, I wasn’t really on my toes. I think I may have looked at her without even registering what was happening, actually, and just looked away-- only for my adrenal gland to save the day and send panic screaming up into my head as I quickly processed the sure fate of a soft biological life form if it the terraformer sucked her in-- my muscles responded to some deep apeish instinct and propelled me forward across the walkway as if they belonged to someone else-- grabbed her by the straps on her protective suit-- cranked my magnetic boots up to their highest setting-- and struggled with a terraformer. It would have sucked us both in if I did not succeed in frantically inputting the emergency shutoff command through my AR glasses.

I helped her out of the chute with shaking hands. I told myself to breathe. She still had her helmet on. Good. As she emerged, I noticed she was holding something in her hands.

A little droid, no bigger than a bread box, half burned but repairable.

I started yelling about how foolish it was to risk her life for such a thing. I won’t make excuses for myself, but I couldn’t have in that moment understood why anyone would stare directly into the face of death in the name of protecting a small robot. Why didn’t she issue the cut off command? Why was this particular droid so important to her? Why did she seem so unnervingly calm even after skirting the veil between life and cold dark oblivion? Why did she just stare at me quietly as I yelled at her and flailed my arms? When I later broached the topic again, she stated she did not want to discuss it. Needless to say, though, I’m sure she had her reasons, I’m sure she had good ones, and so I’ll say I’m embarrassed by, and ashamed of, how I acted in the aftermath and leave it at that.

After I was through yelling, she just looked at me in silence, hugged the half baked toaster close to her chest, and said “Thank you.” before walking away.

When one walks the streets of Atlas, even when one looks up at the glimmering statue of that muscular greek myth, the old obsolete earth dumped like so much human garbage beside him, that adorns the spectacular city center, one is bombarded with a series of advertisements for various products and the associated promises of happiness packaged with them. I have neither seen nor been in a swamp, but if advertisements be sludge and slime, then I am a magpie, treading water and trying not to get my feet stuck. At some point, you learn to just ignore it.

Yet suddenly, after that encounter, I took notice once again of how much of my net time being alive was spent having people try to sell me stuff, like a tax on my lifespan.

Was it the moment itself? Usually, death is such a far away, impossible thing. Our lifespans are so long now, it seems like the oldest members of our society-- some in excess of 200 years old-- will never die. Certainly I, a mere infant of twenty-eight, felt as though my time was infinite, and that nothing of worth would be lost by watching it drip down the drain.

Or was it her?

Her simple action, insane, but deprived of personal gain, a glistening gem of selfless self sacrifice, distracted me from swamp treading and bid me dip my beak down to grab it. No facsimile was this, only something very real, human, of the heart, could ever prompt some mad urge to brave the ever churning gears of the terraforming machine.

Two weeks later, I was on my way out of work when I noticed her. She was sitting on a bench, her eyes performing the telltale motion of someone reading off their AR lenses. In the spectacular sunlight, surrounded by people with flawless faces, I felt it had to be her. She had blonde hair. It came down to her chin, and framed a face with features unheard of in the era of body modification. She had a scar, and a broken, non functional eye.

I saw the steel in her eyes, in her face, and I thought it must be her. Each step I took towards her represented increased anxiety, but I knew in my gut that I was already past the chains of doubt. I walked up at her, stopped,

She looked up at me without moving her head, “I don’t feel like talking.” she stated without qualification, her eyes returning to reading instantly. I recognized the voice, but still felt the biting chains of doubt begging me to run.

“Were you the woman I pulled out of the terraformer?”

She paused. Her head gradually raised, tilted, her bright eye sharp with scrutiny.

“You.” she stated. In that moment she stared at me, atomized me, picked me apart string by string. I knew, then, she would not be the type to mistake gratitude for obligation.

“Yea, I just wanted to apologize for how I acted, I have no excuse. I am Cheyenne.”

Her eye searched for my hand as she tentatively replied “Sophia.”

On Venus, apologizing is something you do for superiors because you screwed up at work. When you offended a friend, you bought them something nice like a necklace, or alcohol. If she had asked for something I probably would have bought it for her, but I was overcome with the immediate impression that she did not want to be bought at all.

“No gift,” I lied, “just me.”

How do I describe the process of falling in love? I wracked my brain for a long time over that, for several days, with Sophia always reading what I wrote and insisting it was good, before I felt ultimately compelled to delete it and begin all over again.

I could tell you about her eyes, would that make it seem authentic? To me, they are gleaming jewels, they see into me and through me. They see into the future, past the market, past the companies, past Atlas. Her personality? Formidable, she enjoys her athleticism and practices it with grace and power. When she finally gets so frustrated with the constant bombardment of advertisements, takes her glasses off, and says “They task me” my heart soars. I could tell you her hair is like shining waves, gold sheets of clouds ill fitted with the artificial sun of Atlas, and that when I bury my face in it I finally know what the real sun feels like.

It’s frustrating, because as many words as I gift to her, whether to see her smile or to prompt a new kiss, none of them feel like they truly grasp the depth of my love. Staring into my love is like staring into the void, just as infinite, just as terrifying, but warm, and certainly impossible to actually describe. It’s like an eldritch monster inside you giving you a hug.

There have, of course, been moments. When we were eating at a restaurant on our first week together, and I asked her about her wooden rosary, she smiled in her elusive way and told me it reminds her that God and wealth are two separate things, no matter what they tell you. Another time, when we were being served dinner by a droid, and she thanked it. When we were walking through the streets of Atlas one day, she glared up at the statue of the man himself as if she would, and could, impale him on a spike and chuck him into the clouds. She stood there for at least a full minute before shaking her head and walking on.

By then, I would have followed her anywhere, even through the burning atmosphere.

What I never understood was why she liked me. I am not very attractive, nor am I particularly tough. But sometimes when I’m doing something, like I’m trying on a dress and laughing at how I look in it, or when I’m swaying my hips to some rhythm, I find her looking at me, looking content to watch what I figured was nothing interesting at all.

“I’m not alone, either.” she told me, one morning, when we were outside the dome together, taking our time to watch the new patterns weaving and forming before they were consumed by the terraformers. “Many women in this city are just as sick of this shit as I am.”

“I wouldn’t know.” I said, my fingers deftly typing in codes and reports, “I don’t really participate in the network forums.”

“That’s a good thing,” she sighed, “But I don’t think there’s been this much powerful female energy in the entire history of humankind. They say they abolished sexism for good in 2114, but, you know, we still have way more expectations placed on us. They turn our bodies into commodities, and sell them to a presumed male audience, because of course most women do not feel particularly compelled to consume pornography.”

“Yea, even the stuff with only women in them are clearly made for men.”

“Right, the market assumes everything is for them, or for women to aid themselves in becoming their ornaments.”

“That’s pretty true to what it’s like to date one, too.”

I saw her helmet turn toward me suddenly, silent for a moment. “You dated a man?”

“Once.”

She laughed “Well, no one’s perfect.”

I laughed too, because I thought it was a joke.

My first and only man had been an ambitious one, although it seems to me nearly all men have ambition on Atlas, named Mark. I found him through a dating service, shortly after I underwent my massive body modification. I had thought, and been told, that I would walk into the clinic a man and walk out a woman, simple as that, but of course when I walked out I had no idea what I was doing, and the only instruction manual I had was the market.

And the market always advertised men, and so I thought that came with the role.

He made his expectations pretty clear the moment we sat down, and I was attracted to him at the time so even though I was uncomfortable with the seemingly personal act of being fucked by a man, I allowed him to fuck me anyway. I had been told by the market that sex was free, pleasurable, and fun. I had watched some videos as well, in my curious moments, and it seemed the act was very controlled, and clean.

In reality, it was nothing like this, and nothing prepared me for what to do or how. It was a very bodily, manual act, and if I were in a position he found inconvenient, he simply repositioned me, kicked my legs apart, pushed my back down with his hand. If he felt like trying something new, he tried it. At first, if I gagged, he choked me, or hurt me, he’d ask if I was okay, but eventually he became comfortable enough that he stopped asking.

He fucked me four times before he stopped bothering to talk to me beforehand, and then three times after that. The last time, I learned how truly professional those actresses were, as I spent the next hour washing his climax out of my eye before it stopped burning. I looked at myself in the mirror, at my smeared makeup and eyes I couldn’t even open all the way, and this is what it took before I finally realized something was wrong and never saw a man again.

So when Sophia told me this was because men still felt women were objects to be consumed, like any other commodity, it lit my mind ablaze. It made so much sense; it was an earth shattering revelation with continuous aftershocks each time I saw more and more evidence she was right. I wanted to scream, a lot.

“So in that way, being a lesbian is a kind of boycott of men. It’s an act of rebellion.” she told me. We were sitting on her couch, my head in her lap, as she fed me soy puffs.

“Good, I don’t find men attractive anymore anyway.” I laughed.

She nodded, “I’m glad to have escaped that, I’m still completely pure.”

“Yes if you have any flaw it’s that you’re too perfect.”

With a shrug, she said “It’s a challenge to maintain, so I understand. Our culture is constantly telling you that you are for men.”

I reached up and cupped the side of her face “Now I’m a lesbian, too, in love with a lesbian.”

She smiled down at me and kissed me. Then she paused, looking thoughtfully. “There is one thing of which you must be careful. Sometimes, men will modify their bodies to look like women, to trick us into sleeping with them.”

I made a face “Really? That’s pretty fucked up.”

With a nod, she continued “It is. There are ways you can always tell, of course, by how they act, how they look, how their hair grows--”

My arms curled around her, I pulled her in tight.

“Well, I’m safe, because I only have eyes for you.”

It occured to me only on the lowest level she might have been talking about me, at first. With time, however, the infiltrators took up more and more of our conversation time. I went about my days largely oblivious, but looking back she had painted a black streak on my heart that boiled my blood into self doubt. I hadn’t asked myself if I was a woman or not, but I did find myself checking to make sure I was one. I checked my body, my personality, my behavior, I scanned myself to make sure all my female parts were working, and that my chromosomes were still modified to support my full anatomy.

I was assured, but sometimes I’d say something and wonder if it was too mannish. Some mornings, I’d look in the mirror, and poke at my bones, my breasts. I’d look at myself, and at that altar I’d ask myself what a woman is, and how I know if I really am one.

Then I’d remember that I am loved by Sophia, and got myself out of that room.

When she was undressing me for the first time, I was shaking. I felt her soft lips kissing me in her usual places, her skin white as light along my brown cheek, down the crook of my neck to the crest of my chest. When my shirt was off, her hands worked her way around to my bare back.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered suddenly.

“I am ugly.” I responded, sinking down to the bed.

“No.” she repeated, as she had many times before.

“Do I even look like a woman?

She comforted me with kisses on the cheek. “You are the most womanly looking person I have ever met.”

That threw me. “Huh?”

She pulled back, her face flushed, but her eyes that same steely blue. “Most women, myself included, have come to think of being women as a burden. Some become complacent, try to get by with pleasing men, and others rebel. But you, it seems like you truly think of womanhood as a gift. I’d never met someone who actually liked being one, before you.”

I stared into her eyes for a quiet moment.

I kissed her, she crawled onto the bed with me.

The trouble with gestures of love, even simple pure words like “You’re beautiful” and “I love you,” is that in our culture we hear them so much as a matter of marketing, that they seem like practiced lies coming from the mouth of the city. “I love you” says the man selling you a cup of coffee, “You’re beautiful” says the man to the woman who buys our moisturizer.

Sophia found a way through those barriers. She repeated her words, over and over, looking into my eyes, until they lost their previous meaning and built new ones in my heart, until I could finally walk outside the dome, float between the clouds, and feel her-- the sun-- kissing my skin. Until at last, the sun is my body, and my body the sun, and the sun is love.

It became the happiest month of my life, so happy I ignored the growing undertow of darkness beneath. I was in her room, the artificial sun low enough in the dome to elongate the apartment’s shadows across its length, when she walked in with a look in her eyes I did not recognize. Her face was as cold as the dark side of Venus, her gaze as implacable and consuming as the terraformers, her voice a razor thin wire around my throat.

“Sophia?”

Silence.

My hands started shaking.

“Put on your glasses.” she ordered me. I did.

Our AR glasses between us, now I see what she brought me. My medical report, from the transitory modification. How did she get this?

“Is it real?” she asked, as if she knew.

“Y-yes, but”

She ran to the bathroom, and I shortly heard the sound of vomiting coming from within. I quickly assembled myself into a passable state of dress, and crept around to see what was happening in the bathroom. It felt like the city itself was tilting underneath me, and my soul was outside the dome-- eyes pressed to the glass-- watching, unable to act.

“Soph…” and I saw her, bent over the waste tube, her fingers down her throat as if she needed to get the poison out. She was hurting herself.

“Sophia!” I cried, trying to pull her away from her altar of viscera.

“Get away!” she screamed, swatting at me “Get away from me.” she glared at me, pure hatred in her eyes, hatred for me. I still didn’t understand, I backed away from her.

“You did this to me.” she stepped toward me, I stepped back. “You tricked me, you raped me. How? How could you? You soulless bastard. You fucking filth.”

I could hear her anger rising, but I wasn’t prepared for any kind of scenario in which I had to flee from her apartment, so I cowered, I cowered until she towered over me.

“I don’t-- I don’t understand Sophie, I don--”

She grabbed me by my shoulders and shoved me, shoved me out, towards the door, I scrambled to grab for the handle, to pull it, to get an opening, and she shoved me out, screaming at me until she could no longer see me, and I had gone.

What no one tells you about trauma is the horrendously painful adjustment period your mind takes to accept its new reality. For the next few days, I still expected Sophia to message me, to knock on my apartment door, and I looked for her. I never saw her, not there, not on the streets, not at work, not at restaurants, not in the city square, at the statue of Atlas. I sat down in the city square, still numb, still failing to understand, and I looked at that statue.

Had I become him? Had I become an object of marketing myself, deluded by my desire to occupy a role in society to which I did not belong, and enabled by the ever eager engines of consumption to chew my own body and spit it out in the form of a woman, for the sole purpose of an attack on womanhood itself? I had done everything to my body I thought I needed to do, I had the breasts, the vagina, the skin, the face, the hair, the womb and the chromosomes. But they were all the result of body modification, the product, the market, Atlas itself, shifting and breaking down my body into its idea of a woman, for no reason other than that I paid it to.

If that was all true, then how should I become a woman, then? What did I need to do, where did I need to go, who did I need to talk to. I needed to be a woman, to be back with the person who loved me as a woman loves another. But there is no one, no one to tell me the path, no one but Sophia.

Cheyenne:

So, even though I should have left her alone, I messaged her.

Sophie?

Sophie? Please talk to me.

Sophie…

Please. Sophie, I’m sorry.

I should have told you.

But I didn’t mean to take something away from you.

You know I’d never do that.

Sophie?

Sophie, just tell me, what… what do I need to do? How can I be a woman, then?

I just want to be a girl, I just want to see you again.

Sophie.

I saved your life, Sophia.

I saved your life. The terraformer.

The terraformer.

You owe me an answer. Please.

Sophia:

Nothing

Cheyenne:

What?

Sophia:

There is nothing you can do. You will always be a man. You were born that way, you will die that way. Good bye.

I spent the next few days sobbing into the mirror, my body and face now the mutilated corpse of a delusional man. It had become apart from me, something I controlled like a twisted puppet on the strings of a pervert’s sick joke. I punched my mirror, I shattered its glass, I let it fall about my bathroom, I watched it sit on my floor, specked with my blood.

When I first stepped outside the dome, in my suit, I looked over the edge, and I was afraid of falling, falling to my death. I was worried Venus would swallow me whole, but I should have been afraid it would spit me back out, out into the vacuum, into the darkness, the abyss.

If those old gods wanted my blood, they could have it. I dragged that broken glass across my wrist, and the sting-- the pain-- gave me a rush, filled me with adrenaline. It was like an old friend, one I hadn’t seen since the days of my boyhood, since Mark. His shadow welcomed me back, with open arms, he caressed me, he fondled me. I gave him more blood, I squeezed my hand and watched it slowly drip down onto the sink like the sands of time, forming stalagmites, pointing up at me out of my twisted altar. Did it want my heart, then? It could have it, I could rip it out of my chest and throw it down to those old gods, they could drag it screaming before the squirming waves of viscera and vile sludge, and I would just look down at it, watch it sink and beg me to save it until I was free of it, and could see it no longer.

I looked down at my arm. It would be that easy, I had already done it twice. I needed only do it down my vein instead of across, a longer cut, but the last one I would need to do.

I put the glass back down. I turned around and walked into my kitchen, squirting some healing sealant on my cuts.

I guess I am stuck being alive.

God damn it.

Part 2- Sophia of the Spectacle

I am Sophia.

What is intelligence? How does one define self awareness? It is the year 2321 and still artists have had much more luck defining this than scientists.

It’s okay, because scientists have yet to even make any more significant progress on technology since 2200, when a high efficiency fusion drive was invented to take us to Jupiter. We started a colony there, but turns out Jupiter’s resources didn’t justify the cost of shipping, and it was shuttered, with a hundred thousand souls still aboard to attempt to solve the problem of keeping themselves alive without inner planet support, and failing. Ah, progress.

The earth, meanwhile, has been recovering. They constructed great big nuclear powered hydroponic carbon dioxide scrubbers, which is to say massive amounts of algae. It’s the biggest construction project humanity has ever taken besides Atlas itself, and it was prompted by the leavings of the very people who live on this planet with me right now. Conveniently, they forgot to take a headcount of the people who died during the climate collapse of the 22nd century, so no one knows how many died during the ensuing refugee crises and desertification.

Puts our problems into perspective, doesn’t it? Atlas values empathy as much as it values obstinate women. Simple feminine compassion, the compassion of the life giver, is not just useless feelings we abandoned when we became enlightened. It is revolutionary.

That’s why I dived into the terraformer after that droid. It’s the closest thing to an animal we’ve got here, it’s the other, and they are programmed to want to live. Don’t they have the right, then? And if we can’t even define our own self awareness, what right do we have to assume it is lacking in the intelligences we’ve created. It’s doing okay now, by the way. I fixed it.

I never told Cheyenne I acquired my facial scars the same way.

I guess I am brave, but really I mostly did not care if I lived or died. I’m not depressed, necessarily, but life is such a burden. Atlas is so large, so strong, and it seems like nothing I do can even free me from his influence, let alone kill him.

I once told Cheyenne that God and wealth are two separate things. I said this because on Atlas, religion is not all that uncommon, but what they preach is that wealth is a sign of how blessed God has made you. Ancillary is the assumption that if you do not have wealth, you are not blessed, with the unspoken conclusion being that Atlas is the most holy city of God ever built. A utopia, a paradise.

They don’t enforce our standards of wealth through taxes, however. That would be oppressive government overreach. Rather, everyone pays rent to the company which built Atlas, the company in which my father is the Chief Technology Officer, and those who can’t afford their rent are shipped off world. This is different from taxes, somehow. Naturally, this isn’t true of top corporate officials of companies throughout Atlas. They own shares in the company, and those shares represent their private property, so far as one can own slices of air on a slowly falling city of garbage. It makes as much sense as them owning the ground we’ll be landing on.

When I was a little girl, I told my father I couldn’t wait to see the world outside the dome. He patted my head, smiled, and said me neither. The first terraforming project ever completed, and certainly the most impressive. Who else but the geniuses of Atlas could achieve such a thing? Could they have with the burden of Earth on their shoulders?

As I got older, I discovered that I am not attracted to men. Never have been, never will be, ever. Men do not disgust me, but the thought of fucking one did. I thought of it as an inherently undignified act, where your body yields and is spread by some force, to feed the pleasure of a man who sweats and labors over you. I found it unappealing.

This never deterred men, though, they always tried to fuck me regardless. If I said no, it took some time for them to respond and stop trying. Somehow, even though homophobia was abolished, men still have trouble accepting that a woman may not be attracted to them, and they act with accorded offense and entitlement if you try to tell them.

My first partner and I bonded over this. We were together until we started working. Then she was shipped off world for refusing to sleep with her employer.

I responded with a deep and terrible rage. I responded with lies, and slander, and manipulation, and I got that employer fired and shipped off world too. It didn’t mean my partner could come back, no one evicted from Atlas can ever find a job here again. I turned my eyes to the patriarchy instead, I fought sexist employers wherever I could find them, I joined with like minded women, I communicated with them constantly. My father seemed perfectly willing to help, but then I learned he was getting them new jobs in other parts of Atlas, so I started to hate him too, and I was thrust from power, working outside the dome as an engineer.

People like me have existed throughout history, I realized, and never succeeded in destroying the patriarchy. Why? I searched for answers, and Atlas happily obliged.

They gave me transsexuals.

Infiltrators, who degenerate feminism by entering into it and replacing women with men. Atlas was pumping out women in the image of men’s imaginations, perfectly servile, willing, baby making sluts, and the women who weren’t keeping up had a few options.

Become feminine and submissive, become men, or die.

Everything made sense, then. The patriarchy was inside feminism, and that is where it needed to be hunted first, and so I did, I tracked them down where I could and exposed them, I attempted to insight rage against the clinics, and I once again found the ears of my father listening and nodding. He said he didn’t like it either, but they were reliable consumers of body modification, and so we would need to wait for the company to go under before we could do anything about the degeneracy on Atlas.

So I spread my message, and waited, and hoped.

Then I met Cheyenne.

I had spent so much time hating people like her, I hadn’t really met one, which is how I became convinced with time of her authenticity. That attracted me to her in the first place; sure I dived in after a droid, but she dived in after a person, and I came to saw her ensuing rage as a concern for the safety of others, not as concern for herself. Most people would have let me get sucked in, after all.

I later learned that she is a massive dork, and that she truly loves Venus. No one loves Venus, people “love” Atlas, but Cheyenne loves Venus. The planet as it is now, with all its inhabitability and dangerous temperature shifts. She loves it. She also loves being a woman, which should have given me a clue because most women definitely do not love it-- it comes with so many burdens to bear-- but it seemed like she could shrug those off.

After I threw her out of my home, I cried for the lost idea of my virginity, and I tried to go to bed, but sleep eluded me. What I had done haunted me, not because I thought it was wrong, but because I felt pity for the pain and fear I had seen on her face. No one had ever been personally, physically afraid of me before, but I saw it in her eyes.

She was afraid I might beat her.

I steeled myself. My identity was under attack, after all, and I might need to do some unfortunate things to protect it. I was not going to let her erase me.

She had seemed like a woman to me, though. I was well and truly convinced. What the fuck? But that didn’t matter. I told myself of course the patriarchy would send its greatest trickster after its most dangerous foe.

Then she messaged me, asking what she needed to do in order to become a woman. I just stared at that message for a few minutes. This creature was seriously deluded. Again I felt the sting of pity, and if I had thought there was some way, in that moment, then I would have told her, but I knew there wasn’t. So I told myself I would help her by mercifully rescuing her from her own delusions.

The question stuck in my mind. What is a woman, anyway? How does one become female? Was I a woman when I was born, or did I become one by being born a female baby? The sensible answer is that I was just an infant, unless I had some female soul in my body which made me a woman even when I had none of the traits. But if I had a female soul, then couldn’t Cheyenne have one? I rejected this explanation, I had tread too far into nonsense. Why would God make a male baby and put a female soul inside it?

Then was her need to be a woman some kind of disease? An illness, which needed to be cured but which Atlas had turned into a consumer category for its commodities?

I wracked my brain, I researched, I found so many people offering explanations but none of them agreed, none of them had all the answers. I learned one man suggested they had some sort of sexual fetish which drove the transition. I found this compelling, and then learned that after the transition this fetish nearly disappeared, and that the way they think about their own body nearly precisely mirrors the way I think about mine. Some people suggested that human genes become broken and useless when mixed with the blood of different races. What the fuck?

I needed answers, I chomped through volumes, I chewed them up, I spit them out like sludge onto the floor. In my hatred, I burned through the knowledge of mankind, all its garbage science, and found nothing. I stood at my window, pounding my hand against the glass in frustration, when I realized something. I looked out at the dome and realized what I had lost.

My ability to accept the unexplained. Yes, my ability to dwell in and appreciate inhospitable knowledge was gone, I had lost it, and in its wake I had left a great deal of absolute junk, and the more I burned through the more junk I would accumulate.

I had become Atlas, I had become the city, consuming womanhood, consuming the very mother of women, in my ever expanding need to dominate the universe, to be the captain and steer the ship. When I reach the surface, finding nothing, finding no explanation, no meaning, no God, I will move on, I will go to a different planet and consume it instead, just like I consumed Mother Earth, for I am Atlas, eater of worlds, and breaker of women.

Part 3: Why Eve Ate the Apple

I woke out of my stupor one morning to see Sophia had messaged me.

Let’s talk.

I rolled out of bed and into the shower. As the warm water cascaded down my body, I looked down at scabs and scars on my wrists. I wore long sleeves to cover them. I had put in the code to buy a new mirror by then, and a droid had come in and installed it. I thanked it on its way out without thinking, and stood there at the mirror staring at myself. I didn’t feel as in touch with my body as I did before, but sheer inertia had left self loathing too boring of an exercise, so our relationship could be strictly professional.

I looked fine. I shrugged, and walked out the door.

As I tread down the streets, I started thinking. You know, I’ve attempted to describe these streets in as much poetic language as I could in this work, but the truth is most of the time they aren’t oppressive, or like a swamp, or even like so much garbage. The truth is, most of the time they’re boring. Because I grew up here, I really am used to them, and the insidious thing about alienation is you just get used to it. You get accustomed to feeling you don’t belong, because you forget what belonging feels like, if you ever even knew.

And as I walked to the bench to meet her, I thought of all of these supposedly faceless people, with their perfectly constructed faces. Previously, on some level, in my mind, I had sorted them into some hierarchy beneath me. I thought of them as robots, all the same, with Sophia and I the unique, the special among them. I thought we were better than them.

We weren’t. And I looked at them then, on these streets, and realized they must feel the same thing I did, but in a different way. Or maybe they have different ways of coping, maybe their manufactured faces are necessary for their survival. Maybe to not feel alienated from the spectacle, they must allow it to enter into their minds, and change their bodies.

Maybe that’s what I did, to an extent. My change was the expression of an inner truth, something that came from inside, but the reason the inside and the outside are so difficult to separate is because they aren’t so different. The people around us shape who we are, and we shape them in return. People could have perceived me as a woman when I had my male body, but they weren’t going to do that, so I responded to the situation I was in.

I walked into the restaurant, with my epiphany less like a light and more like sobriety.

I navigated the tables toward Sophia, feeling weird. She had a look on her face, mostly confusion. But maybe it’s a good thing to be confused.

I sat down the table beside her, letting the ambiance of the restaurant drift between us.

Each tick of the clock meets the air like lithium; it combusts and turns to smoke, slipping through your fingers, irretrievable. If I could catch one, I could have done something differently, and repair this distance between us, between me and a woman I used to love.

Instead, she slowly extended her hand across the table.

And I took it.

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keithxhappiness · 5 years

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Voltron S8 Review (SPOILERS)

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR VOLTRON SEASON 8 PEOPLE!

OK, so I just finished Voltron Season 8. I had to watch it a day late because I went to see Into the Spiderverse (which was REVOLUTIONARY btw, I highly recommend seeing and supporting it!)

One of my biggest fears about watching it late was that something would be spoiled for me by twitter/tumblr/youtube, and although I got through it without any spoilers, I did see some general negativity surrounding the finale, without really knowing why though.

But after finishing it, I took a look at some of the comments to try to decipher what it was that made people think it was so terrible! So, here are my thoughts on the finale itself, and on peoples’ thoughts about the finale:

First, I would just like to say thank you to Voltron.

I have never been one for shipping battles, and I was never concerned with all of the controversy surrounding the political statements that could be made through the show.

My main focus was the story, and my connection to the characters, particularly Keith. No, not just because I think he’s insanely attractive.

Because, he reminds me of myself…I also struggle with trusting other people, and I often think I can do everything myself or that it would be easier if I took control of the situation. I’m not patient enough to give others a chance, which is something I recognize and am working to change.

So, Keith’s development embodies my own objectives. Which is part of the reason why I love him (the other being how HOT he is).

Keith aside, everything in this season was meant to display the core idea of this story: strength through unity. It is something I hope to truly experience one day, and I think it has been demonstrated beautifully throughout the show.

It is obvious to me that a lot of effort, thought, and work has been put into animating and producing this series, something that I am angered to see not appreciated enough.

Even when you don’t enjoy certain aspects of the story, there is NO DOUBT that the creators deserve respect. Respect needs to accompany criticism of the series, or else how can you possibly expect the creators to respect your criticisms?

So, to everyone who worked on Voltron, from the seeds of its creation to its conclusion, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, and I wish you the best in all your future endeavours.

I can’t wait to see what you come up with next :)

I guess I shall split this next part of the review into things I didn’t particularly like, and things that I liked.

Starting with the things I personally didn’t enjoy (and some other commentary):

a) Allura and Lance:

Ah yes, the dreaded Allurance. Although I said that I wasn’t heavily involved in shipping in this show, I was unfortunately all too aware of the war waged within the fandom, which frankly, was more chaotic than the war in the show itself :’)

Other than Lotura, I didn’t ship anyone with anyone else, personally. And I understood the resistance to Allura and Lance becoming a couple. I didn’t feel any chemistry between the two of them, and particularly for Allura, I only felt that she saw Lance as her family, just as she saw all the others.

Like, when he confessed to loving her in Episode 1, I felt that her reaction was something akin to “UM, cool, cool. Same here." However, there is no denying that the seeds for this union were planted from the start of the show. It would be foolish to think that this wasn’t their plan all along, really.

But somehow, it just didn’t click. I can’t wrap my head around why, though! For me, I think that I prefer the idea of two characters coming together as friends, and then romantically, if they’ve been helping one another overcome some emotional trauma. You could argue that Lance was doing that for Allura, but it didn’t really happen until this specific season, and so, it didn’t quite establish the strength of their bond in time for their romance to feel like anything but just something that happened.

ALL THAT SAID, their scenes together were still very cute…and the Altean markings she left behind on his face BROKE ME. If only the strength of their union, and their mutual love for eachother, was established a little earlier - season 6, maybe - it may have felt more right.

And when she left him behind, I expected MORE from him, resistance-wise. I didn’t like that he just…let her go, after a few tears and a kiss. I wanted him to pull her back, to offer himself instead, or to see him destroyed when they were returned to their reality.

But, I’ve never experienced this type of loss before. And, maybe, deep-down, he knew that he could do nothing to stop her. I just…wanted to see more from him.

Even when she had absorbed the entity. His role was too, too passive. A few times, he’d go “Allura, um, I don’t think this is safe…maybe we should think about this…” and Allura would respond with “No, shut up I know what im doing”, and Lance would just shut up. I wanted him to pull her and shake her and force her to come to her senses!

b) Allura’s death:

I am really sad to say that I knew this was coming.

I can’t believe the leaks were real. I guess they didn’t technically spoil anything because there was also doubt surrounding their authenticity.

And even knowing that it would happen, I AM NOT OKAY WITH IT.

I am happy that they established very early in this season the lengths to which Allura would go to stop Honerva. It was always clear that she was ready to sacrifice herself. Even when she was saying her goodbyes, she seemed to already have come to terms with the fact that her path was ending.

But, that doesn’t mean I’m happy with it.

You know, it’s interesting, I always say that I hate “happy” endings. I prefer my endings to be bitter sweet - like green tea lemonade. So, for everyone to get what they want — that to me is just too good to be true, and bothers me, because real life does not have a neat little ending like that.

So, I knew the ending had to be enveloped in some amount of loss. But for Allura to lose her life, after all that she’s lost, I had hoped she would get to keep her future.

Even without her past, that she could move forward and forge a new world for her people, and get to see that world with her own eyes. IF ANYONE deserved this, it would be Allura.

And like other people, I was really mad that she never had an opportunity to say goodbye to Coran, who was essentially her father figure, or to her own father’s soul.

So, in short, I didn’t want the “death” of the show to be Allura’s….but we don’t always get what we want…

c) Honerva:

I hated her, and not just because she was the antagonist.

The hilarious thing was that Season 8 had the exact same plot as Into the Spider-verse :’) And I still don’t understand why anyONE, crazy, evil, or otherwise, thinks that it’ll be a good idea to travel between REALITIES to find another version of your lost family.

I guess IT’S TRUE that people would do anything for their family, but it seems ridiculous to me that they wouldn’t consider the possible consequences for themselves as well their own world. It’s like time-travel. You just don’t mess with that shit.

But I also hated her as the antagonist. Her objective to me was just not compelling enough…I didn’t really feel her love for Lotor or for Zarkon. I just felt that she was cray cray.

For example, consider Castlevania: a show that excellently protrays the antagonist (Dracula’s) loss. You see why Dracula loved his family, the kind of (immortal) life he could have had.

But other than a few scenes when they were in her consciousness, I just didn’t really believe in her love.

I didn’t want to see her reunited with anyone. I just wanted her to chill out and leave my babies alone.

I also didn’t like how easy it was for Allura to sway her at the end. She seemed so weak-minded and stupid, despite having all the power that she did.

WHY DID ORIANDE EVEN CONSIDER HER WORTHY?!?!?!?!

d) Some other things:

I wasn’t a huge fan of the amount of action comprising this season. I mean, not that it’s the show’s fault - this is a space opera about giant mechs, so obviously, there are going to be space and mech battles.

But I guess I prefer ground/hand-to-hand combat. It’s hard for me to follow mech fights, and I just like sword fights. This is a matter of personal preference, though.

BUT, I will say that because there were SO MANY Robeast/mech fights, there wasn’t as much time for character-character interaction.

So, that made me sad.

So many opportunities gone - opportunities for James/Acxa and Keith to interact (esp after the Ezor/Zethrid conflict), etc.

This season was really flashy, and while I like flashy, as I said before, I also value the emotional connections between the characters a lot and wish that a greater emphasis could have been placed on them.

Things I liked:

Keith being a fearless leader

Krolia NOT dying - thank goodness for that, that was really worrying me

When Keith made his speech in EP1, and Krolia and Kolivan were smiling proudly :))

Matt (sad to see his ponytail go, but he still cayuuuute)

Lotor, all of the little Lotor scenes (AH, I JUST WANT TO ADOPT HIM AND RAISE HIM WITH LOVE) - saddened not to have seen him returned :((

The pictures at the end - happy to see everyone happy and thriving!

AND EVERYTHING ELSE NOT MENTIONED!

All in all, I think it is absolutely absurd (in the Snape voice) not to watch the season just because you heard some negative things. Don’t be as easily swayed as the Alteans were. Watch it yourself, think for yourself, and form your own opinion. Regardless of what you didn’t like, you can’t deny that this show has been a wild, beautiful ride. PEACE.

#vld s8 spoilers #vld s8 #vlds8 #vld keith

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a--musings · 5 years

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The love, defined.

July 10, 2019. Recently, many friends of mine, knowing that I’ve been reading Osho’s ideas on love, have asked, “what is love, A? Have you figured it out?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I provoke. “You tell me what you think it is.”

And that’s when the floodgates open and the banal platitudes come pouring in and I cringe at the clichés. They say that the ultimate partner is one who will readily give up everything for you. Love is selfless sacrifice, and if you really love someone, you would give up your all to be with them. If so, I don’t want it, I think to myself. How much am I supposed to compromise--to reject parts of myself just to accommodate someone else? How is it actually me that somebody would love, in that case? And why would I ever demand someone to give up themselves for me?

So then they say that love defies all logic and reasoning. It doesn’t make sense; it just is, and it makes you crazy along the way. Let me guess, you probably have “Live, Laugh, Love” plastered somewhere on your walls, I think to myself. Are you implying a nonsensical state of delusion? One that keeps you stuck in some false reality? Sounds like a chemical imbalance to me. Love brings the freedom to allow clarity and helps you align with yourself. What is illogical about that?

And then they say love is when you find someone that you just can’t live life without. You can no longer envision a future without the person. You don’t feel like yourself without them. Sounds dangerously codependent, I think to myself. I would never, ever hope to make someone feel incompetent without me. To feel like they need me to be capable and worthy? To not exist fully without something outside of themselves? Again, I don’t want it.

So, what is love to me? I’m still figuring it out. Part of the reason why I ask is so I can gain insight and borrow ideas that might resonate with me. To fully accept one philosopher’s beliefs is to deny the uniqueness of every individual’s experience with humanity. I can’t run around claiming the definitions of Osho, or Nietszche, or Socrates are truth. I am creating my own, which at the moment, is messy and incomplete. But there are common themes that I do believe to be true: love is absolutely logical, it is freeing rather than limiting, and it starts with the self.

Not too long ago, I made a mockery of “love.” Humans aren’t meant to be constrained to one partner, I argued. It’s not even evolutionarily advantageous for a male to stick with one mate. Love is just another idealized social construct, stemming from predating attempts to define a neurobiology reaction, that ever so happens to be beneficial in supporting our primal needs as animals to perpetuate our contributions to the world’s gene pool. All we are intrinsically driven to do is reproduce, essentially reincarnating through offspring and achieving immortality. Love, at its root, also supports the beneficial bond of co-parenting to produce capable offspring. You don’t really “love” a person in the romantic sense that we were taught. You just intrinsically need a partner to help you raise healthy kids. As a society, we just use the glamorized idea of “love” to bind two people together. That’s all there is to it, and it’s naive to think of infatuation as anything more than that.

I falsified this detached perspective, and depicted a relentless need to base every idea on logic and science and microscopes. It made me feel cooler, better, helped me feel less stupid and weak, and less of a wide-eyed, naive, poor little girl to be pitied. Ugh, pity. My ego detests it. So I created and embodied a false idea of a strong, independent who is above romantic connection to be fulfilled. My stance fed my ego because it allowed me to be condescending and superior to the emotional friends brave enough to live honestly and openly.

But I lived in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, and in doing so, I trapped myself in a cage. I preached all things logic-based and analytical, but my natural actions and patterns of behavior proved otherwise. You can say all you want, but it is so very difficult to restrict and conceal true motives in your actions. My dear friend A once told me, “always pay attention to actions, never the words of a person. People can say whatever combination of words they want, but what they do will always tell the truth.” My action were loud and clear once I stepped back and admitted to myself that I created a real world inside my head to retreat to from the facade. I was cold and aloof, under the guise of simple indifference and disinterest in affection and intimacy. But what of my earnest and most sincere behavior that I didn’t have to reveal to anybody else? I would daydream for hours, staring at clouds and pretending my love life would follow some cliché rom-com trope. I would ruminate on all the mushy-gushy stuff, thinking about who I would whisper I love you to every night and every morning. I would think about myself as the coldhearted scientist, patiently (and secretly) awaiting the rescuer who would defy all these thoughts and prove me wrong. Ironic, wasn’t it? I was already proving myself wrong.

When you are vulnerable to judgment, you are too ashamed to be yourself. I was harsh with myself, feigning heartlessness and apathy, but I was just guarding my fragile, delicate heart. When I began to develop self-compassion and humility, I started to allow myself to just be, in my truest realest form. I stopped being ashamed and embarrassed of the truth. Besides, one personality type was not better than the other—they are simply just different, so why must I choose to play the part that I didn’t even want to? Eventually I chose to be me, and anything that didn’t get along with that simply was not meant for my life. I finally started to become happy after admitting, accepting, and recognizing every part of me. I am a textbook romantic. I am sensitive, expressive, idealistic, emotional, bohemian, eccentric, and abstract. I can also be moody, complicated, temperamental and difficult. Why is that something to be ashamed of, anyway? I was placing judgment on myself, forcing myself to take on a false identity to spare me the shame. So...I am not the level-headed, practical analyst that I claimed to be after all. So what? I see the world through a different lens than others. So what? What is there to analyze? To what is there to attach judgment? Why did I think my authentic self was lesser than the self I portrayed? By whose standards? The person I portrayed was neither better nor worse than the truth. I just wasn’t me.

We have to find a way to come back to ourselves, to be in touch with our center. That’s how we can truly live a fulfilling life and realizing our own inherent value. This is how we are utterly freed from the need to find something outside of ourselves. This is how we know of our infinite worth on our own. We don’t realize how crucial it is to begin weeding through the bullshit that was projected onto us—the nonsense we internalized and accepted to be our own authentic self. We are told who to be, and what to view as acceptable and glorified traits. In churches, in schools, anywhere in society. There are too many external factors rigidly affirming who exactly we need to be in order find inner peace and in order to be whole. But what happens when these things don’t ring true for us? Much of our grief and suffering as humans originates from the fact that, since birth, and in virtually every aspect of life, we are kept away from ourselves. We are taught to keep these truths hidden. But before you can truly love someone, you need to discover your true self, your absolute. Creating the habit, mindset, and perspective to fully understand embrace the wide spectrum of the human condition starts with how you perceive yourself. To understand your true self will open up your mind to understanding that other people have their true selves too. You will know who you are and what it means to exist consistently with your values. You will understand how to not change your core for someone. To not expect someone to change their core for you.

There are a million different things that I had to learn and accept about myself, and this is why I question whether or not I really meant every I love you. I am a complex person. This is the truth. And for many years, I kept viewing this trait as an imperfection. I was dating men, year after year, who made me feel like I was fundamentally flawed, and I was unhappy because of my complexity. There was too much going on up in my head, they’d say. They wanted me to be simple. They didn’t want me to think and write because they didn’t think it was healthy to strengthen my habits. They couldn’t tolerate my need to search for deeper, hidden meanings and symbolism in movies and songs. “Why can’t you just listen to a song and enjoy the rhythm? Why can’t you take things for face value? This is why you’re unhappy. You can’t enjoy life’s simplicities.” Eventually, I realized that it wasn’t that I was unhappy because I was difficult and complicated. I was unhappy because I couldn’t accept these very traits and chose to continue fighting it—fighting me. I was in relationships that encouraged this struggle with my inner self. Imagine that. Someone who is supposed to love you is telling you, “you’re unhappy because you are you, so change that.” The truth is, I was unhappy because I was in an environment that did not allow me to be me. In return, I likewise created an environment that pushed them to reject their simple, undemanding ways. Read more books. Talk to me about philosophy and astrophysics. Why are you not interested in neuroscience? If you loved me, you would watch more foreign films and go to slam poetry at sketchy coffee shops. But all of this simply wasn’t them, and expecting them to speak my exact same language was not loving them. We were keeping each other away from our true selves. They saw my complex thinking patterns as flaws, just as I saw their inabilities to do so as flaws. Neither were. We could have accepted our differences, but we didn’t. This was just not love.

I don’t want a partner that will readily give up anything for me. I don’t want someone who will morph into the person he thinks I want him to be, nor expect me to do so. I want a partner who will know he never has to. I want a partner who knows I am here to accept him for the way he genuinely is. I have no right to decide who a person should be—no expertise, gifted with omnipotence to tell someone what to change. I hope to help him learn that he is already inherently valuable and worthy all on his own. To love is to foster an environment and seek opportunities that will continue helping him to strengthen the connection with himself. To love is to put in the time and effort to understand each other’s souls, and give one another the space to be, unbothered.

Come to me as you already are. That is all. Let me know myself. Let me help you know yourself, too. Let’s share these things with one another. Let me encourage you to pursue the things that will help you understand what it is that you are, and let’s inspire one another to live as that person to the best of our abilities. Because that’s what you do when you love someone, I believe. You simply let them be, and you help one another grow into your most authentic selves. You appreciate all parts of each other. When you love someone, you acknowledge that this is who you are, and you do what you can to add depth to their acceptance and understanding of that. You free them from the urge to change, or run away to avoid themselves. You empower them to face themselves. My friend S told me when you love someone, you expose your flaws to one another, and though you know these imperfections exist, you still would never change a thing.

But then again, if this is the case of love, then perhaps I love every single human being in existence. I encourage my siblings, my parents, my friends, strangers I walk past on the sidewalk to be true to themselves, and I want them to know this is who I will take them for, and I will never judge them for that. This is love.

But to be in love? Perhaps it’s when a person bares their soul to you—the good with the bad, and the beautiful with the ugly—and you still want all of it because you organically connect with every part of them in the most deep, significant, and beautiful ways that you can’t seem to do with others. Is this being in love? Maybe. But I don’t know. I suppose that’s a question for another time.

—a.

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calvarineharrod · 7 years

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25 things I've learnt at 25:

Lists usually remind us of order...

Grocery lists, itineraries, pros and cons, marked calendars, full inboxes, an array of neon post-its and not forgetting the dreaded PING! of a cellphone reminder.

Throughout life, we go through seasons of pain and gain. It's inevitable. For me, writing is cathartic. It's a outlet for my spiritual tap to run open. It's a window to invite visions and sounds to enter.

Our 20s is a metamorphosis between childishness and real adulting.

Since I'm 25 right now, I'm not relinquishing this opportunity to finally pass on some of my "wisdom" to other people reaching this 'tender' age.

Herewith below is MY list of what I've learnt at 25:

1) Age: is just not just a number: you're half way to 50! "You cannot live the same way for 75 years and call it a life." Wisdom should grow with age. Be alert, stay woke and make sure you don't waste your youth for its a short time.

2) Goals: are very important. Without goals, we live so aimlessly and not driven to be better, live better. Set realistic goals and update them. The "Dragging feet mentality" is the worst feeling. Goals keep you challenged and motivated. Don't despise moments of difficulty. Cultivate resilience.

3) Discovery: One of my favourite things about being 25 is that you start to get specific about the things you like and are completely unapologetic about it. I know the type of food I want to eat, places I want to visit, conversations I want to have and the company I wish to be surrounded with. It's very liberating.

4) Fix your Axis: start to get serious about your career. Shift your focus on productivity. Live to please yourself.

Head in the direction of your dream job. Being 25 is probably the oldest age to get an internship so take any opportunity that allows you to be your best version.

5) Nightlife: The club is not as exciting as your cosy bed. Having a rejuvenating 10-hour sleep session trumps a night filled with drunk, sweaty people, loud music and traffic.

6) Your interests WILL change - for example, shopping for furniture is waaaaay more exciting than clothes. Your style changes, your taste evolves, you crave authenticity. You want to eat soul food and drink merlot. It's quite hilarious.

7) Happiness. We spend our entire lives and a lot of money trying to attain happiness. It's all a hoax. Your happiness always begins with you. You are a complete person. Please stop looking for someone or something to complete you.

8) Stand up for Yourself: It's okay to disagree with someone but still be graceful. Being 25 means you have lived long enough to have figured out the pattern of life. Have an opinion. Stand for what you believe in. Be strong and courageous. Don't allow anyone to violate you.

9) Be responsible. Don't drink and drive. At 25, you cannot ask your parents to bail you out, sort your bills and rescue you from trouble. Grow up.

10) Independence: sounds great but requires discipline and maturity. If you wish to be independent, you must be willing to make sacrifices as well. Rent, Groceries and Petrol are more important than Dinners, Movies and Entertainment.

11) Finances. This is huge one. A proper savings plan and retirement annuity must be implemented. Start thinking critically of your future and be precise of exactly where you want to go.

12) Friends : by the age of 25, you should already have figured out whose in your life for a season or a lifetime. I don't waste time being friends with fickle people. Loyalty and respect is what I look for in friends. Quality over quantity any day!

13) Get smart: my favourite hobby of all time is reading. Get into the habit of knowing what's happening in the world. You're 25! You should have an opinion surrounding politics, religion, comedy, entertainment, sport, music. Don't go with flow, stand out and honestly, don’t be afraid to offend. Of course not maliciously, but if you view offends someone, don’t be hindered by their reaction.

14) Forgiveness: no matter what religion or values you follow, forgiveness is a difficult but necessary trait to develop. Forgive others and forgive yourself for any past mistakes.

15) Marriage: this is sensitive and different for everyone. Don't stress if you're not ‘Married’. Yes, you might feel dis-heartened that you did not find your so-called 'soulmate'. So what? Stop living your life based on other peoples’ deadlines. I believe in timing. Everything you're going through is preparing you for a brighter future.

16) Family: Don't tolerate an abusive partner, instigating family members. Find your inner peace. Family is not limited to blood relation and true family don't seek to hurt each other.They seek to build each other. Remember that.

17) Faith. I am I firm believer in God. I daily remind myself that it's not about me but actually fulfilling my God-given duties. My purpose before being a daughter, sister, auntie, friend and lover is to be WORSHIPPER. My role model is Christ and I often use the famous "WWJD" when approaching a situation. Don't worship with emotion but always in spirit and truth.

18) Dating: I don't believe in dating people just to pass time or when I'm feeling bored. If I don't see a future with you, I'm not going to date you and waste both our time.

19) Value: People base everything upon face-value. You might have received bad treatment because of your race, age or marital status. Ignore it. Remind yourself daily of who you are and who you belong to and that's God. You are not the tail but the head.

20) Women in Power: I love seeing a strong woman taking charge, shattering the glass ceiling and successfully leading her home, workplace or any situation. We deserve respect, love and comfort but remember that you must also offer these qualities in order to receive it.

21) Social media: straight and simple. Don't post anything you wouldn't want your mother to see or would be embarrassed of in 5 years’ time.

22) Face-beat: Learn how to do your own makeup but also don't feel afraid to be comfortable in your own skin. Contouring and highlighting is great when you have a great personality to match it with.

23) Birthdays: are no longer exciting. You get anxious even thinking of getting a year older, especially if you haven't met your goals for the year.

24) Time is precious: spend it wisely on experiences and relationships. You will never have regrets about this. Remember, you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time and no matter how big your house is, you can only sit in one place at a time. Invest in people and do good service for them. Cut down and live frugally.

25) Instinct: at 25, your 6th sense develops in a drastic way. Trust your gut. If it feels suspicious, it probably is. Don't downplay your instinct. Own your truth and work on strengthening your instinct for it is an asset to your future well- being.

HOPE THIS HAS HELPED SOMEONE, ANYONE.

XOXO

#blog #blogger #20s #indian #southafrica #advice #like4like #christian #christianity #feminism #hopeful #womeninpower #glory days #happines #inspiration

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topicprinter · 4 years

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with James Rosone of Front Line Publishing Inc, a brand that makes military and espionage thrillersSome stats:Product: Military And Espionage ThrillersRevenue/mo: $19,000Started: December 2015Location: TampaFounders: 2Employees: 2Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hello. It’s great to virtually meet you all. My name is James Rosone and I are a thriller author and co-owner of Front Line Publishing Inc. I write military, political, and espionage thrillers, though I’m currently working on a military sci-fi series. My wife and I have published sixteen books, with another four more somewhere in the editing process, getting ready to be released over the next eight months.imageWhen I released my first book in December 2015, I was writing as a form of PTSD therapy. That month I earned $78 dollars. However, my most successful month as an author, December 2018, I earned $47,365 in a single month. Right now, if we include audibles, I believe we’re averaging somewhere around $19,000 a month, so we’ve done pretty well in the self-publishing space considering how long we’ve been writing.What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?Before I was a writer, I served ten years in the Army and Air Force, and then followed that up with another eight years as a contractor for the Department of Defense and the State Department. During that time, I lived for 3.5 years in Iraq and 3.5 years in Germany, and spent most of that time involved in hunting and capturing terrorists across the globe. Although the reality was quite different from Jack Bauer in 24, I held a unique job in the military as an interrogator. I’d spend twelve to sixteen hours a day interrogating Al Qaeda prisoners, and we’d use the information to capture or kill the rest of their terrorist cells throughout the country.It was an incredibly intense job. I’d go from huge emotional highs when we’d capture a top 10 high-value individual to immense lows when members of our capture teams would get injured or killed. It was a pure adrenaline junky job, right at the tip of the spear. I’ve interrogated a Saddam Hussein body double that I swore was really him. Other detainees I interviewed ranged from the top five members of the Al Qaeda organization in Iraq all the way down to a fourteen-year-old kid placing an improvised explosive device on the side of a road.Looking back on my time in Iraq, I have mixed emotions about it. I was honored to have served my country and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’m also torn up at times with the guilt that I could have or should have done more. We lost twenty-six service members on missions derived from my interrogations, and more than a hundred were injured. I kept asking myself if I could have done something different, maybe asked another question or pushed a prisoner a little harder. Would it have changed the outcome? I struggled with that really hard when I left Iraq.imageWhen I stopped working for the government, I fell into a deep depression and my PTSD symptoms became so overwhelming it was hard for me to deal with them in a constructive way. I lost interest in the things that I once loved. However, one hobby I still enjoyed was reading. I became a prolific reader, often devouring one or two books a week. I enjoyed military thrillers, spy thrillers, and sci-fi the most. However, I found myself annoyed with some of the writing. To me, it lacked realism and authenticity. It’s not that the authors didn’t try—many of them did a decent job—but it seemed like they were just writing about stuff they’d never personally experienced. At best, they’d probably read about these topics.One day when I was talking with my VA counselor, he asked me a question: “Why don’t you try writing therapy?” It had never occurred to me that writing might help with my own PTSD symptoms. I kicked the idea around for a couple of years and wrote some things but never published them. Then, in February of 2015, I hit an emotional dead end. I suddenly found myself laid off just as my security clearance was in the process of being renewed.When my security clearance inevitably expired, all my chances of continuing to work in a classified environment also faded into the wind. For me, that had been my life, my purpose, my mission—and it was all suddenly taken from me. I fell into an even deeper depression and really struggled with thoughts of suicide at that point. I had a wife and two kids now, but I had no immediate means to support them. I sat there for one night in the dark thinking to myself, “Wow, I’m honestly worth more dead than alive.” Then I remembered what the counselor said to me a few years before, and the next day, I set off on a course to write the type of books that I liked to read.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Every author has their own style. Some people spend days or weeks prewriting a story. I would describe myself as more of a “Pantser,” meaning I tend to write by the seat of my pants. I’ll craft up an idea for a series with a start point and an endpoint. Now, how can I get from a to z is a constantly evolving process. When I outline a chapter, it’s usually only two or three bullet points.Once that basic outline is written, and it’s not much, I start to fill it in with the story. When I write my books, I tend to write to them with three perspectives in mind:1) The decision maker-level (all wars or operations are typically dictated by the policymakers so I show that part).2) The strategic level of how the military plans to implement the policy decision that’s been made.3) The operational level or the “grunt” that has to execute the decisions.My wife and I are a co-authoring team. We write and produce all of our books together, and at this point, we’ve become a pretty good team. I personally love it. We get to collaborate, and we work from home. We get to spend a lot of time with our kids, go to their school events, spend extra time with them or handle other appointments as needed all while working around our writing.Here’s how the process works for us. When I finish writing the book, I handed it off to my wife. She then goes in and adds some extra flair to the characters, makes sure the pacing of the books is good, completes a first-round edit and then coordinates and handles all of the editing changes from our professional editor and our beta reader team. While she’s working on book one, I’m already burning through book two, when I finish book two, I hand it off to my wife and then I start book three. At this point, book one is nearing completion with the editing process, which is when we put book one up for a 90-day pre-order.imageWe have essentially created a writing assembly line, with a book coming out every 90-days once we start the cycle. Then it’s just a matter of us keeping up with the pace we’ve set and working to ensure we maintain the quality of what we’re producing. We’d rather delay the launch of a pre-order than have to sacrifice on quality. We view writing as a business, and as such, we want to make sure the brand we’re building is known for producing good quality books, not rapidly published books riddled with errors and story plot holes because we didn’t take the time to do a couple of layers of quality proofs.Describe the process of launching the business.When I first started self-publishing, our start-up costs were relatively low. I found a book cover artist on Fiverr to produce a cover for under $100, and we were off to the races. As we’ve become more successful, our costs have grown. We now spend $300-$500 on the cover art. Initially, we spent very little on marketing, but now our average budget is between $2,000-$3,000 monthly. Once we could afford to move beyond our beta team for editing, we also started working with a professional editor, and each pass of a manuscript runs roughly $1,800. There are networking conferences that we now attend; for example, last year we went to Politicon for research. However, each of these expenses was added as we had the capital to do so.When I first started releasing books, I began to network with our readers on Facebook by creating a World War III series page. As I continued to post articles of interest about the military and emerging technologies, the followership grew, and I was eventually able to create ads using a lookalike audience for that group. I did make an error in naming the page after the series; had I known that Facebook does not allow renaming of pages, I would have originally created an author page. As it is, we are still trying to build our author page to the same level of followers as our series page.Back in 2016, Facebook ads were much more effective, but now, I do a lot more of my advertising on the Amazon Marketing Services platform. Then, this year, something changed on the algorithm with AMS, and many authors I’ve connected with say that this year’s costs on marketing have increased dramatically while sales have also decreased. We ended up financing the recording of some of our audibles with credit cards due to the declining sales, which is something I wish we could do-over. Each audible recording is around $4,000 for us unless it is worked out with a royalty sharing agreement, so a few of those can really eat away at our profits. On the other hand, the audible market is growing tremendously, and we didn’t want to lose out on that potential income.About a year ago, we discovered that although our works are copyrighted, there are a large number of websites on the dark web that attempt to sell our works illegally. There aren’t enough hours in the day to track down all of the piracy that happens out there, so I would highly recommend using a site like Blasty.com, which sends cease and desist letters to all of these scamming sites and works with search optimization algorithms to make sure that these results do not readily populate when someone searches for your book.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?The biggest strategy that we have used to capitalize on reader buy-through of our books is our 90-day rapid release strategy. Each time we release a book, we have the link for the pre-order of the next book in the back matter, ready to go. Now, this does require us to crank out books at a rapid clip, but we’ve managed to grow our followership substantially without investing as much in growing an email distribution list.imageAnother strategy we’ve implemented is asking readers for feedback. When we receive messages from readers who are critical or receive one-star reviews (these are inevitable), we have contacted that person and politely asked them how we could improve our work for the future. By not taking it personally and being willing to listen, we’ve even managed to turn some of our more critical readers into some very helpful beta readers.Finally, we’ve been very active in engaging our fans on social media. We’ve offered to allow fans to name characters and have at times, even asked for input in crafting our stories. This is vital in taking a group that might be casual observers into a collection of superfans.imageHow are you doing today and what does the future look like?Our business is still profitable and allows us to pay our bills without taking on a standard 9 to 5 job. As I mentioned above, there have been some challenges. Recent algorithm shifts for Facebook and AMS have made marketing less cost-effective. A popular advertising site, BookBub, which used to promote a wide range of books, now has shifted away from self-published authors and toward traditionally published authors as well. So we need to constantly change and adapt.We have spreadsheets for entering our books into contests, we’ve been looking into how to get our books into the library system, and we are trying to see if we can get our books into Army surplus stores. We will be trying something completely new and set up a table at one of the local gun shows as well. We are having to get creative and utilize a little guerilla marketing, but we are ready to meet this challenge head-on.In addition to these new avenues of marketing, we are trying to leverage our connections with other authors to cross-promote our books. Because there are so many readers out there who consume books so rapidly, we are not really in direct competition. None of us can produce stories of high quality fast enough to keep up with the readers, so it makes sense to partner together.We’ve put a significant amount of hours and financial investment into having our books turned into audibles this year. We are looking into different ways to promote audiobooks since listeners find their next books in different ways than readers do. This is a rapidly growing market, but the advertising industry hasn’t quite caught up with the demand in this field, so more work remains to be done on our end to capitalize on the expanding need for new audio content.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?When I first started writing, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t understand marketing, I didn’t understand the need for even a basic author website or the need to create an author mailing list. I didn’t actually start creating an author mailing list until I was two years into this business.When I began creating my mailing list, I used the conventional wisdom at the time and tried to give away snippets of my books for free. Many authors do this, and will even give away entire novels just to get people to sign up. However, I quickly learned that those who are seeking free items will usually unsubscribe once they receive their freebie, or will seldom open future emails.I was rather discouraged when I saw this happening, so I changed my strategy. I now grow my mailing list exclusively through the links in the backmatter of my books. I don’t list build like many other authors do. My current list is somewhat small, right around 2,500, but it’s highly active, with an open rate of 70% or higher. Each time I send an email out, which is usually around once a month, I can generate between $500 and $2,500 per email. So while my list is small, it generates me money. It does grow, just much slower than what some of my author friends’ lists do.One thing I’d like to stress to people is that although I’m being transparent and open with how well our sales have gone, you have to understand this didn’t happen overnight. This is the result of a lot of incredibly hard work and sacrifice. I write every day and every week like I’m going to be homeless at the end of every month if I don’t reach certain writing goals. I don’t watch TV, I seldom go to the movies, and aside from playing with my three kids who are all under the age of six, I have no personal life. I work like a beast. I write seven days a week with maybe two or three days off a month. I write on average five to twelve hours a day. When I’m not writing, I’m reading other books in my genre to learn from them, I’m watching MasterClass.com learn from other successful authors, or I’m listening to marketing and business podcasts or YouTube videos.I’m constantly learning or working. I’m not going to maintain this schedule forever, but I am going to maintain it until I’ve hit a certain level of financial freedom. I think a lot of authors would look at my numbers and think they could easily replicate it, but I want to be clear—I often put in eighty to one hundred hour work weeks to make it happen. I research my subjects, interview, and talk with people, and really study up on what I’m writing about. That requires a lot of effort and time. I do believe a lot of people could reproduce these results, but most aren’t willing to put this level of dedication into it.What platform/tools do you use for your business?I use a couple of platforms to market our books. I initially started out using Facebook. That has worked in the past but frankly, they’ve made so many changes to the platform that I’ve found it hard to really keep pace with it and make it profitable.At this point, 90% of my ad spend is done on Amazon’s AMS platform. I typically spend around $3,000 a month on marketing with the bulk of it on AMS. I do, however, use Facebook when I launch a book which is around every 90-days. Most of my Facebook campaigns will usually last around two weeks before I flip back to using Amazon exclusively again.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?From the beginning, I began networking with fellow authors. I’ve heard mentors say that “fortune favors the bold,” so I constantly approach people on social media and try to pick their brains about how they’ve become as successful as they have.Surprisingly, many authors have not only responded, but have been very helpful. This has led to some very good leads on book cover artists, editors, and other services, and introduced me to Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing Formula group. Joining the SPF community has by far created the biggest impact in our publishing business and its profitability.imageIn addition to joining the SPF group, there are several books I’ve read that have been very influential. One to mention is Brian Meeks’ book on Amazon Marketing Services advertising. As you can see in the chart above, each of these events led to marked changes in profits.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?If you want to get into writing, then you need to sit down and ask yourself a couple of questions:Why do you want to get into writing?What do you hope to accomplish?How do you plan on making this happen?What are you willing to cut out of your life to reach your goals?There are two types of authors: hobbyists who write for fun and entertainment, and authors who view this as a business. There is no right or wrong author to be. It’s a personal decision you have to make. If your goal is to publish books for fun and making money isn’t the priority, then that is great. If, however, you want this to be your main source of income to support your family, then you have to take this very seriously. You have to develop a game plan and then execute it.I made a LOT of mistakes when I first started out. I didn’t know the first thing about building an email list, I didn’t have an author page and I had no clue how to write book descriptions, what made a good book cover or how to market my books. I spent hours and hours on YouTube trying to self-teaching myself these skills, but it wasn’t until I learned about Mark Dawson’s SPF program and then read Brian Meeks book on understanding Amazon Marketing Service or AMS ads that things really took off.The best advice I could give to any new author or someone wanting to become an author is to find a mentor. Find an author who produces good quality works and has a track record of success and then see if they will help you in your journey. I’ve done this with several new authors who wanted to get into the game. I share openly my failures, my successes, and what I wish someone would have told me when I first started getting into this business myself. You need to have someone else walk alongside you.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?This is a tough question. While we aren’t looking to hire a full-time employee currently, I certainly have areas I need business help in. A couple of areas I’m always looking for help in are beta readers. Our books tend to have a lot of technical details in them, so we have a large team that reads our books before they are released and helps us make sure we get those details right.Another job I desperately need help in is marketing and research. When I hire someone for a job, I tend to pay by the project. My last big project was creating 5,000 keywords for our AMS marketing plan. It wasn’t hard work, but it was tedious and time-consuming. Right now, I am certainly in need of someone who can help me with ways to increase our audiobook marketing or who is knowledgeable on getting books into the library system. It’s all telework, so if you have the internet, a laptop, and a cell phone, you would be able to accomplish the task. If you’re interested in a part-time job or a job that pays by project, make sure to look me up.Where can we go to learn more?WebsiteFacebookIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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mariespeaksg-dsgrace · 5 years

Text

Fasting and it’s importance…..

The Bible study Wednesday!!!!

Book of Matthew 6: 16-18

Praise God on High!

Thank you, God for blessings us with another day to come together; in praise of your glory.

Thank you God, for covering us in your loving protection both in our waking and sleeping life.

Thank you God, for knowing everything we want or need, before we even speak. Thank you God, that issues or concerns are already on the way to woking out for our good and the good of others. Thank you God, being our way maker, rain maker, and light maker; for all our days.

We thank you God for preparing us to complete our mission for this life: and in so doing, we be welcomed in the bosom of God, Yeshua, and the Holy Spirit. Forever and ever.

We praise you now and forever.

We pray this in the loving name of your begotten Son; Yeshua Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Book of Matthew 6: 16-18

16. “Moreover, when you fast do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. ”

Dying unto oneself

Biblical definition of fasting:

-Refraining for eating food, focusing in deeper prayer, and drawing nearer to God.

(Retrieved from:https://www.bible-history.com/faussets/F/Fasting/, date 20190325)

Definition of countenance:

-Look or expression

-mental composure

(Retrieved from:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/countenance, date 20190325)

Dying unto oneself:

-To die to self is to set aside what we want in this moment and focus instead on loving God with everything we’ve got and valuing others as highly as we value ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39)

(Retrieved from:https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/september-2011/dying-to-self-and-discovering-so-much-more/, date 2019March25)

Fasting is not just giving up food. Fasting is giving up fleshy wants…fleshy “needs”, fleshy desires…….fasting is not only a denial from the worldly living, but a way/ source of escaping from ones passions that holds them back from fully releasing into a spiritual relationship with God.

Fasting,(giving up) worldly ways also reveals to us things we don't really need in our lives. Fasting, also shows us how removing certain actions, thoughts, items, practices; from our life can actually be a true benefit, for not only our physical, medical, and emotion health, but our spiritual health.

Giving up impure actions or thoughts is good for our spiritual growth. Giving up porn or strip clubs, is good for those in committed relationships. Giving up on or controlling the negative/uncontrollable, expressions of anger violence, or non-productive actions; is good for relationships.

In addition, I am sure many of else know or have those individuals in our lives, who just need attention. Those who express issues or concerns etc……for attention from others.

I call these types of people: people who cry wolf. (It’s a personal peeve of mine; people who cry wolf. I just don't understand for some to manipulate others. In fact I find it insulting, but that is just my personal opinion.)

Those who claim they are concerned about their lifestyle/health yet, continued their unhealthy lifestyle choices or dangerous actions; none the less. OR, others who claim they “want” to make changes in their love life, or quit smoking/drinking; only to be seen out hours of the next weekend down copious amounts of alcohol, while chain smoking; or back with their abuse relationship partners moments after declaring never to return.

They post their ”concerns for” improving simply for the attention factor of it all.

Or, those who broadcast every trial and tribulation; going on in their life to the outside world. From the meal illy prepared for the kitchen…toooooooo how their dog chewed up their favorite t-shirt.

OR, even worst they post such negative information about themselves and others on social media.

This is in-effect, the same as “sounding trumpets” or “horns” or “beating drums”, which, we have learned in previous verses of Matthew, practices Yeshua stating God’s people should avoid.

Putting the teaching into current times and situations: God does not want us showing or “broadcasting” to man(the world); what we do as a sacrifice for God’s kingdom. For if we do the “broadcasting”, our efforts are no longer a sacrifice, but us seeking out attention and praise of man. If we seek only praise from man; we will not receive the praises or rewards from God.

For example: If we have given up certain ways of life, we should not show the ways of which we have given up. We should, not show the ways of how the lifestyle we have given up is making us feel: tired, sluggish, or even the aches of the change. No-one, should know that the changes and sacrifices we have made, by our outside appearance.

What Yeshua is saying here is we are to keep pain, frustration, or fasting; quiet. We, are to not look dissolved or as we a suffering from fasting, but appear to be at the best we have always been if not better.

This also makes me wonder way so many people are afraid to give up their worldly comforts? I don't know if it's because some are afraid of change. OR maybe some are afraid to truly moving on with their life. OR if some are afraid for what others might think. But, I/we all, can somehow relate because I am sure us too were maybe somewhat afraid of the changes that were taking place in my life at certain periods in time.

17. “But you, when you fast, anoint you head and wash your face,”

During troubling times look refreshed

This takes me back to something my Aunt Mary used to always tell me: She would always say when ever I felt bad or sad, put on some makeup, some heels, a dress, and act like I feel better than ever. She always said there was no point in lying around feeling sorry for ones-self or walking around all plain Jane. (Lol. She was a pistol. I loved her very much……R.I.P.)

Anyhow, she was a God fearing woman. And, it wasn’t until I was older, I realized how many of the words she spoken to me had some Biblical context. She, was inputting knowledge on me and to me; that had benefited me years later. And, I am so very grateful that she did teach me, hey everyone goes threw troubling times, but its not everyones business to know your troubling times.

Don’t look for others to get into agreement with your pain and struggling. Don’t look for others to go feeling sorry for your with you, but lift up you head and walk with pride knowing that God will right your wrongs and carry you through.

18. “so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly”

Suffer in silence to avoid spreading negative talk or feeling into the energy spiritual world…God will reward you in complete view of others

This verse is repeating the importance of the private and sincere manor of how we should address our communications and efforts towards God. God, does not want our efforts to be made public for notoriety. God, does not want fasting or falsely; moving towards God for frame.

God, wants and commands us to be authentic in our efforts. This being said, I am sure like me, many others have been called “fake Christians”.

How one can be a “fake” Christian I don't know know, but many will call others “fake”, possibly as an effort of making themselves feel better or justify their evil actions towards others. Which, in my opinion is sad and pathetic.

Some people even, people from church; will doubt you or your efforts towards furthering our walk with Yeshua, filled with the Holy Spirit, and righteous love for God. We should pray for them.

Christians, who attack other Christians, are struggling in and with their own faith. And most likely are pushing their own self doubts onto others. Though this maybe frustrating, don't give into the feelings of rejection and the torment of being falsely accused, but instead we should focus even more on our relationship with God.

God, knows our heart. God, knows how we love him and how greatly we want to get right with him. So, if others are coming against you…pray for them. Don’t argue or justify their evil words. Don’t, give up trying to be righteous; because others don't understand you or doubt your heart. Don't stop trying. If anything we should see others coming against as motivation to go even further for our love of God. Doesn’t God say “many will be persecuted for my name sake?”

This verse also confirms for me that God, wants us to have a presentable appearance as his children. This verse also calls in to question certain fashion trends as children of God, that maybe we should avoid. Now, I would say I am a fashionable person, but I have learned from fashionable mistakes of my pass. The best guidance I can give here is, maybe when leaving for the day we should ask ourselves if God would approve of how we are representing God’s Kingdom out in public. If the answer is or might be no, they perhaps we should reevaluate our choice in wardrobe.

Let us pray.

God, Thank you for giving us your living word. Thank you God for sending Yeshua, to speak to us and explain in clear understanding how we can and should better serve you. Lord, thank you for letting us know that we are to not only try our best to have a righteous relationship with you, but to try are best in having a presentable appearance. Thank you God, for letting us know that we are to not be like the hypocrites of yesterday or today, but we are to do our best to live righteous and complete in your love and only seek your approval.

We pray for continued the safety and guidance of all the Prophets. We pray, for the protection of our Leaders who are truly of you and doing your work here on earth.

God, as always we pray for POTUS, Q, Q+++, and Patriots world wide that are fighting to rid this world of those who seek to destroy your agenda. I pray God keeps everyone safe and blessed. We pray for the Prophets of today. Let them not stray from your word. Let them speak from you and leave ego at the alter.

In Yeshua Jesus Christ loving name.

Amen

Prayer from 23 March, 2019

God, today for the release for any and every unforgiving way that may be within us. We pray, that we recognize that we are all your children. God, we ask for the healing spiritual and any soul tries to be severed. God we pray for restoration of our minds and spiritual hearts. Lord we thank you for loving us recklessly and without boundaries. God, we thank you for already setting in motion the healing that we are going to receive.

We pray for others who may need extra guidance , grace , and mercy. We pray for those individuals who have wrong us and others, repent for their transgression and come into the agreement of what is your ways and your love. Holy Spirit we ask that you touch each and every heart that is in need of healing and prepare. We thank you Holy Spirit for filling us with spiritual love and loving ways. Lord, we thank you for those who have helped us along that way. I pray everyone who is in need receives a special visit from their Angel tonight, and are hugged, and are set free.

We pray for continued the safety and guidance of all the Prophets. We pray, for the protection of our Leaders who are truly of you and doing your work here on earth.

In Yeshua Jesus Christ loving name.

Amen

RECAP: I will be using my Second Edition Fully revised and expanded book: The Jewish Annotated New Testament. I purchased this book from Barnes and Noble a while back. I have provided the link below incase anyone is interested. No, Im not paid or sponsor by this book, editors, or writers, or Barnes and Noble, just sharing information. (Plus, as a side note I personally don’t like it when information of where to look up reference with held when I am watching others on channels etc, so I try and provide the sources of which I am gathering information.) https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-jewish-annotated-new-testament-marc-z-brettler/1125563566

This is just me doing my part to share THE GOOD NEWS, from a study Bible new Christian study person view of the world, experiences, and study bible sorts. So I completely understand any others interpretations, but this is my blog so obviously that interpretations I write with my views and applications to my life, from my life. I pray this helps others. I pray I can help further God’s kingdom here on Earth.

I pray God be with us in our study and guide us to wisdom, knowledge, and discernment; for our souls shake. In Yeshua Jesus loving name. Amen. I will be going through this study bible book by book, verse by verse. While comments are welcomed, any negative and evil comments will not be tolerated(towards myself or others) by me.

I don’t aim to divide, but bring us together as sisters and brothers in Christ. I can accept different points of view, but evil words will never be tolerated or welcomed. It is ok to disagree, but not to attack. It is ok to have a different view or interpretations, but not to curse(spiritual definition).

And as always if others have information to add, or thoughts to be considered, please post in comments sections.

Thank you friends and Christian family.

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aboutelan-blog · 5 years

Text

Entry 5/14/17

Notes from Conversation with Mom:

People want to connect with you more. That’s a deeper, more mature kind of conversation.

I have to rely on you and your past experiences, because I don’t have my own experiences yet.

Leaders don’t have the answer to everything.

Isn’t letting go the greatest act of love? For Zach…the woman that he’s with, may she love him, may she honor him, may she stick with him through it all. True I like you Zach, but I want you to be happy and I’m willing to sacrifice my own personal desires, moments, and thoughts of selfishness.

I’m so broken God, just put me back together as you see fit.

For Zach: I wish you well and pray that the woman you are with is everything you need plus more, and that she is the more that I couldn’t give. I pray this prayer because in this moment, I am selfish and out my selfishness I am breeding pain instead of pure joy. I am breeding suffering instead of peace. I am breeding ill-well instead of blessings.

It is my intention to change that. And though it may take Zach going away and I may want the narrative to return to me and Zach being together, I have to let him go.

I’m working toward a true surrender of Zach – the idol I created – instead of trying to fake you out God. Because I can’t truly lie to You, only to myself.

Thoughts from Church:

True surrender = Willingly cease resistance and can’t be forced or faked; it has to come from your heart.

Surrender involves trust and trust is developed through relationship.

“We try too hard to get what we love, instead of loving what we get.”

Oftentimes, when praying we focus on ourselves and what we want instead of surrendering to what he wants.

Surrender doesn’t mean negotiation.

Fear keeps us from worshipping God; from true surrender

I am my own captive; now that you are no longer here, I’ve taken on that role that holds me here, hostage and uncivilized.

I am just a person experiencing pain in this moment. I am not the sum of this one part of me.

Dear Dad,

I apologize for ever thinking you were weak and I forgive you.

This pain is treacherous, this pain is hard, and this pain is a slog, among many other things.

We have to remember it is only out of love that this pain arises, the universe cleaning out our wounds while simultaneously proving our strength.

Will we ever heal? That’s up to us, we can keep picking at our wounds causing infection that will be sure to spread. That’s one type of pain. Or, we can let the universe bandage us up, which in the moment will feel worse.

The pain will be crippling. We will mistake it for true harm. But it’s nice. And through one breath at a time, we will make it. I will make it for us.

You are not a monster and you are good enough. I can’t have you in my life at the moment because you are more like a baby unknowingly stumbling around ripping at and pulling away my bandages. But I know we’ll cross paths again.

Dad, when trusting God, here’s why I’m struggling to surrender: I want God to fix everything. Even you dad. And if he can’t fix you, how will he be able to fix me? How can I trust him to provide a partner for me when he couldn’t fix you? But as mom said, maybe it’s not about fixing the person, the action may be about providing guidance to a problem that person has in their life. You don’t need to be fixed, but maybe you need to be guided.

God is watching over you.

-------

Me again Dad. I understand your pain because I am living it, because every day I wake up and fight, and you do too. That’s what makes us strong. God wouldn’t let me down for my sake, because he knows you’re the best friend I’m looking for. You are me and I am you. That will always be true.

In the ultimate ending, I would want you to choose me, but I know you have to choose what’s right for you.

I have a two-headed monster fighting inside of me. One for my dad and one for Zach. Nothing has ever felt more intertwined. I want both of your acknowledgement, adoration, and love. I want your compassion, to see me as a little woman struggling, and for you to reach out to be the hero.

I can save myself in so many instances and in so many moments, but in this one I’m asking if you see me, if you hear me, did I make an impact on you.

That desire of acknowledgement is that foundation of my pain. But I don’t want to live in this space anymore.

Dear Zach,

Here’s the kind of wife I would make:

I’m good at listening and inspiring. I will show up to your dreams as much as I show up to mine. I’m working on being playful, because I don’t want to go through life being so serious or burdened with worries. I will support you while at the same time allowing you to grow. Growth is huge for me and I hope whoever we end up with, this will be a priority. Because if I’m not growing, I’m dying.

I will be a god-fearing wife putting Jehovah first. This is the only true way to live.

Through Him I am patient, thoughtful, wise and loving.

I will be the type of wife with great coping skills. I shy away from bad habits when I’m blue because brain health is important to me.

I struggle with depression, so I have to stay vigilante in order to protect myself.

I won’t give up on our relationship if you won’t, because when you work hard for something, why let it wither.

Even in hard times I have grit and resilience.

I’m good with withstanding challenges. I may fall hard sometimes, but the risk is absolutely worth it.

What I’m looking for in a husband:

Someone who’s playful because life should never be so serious that we stop and forget to laugh.

Someone who can just listen.

Sometimes I don’t need the teach-me-now moment, but a moment of support.

I want a husband who’s accustomed to failure, because if you are, you’ll know how to get back up and go again. You’ll know how to work through a challenge.

I want someone who’s a good communicator at communicating vulnerability and never being abusive or demeaning. But someone who knows how to come back to a place of self-love.

I want someone who’s independent, because there will be moments when we both need space, and our whole worlds can’t revolve around each other, as much as I would want, it becomes dangerous and reckless.

Lastly, I would want your support. I’m working tirelessly toward my dreams and though I can handle everything independently, as a husband, I would want you to be there every step of the way.

Right now, in this moment I can do nothing more than what I already have. I surrender it over, no hostages, no weapons behind my back, no ulterior motive.

I pray Zach did not find me desperate, but vulnerable, because that’s what I struggle most with, and the intent was to find a moment of clarity, to share and open up, to communicate truthfully, to be brave.

The reality is, I do take risks in my love life and you were one of them, Zach.

Now I have to clear the space, accept that it’s over and move forward.

I have to work on forgiving my father and myself, and recognizing that staying in this one spot would be unhealthy of me.

As much as I want to live in the past and go back to how you made me feel, and believe that you are still interested, I can’t keep digging up those bones, because in this moment, you are not here but I am.

Jehovah, will you walk me into peaceful surrender.

Resistance is a form of self-sabotage.

Brene Brown: “Daring Greatly”

Cultivating authenticity: Letting go of what people think.

Cultivating self-compassion: Letting go of perfectionism.

Cultivating a resilient spirit: Letting go of numbing and powerlessness.

Cultivating gratitude & joy: Letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark.

Cultivating intuition and trusting faith.

“Don’t let people who don’t matter too much, matter too much.” - Wes Moore

“Don’t make someone else’s crazy about you.” – Iyanla Vanzant

I have to create a life where I am the right person for myself. Oprah Super Soul Sunday

It’s that moment between impulse and action, a moment of consciousness where we can choose. We can change our universe.

#Journal #Growth #Journal Entries #Personal Growth #Love #self love #Depression #Mental Health #Emotional Health #Healing

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icechuksblog · 6 years

Quote

Read his article below... My dear President, please, permit me to wish you and your family a very happy new year. Let me also offer my words of prayers, and intercession, on behalf of your very handsome son, and his friend, who, according to reports, were involved in a terrible power-bike crash. I pray that God almighty will grant them full recovery and I believe my prayer is already answered because of my presence in the Holy Land of Jerusalem. Now to the business of the day. Kindly permit me to be as brutally frank as possible. As a stakeholder who made his modest contribution to your emergence as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, I owe you nothing but the truth. I was not a member of your party when I volunteered to support your mission and ambition in 2015. I was elated when Nigerians succeeded in chasing away the profligate and reckless government of the PDP, led by President Goodluck Jonathan. I was one of those who unleashed terror on that government and I subsequently presented you with a compilation of my articles in which I criticised and advised the then President, free of charge. I never expected that our situation could ever get worse under the APC government that almost literally promised heaven and earth. But it has become evident that it is easier to govern by words of mouth than by force of action. It is indeed shameful that those like me who supported you so vociferously have become butts of jokes everywhere we go. Sir, I plead with you to ignore your acolytes who may be telling you that all is well in Nigeria. My unequivocal verdict, without any fear of contradiction is that things are very bad. While I will not, in all honesty, totally heap the blame on you, there is no doubt that your government has been less than competent. I’m reasonably convinced that you have not availed yourself of the abundant talents it has so pleased God to endow Nigeria with. Rather, you’ve chosen to saddle yourself with hungry lions and deadwoods that you’ve resurrected from penury and oblivion. Leadership should be about managing people and resources. Most of the people you are working with are already retired or tired and with little or nothing new to contribute. It is grossly unfair that it was very convenient for us to lampoon and scandalise Dr Goodluck Jonathan, yet most of us have remained funereally silent and unreasonably complicit in the evil that the current men of power are perpetrating and perpetuating under your watch. Unknown to you Sir, some people are merely using you to rule by proxy. There is no evidence of discipline in your team, one of the greatest things you preached so fervently about in your first coming as military Head of State. Your acolytes are virtually getting away with murder. Someone, somewhere, sat down with birds of the same feathers, to conjure and compile the most disgraceful list of political appointees ever and yet nothing has happened to those who brought such perfidious insults on our nation. Instead, we are being regaled with tales by the moonlight to gloss over serious maladies in the polity and damning treachery against our nation. No serious apologies. No penitence. Only some foolhardy cockiness from those who will repeat the same nonsense when tomorrow comes. Your Excellency, it has become very difficult, if not impossible to defend the excessive shortcomings of your government, please, permit my oxymoron Sir. We definitely want you to succeed but it seems some demons are desperately determined to make you fail by all means. The more your administration unravels, the more ridiculously hopeless it seems. You have waltzed from crisis to crisis instead of from glory to glory, as most of us expected. We thought you truly possessed the magic wand and talismanic effect to make all our problems evaporate and vamoose in a jiffy. We did not expect to be regularly mesmerised by impotent excuses galore. I sincerely doff my hat to your wonderful wife for her rare and uncommon courage. Regardless of what her detractors may say, she is the only insider who has been trying to say it as it is. Even if some of her critics feel she’s seeking for relevance in your kingdom, it is still within her rights. I’m sure that when the day of reckoning comes, you will remember and appreciate her timely warnings. Without mincing words, what Madam Aisha Buhari has been trying to tell you in clear terms is that this government is swimming in a big foul mess and that you should not be carried away by the fake adulation and false adoration you see all around you. There is no government in Nigeria that did not enjoy the services of praise-singers who disappeared as soon as the government itself collapsed like a pack of cards. Ask President Jonathan! I’m aware that your foot-soldiers are already warming up for the next election. I really do not know what they hope to tell and sell to the electorate this time, particularly after the colossal failure of the last three years. I do not see how they expect to fund your campaign without resorting to the same type of extravagant jamboree we witnessed in the dying and last days of the PDP’s prodigality. As a result of your decision to contest again, you are being forced by circumstances beyond your control to compromise and capitulate on your known principles. Is it not better, and more profitable, to return home, triumphantly, with your reputation intact than to win a pyrrhic victory with everything you ever stood for wasted on the altar of vainglorious aggrandisement? What guarantees do you have that you will win the next election even if you agree to sell Nigeria to the political gladiators? Sir, I’m pleading with you in the name of God, the Merciful and all-powerful, that you don’t need two terms, or eight years in power, to prove your greatness. Nelson Mandela spent only one term in power and retired to superlative glory as the world’s most respected and revered and idolised statesman. Robert Mugabe spent about four decades in power, yet he returned home in total infamy and unenviable disgrace. It is a lesson of life that we must all learn, sooner rather than later, that man shall not live by power alone. I know my preaching is not likely to touch you and your hardened supporters but, at the very least, I want it to be on record that I spoke publicly, out of genuine love and concern, while you were being goaded on by those who stand to gain more if you win a re-election next year. For most of those asking you to continue, by fire and by force, it is always about their personal agenda and survival. They know their political careers would come to a shuddering halt and abrupt standstill should you fail in your bid to come back. In their desperation to come back at all costs, they are going to do exactly what PDP did, or even much worse. What moral authority would you then have to justify the continued detention and harassment of some of the PDP operatives accused of wasting government resources on Jonathan’s truncated re-election bid. Who amongst us can in good conscience say in the market place that you won the last election on pure merit and that no substantial government funding went into your campaigns. This year promises to be an interesting one. You will soon discover how treacherous human beings can be when some of those hailing you today as the authentic messiah begin to show you their true colours. Our country is bleeding dangerously while some over-pampered politicians can only think of winning elections by hook or by crook. The quality of your appointees in recent time points to how directionless your government has finally become. In a country overflowing with so many amazing brains and talents, it is incredibly shameful that those are your best representatives for our country. The easiest way for a leader to fail is to continue to attract those much worse than himself. Conversely, the best way to succeed is for a leader to recognise and attract and surround himself with those much better in all aspects of human endeavour. This does not erase or take anything away from the leader but it actually enhances his personality and how he is perceived by everyone. The late sage of blessed memory, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was a veritable example of how a leader can effectively tap into the collective brains of some geniuses and add to his own in a way that makes him appear super-human. Nigeria has never been in short supply of whiz kids at home and abroad but Nigeria started dying when our leaders stopped respecting merit and preferred to enthrone mediocrity. The truth is mediocrity begets further mediocrity. The few good leaders in your government have not been able to display their wizardry out of fear and trepidation that some cabal would mark them out and hack them down so ruthlessly. It is a sign of the times, that the courage, astuteness and brilliance that made them stand out in the political crowd has suddenly taken flight and they are now little more than wimps in your insipid government. The bureaucracy in Abuja is enough to suffocate and disorientate any fertile mind. If I were in your shoes, I would consider that it is not too late to groom and propel some of the best brains in APC or even those living beyond the shores of Nigeria to succeed me. You do not need to look far in this regard but I will not make any suggestions today, lest it be misinterpreted that I am touting any particular individual as a worthy successor. I’m reasonably convinced that you have worked very hard and seem to have reached your peak. To God be the glory. In a country of nearly 200 million people, God has been too kind to you. Apart from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, no other Nigerian has been given a second chance so miraculously. You will be able to justify this unmerited favour by leaving Nigeria much better than you met it. The only way you can do that in the next remaining year is to sacrifice your own personal ambition and hand over the country to proven and tested modern and cosmopolitan technocrats. The world has moved beyond the backwardness that we are being saddled with in Nigeria today. The world expect us to be the true giant and leader of Africa not by words but in deed. My appeal to you is to urgently do a self-assessment to determine and decide on whether you are what Nigeria needs at this time and age for our country to join the comity of other nations in their march towards technological advancement, political stability, social security and economic prosperity. With all due respect, Sir, if your answer is yes to the above, you may go ahead and contest but if in all honesty, the answer is no, my prayer is that you will find the courage and selfless spirit to quit the stage while the ovation is loudest. That in itself would be a deserving legacy. I’m watching and waiting for your patriotic decision with bated breath. Thank you, Mr President, for your usual attention and kind consideration of my latest memo to you, albeit so early in the year.

http://icechuks2.blogspot.com/2018/01/dear-president-buhari-it-is-shameful.html

#http://icechuks2.blogspot.com/2018/01/dear-president-buhari-it-is-shameful.html Dear President Buhar

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spencerthorpe · 7 years

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Modern Heroes: One Nine Eight Five

One Nine Eight Five is the creation of Eleanor Nadimi and is an emerging textile brand, with a keen social and environmental element using almost entirely ethically produced materials. With a collection of beautiful pieces and designs, One Nine Eight Five is making waves in the design industry using bold colours and eye-catching prints. We wanted to find out more about the brand and met with Eleanor herself to dig a little deeper.

I’m inspired by lots of different things, almost too much: film, culture, exhibitions, architecture, fashion, anything visual.

Emergence

Eleanor Nadimi, Founder of One Nine Eight Five

IDEALIST: How did One Nine Eight Five come about? Since I was a kid I have always wanted to do something creative, be an artist; I am a true believer in following your dreams. At the age of 30 I finally felt like I knew what I wanted to put my creativity into, so I quit my job and moved to London to set up One Nine Eight Five. It’s been an emotional roller-coaster but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

IDEALIST: What is your background? Before I started One Nine Eight Five I was living in Stockholm. I lived there for 4 1/2 years working as a print designer for H&M. The job was fantastic, I travelled the world, lead a team, designed prints and forecasted trends. I learnt so much working there, it was almost like a school. Before that I studied printed textiles at a Masters level at the Royal College of Art, it was one of the best experiences of my life and has shaped me into the designer I am today.

Drawing Inspirations

IDEALIST: Where do you draw your inspiration from when creating new designs? I’m inspired by lots of different things, almost too much: film, culture, exhibitions, architecture, fashion, anything visual. My mind has a tendency to jump from one thing to the next way too quickly.

Challenges & Achievements

IDEALIST: What have been your biggest challenges so far?

There have been many hurdles already, but I would have to say that the biggest challenges would have to be the day to day struggle of running a business. I had zero business skills when I started the brand, every day was, and still is, a learning curve for me. I think I was very naïve as to how much more there is to running a creative business then designing. The second biggest challenge so far has been finding factories that want to work with me. As a new business I found a lot of companies didn’t take me seriously; it took a lot of persistence and thick skin to make people see that I was serious about the brand. Lastly, the management of my time and energy has been, and still is, something that I am working on as it can be very overwhelming working solo.

IDEALIST: What has been your biggest achievement? This is a tricky one to answer, because things have been moving so quickly over the past year that I sometimes forget to stop and actually enjoy the moment. I would have to say my 2 biggest achievements are taking the jump out of steady employment and starting One Nine Eight Five, and having an exclusive collection in Heals within my first year of trading – an absolute dream come true!

I wanted to create a brand which has its core values focused on using ethical processes

Thoughts on Sustainability

IDEALIST: You use recycled materials, what does sustainable design mean to you?

I think that when you start your own business it becomes an extension of who you are. As a result, One Nine Eight Five needs to be a brand that has an ethical approach in all aspects of the business. Sustainability has always been very important to me, I love nature and appreciate how amazing the world is. The world we live in is extremely precious and I think that everyone has a duty to do their bit in maintaining it. I wanted to create a brand which has its core values focused on using ethical processes, being dedicated to creating British manufactured goods and working with recycled fabrics wherever possible – all of these points are super important to me and hopefully to others too.

Design Tips

IDEALIST: What are your top 5 design tips for the home? 1. Nature – bring the outside in with plants, plants and more plants! 2. Don’t sacrifice comfort in your home, comfy sofas, cosy blankets, rugs and lots of cushions are a must. 3. Embrace your own authentic style: your home should reflect your personality. Allow your space to continually change and grow with you, it should be a place of comfort and inspiration. Start collecting things on your travels: the best interiors reflect who you are, where you have come from and hints at where you want to go reminding you of treasured memories. 4. Don’t forget the walls. Artwork is so important as it helps to personalise your space as well as strengthening a colour palette or theme in the room. 5. Use technology to your advantage, by working with platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Houzz to get the inspiration and confidence you need to achieve the look you want.

Future Aspirations

IDEALIST: Where do you see One Nine Eight Five in 5 years? I would love to be stocked internationally, be recognised as an influential brand amongst my peers, have collaborations with other companies on different product types and have grown One Nine Eight Five to a size where I can employ staff.

IDEALIST: Are there any exciting collaborations or projects on the horizon? Potentially, but nothing that I can talk about yet!!