#(again. similar to the short term housing problem. why is the assumption that you can and will immediately stay somewhere for a year)

[senadimell]

I'm normally a huge fan of USPS, and I still am, but it is very unfriendly to people without stable addresses. You can't forward your mail to a house you don't permanently live in (and have proof of residence in, like your name on a lease). If you want to forward your mail somewhere, your billing address has to either be the place you are sending it to or the place you just came from.

You can't get a P.O. box without proof of residence.

that said, however, I did learn that if you do not have an address, you can have mail sent to Your Name, General Mail, Town/Zipcode and pick it up at the post office.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

A chatty writing update | novels, short fiction, etc!

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I last wrote an update on this blog! I thought it’d be fun to go back to basics, and just talk about writing. This post chats about: new plans for Feeding Habits, my newest novel, my short story goals & growing collection, along with process reflections.

(image description: a photo of green leaves with the text “writing update” in a white font written on top. /end image description)

Post starts under the cut!

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed)

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting, @aetherwrites, @avakrahn, @maisulli

What have I been up to?

For starters, I finished my second year of my Writing undergrad last week and got two of my final grades back today (A+ baby)! For anyone who has taken online university, y’all already KNOW, but this year was so difficult. Would not recommend! Really proud of myself to have gotten through this absolute rollercoaster of a school term and am excited to get into some writing. That leads us to:

What have I been up to (writing edition)?

2021 started off so fast. By the time January hit, I was so consumed in my new semester that I did not have time to write Feeding Habits (my novel). In the first few days of the term, I managed to write between class, until I could no longer keep up! Essentially, I did not write any of that novel until exam season (last week), where I did manage to get in about 3k words in ~4 days.

Feeding Habits

I’m currently drafting what I believe will be the last chapter of this book (chapter 10: Swan Song). This chapter is so bizarre for a few reasons. It begins the book’s third part and also marks the shift back into Lonan’s head from Harrison’s. I originally thought this part would be much, much longer, with at least another five chapters to go, but quickly realized the book’s content was nearly completed. In my 4 day 3k palooza, I hit 50k in the book (the word count goal), and couldn’t see myself extending past 60k. Since then, I’ve made the loose decision to write this final chapter as a ~novella. Here are a few reasons why:

1. This chapter is structurally very strange.

I unashamedly shift from present to past to present to past past, and so much more every 12 words. I mapped out the timeline on a sheet of paper, and there were over 20 shifts in scenes (the chapter is only about 4400 words at the moment). The fictive past is incredibly important to this chapter, more important than the present, and I thought it would make more sense to not break randomly for a chapter so I could upkeep the consistent inconsistency of the chapter.

2. The chapter is very abstract

This stems from the structural changes, but there are paragraphs in this chapter of the fictive present that are loosely based in reality. They’re more poems than they are factual paragraphs, and keeping them all contained in one place (so a mega chapter/ novella) would reduce the most confusion!

3. There’s not much left to cover

Like I said above, Feeding Habits is on its last leg, lol! I know exactly where the book needs to end up, which is very, very soon from where I’m currently at on the timeline. Swan Song should cover what 2-4 chapters would cover in terms of arcs.

Feeding Habits and I have a really weird relationship, tbh! When I realized a few weeks ago that it’d been over a year since I started the book, I realized I just needed to finish it. Not that I want to rush (because I’ve taken longer than a year to write a book in the past), but that in order to move onto another project, I’d like to put this one behind first. This book has been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, and has reminded me there’s always a time to let go. This sort of scrounges up a conversation about letting this entire series go, which is certainly something I’ve been contemplating doing soon(ish). If this spinoff series gets a third book, that may or may not be the last Fostered book for a very long time (or ever)! There are many complex reasons to move on, but the main one is that I have other projects I’d like to focus on. This is not a definitive decision, but something I’ve certainly been thinking about!

Here are a few excerpts I wrote recently:

(TW: death, gore)

Dying feels like being a trout dangled out of water. Clinging to a hook. Mouth open. Scales iridescent in a final death cry. It’s like blood spurting up the knuckles, drowning out the flesh. It’s that moment on the long fall down when the clouds cup the body. Easy drifting. The sound a skull makes when it cracks is really just the afterthought.

(TW: death, gore)

Kill shot. Death blow. Coup de grace. Right in the heart. He feels it. The blood swelling, slicking his palms. He can do it. Reach into the cavity. Feel for the ribs. Part each bone. Then cup the humming heart. Stay there. Right. It’s never been easier.

Look at this PURE moment of Lonan holding a baby I CANNOT:

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute walk away. With Olivia clinging to his shoulder, Lonan was acutely aware that she could feel his heartbeat. Open valve. Close. Repeat. Hers pulsed right above his, a miniature drumming. The sky had bruised purple, misted with clouds. The evening air nipped his cheeks, so he made sure Olivia was securely fastened between him and his jacket. With wide eyes, she absorbed the drowsy suburbia, all its family cars pulling into driveways, all its couples heading back home after a sunset walk. When Lonan passed a young boy walking two golden retrievers, Olivia giggled, and didn’t stop, even after he’d spent fifty dollars on groceries and nearly the rest on a red Corolla marked with a MUST GO NOW sign outside a convenience store.

Let’s move on!

Mandy and Cora

I said I wouldn’t talk too much about this project, but I just love it so much?? I wanted to share my SUPER early thoughts on drafting a novel, especially one that is SO different from what I’ve been writing recently. I talked about this before in THIS post, but the summary about this project is that it’s a YA contemporary novel! Can’t believe I’m writing YA again, it’s been so long, but I also think it’s going so well. Everything I’ve learned as a literary fiction writer has been a fantastic primer for transferring back to the genre. Admittedly, I have not written much, but I’m having a lot of fun diving back into a lighter project. This is the summary:

Cora and Mandy are identical twins who’ve always done everything together. But when Mandy decides to go to university out of province after graduation and Cora doesn’t, Cora takes this as an opportunity to “test run” life apart from her sister for the first time by spending the summer at her aunt’s house across the country.

I have come up with a few ~things since I last talked about this project, mostly how I’d like to structure it. As of now, I’d like the book to be structured super loosely. I’m really pulling on a lot of inspo from “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour (which is SO good), particularly how “nothing happens-y” that book is. This project (which I still need a title for!!) will be structured in short chapters that cover something Cora does on her own for the first time (without Mandy). For example, a few ideas are “Flight”, “Lunch”, and “Groceries”. “Flight” is the first “chapter” (they’re really kind of vignettes) where Cora flies to her aunt’s house. I still can’t determine if this book will take place in Canada. On one hand, I feel like there will be a wider audience if it takes place in the US (is that just an assumption??? maybe?? someone let me know!), but also: don’t really care too much about an audience at the moment! It could also take place in Canada (So Ontario and British Columbia). But if it does take place in the US, I think it may take place in NYC and San Francisco. The problem is: I really don’t like researching lol, and while I’ve been to NYC many times, I will definitely write it wrong! Does this really matter on a first draft?? absolutely not lol, but of course I am already overthinking!

But back to structure: I am looking forward to seeing what this looser structure will do. This is a story that is solely around one half of a set of twins learning to be her own person (and ultimately that she doesn’t have to completely forget her sister in order to do that), and as a twin who KNOWS this feeling, I think this structure of her doing things for the first time is SUPER relatable.

I was worried it might sound silly/worrying to others who are not twins that Cora hadn’t done things like “lunch” or “groceries” on her own, but I feel this so much as an identical twin myself! Not that she hasn’t done anything at all by herself, but as a twin, when you do something without your twin for the first few times, at least in my experience, you notice. If any twins are reading this--weigh in!

This story is the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It definitely is an OwnVoices book! Usually, I avoid details that are remotely similar to me because they make me uncomfortable haha, but with this book, it’s all me, lol! The characters are all Guyanese, which is SO fun because I’ve been planning what they eat (my fellow Caribbean peeps know: the FOOD!), which is so fun (yes they have pumpkin and shrimp, yes they have roti, yes they have pera, yes they have mithai). Every time I’ve gone to dabble at this book, or even think about it, I get incredibly emotional for this reason? I don’t exactly know why. I think this is a story I just so want to tell, with the culture I love SO much that I definitely struggled to love as a child. This is reclamation bitchessss!

Not going to lie tho: the prospect of writing ~a book~ is kind of freaky! I’m going to make the minimum word count for this book pretty short (50k) and see where it goes from there. I think I will focus on this project this summer! Originally I was going to write a literary novel this summer, but I think this one’s calling my name!

Here’s a pretty rough excerpt:

Try. I remind myself that’s what I’m doing after the flight attendant fills me a disposable cup of Coca Cola and all I can think of is Mandy and I shoving Mentos into a bottle of the stuff when we were twelve. Just me, wedged in the middle seat between an exchange student heading out for summer break and a middle-aged woman sipping a cocktail, thinking of Mandy and I bursting whole oranges in a blender when we were bored one Winter break as the plane dips through a wave of turbulence. Mandy and I dying our hair neon green with highlighters (didn’t work—our hair is too dark) as the plane lands on the tarmac. Mandy and I arguing so loud last month, we both lost our voices as I lug my carry-on out of the overhead compartment and shuffle off the plane and through the airport, searching for Aunt Vel.

Short Fiction

I’ve written so much short fiction this year! I have a goal to write a short story a month (they can range in length, as long as 1 is “complete”), so my short story brain has seriously been soaking it all up lately. Let’s chat my month to month breakdown so far:

January:

I wrote four stories in January! The first is a flash fiction piece called “Shark Swimming” that follows a young woman who attends a shark swimming class after breaking up with her girlfriend. I wrote this story for a “test” workshop for my fiction class, and it was based off the prompt “think about something you’re afraid to do and make the character do that thing”. I’m not particularly afraid of sharks, but had been wanting to use the title “Shark Swimming” for AGES (literally since 2018).

This story is one of my favourites. It’s only about 900 words, but I think there’s something profound in how mundanely specific it is. The entire story doesn’t even see the narrator swim with sharks once; it actually takes place fully in the sanctuary’s lobby. But I really love this narrator. This is the first story I’ve written in second person in a while, though I felt really connected to the unnamed narrator. She struggles with accepting that she truly is a “boring” person, and there’s something about the final image that really gets me!

I’ve been submitting this around, though it’s been rejected a handful of times. Hoping I can secure it at a magazine one day because I really love it!

The second story is “Joanne, I’ll Pray for You” which is actually a rewrite of one of my very first short stories (the first story I did not write for a class haha), “NYC in Your Apartment”. I LOVE this rewrite a lot, and also learned the original is not a very good short story! Revising this story taught me just how much I’ve learned in the 2 years I’ve been writing short fiction. Seeing the 2019 version versus the 2021 version side by side is fascinating because I essentially “gutted’ the 2019 version of its beginning and end until all that was left was the middle of the story (aka the actual story). AKA: this is the only story I’ve ever written with a hopeful ending and I cut out all the happy bits lol I am SO sorry (that arc is more for a novel or novella). That’s how this went from a 5k word story to an 1800 word story (my Submittable thanks me for this lol). A lot of details and scenes I included were more pertinent to a 3 act structure/novel, which of course short stories don’t often have because of their brevity. I love rambling about writing theory, and seeing that actually pay off is so fascinating!

(TW: trauma)

Like the original, this story follows Joanne, a woman in her early twenties, who spontaneously breaks up with her boyfriend. She claims the poltergeist haunting her drove her to this decision. The original draft focused a lot more on the traumatic events Joanne survives, but this draft really loosens them up. It focuses less so on the events themselves, and more on how Joanne’s life is affected. I found the details of these events were less important, and even sort of contradicted Joanne’s insistence she is being haunted. Instead, the poltergeist really takes more precedence in the new draft as a force Joanne doesn’t understand. That ambiguity, I think, is what the story truly needed.

I also centralized Joanne’s relationship with her boyfriend, Julian, here. Now don’t get me wrong, I really didn’t add anything to this draft. It was a matter of trimming the fat around it to leave the lean “meat” in the centre. But by removing that fat, I was able to emphasize what was most important here, and that was her relationship. Julian always played a really big role in the original draft, but I feel like his role as both a friend and partner to Joanne is much more emphasized since this draft literally is only two scenes now. Because there is less, there is more room for Joanne to reflect, which I’m happy about!

A final change I made was the setting and therefore the title. The original, which was “NYC in Your Apartment,” I couldn’t keep because I shifted the setting to Toronto (this is how I originally saw it, but in 2019 I just?? couldn’t?? write?? canlit??), and “Toronto in Your Apartment” sounded sort of gross LOL. The new title comes from a line in the story which I think is more relevant to the themes!

The next short story I wrote in January was “How to Spell Alpaca.” This one is super fun because I wrote it SO fast (in about 15 minutes or so). THIS is the writing update if you’re interested in learning more. I talked extensively about this one in that update, but some developments are that I dove into an edit a few weeks ago to really understand the core of the story. I’m still not quite there (this is just an intuitive feeling; I know not everything has “clicked), but I am really intrigued by the two mothers in the story, the narrator, and her newfound acquaintance, Violet. Both really struggle to understand their place as mothers (the narrator even declares she isn’t a mother anymore). The narrator, who is in her 50s, sees herself in Violet, who is much younger (~20s), and so she views Violet’s relationship with her daughter in a cautionary, yet mournful way, like she can see it will end up like her own relationship with her daughter, despite wanting the opposite. This is a really subtle story. I feel like if you blink, you’ll miss the message. But I think it’s compelling for that reason. It’s really a portrait of parenting and how to grapple with mistakes you may make that inevitably affect your children. Wow just unlocked the theme writing this lol.

The final story I wrote in January is “The Party,” which may be in my top 3 faves I’ve ever written. This story follows Aida, a recent divorcee in her ~40s. The day her divorce turns official, she moves into a new house and receives a party invitation addressed to the previous homeowner, yet RSVP’s anyway. At this party, she’s hoping to find some sense of noticeability, having struggled with being nondescript her whole life. Things seem quite normal at the party, until it gets bizarre.

I LOVE this story, y’all. Like “How to Spell Alpaca” it really delves into motherhood. Aida, our narrator, is incredibly hurt after her divorce. She now lives farther from her children she struggled to feel connected to in the first place, and doesn’t really know how to reignite her life. This party is a means to do that. This is the first story I’ve written that contains a “twist” which is strange because I really prefer stories that give us as much info as possible upfront, but yes, this one sort of twists.

February

I wrote one story in February, and that was “Protect the Young.” This title is SO changing when I think of a new one because it’s thematically incorrect, haha, but this story follows a woman in her late 40s whose daughter, Lindy, announces she is married the same day all their backyard chickens turn up dead. The discovery of dead chickens prompts our narrator to recall her ex-husband’s murder and the role her daughter may have played in his death.

I love this story so much! I think this would make a great closing for my short story collection. It just has that vibe! I wrote this for my second fiction workshop. I thought I had to hand in the story a week earlier than I had to, so I panicked and wrote this in one sitting! Little did I know, I did not need to do that lol but I’m very happy because this story is so fun. We get to learn more about Arnold (her ex), his relationship with Lindy, and how that translates to Lindy’s relationship with her new husband, Malcolm. I LOVE true crime (I listen to about 3-4 hours of case coverage daily), and this is my first “true crime” story. Because of that, I’m very sus of a few details that probably wouldn’t slide in actual investigatory work, so I’ll also be working on that in a revision. My professor also gave me a great suggestion that may alter the story’s structure a bit, though I look forward to toggling with it in the future.

March

In March, I was really on a Criminal Minds kick lol. I’ve been watching this show since I was seven (oops), and dove into a rewatch since it hit Disney+! This story, “Where to Run When the Lamb Roars,” is very clearly Rachel watching 5 episodes of CM a day. Oops! We follow 14-year-old Astrid as she and her older half brother kidnap a young girl to sacrifice for their yearly ritual.

I knew a few things going into this story, but the main thing was that I did NOT want to show any details of a potential murder (if one even occurs). I really wanted to keep all of those elements off the page because this story is not about those events, but about Astrid’s relationship with her brother. They are a murderous duo, with Astrid actually being the dominant partner. I wanted to explore that. I knew her brother, Fox, was more of a submissive partner in their team, even when he used to do this same thing with his father when he was much younger (chilling!), and so it was a task to explore how this young girl’s desire for violence works. The end actually comes right before the story starts, one could say, but I like it for this reason. It really made me contemplate the story by the time I finished it, and helped me examine what it really was about versus what it appeared to be about.

April

(TW: sexual content, non explicit)

I was so busy this month! Who knows if I’ll write a story last minute, but I did write one story this month called “Five Times Fast.” I wrote this during a “writing sprint” that was being hosted at a flash fiction workshop I recently took with one of my favourite writers ever, K-Ming Chang. I learned so much from this class, and am so happy I came out of it with a draft! This story is just over 300 words, so the shortest flash I’ve ever written, but I’m really happy with it. It was based off the prompt “describe the last time you or your character was naked.” In this case, the narrator has a “friends with benefits” relationship with Ricky who works at a laundromat. This story highlights a moment in this relationship (and also Ricky’s goofy personality lol). I really like it! Hopefully I’ll submit it to some magazines soon.

My short story collection

Very briefly I wanted to touch on my short story collection which I’ve titled “She is Also Dead.” I’ve been meaning to make a blog post on this, so look out for that in the coming months, but this collection is already at around 35k words (about 14 stories so far). The collection also surprisingly has a solid amount of flash fiction which is kind of fun! There’s definitely a range here, which is what I personally love in short story collections.

I feel very professional now that I have a ~collection chart. This is her:

(image description: A chart with the title “She is Also Dead.” It is broken into four columns: Story, Status, Word Count, and Published. Entry 1 - Story: Slaughter the Animal. Status: Revisions, Word Count, 3982, Published: N/A. Entry 2 - Story: Joanne, I’ll Pray for You, Status: Polished, Word Count: 1809, Published: N/A. Entry 3 - Story: Primary Organs, Status: Published, Word Count: 2342, Published: The Malahat Review. Entry 4 - Story: Faberge, Status, Polished, Word Count: 619, Published: N/A. Entry 5 - Story: The Wolf-Antelope Will Not Come for Us, Status, Polished, Word Count: 1556, Published: filling Station (forthcoming). Entry 6 - Story: How to Spell Alpaca, Status: revisions, Word Count: 1327, Published: N/A. Entry 7 - Story: Blink Twice for Final Judgement, Status: Polished, Word Count: 6572, Published: N/A. Entry 8 - Story: The Species is Dead, Status: Published, Word Count: 1208, Published: Minola Review. Entry 9 - Story: Shark Swimming, Status: Polished, Word Count: 907, Published: N/A. Entry 10 - Story: The Party, Status, Polished, Word Count 2339, Published: N/A. Entry 11 - Story: Fig, Status: Polished, Word Counter: 947, Published: N/A. Entry 12 - Story: Protect the Young, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4128, Published: N/A. Entry 13 - Story: Where to Run When the Lamb Roars, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 2174, Published: N/A. Entry 14 - Story: Phantom Limbs, Status: Revisions, Word Count: 4844, Published: N/A.) /end image description.

This order is DEFINITELY not permanent (at this point whenever I write a story, I just fit it randomly into this chart lol), and some of the info is outdated (for example, Slaughter the Animal is now polished!!! thank god!!!). But just an idea of what I’m thinking of including.

This is the summary so far:

In SHE IS ALSO DEAD, characters are pushed to act on their gravest impulses. A small town turns murderous when their local invasive species, the Janices, begin dying. A child struggles to understand her mother’s suicide. A college dropout who insists she’s being haunted by a poltergeist unexpectedly breaks up with her boyfriend. A mother acknowledges her daughter’s murderous tendencies after her backyard chickens mysteriously die. A young girl caters the funeral of a girl rumored to be killed by a wolf-antelope. A newly-divorced mother RSVP’s to a bizarre party she was not invited to, and a murderous brother and sister upkeep their yearly tradition of abducting a young girl. These stories follow characters who navigate death, violent desires, womanhood, and loss, both self-imposed and otherwise.

This is also so subject to change as I may pull and add stories to the collection!

I think I’m going to leave this update here for now! I’ve written TONS of poetry too, but I honestly ~hate my poetry right now lol, so! Hope you enjoyed this chill rambly update. Hope writing has going well for you all! All the best!

--Rachel

[dxmedstudent]

i'm 20 and i'm worried about how overly fussy i am with dating men. i do think it's a maturity thing and i'm still trying to outgrow the ridiculous expectations i have for a boyfriend but i always seem to get bored of the guys i've talked to/dated. idk why but guys that show vulnerability make me uncomfortable?? i think it's the ideas i hold about 'masculinity' and i don't want to think like that anymore. any tips to move past this way of thinking?

Hey, friend. What an interesting ask, thank you for writing in. I‘m going to treat you with a rambling post, but I’ll  try to break it up so that it’s less boring. Don’t be hard on yourself; you’re still learning what you want and need. You’re still really young, and what you want in a partner can change a lot as you yourself grow as a person. What might help is if you reflect on what you actually want. Firstly, what are you actually seeing a person for? There’s an assumption that everyone wants a longterm relationship which leads to marriage, kids, a mortgage and a dog. But not everyone wants that or is ready to even think about that. So you do you. Do you want just to date to have fun? Or a casual relationship? What about FWB? Just sex?  A longterm relationship? Kids and a house? Or just to muddle along and see what happens? Because I think a lot of ourselves don’t really think enough about just what we expect out of seeing people. It’s OK if this changes; lots of people start off wanting to be casual, but get serious, or think they want something serious but realise that they don’t. The key is to be open to reflecting on what, right now, will make you happy. And if you even want to be dating at all. It’s OK if the answer is ‘no’, or if you don’t want what everyone else wants for you. The best way to find someone you really want is to not be afraid of being alone. I wonder if you might get bored partly because you’re not sure what you want out of dating; a lot of young people don’t necessarily want a long term relationship or to plan too far ahead, and that’s OK, too. Young people are under a lot of pressure to date, have sex and eventually get married and have kids, but a lot of people just don’t feel ready for that, or might not want that at all. Women, in particular are bombarded messages about how miserable it is to be single, and how we need a man and kids to make us complete. A lot of that pressure can come from other women as well as parents and friends. But not all women feel ready for that, or want that, and pressuring ourselves to rush into relationships can lead to unhappiness because people feel they need to have ‘someone’ for the sake of not being single. I’ve seen people put up with relationships that looked pretty unsatisfying from the start, and I always wondered how much of that was the fear of being alone, of being unloved and of being seen to be single. Perhaps take time out of dating to reflect on who you are right now, and what you want out of life. Not just out of dating, but also out of life in general. Look after the whole of your life, and work towards the things that will give you happiness. Make sure you have a life outside of dating; there are no guarantees any relationship will work out, and anyhow, life is more than just romance. If talking to a guy isn’t interesting or exciting, don’t keep dating him; you have to really want to keep seeing someone for it to work. It sounds like you know that, which is why you’re trying to change your way of thinking, and I really respect the thought you’ve put into what’s not been working for you. That’s actually pretty mature, so  don’t be harsh on yourself.

Men are people, too. It’s hard to tell if your dates start out really promising and you then get bored, or if perhaps it was hard to be enthusiastic to begin with? Though if you find your enthusiasm for them wearing off, it sounds like it might very much relate to your expectations for masculinity. When you get to know a man, and he starts to be more open and vulnerable with you, that goes against what we’re taught about masculinity. We’re told that guys are meant to be tough, silent logical and unemotional. But you and I know that men are people with feelings just like anyone else. People who are moved deeply, who have complex feelings and their own fears and hopes and issues. Society may view women as weak for having emotions, but it at least allows us to express them (even if it does mock us for them anyway); men are under pressure to hold back and keep everything they feel to themselves lest they are seen as weak, and well, feminine. This isn’t very healthy for guys, and I think you’re right to point out that we as women can also enforce unfair standards if we insult men for showing vulnerability. In turn, men will tend to find it harder to open up to friends and family, and are more likely to perhaps rely on only their partner, if they rely on anyone at all, because there are few contexts in which men are allowed to express their feelings.

Get him off that pedestal. Try to reframe how you see the concept of a date or boyfriend. I know that when you first start seeing someone they are shiny and new and seem to be amazing, but also really mysterious. When you start seeing someone, it’s hard not to get ahead of oneself because there’s actually very little we know about them. But putting them on a pedestal will ultimately make it difficult to have an equal relationship with them as a real person.  A guy is just a guy; no different from your male friend or brother or father or male colleague, they will just occupy a different place in your life. We get bombarded with a lot of ideals about what a romantic partner should be like, but really, in the end they are just another person; merely a really good friend you fancy the pants off, rather than a creature we should keep to a higher standard than all other humans. It wouldn’t surprise you that your friends have feelings and are sometimes vulnerable. Think about what it is about vulnerability that makes you feel uncomfortable, but also about what that discomfort is. Is it that you feel it makes them weak? Perhaps it’s a bit scary to see someone you admire with weaknesses or being sad? Perhaps it makes you uncomfortable because you yourself don’t like opening up- there could be many reasons. What do we even want in a partner, anyway? Then you need to think about what you want in a partner, and whether your expectations are what you really want, or are right for you. There are things that are non-negotiable, ideally, this list should be as short and sensible as possible, because it rules out a lot of people. The more things that are non-negotiable, the harder it might be to find someone to meet your criteria. My thoughts on this are basically: I want to find a decent person who I really gel with and who I can build a life with. If I focus on things like how tall or chubby (etc) they are, it’ll rule out lots of perfectly nice people who might be just right, on really arbitrary grounds. That said, we ALL have non-negotiable criteria, even if they are something like ‘is respectful’ and ‘100% understands consent’. I’m just a believer in making sure those criteria truly matter.  And there are things that are nice but not essential. For example, liking the same band, or having the same hobby; you would probably want someone you were seeing to have stuff in common with you in general, but not all your interests would have to line up. You don’t mention what your expectations are, but you can try to remind yourself that most qualities are seasoning; added extras. It might be nice if you like the same band, or the same game, but it’s by no means essential. Types are for blood, not people. I’ve always been a bit wary of the idea of a ‘type’; it feels like limiting yourself to a narrow set of attributes that might be charming, but honestly? lots of people who are different than that can also be perfectly nice and might also be good for you. I’m not a massive crush person, I don’t fall for many people at all, which makes dating even more like looking for a needle in a haystack. But the people I’ve liked have been pretty varied; they aren’t linked by ethnicity or weight or height or particular interests and I guess what I liked about them all was a little different. I just don’t see how some people can say ‘I only like blondes’ or ‘only muscly guys turn me on’, like there are so many cute things about people out there in the world, are you really going to tell me that if someone doesn’t have blue eyes or big boobs, ripped abs, lots of cash or a flash car etc that you wouldn’t find them attractive!? Because half of liking someone is finding little dorky things about them that might not even be remotely conventionally attractive and realising that it makes them kind of cute. Regardless, the real problem with types is that they can sometimes be a way of reliving familiar but ultimately unhelpful ground. Some of my friends really do have ‘types’, and it makes me worry for them, because they keep coming across similar problems in their relationships again and again and I can’t help but feel that it might be because they are picking people with similar kinds of issues, and come up against the same wall as last time. I think examining what we’re attracted to, and what that says about ourselves, and how compatible that combination is with our actual happiness is pretty important, and that’s only something we can et through practice and learning from previous relationships alon the way. There’s no shame in things not working out in the past; it helps us do better next time around. This isn’t to say that it’s wrong to be attracted to something, but some things can be unhealthy, and attraction to something doesn’t necessarily mean there’s compatibility, either. We can be attracted to people with qualities that bring out the best in us, or bring out the worst; our attraction to something doesn’t guarantee that it works for us. What each person needs to do is work out the things that attract them which are good for them, or work on their self until what attracts them is good for them because they are in a much healthier state mentally and in their life.  We all have issues; we all have different ways of thinking, and ways in which our past affects who we are. We all have hurts, and different  ways in which we react to situations. Accepting that we’re human, and that interpersional relationships can be hard (and therefore require thought and work) means that we can work on understanding ourselves and the people who are in our lives. Utimately, in the long term, we all need people who can bring out the best in us, but who don’t bring out our worst qualities or insecurities. Good luck, and I hope you find what you’re looking for :D

[killjoy-loveit]

Solar World- Part Two

A/N: I would like to clarify that everything written in this story is complete fiction and isn’t to be taken as a true portrayal of reality. Also, this is a story I had started writing but completely forgot about and thought I could convert it to fanfic so that I might actually finish it, lol :) This series has an unknown finish date, as I’m still trying to set up the layout of the series. I’m going to try doing something different, I’ll be including links to the other parts in the notes by a reblog (to access the links I think you might need to click on the reblog itself)

Summary: Sunni and her team have learned Valis Havens did not hold the last of humanity as they thought.

Word Count: 2,170

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic AU

Introduction | Part One | Part Two

    Sunlight twists through the branches of trees towering above- at maybe a hundred feet, if I had to guess. The plant life in the area surrounding the hatch seems healthy upon a brief glance, the vibrant foliage leading me to this assumption. It’s so much more beautiful than I imagined, or than anything we have in Valis Haven to give us an idea of what the surface looked like. Nothing could properly give it justice in a mere reproduction, not when it looks like this. I’m even a little short of breath just taking everything in, not because the air is bad but rather my excitement is making it difficult for me to take a deep breath.

      It appears as if the hatch opened up in the middle of a forest, one that wasn’t present three hundred and fifty years ago. As my team climb out of the clean room through the hatch one by one, I have a tough time trying to focus on the questions they’re asking. But it’s apparent I’m not the only one enamored with the environment around us. A breeze rustles the leaves resulting in everyone jumping slightly. Reminding us that while this is an exciting experience, we must be cautious and not let our guard down.

     “Sunni, it’s… It’s beautiful.” Jae murmured beside me.

     His words break me free from the trance I’d been in, and I nod in response. “Yes, it most definitely is beautiful... We can’t just stand around here though, we need to look for a place to set up camp.”

     “Sure thing, Sunni. Just lead the way.” Gil replies giddily, his feet bouncing with energy.

     I step off the platform that leads to the hatch after sliding it closed. Twigs snap under my feet as I move forward, determining which direction we should go. Based off the fact that a forest wasn’t present before, I’m going to assume that the maps I studied are inaccurate and useless now. Our camp should be near a water source, and if we can find animal tracks they could lead us to the closest body of water.

      “Look for animal tracks, shout if you find anything.” I say calmly, wandering farther from the group.

     At this we split up, some going in pairs or solo, like myself. I walked to the left of the hatch, going past a few trees to look for tracks. As I searched the ground something in the dirt seemed odd, I crouched to get a better look at it. It was a track, that much I was aware of, but it was unlike any animal I’ve studied. Instead, as I moved leaves to the side to analyze it, the track appeared human. But that can’t be, nobody could have survived those disasters. Could they? I mean, is it possible that somehow people managed to survive and their descendants have been roaming the surface while we’ve been stuck underground?

     Shooting to my feet from my crouched position, I move to yell out for the team but a movement in the corner of my eye makes me freeze. It was fleeting, almost imperceptible, but it was enough to bring me pause. Breath frozen in my lungs, I turn my head to where I saw the movement. I scan the trees carefully, and to my disappointment or relief I’m not sure, nothing’s there. Shaking my head to rid myself of intrusive thoughts screaming that I’m not alone, rather, we’re not alone.

      These thoughts are proved correct though as a body presses into me from behind, an arm wrapping around my waist to restrain me and a hand moving to cover my mouth. Even knowing it won’t be of much use I try to scream, and as expected the sound is muffled by my assailant’s hand. Twisting and yanking my body in a futile attempt to free myself only results in being held tighter, the arm constricting painfully around my waist. Hot tears start to build in my eyes, threatening to burn their way down my cheeks. I’ve only just made it to the surface and now I’m probably going to be killed by someone we had no clue existed.

     Words were spoken into my ear by a low voice in a language I didn’t recognize and the hand was removed from my mouth. A minute passed in silence as the person waited, I assumed it was a male at this point based off the voice. Maybe he was waiting for me to respond. I chew at my lip trying to determine if it’d matter if I told him that I didn’t understand him if he couldn’t understand me either. Screw it, it’s worth a shot.

     “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” I whisper softly.

     A huff of breath hits my neck, sending chills down my spine. “Do you understand me now?” My eyes go wide at his words and I nod frantically. “Good. Where did you come from? Why are you here? What are your plans?”

     “U-Um, well, I’m from Valis Havens. I’ve been sent up here with a small team to solve a problem. The plan is to find the problem and a solution.”

      “What is Valis Havens?”

     “It’s an underground facility that houses what we thought was the last of humanity.”

     “You said you have a team? All of you are unknown threats on our land, I have to take you to the Superior.”

     “Superior? Will-will we be killed?” I stutter out, heart pounding.

     “Only if you’re deemed a threat.”

     Surely that shouldn’t have comforted me, but for some peculiar reason it did. While, yes, there were those on my team that could pose significant threat for the people that lived here, none of them would do anything unless I gave the go ahead. I wasn’t about to give permission to go to war with people we had no clue existed until now.

      “Call your people here.” He demanded.

     “Are you sure?” I question. “If I call them here with you holding me hostage, they won’t listen first, they’ll attack. I promise I won’t try to escape, it’s no use when I know nothing about the terrain.”

     “Fine.”

      With that single word the arms holding me in place released me. Before calling out to my team, I figured I deserved to see the face of the man that had been holding me as leverage. What I saw was not what I was expecting. Although, I’m not really sure what I was expecting, just that this was not it. The man standing before me is handsome, with a sharp jawline, high cheekbones, and rounded lips. His tanned skin shone in the sunlight, and his dark almond shaped eyes held a dimmed fire within them.

      “Call them, now.” He ordered, eyes narrowing.

     I pause a second longer to regain my composure. “Guys! I need you to come over here.”

     In the following minute countless shouts ring out into the air, confirming they’re moving my way, joined by sounds of leaves crunching underfoot. Gil and Nia appear first, followed shortly by Bo and Bren, next comes Jae and Vera, then finally Ves shows up. As each group finds me, they pause in place upon seeing the man standing beside me. Bo’s mouth keeps opening and closing, giving him the appearance of a dumbfounded fish. Ves is the only one to speak up amidst the dead silence surrounding my team.

     “There were survivors. Interesting.” She murmurs, a calculating look taking form on her face.

     “Yes, and apparently we’re on their territory.” I sigh lightly, glancing at the man beside me. “Now we have to go with him to meet his Superior.”

     “Sunni…” Vera draws my name out, her tone showing that she’s uncomfortable with the situation.

     I grit my teeth. “We don’t have another option, either we go with him or we start a war. I would prefer not to go to war.”

     With these words, any protests that my team had been forming died on their lips. It was evident in their eyes, how they widened in realization and fear, that initiating a war was to be avoided at all costs. None of us had ever lived through anything similar to that, the only wars we knew of were in history books. Each war in those books was devastating, with body counts higher than our population, it was difficult to imagine being okay with such loss.

      “We must move out now, so that we aren’t out when the sun sets.” The man beside me spoke up.

     A quick head count and we were on our way, following the mysterious guy through the forest. He never really spoke, except for telling us to avoid certain plants. One plant in question being a deep purple, almost black color, with large heart shaped leaves harboring small spikes that contained a deadly poison. If I’m being honest, I truly wanted to take a sample of one and examine it, potentially run a few tests. Maybe if I could figure out it’s genetic makeup, an antidote could be made for the poison, if one already hasn’t been developed that is.

     Though it wasn’t just the plant life I was curious of. I mean, how could anybody possibly survive the massive solar flares and tsunamis that happened three hundred and fifty years ago? There’s the potential that maybe if they had a bunker people could survive for a few years before facing the surface again. Except I don’t understand how the radiation wouldn’t have killed them upon surfacing, it certainly should have been deadly at that point. Everything I’ve been taught goes to say that nobody should have been able to survive. Thus, it’s mystifying to find out that people somehow managed to make it through the calamity.

     Surely the Earth would have been a mixture of scorched grounds and raised sea levels, which makes it even harder for my brain to comprehend. Quite honestly I would love to learn of their history, what they’ve been taught and how they’ve progressed. Has their society regressed in terms of development? Or has it gone beyond any expectations we may have down in Valis Havens? While I have one member of the society leading us, he is remaining quiet and elusive regarding sharing any information. I do know one thing, they must speak multiple languages, seeing as how he didn’t speak English to me at first. Scratch that, make it two things, because I am certain that the language he spoke first is new or a derivative at the least.

      Granted, I am not well versed in linguistics, I only ever managed to learn two other languages fluently. Though I do know basics of a few others, most of which were spread out regionally. Ves and Nia are the best with languages in the team, both speaking upwards of five different languages, not including English. One of them could potentially identify the origins of the language he spoke, if it was a derivative that is. It wouldn’t be surprising if Ves was the one who could identify it, seeing as she is a bit of a wild card.

      See, there’s no telling what Ves knows. She’s the type that values secrecy and never shows the world anything but a face of stone. If I’m honest, Ves scares me just a little bit. Not because I feel that she would ever go against the team or harm us, but mainly for the sole fact that you can never guess where her thoughts are. And since she rarely talks, everyone goes quiet when she does.

      Everyone else on the team is a bit easier, well, a lot easier, to read in comparison to Ves. Gil’s emotions are always plain as day on his face, he’s probably most like Ves’ polar opposite in that regard. Most of the others tend to have control over their expressions and body language, though there are times when they have an extreme reaction to something and that control slips.

      Sometimes I get so lost in thought that I lose track of my surroundings, this was one of those times. I slammed right into the back of the guy- I really should learn his name- that was leading us as a result. Yeah, I’m quite aware that I should’ve been paying attention so that incidents, such as this, wouldn’t occur. Well, it’s too late to remedy the situation. He turns slowly to face me, a blank look on his face. All I manage to do is smile sheepishly and whisper a quick apology.

     He shakes head lightly, a small smile appearing briefly. “We have arrived. Stay quiet and try not to attract too much attention. There’s no telling how the others will react, so it’s important to get you to the Superior as quickly as possible.”

     I stop him as he turns back to lead us further. “Wait, what’s your name?”

     “Minho.” And with that he turned on his heel and continued forth.

     At least now I know his name.

[layla256]

Key to Her Heart Chapter 1/52: Halloween

So, some context first. My friends and I decided to do a 52 fanfic challenge this year, one prompt each week. The only rule is that you must adhere to the prompt, one post a week, and they all must be in the same universe. So, for example, if you have been writing marvel fanfic all year, but you think a prompt would be GREAT for Supernatural, you have to somehow fit the Supernatural universe into the MCU. 

Now, because I hate myself, I decided I was going to write an entire series consecutively with only a basic outline of my AU and no knowledge about the future prompts.

KILL ME.

But, either way, I think this’ll be a fun adventure into writing for me. So behold the first in my Spuffy AU Key to Her Heart. I’ll probably post this on AO3 and EF as well.

The prompt this time was:  Our hero (or heroine) loses his memory.   Who will help him find his way back?

And doesn’t that just scream “Halloween episode”?

WARNING: At one point at the end of this chapter, Spike makes the assumption that Buffy was raped in the episode Reptile Boy. While no detail is given and Buffy reveals that there wasn’t any rape, it’s still an issue mentioned and I don’t want to blind side anyone with it.

Spike wasn’t a traditionalist. He never pretended to be one either. No matter how much Dru had wanted him to be, that just wasn’t something he cared about. All that chanting and ritual? It just wasn’t him. However, if there was one rule he was willing to take seriously, it was the one about Halloween. You don’t start shit on Halloween. It’s everyone’s fucking vacation day. Sure, if a tasty snack wanders by he isn’t going to say, “No thanks, I’m dieting today!” But he also understood that, at a certain point, causing problems on Halloween was just being a dick.

Spike can respect an asshole (he is often one), but being a dick is an entirely different story.

So, you can imagine the conflict he felt when Dru told him that someone was, as his mother would have said, “making shenanigans” that were going to deliver the Slayer into his lap. On the one hand, he had his principles dammit! He had said he would respect the Halloween rule when he first learned of it. However, on the other hand, he was an ancient, evil vampire and he did whatever he wanted! Not to mention the fact that the slayer was a royal bitch who had it coming.

Eventually, Spike made a compromise with himself. He’d go out and enjoy whatever chaos occurred because of this newcomer. If he saw the slayer? Great. Dinner and his Dark Princess back at her best again. If he saw the person responsible? A beating and lecture that would make his father weep with jealousy.

He hadn’t been planning on what he would do if he ran into her however.

She looked beautiful, although he knew from experience at this point that she always did. Her normally well-kept hair was completely falling out of whatever adorable braid she’d managed to coax it into that night. The crown of what looked like Daffodils was almost falling completely off her head. Her make up was relatively un-smudged, but that probably had more to do with the fact that she wasn’t wearing much, just a light dusting of gold across her eyelids and a similar color on her lips.

However, the thing that caught his attention wasn’t just the confused look on her face, but the dress she was wearing. Unlike the tight black number that had been haunting his dreams since that God-awful frat party the week before, this dress matched Buffy far better. The creamy silk of the one-shoulder dress looked gorgeous folded and wrapped around her body, accentuating every curve while hiding the important parts from his gaze. The golden rope around her waist synched it all in, drawing his attention to her hips and that luscious ass that—

And he was going to stop that train of thought right now.

She looked at him with no recognition and a hint of fear, making him want to cast himself on the nearest cross. Worried that she was upset with him for the party, he shrunk his shoulders, held his hands up, and tried to seem as non-threatening as possible.

“Pet I—I would never hurt you. You know that, right? Please tell me you know I would never hurt you.”

While the confusion didn’t leave her hazel green eyes, the fear definitely did. “D-Do you know me?” She asked hesitantly, looking around them with wide eyes. “Do you know who I am?”

Spike’s brow furrowed. “Of course I do, luv. You’re—”

He was cut off as one of her friends came running towards them looking a bit odd while followed by the other one, who wasn’t moving normally. Too stiff.

“Buffy!” Red called, waving her arms wildly at the girl in front of him. “Buffy, thank goodness you’re ok!”

 Spike was stuck on baby-sitting duty, and he wasn’t sure how upset he wanted to be about it. Red, who was a very hot ghost for some reason, had run off to find Buffy’s pseudo Watcher, leaving him to look after the Whelp and Buffy, both of whom had turned into their costumes, leaving confused shells behind.

“So I dressed as a goddess and now I am one?” Buffy asked again, still trying to grasp everything after the short run-through Willow had given Spike. “That does sound rather . . . disconcerting.”

What’s disconcerting is you using that kind of language Spike thought, but he kept it to himself. He knew there was a bright mind under all that blonde, and he wasn’t going to be one of the many people discouraging her about it.

“So, fill us in,” Whelp ordered, showing more initiative that Spike had ever seen in the teen. “What is the situation like?”

Spike sighed heavily, not wanting to really get into it. “Look, I wasn’t here for the mess that was last year, alright? So you lot are getting the cliff-notes version and nothing more. Got it?”

The goddess and soldier before him nodded, though Whelp looked like he wanted to argue the point more.

“Now, I don’t know about you Whelp, but I know that little miss amnesia over there moved here about a year and a half ago after her parents split. She met you and Red and you little Happy Meals have been friends ever since.” He noticed Buffy scrunch her nose at the term “Happy Meals” and couldn’t help but smile knowing there was still some of her in that costume after all. She always did get on his case about it.

“Why would my parents split apart? Surely if they loved one another enough to marry—”

“Cliff notes version luv,” Spike reminded her gently. In all honesty, he didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. That when Hank and Joyce Summers had been confronted with the very real issue of the supernatural Joyce had dealt with it through mild panic, heavy drinking for two days, and silence while Hank had simply attempted to ship Buffy off to the funny farm. Thankfully, the idea of her daughter being sent somewhere like that for something Joyce knew was real had snapped her back to herself pretty quickly. However, Buffy had blamed herself for the divorce ever since, and Spike, evil though he may be, didn’t have it in him to hurt her like that.

“So you lot wound up getting involved in most of the nasty business here on the Hellmouth since good ol’ Watcher thought you might be a Potential.”

Once again, Buffy’s brow furrowed in the most adorable way. “Potential what?”

Spike shook his head. “Potential Slayer, luv, like that Faith bi-bint Willow mentioned she was getting. One girl in every soddin‘ generation to cause vamps like me all kinds of headaches. They thought you were one for a bit, but turns out you’ve just got major magic going on.”

Whelp shot up. “‘Vamps like me’? You’re a vampire? Then why are you helping us?” Spike saw him reach for his weapon, but waved him off.

“Easy there Rambo. My issue’s with the Slayer and her lot. I got no quarrel with you all.” He looked at Buffy with a single smirk. “Told you that the first night we met actually. You and Red threatened to light my highly flammable ass on fire if I tried to take a bite out of you. Been nothing but banter ever since.”

Buffy smiled, “So we’re compatriots then?” she asked cautiously. “Through humor and fear?”

Spike barked out a laugh. “‘Compatriots’, sure. I gave you my word that, long as you and your lot stayed out of my business, you’d be safe as houses. Yer Mum’s got permanent protection too, in case you’re worried.” No need to mention how pointless he thought it was, seeing as how the woman bashed him over the head with an ax right after thinking he was attacking Buffy.

Buffy nodded her head gratefully, more of her hair spilling out of her braid. “Thank you very much Spike. That puts my mind at an ease.”

Bloody hell, Red needed to hurry up with whatever plan it was she had for fixing this mess.

After that, things eventually quieted down a bit. Soldier Whelp went into the kitchen hunting for “provisions”, leaving Spike with a curious Buffy.

“Spike,” she said cautiously, tilting her head as she looked at him. “Spike, why were you concerned that I was afraid of you when we met? If we are friends and you have upheld your end of our bargain, then surely I would have no reason to fear you.”

Spike sighed heavily for what felt like the thousandth time that night, running his fingers over his gelled hair in frustration. He’d honestly been hoping she wouldn’t ask about that.

He could lie to her, tell her some made-up story to keep in the goddess’s good graces for a while longer, but he immediately shook the thought off. He might not mind it, but Buffy would be offended. She’d see it as a manipulation. While she won’t come out and reprimand him for it, he’ll still be subject to those disappointed eyes. Like last time.

“You, well, pet, that is—” he cut himself off with an angry growl. Rip the bandage off. “You’re upset with me. I went and killed some blighters who absolutely deserved it, but you didn’t appreciate it. Haven’t spoken to me in a week for it.”

Buffy’s head tilted once again for a moment, considering. He hated when she did that. For one thing, she looked bloody adorable. For another, he could never tell what she was about to say. “What was their crime?” She asked finally.

Spike blinked at her twice. “What?”

“Their crime.” She repeated simply. “You ascertained that they deserved their fate, but what crime did they commit to deserve such a thing?”

Spike couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t explain the pain on Buffy’s face when she’d told him of the drugs they’d put in her drink, they way they’d dragged her about as they saw fit.

She hadn’t come out and said it, but he knew that you only drugged a girl for one reason and one alone. That in and of itself would have earned them a solid beating session with him (he’d never much liked rape, even after being turned), but the fact that they’d done it to Buffy, kind, innocent Buffy who went so far out of her way for her friends and family, even an undead monster like himself, was unforgivable. There was only one appropriate punishment, and he certainly didn’t regret being the one to give it out.

Thankfully, he was saved from explaining as the crown completely fell off of her head, and Buffy, blinking as if to clear a fog, looked at him with recognition for the first time. “Spike?” she asked her nose once again being too freaking cute for words as it scrunched. “Ugh, what happened? I feel all magic-y.”

“Thank Eric Cantona, she lives to butcher the mother tongue once more!” Spike grinned and swept her into a hug, swinging her around once before dropping her onto the ground.

“Spike, what’s got you all ramped up? You’ve been all with the brooding worse than Angel lately.” Despite her words, a bright smile took over her face. “Ever since Willow, Cordy, and I almost got sacrificed to that snake demon thingy last week—”

Spike gripped her shoulders tightly, eyes tinted yellow. “Wait, what? What sacrifice?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Remember? The frat party? I was all with the crying and the depresso girl and you went on a completely unnecessary warpath through the whole freaking frat?”

Spike felt the distinct need to lay down. A sacrifice. The boys hadn’t raped her. Just a failed sacrifice. That he hadn’t even known about.

Yes. A kip was definitely a requirement right now.

So that’s the first chapter! In this AU Buffy is the key as opposed to Dawn, and Faith is the Slayer. This is actually a thought I had back in high school when I first watched the series and couldn’t get my hands on anything past the first third of the fifth season and none of the Angel series, so recognize that a lot of my characterization won’t stray from my feelings about characters past around the Dracula episode. While I’ll be referencing and maybe even writing about things in later seasons (maybe even the comics, I’m not sure yet), my main influence are going to be those first few years. For example, I am perfectly aware of the fact that Faith gets a redemption and becomes a great Slayer and a good friend to Buffy. However, I had seven years to sit and stew on how much I hated her before I could get my hands on the later seasons, so . . . yeah.

[fapangel]

SO what do you what will happen now with the whole fake Bomer guy supposedly be a trump supporter? Do you think the blue wave will restart or is it too little to late?

The most significantrevelation of the mail-bomber incident was that the Republicanmainstream – not the usual fringe kooks, but the levelheaded,respected commentators – immediately suspected it to be amanufactured “October Surprise.”

Some of those knee-jerktweets have since been deleted, likelyfor the same reason that I was more alarmed that I could entertain a“false flag” theory in the first place than I was by the possible“false flag” itself. Embracing asinine conspiracy theoriesis, to me, a hallmark of left-wing agitprop, an indelible impressionfrom my formative Bush-era youth when ~Halliburton~ and~Bush’s cabinet of puppeteers who have Jewish last names~was unceasingly invoked in anypolitical argument. And yet, despite knowing theoverwhelming odds of a lone lunatic being the perp (as indeed theywere) and my own decades-old biases against conspiracy theories, Istill found myselfmuttering dubiously.

Iwasn’t alone in that impression – the NewYork Times picked up on it too, and as is their wont managed todisclose their unique myopia as well. In their effort to equate allright-wing media to Alex “Lizardman Chemtrails” Jones’s usualconspiracytainment bullshit, theydrop this revealing paragraph:

Mr.Jones has been largely pushed tothe fringes of the internet — kicked off Twitter, Facebook and adozen other services — and his cries for attention now seem mostlypitiful. (This week, he was filmed yellingat a pile of manure outsidea rally for President Trump in Texas.) Buthis spirit lives on in the larger universe of pro-Trump media, whichhas fused the conspiratorial grandeur of Infowars with an unshakablefaith in Mr. Trump’s righteousness.

Theyautomatically equate media exposure of an idea with how manyviewers believe the idea. The thesis of the article lies inthese two sentences; Alex Jones has been silenced, but the moremainstream right-wing media has picked up his ideas, and that’s whythey’re still alive.

Thisalone speaks volumes about the media’s worldview, but to reallydrive it home see thisarticle wherein the reporter blames Trump’s attacks on themedia for their plummeting popularity, as if the Great PresidentialPumpkin can sway millions of Americans into hating themainstream media via his eldritch mind-control rays. This is why theyspeak of “an unshakable faith in Mr. Trump’s righteousness-”leftists view the world in terms of stupid mobs and the influentialdemagogues that sway and lead them. They simply cannot comprehendthat their own actions have shattered the public’s trust in them,despite the problem long predating Trump (one of my Journalism 101professors cited trust polling that consistently put Journalistsbelow used car salesmen back in 2007!) They find it easier tobelieve that their vast media empires’ combined megaphone is beingdrowned out by RumpleTrumpskien pied piping on his magical racistdogwhistle than to admit that people might think for themselves longenough to call them out on their egregious lies.

Thisdovetails nicely with recent revelations thatthe FBI leaked information to the press, then cited said “reporting”to the Justice Dept. as justification for further investigations,including FISA wiretapping warrants. Whilethe media’s lunacy is frequently amusing – reporters leaningdramatically into nonexistent wind, CNN’sfit over a panel truck blocking their stalker peephole in the hedge,or going bugfuck insane because Trumphad dinner without informing the media – nobody’s laughinganymore. And it’s precisely because of the growing understandingamong the populace of how the media has wantonly abused its power toaid the abuse of Federal power to nullify the results of a democraticelection.As Ian Miles Cheong said; “if the media can lie about somethingas insignificant as a koipond feeding ceremony, what else are they lying about?”

Well,now we know – and the people don’t seem amused.

I’vecovered the media’s worldview and demonstrable myopia before; Iaddress it in this instance to show thatthe media simply cannot adapt their message. Indeed,the NYT article on fringe-to-mainstream cites the mocking/pol/ “suspicious devices” meme without apparentunderstanding of how it undermines their implicit assumptions mereparagraphs prior of deplatforming speakers equalingthe silencing of their ideas. Theleft-wing “mobs and demagogues” is more than theory to them; it’show they organize – which is why John Oliver’s sick Friday nightburns are being repeated ad nauseam on Facebook by early Saturdaymorning. Theleft truly cannotmeme;it’s simply how they function. So when RumpleTrumpskien needles themedia into talking All About Themselves instead of the issues at handyetagain, iteffectively makes the mediathe issue at hand – and given that pollingconsistently shows that many Democrats are coming to distrust themedia of late, that’s not a strong issue for the DNC.Conversely, right-wingers will be shitposting the latest dank memeswith or without Alex Jones’s Twitterfeed, comehellor Maxine Waters.

Thusly,I conclude the mail bomber incident won’t have a significant impacton the electoral map – notjust because of widespread cynicism engendered by constant mediafalsehoods, but also because the structural problems that producedsuch alsocripple the media’s ability to exploit such incidents. In fact, themedia’s incredible blindness makes them likely to harmthe left-wing’s cause by doubling down on narratives that wereasinine the first time around. There is no bad news for the DNC thatthe media’s mental illness cannot make worse. Takethe latest example of thesynagogue shooter thatturnedout to be a Trump-hater who thought POTUSwas controlled Jews. Theusual hate-mongeringWaPo crowd actuallydug up the “star-shapedbackground graphic in a campaign ad” gem that was laughablelunacy beforeTrumpmoved the US embassy to Jerusalem and made defending Israel in the UNa cornerstone of US foreign policy. Thisis placed at the topofthe article, as if it’s a powerful and convincing lead-in to thelong-winded paranoid rambling of “troll armies” motivated by theusual mystic ~coded signals~ mentioned later on. Eventhe more sober-sounding takes likethis NYT hit-piece must open by blaming Trump for the crimes ofTrump-supporters andTrump-haters,which obliges the author to afascinating attempt in pissing up a rope without getting wet.

Itnaturally follows, then, that breathless media polling reports citing85% and upwards chances of a “blue wave” retaking the House areabout as trustworthy as similar polling in 2016. Even Nate Silver’smuch-vaunted “538” polling agency has come under prettypointed criticism for the number of times they’ve shrugged offsimilar “80%” predictions that haven’t come to pass – froma Harvard professor, no less. Furthermore,midterm elections are different in many ways – local issues oftenhave people more fired up (read, pissed off,) especially regardinggubernatorial elections. Since midterms are traditionally very lowturnout, a popular gubernatorial candidate can have a huge impact on“down-ballot” races – i.e. people show up to vote for thegovernor, and vote straight party ticket for alltheother candidates, US House included. In short, the polls mean jackdiddly squat, soeveryone’s simply reporting what they want (if you don’t believeme, look no further than Fox News’s reportinga nail-biting dead heat currently, then thisSeptember 22ndarticle on how dismissing “blue wave” rhetoric as the bullshit itis could suppress the Republican vote via overconfidence.A “dead heat” narrative is the safest way to turn out votes; norisk of overconfidence or hopelessness keeping people away from thepolls.) Soto evaluate the potentials, we must turn to the murkiest of allpolitical-forecastingcrystal balls - “energy levels.”

There’sbeen multiple media-exacerbated own-goals for the left in thatregard, most notably the mind-blowingly vicious smear campaignagainstJustice Kavanaugh that only managed to rile the right wing via sheeroutrage even more than the left. I could roll this one around fora while – talking about the surprising pluralities (note therelatively high numbers of Democrats and low numbers of Republicans“Very Angry” over Kavanaugh’s suffering; a surprisinglycenter-right plurality,) or how big the Republican benefit really was(Republicans being moderately more outraged than Democrats amounts toa low gain if Democrats enteredthe fray with high outrage already; but it’s likely that manyRepublicans who didn’t care at all before are outraged now).Butthere’s a larger factor to contend with – the historical realitythat the party controlling the Executive usually loses seats in theHouse in midterm elections. It happens with regularity for the samereason PoliSci101 shows you a “standardized plot” of Presidential approvalratings over time – human nature. Whoever’s in charge gets blamedfor everything bad, simply enough – so even popular Presidents willshed a few seats in the mid-terms. Combine this with the importanceof turnout in midterm elections and the oft-lamented anti-Trumpobsession on the left, and everything seems to point to Democratsbeing more motivated.

However,I’m not so sure they are.

Youtuber“Aydin Paladin,” an advanced psych student who usually talksabout psychology in a political context, did a video 11 months agotitled “LeftistLethargy and Low Energy,” specifically addressing how aconstant state of horror and outrage at every single damn Trump tweethas the inevitable consequence of emotional burnout. One cannot stayoutraged forever. At some point, you simply stop caring. Onecould debate Ayadin’s point that the left was demonstrablyhittingthis point a year ago, or posit that they’ve had time to recover –but I personally believe the lethargy lingers. Myevidence? A quick jaunt through the New York Times’ editorial page:

*A Halloween op-ed about Trump literally being worse than the fuckingbogeyman (“WhenNightmares Are Real” by Jennifer Finney Boylan,)

*An article begging Democrats not to take a usually-safe votingdemographic for granted, Native Americans

*An article on “how to turn people into voters,” featuring a modelspecific to “black Southerners,” who are a safe Democraticdemographic – but only when they actually turn up to vote,

*Andmost tellingly, an article titled“You’redisillusioned. That’sfine. Vote anyway.”

Blindand narcissistic they may be, but I trust the media to know their owntribe – and theiroutlookon the base’s revolutionary fervor looks rather dim. Once again themedia’s endless talent for own-goals is apparent. The continuingdemonizingof Trump as theworst nightmare ever onlyensures that a choir that tired of the preaching a year ago willremain so. The struggle to get black voters to actually turn out isan old and ongoing one, but pissed-off Native Americans isn’t justElizabethWarren’s fault – it was mostly the media that accepted her DNAtest showing some squillionth of a percent of native DNA asvindication,andthen gallopedover to Trump to triumphantly flaunt it at him, giving him a goldenopportunity to mock it on national TV – on their own live networkbroadcasts, even.

You’llnote that the point regarding the media’s self-sabotage of theleft-wing movement was made many paragraphs ago, but it continues torear its awful head as a salient factor in almost every exampleillustrating any otherpoint in this article – this is how pervasive it is.

There’smore to Democratic lethargy than the media pissing off key left-wingDemographics in western states with important House races, however –there’s also the overall lack of a message. Instead of coalescingon a single one, Democrats appear to be taking a local-issuesapproach, which is rather awkward given they – and the media –have spent the last two years making absolutelyeverything aboutTrump. They’re stillmaking everything about Trump (e.g.synagogue shooter) even now,inthe eleventh hour. Thenthere’s the notable and growing strain between old-schoolblue-collar union Democrats and the “progressive wing” (viz.privileged wealthy white socialists) whichdivides their messaging on the economy – especially tellingconsidering the record-low unemployment and rapidlyrising wages. (It’s hard to tell people they’re living inObama’s economy whenyou were telling them it was Trump’s climate a few months ago.)

Andof course, the cherry on this shitstorm sundae is the latest greatestmigrant caravan advancing through Mexico – seven thousandstrong, originally – which took Trump’s single greatest electionissue and slam-dunked it in the middle of the debate again. Thecaravan is significant because it tangiblyprovesTrump’s long-standing point regarding immigration problems, and isexactly the kind of thing a big wall would hinder – awall Trump can’t build if he can’t get a funding bill through theHouse.

Insum, the left still lacks a coherent message, is still desensitizingtheir electorate with constant panicked screeching, is frequentlypissing off their own key constituencies with their ham-handedagitprop, and are helping to suppress their own vote by portraying anelection that’s all but won. Meanwhile the Republicans have aPresident who’s actually delivered on many of his promises, has agreat recent event to showcase how delivering on the rest rides onthis next election, and, in general, have optimism.Somethingabout Kanye West’s recent visit to the White House stood out to me– he saidhe had nothing against Hillary’s campaign slogan, but when he puton a MAGA hat, he “felt like Superman.”

“Feltlike Superman.” That’s a sentiment of empowerment.Obamaunderstood the power of positive messaging – it’show “Hope and Change” swept him into office in his first term.Democratsthis year simply don’t.

Ican’t call it either way. But I cantell you that anyone who thinks this election is all over but for thecounting isnuts. The battle lines of 2016 have only been dug deeper, and thesimple truths of human nature make for an uphill fight – but by thesame token, Democrats have badly misplayed the hands they have, arecompletely incapable of real self-reflection on any significantscale, and Trump’s been President for two years with realsuccesses, with the much-ballyhooed Trumpocolypse yet to descend.

Insofaras I can call anything, I’d say this election is going to be close.I’d tell you to go out and vote, especiallyif you don’t want to see the party encouraging mob intimidation andstoking racial hatred controlling the House – which they’ll useto launch endless sham investigations of Trump long after Mueller’scharade finally gives up the ghost, in addition to impeaching himjust for the hell of it. If Trump loses the House he- and his agenda- will be a lame-duck for the next two years, because any seriousbill needs to be passed by both House and Senate.

Onceagain, everything is on the line.

I’mnot sick of winning yet.

[lovemychinchilla]

Why Do My Chinchillas Sleep All the Time?

Chinchillas can sleep almost the whole day through. That's unusual compared to other pets, so why do chinchillas sleep so much, and is it normal for them to do so?

How much sleep do chinchillas need? Chinchillas sleep for roughly 12 hours a day, and not all at once. This means your pet sleeps many times throughout the day for a long total amount of time. However, if you notice your chinchilla always sleeping more than this, the issue may be lethargy and you should talk to a vet.

Lethargy is a sign of severe ill health, so learning the difference between lethargy and regular sleep is vital. The guide below will teach you how much chinchillas sleep, when they sleep, and for how long... And what to do if your pet sleeps far too much.

How Many Hours Does a Chinchilla Sleep?

Because they have long been kept as lab animals, chinchillas and their sleeping habits have been studied in depth. The average amount of sleep for adult mammals is 11 hours per day. Chinchillas fall at around this average, spending between 42% and 52% of the time asleep, which is roughly 12 hours. But what's fascinating about the chinchilla is how short its sleep cycle is, at only six minutes. For comparison, the sleep cycle in people is an hour and a half long.

Chinchillas sleep in blocks of time. How long or short these blocks are depends on your chinchilla's environment, its temperament, and how much it has to do in its cage. Most owners report that their pets follow a rough two-hours-awake, two-hours-asleep schedule. If this is what your pet is doing too, and if it displays no signs of ill health, there's no need to worry.

There is no one specific pattern by which all pet chinchillas sleep. So, your experience with your pet may be different. For example, your pet might sleep for an hour at a time and get up for snacks in between. Or, it may sleep in slightly longer blocks of time. It may also spend longer in its hide 'sleeping', but in reality, be awake and only resting. There's enormous variety between different pet chinchillas in this regard, so again, it's highly unlikely that there's something wrong with your pet if the only issue is that it sleeps a lot.

Why Do My Chinchillas Sleep All the Time?

At 12 hours, your chinchilla only sleeps an average amount for a mammal/rodent species. But why do chinchillas need more sleep than people do?

The commonly held assumption is that this is a good way to stay safe. Chinchillas and other rodents have many predators which can attack at any time. If a chinchilla spent eight hours in a row asleep, it could more easily be eaten. While this does appeal to common sense, research shows that it likely isn't the case.

A paper published in the journal Functional Ecology looked at this precise issue. They state that neither sleep cycle length nor overall sleep length over the course of a day is affected by likelihood of predation. Instead, the scientists found that this kind of sleep was associated with energy expenditure. As chinchillas are small animals, they need to feed in frequent small amounts. This prevents them from 'consolidating' their sleep into one longer sleep either during the day or the night, because they need to get up and eat. This would explain why many rodents have a similar sleep cycle to the chinchilla. That's why you'll frequently see your chinchilla get up, get a snack, and go back to bed.

Moreover, this kind of sleep requires that the animal sleep more overall. This is presumably because the chinchilla cannot fully rest and recover in only a short span of time. But whatever the reason, this means that the chinchillas overall required amount of sleep is dictated by its biology. This explains the chinchilla's strange sleeping habits, because wild behavior and biology has been retained by pet chinchillas.

The Chinchilla Sleep Pattern

The 'sleep pattern' describes the different phases that an animal goes through when it sleeps. The phases each have their own purposes, although these aren't fully understood yet by science.

Chinchillas have a similar sleep pattern to other mammals. The first period of sleep is slow-wave sleep, also known as NREM (non-REM) sleep. During this sleep phase, the animal is still and does not dream. This is followed by a short amount of REM sleep, which is dreaming sleep, during which the animal might twitch.

Over the course of a night, you cycle between these kinds of sleep twice (or three times if you don't get up in the morning). Chinchillas cycle between NREM and REM sleep, but because their cycle between these kinds of sleep is so short, they can wake up after ten to fifteen minutes.

Scientists term this kind of sleep 'polyphasic sleep'. Larger animals have biphasic sleep, which is where sleep is consolidated into two long phases, typically taken together. Pet chinchillas will combine many phases together and sleep for small blocks, e.g. two hours at a time.

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When Does a Chinchilla Sleep?

Chinchillas are commonly called nocturnal, but this isn't entirely accurate. Your pet may sleep either during the day or at night. Both are normal, although it's more common for a pet chinchilla to sleep during the day and be active at night.

Do Chinchillas Sleep at Night (Nocturnal)?

When you think of a 'nocturnal' animal, you picture an animal which hides and sleeps throughout the day and only comes out at night. That's not true of chinchillas, which come out both in the day and at night.

Image courtesy of Analysis of Sleep Cycles in the Rodent, by Henry B. Van Twyver.

One term scientists frequently use to refer to the chinchilla's sleep schedule is 'crepuscular'. This term refers to an animal which is most active at either dawn or dusk. These times are especially safe because neither night predators nor daytime predators specialize at hunting at these times.

From study, it seems that chinchillas are slightly crepuscular, but can spend time sleeping both during the day and the night. The graph above demonstrates when chinchillas kept in a lab were asleep, and when they weren't.

The upper dotted line shown in the graph measures how many minutes of slow wave sleep a chinchilla took in an hour. The lower solid line is for 'paradoxical sleep', better known as REM sleep or dreaming sleep. The graph shows that chinchillas sleep slightly more during the day, but that sleep is distributed roughly evenly across 24 hours.

Do Chinchillas Like the Dark?

Chinchillas are comfortable in the dark. They don't display higher sensitivity to noise compared to the daytime. They feel comfortable being either asleep or awake.

A pet chinchilla will be especially comfortable. Your pet will face no potential threats, and will have a hide that it feels secure in. Because of this, your pet will feel safe whether it's dark or not.

The reason for this is that chinchillas rely on all of their senses. A chinchilla's hearing is especially sensitive, which is why their ears are so large compared to other rodents. They also use their sense of smell to detect each other and nearby predators.

Are Some Chinchillas Diurnal?

Contrary to other owners' experiences, you may find that your pet chinchilla is far less active at night. Some owners report that their pets adjust their sleep schedules to stay awake during the day instead.

The rationale behind this idea is that the chinchilla can get more stimulation by being awake when you're awake, and when things are happening in the house. There's no reason why a chinchilla couldn't do this, although this hasn't been studied yet.

Again, this is nothing to worry about. Unless this change in sleep schedule is accompanied by other symptoms of ill health, it's nothing to worry about.

Lethargy vs. Regular Sleep in Chinchillas

Lethargy is the term for when an animal sleeps too much. It's different to laziness, which isn't a problem in chinchillas. Rather, lethargy is where the animal seems unable to move, feed itself or protect itself, even if it's hungry or in danger. It's a sign that your chinchilla is severely ill.

Signs a Chinchilla Is Lethargic

Sleeping isn't the main thing you have to look for to spot lethargy. Instead, watch your pet when it's awake and see what it does. In particular, look for:

Your chinchilla not enjoying playthings that it used to like playing with

Your chinchilla hardly eating and drinking

Your chinchilla sitting still for unusually long periods of time

Lethargy is hard to spot until an illness has become serious, and is quickly followed by death. If you suspect that your chinchilla is ill for any reason, lethargy or otherwise, consult a vet immediately rather than an online guide.

There are several causes of lethargy, which compounds the issue. Habitat issues, dietary issues and transmissible illnesses can all cause lethargy or make it worse.

How to Help a Chinchilla Sleeping Too Much

If your chinchilla is not lethargic, but is still sleeping too much, there are several explanations as to why. You may be mistaking rest for sleep, for example; your chinchilla could be awake and relaxing in its hide, rather than sleeping. Alternatively:

Your chinchilla may not have enough to do. If your chinchilla doesn't have toys or exercise equipment, it may have nothing to get up for.

You may be feeding your chinchilla high-calorie foods. Chinchillas interrupt their sleep because they need to eat. If you're feeding it the wrong kind of snacks (like raisins or nuts) it may be getting enough calories that it doesn't need to get up.

Your chinchilla has a lazy personality. Some chinchillas are hyperactive, while others keep to themselves and do little. This isn't something that needs to be fixed.

Fix the problem of your chinchilla oversleeping by addressing the cause. Provide your chinchilla with more toys, or new toys, to give it something to do. Or, address your pet's diet so that you aren't giving it calorie-dense snacks.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

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#chinchillas #chinchillafaqs

[afishtrap]

(another repost, saving for posterity)

I think it's not just that fanfiction rests (in part) upon a ground of potential plausibility; I think it also works within a framework that's similar enough to original fiction that this gives the impression that one should be able to make the leap quite easily: genre assumptions. That is, fanfiction has canon assumptions which are closely analogous to genre assumptions, so you'd just be trading one for the other. When the author is familiar with the concept of shortcuts, after that it's simply a matter of learning what they are for any given genre.

And since I wouldn't mention it unless I find that a problem, it's that both are cop-outs. They're a way to treat the underpinnings of fiction as superfluous and extract them one by one, until the work feels almost hollow. (Not unlike the non-load-bearing wall in my dining room with studs at 36" on center. It's not to code, though it won't make the house fall down, but it sure makes putting up shelves damn difficult.)

In a story example, this isn't unlike the complaint I had about a historical fiction work wherein there wasn't a single mention of fashion, politics, or technology to give me even a generalized idea of when the story took place. It consisted almost entirely of an emotional conflict resting on a pile of short-cuts. It's even worse than 36" on center studs; it's a house where the walls are made of paper hung from wires stretched between poles: it may be pretty, but there's nothing there, really, to ground it to this place and this time. A decent breeze -- or a decent plothole -- and it'll all come crashing down.

Slight tangent: the notion of structural underpinnings got me thinking, in turn, about instances where I've been able to compare an author's work when the author writes in several genres. (For the most part, the author's approach, technique, sensibilities, stay generally even, which makes deconstructive analysis much easier than comparing cross-author in the same genre.) In a not-this-world fantasy story, there's a lot of world-building required if the not-this-world isn't a direct or semi-direct analogue to our own (similar tech, land masses, cultures, fashion, etc). This world-building acts as one of the integral structural components of the fiction, and the more deft an engineer be the writer, the more heft the story seems to have. (And thus we realize that 'doorstop tome' is a label both physical and metaphorical.)

The result, then, is that the story's close leaves me with the impression -- as one of those readers who can't freaking turn off my brain -- that the story somehow has more to it. It's akin to standing in the great hall of a castle and asking yourself: how did they build that ceiling? Really, how did they do that? If what structure the reader can see is impressive, double that when it implies there's even more under the surface: that's the implications of fiction's underpinnings... even if I am a wierdo for thinking of it in engineering terms.

To take an architectural tangent, because I don't want anyone getting the wrong impression in the comparison, the reason we may see century-old cathedrals as phenomenal works of engineering is because (a) they're unfamiliar to us as an everyday event, (b) we've probably never been around one as it was constructed to see its inner prior to being wrapped in an outer, and underneath it all, (c) those cathedrals, castles, and the like were built without advanced mathematics. I mean, honestly, calculus and the all-powerful derivative aren't even a century older than my own freaking country! (Yes, William & Mary College in Virginia was founded only four years after Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Imagine that.)

But if you've ever seen a Mies Van der Rohe skyscraper, you'd realize that our modern architecture -- analogue to this-world genres of cyberpunk, urban fantasy, steampunk -- is pretty damn impressive in its own right. The engineering and mathematics that go into creating a steel and concrete structure that rises thirty stories into the sky and yet is wrapped in little more than a bit of steel and football-fields of glass... well, that's nothing to sniff at. Hell, just the usual suburban home has some pretty amazing engineering within its walls, but we dismiss it because we see it everyday and have grown used to the idea that platform-framing is pretty ordinary -- to the point that now, to build a post-and-beam house, is considered radical, and something to remark on.

Essentially, you could say that in trad-fantasy the author-engineer is building without calculus, doing the math long-hand to make sure the structure doesn't fall down: creating culture, language, laws, ethics, technology, even genders and species. In this-world genres, the author-engineer is using already-available structural supports. It's not a matter of coming up with a new steel or a new type of glass, so much as using the familiar in an unusual or daring way.

And to drive this analogy completely into the ground, authors may alternate between them, building something long-hand that's ready-made, like artisans building post-and-beam houses instead of using studs and drywall. It doesn't always work, though, and it's the why that I think some authors don't address, too busy thinking it's radical somehow to mix the old with the new (or in trad-fantasy, the new with the old). Structural elements include the story's concept of, say, colonialism. Where once it was accepted that colonialism had a positive benefit (of civilizing the natives) that outweighed its exploitative aspects, now you're more likely to find stories that posit colonialist bad, noble savage good.

The review that started me reading the ferretbrain critiqued that story as flipping good-bad structure on its head and ending up with "colonial good, native ignorant and in need of civilizing colonial influence". Not really an improvement, and more to my analogy's point: somewhat like thinking you'll build this part of your house long-hand as a way to make it unique -- but not realizing that there's a really good reason we stopped using horsehair and plaster to insulate our houses. Sure, this bit of structure may be different from the suburban homes flooding the market, but different does not automatically mean better.

But wait! I just realized I can drive (deconstruct?) this analogy even farther into its foundations. As a friend commented about historical romance, "God help me if you try to convince me a "saucy" woman would ever be conceived of as attractive to a Lord of the Manor" -- except that I know for certain that my great-grandmother was described as saucy, and she was married three times. (Widowed all three times, too.) It's just that what we modern-minds think of as "saucy" or "sassy" isn't quite the same thing -- or more like, it's exactly the same but only on the surface.

Think again to the horsehair-and-plaster versus drywall. Both, done by an expert, can end up beautifully and perfectly smooth and white, and both can then be painted with lime-wash, or oil-based paint, or even latex (though latex, not so good for the plaster, if you're wondering, but that's neither here nor there). On the surface, you have a smooth interior wall, just as on the surface you have a head-strong woman who speaks her mind. It's what's underneath, what makes her possible -- the source of her behavior/character -- that is almost totally opposite between historical and modern.

That, I think, is where a lazy historical writer undermines their story: if you don't realize the fundamental underlying differences even when the external appearance is identical, then you're going to miss all the tiny tells that let a savvy person know that all you've really done is take a modern structure and slap some gingerbread on it and call it Victorian, or slap some mud on it and call it adobe, or slap a corset and a fichu on it and call it Regency. You're not fooling anyone, y'know.

Anyway.

Setting aside the issue of then-structures with now-structures, if the genre rests in our own world -- like urban fantasy, or super-spy-thrillers, or mysteries, or contemporary romances -- the author doesn't even necessarily need genre-shortcuts, given then real-world shortcuts already at his/her disposal. There's no need to tell me what a car is, or why someone might freak out at a call from the IRS. One might say these underpinnings already exist, a kind of socio-cultural framework the author can preempt to use in his/her own work, but it's not like these are considered integral to the story-structure.

To me, these underpinnings are best considered external to the story. They're holding the story up from the outside, rather than from within. It's like looking at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, where nearly the entire engineering structure of the building exists outside the building. It's not hidden within the walls; there's no mystery about it. Okay, if we're talking modern architecture, that statement is debatable, but if we're saying this on the grounds that "when you can see how things are put together, it's not mysterious," then no, there's no mystery to a structure where the architectural and engineering underpinnings are actually designed as overpinnings.

Or more precisely, it's not that the structure is like the Pompidou, so much as the story hangs from the existing elements rather than is built on an interior framework of elements. That's a somewhat post-modernist view, as well, but I'm having trouble finding any better way to put why I frequently find a lot of urban fantasy to be hollow, in a kind of no-real-substance sense. The things that make the story hold together are things I already know, so the ramifications of a story's outcome don't really require this specific story to highlight them; any story, really, could hang from that combination and thus outline the space between. 

But not always, and if the trad-fantasy where the author must build all the engineering from the ground up is a story that seems to have massive heft and substance, the value of a modern-based story (or an extrapolated futuristic story) is to do precisely the opposite: to create a story within the existing limitations of our world (including culture, race, gender, and so on) and to reveal the gaps between these structural elements. It's a kind of parallax, really: what from outside the Pompidou Centre looks kinda awkward and near-brutal is pretty freaking amazing from the inside.

(Hell, I was there because my hosts wanted to see an exhibit, but I spent the entire time at the Pompidou staring at the ceiling, the walls, the floor, and then ended up at the windows, looking out to see everything that should've been within -- in some ways, moving everything to the visible outside doesn't make the interior more dramatic by opening up the space, but makes the overall design even more obtrusive for the lack of expected internal solidity -- sort of like me reading that historical fiction and so busy actively looking for any historical place-in-time references that I stopped really paying attention to the story itself.)

When we talk about issues of racism or sexism or classism, there's often a parallel discussion about intersectionality -- like where one's ethnicity may allow privilege but one's disabilities or gender in turn reduces privilege. That concept of intersectionality is what can make this-world stories, of a variety of genres, so incredibly powerful, when they place us within this previous empty or unidentified space (the intersection between certain aspects of our reality) and show us a view we'd previously overlooked.

That's one reason I retain a fondness for the original Star Trek despite its shortcomings and/or dated-ness, such as the way Star Trek used the "alien culture" formula to reflect back upon political and social questions of the day. ST:TNG toyed with this formula at times (not enough for my tastes, though), like in its two-parter that tackled whether Data was a machine and thus a possession, or whether he had sentience, and if so, what is sentience and what does it mean to be human? These are questions hard to ask in the everyday world, where we have no near-sentient machine. That's where SFF can do some amazing mind-expanding stuff.

But this also applies on a much smaller scale. Ironically (or not), it's another ferretbrain review that got me on this one, this time Dan Hemmon's comparison of BtVS and Harry Potter, in When Harry Met Buffy:

Buffy takes issues that its audience will be highly familiar with (academic pressure, romantic disaster, teenage insecurity) and uses the language of the supernatural to explore them in an emotionally believable way. Harry Potter, on the other hand uses real-world issues (racism, slavery, death) as a cheap way to add colour to an otherwise unconvincing fantasy world.

[loveharleymiddleton]

Software Development cost

Custom software development can be expensive because the development team is building the application from scratch. There’s nothing you can do about that. But there are a few things you can do to lower the costs of developing a custom software solution.

How much does software development cost?

Let’s get started with a simple question: How much does it actually cost to build custom solutions?

There’s only one answer to this question, and it’s:

It depends.

The cost of your app depends on many variables, such as project requirements, application features, your project’s size and complexity, and many others. We’re going to talk about these factors in detail later on.

Software estimation is often tricky, but to give you a general sense of the amounts we’re talking about, let’s focus on project complexity for a moment. Such projects can be divided into three categories in terms of their complexity:

Basic applications – they offer simple functionalities and can be built quite fast. Such an application will take the development team 500-700 hours and cost anything between $20,000 and $80,000. An example is a simple mobile application that has a well-defined and limited set of features.

Medium-complexity applications – such applications take approximately 700-1200 hours to build because they have more complicated features. Examples of such applications include a customer-facing server application or an enterprise app that offers web and mobile functionalities. In this case, software cost estimates will range from $80,000 to $150,000.

Complex applications – such applications take more than 1200+ hours to complete and often require developing a complex architecture and multiple integrations, or have a high security demand. Examples include data-driven apps, an enterprise software that features complex business logic, social media apps, or sophisticated reporting apps.

Why is software development expensive?

Note that the costs of building software originate not only from the team, but also the work of other professionals such as UX/UI designers, data analysts, QA analysts, and many others.

Expert tip: Quality Assurance (QA) services are key to every development process. By testing every component of your software solution, you’ll identify and fix any bugs or errors. The cost of testing will again depend on the complexity of your project. The earlier you find the bug in the process, the cheaper it will be to correct it – that’s why a good QA process matters!

Building software solutions is expensive because it takes many talented people to develop high-quality software. Custom software relies on careful planning, involves research, and is based on a constant back-and-forth between the team, the client, and the end-users for gathering valuable feedback.

This type of software is tailor-made to match the unique requirements, processes, workflows, and objectives of your company. That’s why the costs of developing software are so high.

What factors impact the cost of software development?

These factors have a huge impact on the price of building software, so keep them in mind when working on your idea for an app.

1. Who you hire for the job

Companies that want to develop custom software can choose from several options. In essence, your choice boils down to these three:

Building an in-house team,

Hiring freelance software developers,

Teaming up with a software development company (also known as outsourcing).

Here’s a short overview of each option in terms of its impact on the costs of creating custom solutions.

Freelance software developers

This option is the cheapest, but it comes with many drawbacks. Hiring freelance developers doesn’t guarantee the delivery of your solution on time or the final product quality. When choosing this option, you’re the one responsible for overseeing the development process – and that might be problematic if you need to focus on your business or have no experience in Project Management. Finally, freelance developers come with no assurance, so you might end up with a buggy software on your hands and invest even more money into fixing it.

In-house development team

Building an internal team of software developers is a good option if you’re planning to develop a long-term project and have the resources to do that. The good thing about having an in-house team is the control over its work and the quality delivered at all the development stages. But hiring full-time developers is time-consuming and expensive. You’ll have to invest in their salaries (and let’s face it, skilled software engineers expect high salaries), but also in overhead costs such as software licenses, hardware, taxes, holiday and sick leaves, etc. Hiring an in-house team is the most expensive option.

Outsourcing software development

Companies that choose to team up with specialized software development agencies enjoy many benefits. They get access to skilled and experienced engineers who know how to collaborate efficiently and have processes in place that guarantee successful and productive development.

They have domain knowledge and know-how to help you build the best possible solution. At the same time, they know the ins and outs of software development to provide you with helpful advice about technology choices, product development, and beyond. This option offers similar quality guarantees to the in-house team without forcing you to experience the costs of hiring staff full-time.

2. The level of seniority your project requires

The cost of hiring software developers can vary according to their level of knowledge and expertise. You can divide developers by their level of seniority into junior, mid-level, and senior.

Junior developers have just started their journey and still require support from their more experienced colleagues. By working in a team of skilled developers, they get to learn a lot – but can only contribute simple tasks.

Mid-level developers have a few years of work on their back and can work on a project independently. They know how to deal with complex technical problems.

Senior developers can provide your project with the best skills and expertise. They know how to write bug-free code, develop the best architecture for your solution, and balance between the technical and business goals of your project. Moreover, they can explain in a high-level manner the advantages and drawbacks of different technologies, frameworks, and solutions to help you understand their reasoning behind building your application.

If our project requires more complicated functionalities, you’ll need to hire more qualified developers – and the software development hourly rates will rise together with the engineer’s level.

3. Where you hire

The rates of software development professionals vary a lot between different regions of the world. That’s why the location where you’re hiring software developers will have an impact on the final price of your project.

For example, the development services in the US, UK, and Australia are usually very expensive. That’s why companies that want to balance cost and quality look to Central and East European countries that can provide qualified services at local rates.

What causes software development projects to overrun?

Before we move on to our tips and tricks for reducing the costs of software development, let’s take a quick look at the most common reasons why such projects end up exceeding their budgets:

Lack of proper planning – this step is key in estimating software costs. To be accurate, you need to know the requirements and all the tasks needed to complete the project within the specified costs. Planning is a critical step in resource allocation and management.

Frequent changes (pivots) and scope creep – discuss the project’s scope in detail, or risk that the project fails. Development teams may have certain assumptions about what you’re looking to build, so it’s your job to clarify the scope of your project as early as possible.

Lacking communication – this issue can develop in two directions: over-communicating and micro-management or under-communicating. Clear communication is a must for a successful software project.

Underestimating the role of testing – some companies forget that testing is a key phase that happens prior to the actual work, while the code is in production. If you don’t test your product then, you risk releasing a buggy piece of software (and then overrun your budget when trying to fix your mistake!).

How to reduce software development costs

1. Outsource software development

Outsourcing software development to professional agencies comes at a high initial cost, but you’ll get plenty of cost savings throughout the projects. Since you’re not hiring developers, you get to avoid paying in-house salaries, taxes, perks and benefits, workspace, software and hardware, and many other overhead costs.

Software outsourcing allows tapping into the talent of teams located all over the world. Working with a company located in another country or continent might seem challenging, but experienced providers have processes in place that streamline communication and allow fruitful remote collaboration.

2. Identify and document project requirements

The best way to keep your project within its budget is by avoiding ambiguity in the description of your project already at level of the software estimate. Establish your project requirements and create a document that you will use every time you approach software developers to ask them for a quote.

You don’t need to have it all figured out right from the start. But write down the most important things and, while doing that, aim for clarity.

If your descriptions is ambiguous, the requirements might get misinterpreted and you’ll face problems such as improper functionality, poor design, and low business value. A thorough and well-defined project specification will set the team on the right track, reduce the overall cost of software development, and save your precious time to focus on growing your business.

3. Prioritize features

Be realistic right from the start and prioritize your application features, even if it means compromising your vision. Be aware that a complete software solution might not be possible to realize right away. Don’t give up on your dream, just be smart about prioritizing the functionalities your app needs to drive business value as soon as possible – and create an accurate software project estimation.

Remove nice-to-have elements from the scope of your project and add them to your backlog. You can return to them once the must-haves are completed, implemented, and – ideally – are already turning a profit. Starting with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is how companies build successful products today.

4. Plan with the future in mind

Many companies forget that the costs of building software extend beyond the development and release phase. A completed application still generates expenses – be it in maintenance or future growth.

The application you’re developing today will look different in the future. A customer might ask you for modifications or new functionalities. Your target market might evolve in a completely new direction, forcing you to revamp your product.

A custom software development project should take future changes into account. The development team needs to have a rough idea of the kind of modifications that may be expected in the future. That way, developers build the app to simplify the implementation of alterations and reduces the cost of building software in the future.

5. Involve a QA team early on

It pays off to start testing early in the software development life cycle. That’s because errors or bugs can accumulate already during the requirement or design phase. If you fail to catch them at this stage, they will disseminate throughout the entire project.

Have a QA team be part of your project right from the start to identify problems prior to the development phase. You’ll avoid building software of low quality, but also save up on the costs of a redesign in the middle of your project. Also, bugs require rework in later phases, which can become very costly.

6. Follow the agile methodologies

The agile approach to building software keeps the process lean and facilitates the close cooperation of the stakeholders at all the stages of software development. Every iteration ends with gathering feedback from clients or end-users. The development team then uses it to improve the product. That way, all the changes are made during the process, and the risk for rework is practically reduced to zero.

7. Hire a proactive team (inhouse or outsourced)

You need a team that will challenge and advise you during the process. Sometimes smart technical decisions at the planning stage can reduce costs significantly while providing the same business value. A scoping session usually helps our development team to prepare such a plan.

[elizabethcariasa]

Trump's FY21 budget calls for extended tax cuts and more IRS money

Treasury was one of only five departments or major agencies — the others are Defense, Veterans Affairs, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Homeland Security — that got budget bumps in the Trump Administration's Fiscal Year 2021 budget request. (Screen shot of CQ/Roll Call video of delivery of budget books to Capitol Hill)

The annual presidential wish list, formally known as the administration's fiscal year (FY) budget, is public. Bottom line, and it's a big one, is the FY 2021 proposals top out at $4.8 trillion.

When it comes to this funding exercise, regardless of which president or party initiates it, much of what's in a FY budget proposal won't happen.

That tends to happen, or rather not happen, when a White House doesn't have control of both legislative chambers.

It's particularly true when the White House and U.S. House, where spending measures originate, are led by opposing political parties.

Still, a president's annual budget proposal like the one issued today, is similar to a kid's overly hopeful letter to Santa Claus. It gives us an idea of an administration's priorities.

Expect to see more of the funding ideas in Donald J. Trump re-election ads than in actual spending bills.

No budget surprises: As for those ideas, there's not much new in this latest budget. 

It's no surprise that Trump's pet projects, such as the U.S.-Mexico border wall and the military (with a special nod to the new Space Force), get more money.

And while the document acknowledges that the federal deficit be more than $1 trillion, it says that is a short-term problem.

"This year's Budget includes $4.4 trillion in savings — bringing deficits down each year, and putting the Federal Government on a path to a balanced budget in 15 years," according to the budget document.

More on this pledge later.

More money for the tax man: The IRS also gets a bit of good news.

While no Republican administration can ever be expected to be a true friend of the IRS, the Trump White House continues to be at least a nodding acquaintance of the agency.

The Trump administration is boosting slightly funding for the IRS, proposing $12 billion for the agency in fiscal 2021 to go toward its primary functions.

As in its prior budget, the Trump Administration again seeks money for the IRS to continue to deal with its technology-related challenges. This latest budget proposal earmarks $300 million so the IRS can continue information technology (IT) modernization efforts.

The budget also wants Congress to consider legislation that would provide additional funding to expand and strengthen tax enforcement.

Last year's White House budget request was $11.5 billion, which ultimately made it through Congress and into law. That was an increase from the previous $11.3 billion funding level for the federal tax agency.

Overall, the Treasury Department, of which the IRS is part, would get $15.7 billion, also a slight bump over the current funding level.

Why IRS money matters: Most folks aren't fans of the IRS and wouldn't be upset if the agency didn't get a budget boost.

But since most Americans must, at some point in their lives, deal with Uncle Sam's tax collector, it's really in our best interests for the IRS to work properly and efficiently.

Already, according to the IRS, for every $1 dollar in funding it gets, it brings in $4 dollars in new revenue. That's a pretty good return on investment.

If the tax agency can't collect all that money the Treasury is due, we all have to live with the shortfall. That difference, in most cases, will be made up either by us paying more in taxes or living with fewer services.

Enough … for now: The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 70,000 IRS workers nationwide, has long argued that decreased IRS funding, as well as associated reductions in staffing and other resources affects the agency's ability to do all its jobs.

The jobs ranges from collecting taxes to auditing those who don't pay to assisting taxpayers trying to do the right tax thing.

IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, whom I'm sure would never turn down more money, is, at least publicly, more sanguine about budgets and his agency's ability to do what's required, at least through most of this year's tax filing season.

"The fiscal 2020 budget, which will run through September, will provide us with a $207.5 million increase over last year, taking the agency to $11.5 billion,” Rettig wrote in a memo to IRS employees at the end of 2019, according to Government Executive, which received a copy of the internal communication.

The commissioner did admit, however, that "the IRS will face budget challenges this year," primarily due to personnel (current and retired) costs, as well as other operating expenses. These fiscal concerns would pose "some difficult budget choices in the year ahead," requiring the IRS to "allocate our resources strategically."

Still, Rettig assured employees in the memo that he is confident they can handle the work.

Other budgetary tax matters: OK, the IRS is covered. But what will other tax-related FY 2021 proposals mean to the rest of us?

Fans and makers of electric vehicles aren't happy. The Trump budget eliminates some tax breaks in this area.

And yes, the issue of more oversight of paid tax preparers is still there.

It's not as detailed as previous budget requests, but is cited as the White House's support for "several proposals to ensure that taxpayers comply with their obligations and that tax refunds are only paid to those who are eligible, including: improving oversight of paid tax preparers; giving IRS the authority to correct more errors on tax returns before refunds are issued; requiring a valid Social Security Number for work in order to claim certain tax credits; and increasing wage and information reporting."

Extending individual tax cuts: The biggie, though, involves the tax cuts in the GOP tax reform measure known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

The individual tax breaks are temporary, set to expire at the end of 2025. The business tax breaks, you'll remember, don't have an expiration date.

The Trump Administration wants to extend the TCJA's individual measures for another decade beyond their current expiration date. The cost of keeping them on the books through 2035 will be $1.4 trillion.

Not to worry, though, says the White House.

The cost of the continued TCJA tax breaks, goes the perpetual GOP thinking, will not be a problem because "all administration policies will pay for themselves."

Many folks, including esteemed economists, regular financially-focused folks like me and history, disagree with this assumption. No economy has grown consistently or enough to generate sufficient money to make up the cost of tax cuts.

But expect that debate to continue when Congress does start looking at the president's budget and the federal government's upcoming fiscal year's funding needs.

You also might find these items of interest:

Tax cuts, not disaster spending, produced record deficit 

Government waste reports now on consolidated website

IRS bringing in more tax money despite budget cuts (2017 report)

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[psychotherapyconsultants]

On the Phone: Teaching Your Teen Better Communication Skills & Self-Control

You might have to communicate differently and get serious about your limits.

Parenting teens is a challenge, especially when it comes to communicating with them. Sometimes, it seems like they’re not the best at listening, especially when you ask them to get off their devices.

How do you get them to stop looking at their phone for a second and not have to ask them twice? There are two problems in this scenario: communication and self-control.

Adolescence is a crucial time in every teenager’s life. And as a parent, communication with them is everything.

There are so many ways to improve and even small tweaks on your communication skills can positively impact your relationship with your growing adolescent.

7 Highly Effective Principles for Parenting Through Middle School & Adolescence

A client I’ve been working with for a while shared that ending the communication battles with her teens also allowed her communication with her husband to improve.

If your teens aren’t listening to you, your negative communication pattern probably goes something like this.

You ask them to do something they never want to do — homework, chores, or getting off their phones. Even if you think you’re asking nicely, you’re probably feeling some degree of frustration or dread in anticipation of their response.

You’ve asked this same thing repeatedly and never once have they responded with a “Sure thing”. So, of course, you’re annoyed!

After multiple asks, you yell or flip out, which makes you feel terrible. As one client put it, “Yelling is the only way they listen, but I hate it every time.”

For some kids who enjoy getting the rise out of their parents, this presents an opportunity for a power struggle. Now you’re fighting (again) and the same ask goes unanswered.

The homework still has to be done. The chores still aren’t done. And tomorrow, it’ll still take 10 asks to “Put your phone down and come to dinner.”

The moral of the story: you and your teen don’t really hear each other anymore. That’s why it feels like they aren’t listening. They’ve learned to tune you out.

If this sounds familiar, there’s bad news and good news: There’s nothing you can do to make your teen listen to you. But if you’re willing to try something new, you won’t have to use force.

There are 2 reasons why your teen refuses to listen to you:

1. They Feel Like You’re Controlling Them.

If your kids aren’t listening, chances are that they are feeling controlled by you in some way. The more you advise, suggest, or ask (but really tell), the more they will resist. This is why we have to be savvy and change how we do things.

Now if your response is, “My kid should listen because I’m the parent and he should respect me”, I understand and agree…to an extent, if we lived a world where that was still the cultural norm.

But we don’t and fear-based parenting isn’t the best practice. Also, I guarantee you that proceeding with that mindset will just prolong the negative pattern you are already in.

Sometimes, this even includes things your teen actually enjoys doing.

For example, a client had this pattern with her middle-school son. The more she leaned on him to practice for an upcoming rehearsal, the more he resisted. Even though he wanted the part, the minute she asserted her control and reminded him to do it, the power struggle escalated.

She was frustrated. If he won’t do things he supposedly likes, how could she get him to do things he struggles with?

Since she’s a coaching client, I asked her to assess herself for control on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being mellow and 10 being a control freak. She gave herself a 7 or 8.

Now I asked the same of her son. After a long silence, she said he was about the same.

This means that two people which a similar desire to be in control over a task that ultimately can only be done by one of them.

2. You Make Threats You Don’t Follow Through.

With this same client, when I asked her to recreate what happens when things escalate, she said she makes threats that she doesn’t always follow through on. This time, she threatened not to take him to the rehearsal.

You probably already know this but it’s good to be reminded: Unless you follow through on threats, kids quickly get the message that there are no consequences.

For this mom, she concluded that she’d take her son to the rehearsal. Either he’d either bomb it and feel disappointed or ace it and get a part.

So how can she make him listen? In short, she can’t, so that’s what she agreed to start a conversation with: “I realize that I can’t make you practice.”

That’s huge. But how could she make it on his terms, so he was in control but would still practice? She offered to be his audience and give him her undivided attention. We found two times in the days before the rehearsal that worked for her and she offered them to him. From there, he had a choice of whether or not to take her up on it. Not surprisingly, he did.

From a kid’s perspective, there is very little on their terms. Adults control their worlds. But they have a secret weapon: ignoring you until you lose it and then fighting about how you are being a control freak.

Before you can take action steps to improve your communication with teens, ask yourself these questions for self-reflection:

Am I making assumptions? If so, how does that come out in my “ask”?

What are the things my teen has control over that I am still trying to control?

On a scale from 1-10, how controlling am I?

Am I willing to change how I communicate even if I ultimately believe that they should just behave differently?

In other words, does your communication have annoyance, frustration, and/or control? And if so, are you willing to do it differently?

Now that you know why your teen won’t listen to you, how can you start improving communication so they actually do listen to you?

Get yourself in a state of cold cognition, which means your emotions are quiet and you’re not in the heat of the moment. (Of all the things I teach parents, this is the one that has the most immediate and transformative impact on their communication.)

In this state, call a family meeting and put a time limit on it. Start a conversation in a state of cold cognition.

Then, say something that acknowledges what is going on and the limits to your influence:

“I’ve noticed that we fight to get you to come to the dinner table.”

“I’ve noticed that I have to ask you multiple times to get off your device.”

“I realize that I can’t make you come and eat dinner.”

“I realize that I can’t make you get off your devices.”

From there, offer something that communicates where you are at and also your desire for input:

“I love you too much to fight all the time. I’m interested in your thoughts about how we can get along better and still have dinner together.”

“I am working hard right now, and your help around the house would really help me out.”

“I realize we’re in a bad habit and I’d like to change it.”

And then: listen. Without an agenda.

10 Non-Negotiable Rules for Raising a Teenager Without Wrecking Your Relationship With Them

Chances are that if you are frustrated with your teen, they also have their own frustrations. Give them the space they need to be heard and see what happens. At the end of this brief meeting, you can come to a solution or you can revisit the topic.

The point of it is to communicate with your teen when you aren’t already annoyed with her and to express your desire for a new outcome.

Cold cognition is kind of like a secret weapon for getting teens to buy in, especially if they are used to a highly emotional version of you.

Now, what if your teen refuses to get off their device unless you scream at them?

Screens really are the issue of our time and they’re relatively new. So if you have bad screen habits, you’re certainly not alone. That doesn’t mean you can’t take action and, in some cases, it may mean taking drastic action.

Back to the family meeting: if you are in a bad habit about screens, own up it. If you find it hard to set limits for yourself, own up to that too. Share the behaviors you’d like to see: phones off during meal times and at bedtime without yelling or fighting.

You can invite your teen to share their perspective about to change the ritual of extricating them from their phone, but if you’ve been in a rut for a while, they may just grunt in reply or call you a control freak.

And then, offer a choice: they can either try to manage this on their own for the next week or you’re going to install a parental control app on all of your phones so you don’t have to rely on their self-control.

The minute you bring up an app, you’ll have their attention. Prepare for a reaction that’ll include a lot of begging, telling you how much you suck, or that you’re unfair. You’ve been warned.

I got this idea from a client who has worked hard with her son to set screen boundaries, but he is addicted to gaming. Though he says he understands the risks associated with excessive gaming, he still has no self-control.

Here’s the thing about having a third-party control: If you are like many, many parents and didn’t set limits for screens and now it’s turned your household into a war zone, use the app. Don’t buy into the fear that if you set the limits for your kids now, you’ll always have to. Trust that as they mature and your relationship strengthens, the ultimate goal of self-control will come. And if that means externalizing control right now to an app, go for it.

All this is a detailed process for what many parents want desperately from their kids: They want to be heard and listened to without fighting, especially when it comes to their screens.

Unfortunately, this is part of a larger communication fail where the teen feels like the only way to have control in the situation is to ignore their parents and watch them lose it.

Furthermore, the screen thing is an issue for all of us. I recently installed limits on my own phone because I need external regulation. Not because there’s anything wrong with me, but because I’m trying to change my habits and screens are everywhere and very addictive.

If you want to change the dynamic, start by changing how you communicate with your teens. Ask yourself those self-reflecting questions mentioned above.

After you’ve done a little reflecting, talk when you aren’t already mad and listen to your kid’s perspective with this in mind: “I love you too much to keep fighting about this.” This doesn’t mean to abandon expectations and standards; it means acknowledging the limits of your control and then collaborating from there.

Lastly, if the screen thing has become an immovable issue, then I highly recommend using a third-party app. I wouldn’t consider it a fail. I’d consider it a bridge that you’re willing to construct until you and your teen can reach higher ground on your own.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: How To Get Your Teen To Put Down Their Phone & Listen To You.

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/on-the-phone-teaching-your-teen-better-communication-skills-self-control/

[positivepsychologyinterventions]

On the Phone: Teaching Your Teen Better Communication Skills & Self-Control

You might have to communicate differently and get serious about your limits.

Parenting teens is a challenge, especially when it comes to communicating with them. Sometimes, it seems like they’re not the best at listening, especially when you ask them to get off their devices.

How do you get them to stop looking at their phone for a second and not have to ask them twice? There are two problems in this scenario: communication and self-control.

Adolescence is a crucial time in every teenager’s life. And as a parent, communication with them is everything.

There are so many ways to improve and even small tweaks on your communication skills can positively impact your relationship with your growing adolescent.

7 Highly Effective Principles for Parenting Through Middle School & Adolescence

A client I’ve been working with for a while shared that ending the communication battles with her teens also allowed her communication with her husband to improve.

If your teens aren’t listening to you, your negative communication pattern probably goes something like this.

You ask them to do something they never want to do — homework, chores, or getting off their phones. Even if you think you’re asking nicely, you’re probably feeling some degree of frustration or dread in anticipation of their response.

You’ve asked this same thing repeatedly and never once have they responded with a “Sure thing”. So, of course, you’re annoyed!

After multiple asks, you yell or flip out, which makes you feel terrible. As one client put it, “Yelling is the only way they listen, but I hate it every time.”

For some kids who enjoy getting the rise out of their parents, this presents an opportunity for a power struggle. Now you’re fighting (again) and the same ask goes unanswered.

The homework still has to be done. The chores still aren’t done. And tomorrow, it’ll still take 10 asks to “Put your phone down and come to dinner.”

The moral of the story: you and your teen don’t really hear each other anymore. That’s why it feels like they aren’t listening. They’ve learned to tune you out.

If this sounds familiar, there’s bad news and good news: There’s nothing you can do to make your teen listen to you. But if you’re willing to try something new, you won’t have to use force.

There are 2 reasons why your teen refuses to listen to you:

1. They Feel Like You’re Controlling Them.

If your kids aren’t listening, chances are that they are feeling controlled by you in some way. The more you advise, suggest, or ask (but really tell), the more they will resist. This is why we have to be savvy and change how we do things.

Now if your response is, “My kid should listen because I’m the parent and he should respect me”, I understand and agree…to an extent, if we lived a world where that was still the cultural norm.

But we don’t and fear-based parenting isn’t the best practice. Also, I guarantee you that proceeding with that mindset will just prolong the negative pattern you are already in.

Sometimes, this even includes things your teen actually enjoys doing.

For example, a client had this pattern with her middle-school son. The more she leaned on him to practice for an upcoming rehearsal, the more he resisted. Even though he wanted the part, the minute she asserted her control and reminded him to do it, the power struggle escalated.

She was frustrated. If he won’t do things he supposedly likes, how could she get him to do things he struggles with?

Since she’s a coaching client, I asked her to assess herself for control on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being mellow and 10 being a control freak. She gave herself a 7 or 8.

Now I asked the same of her son. After a long silence, she said he was about the same.

This means that two people which a similar desire to be in control over a task that ultimately can only be done by one of them.

2. You Make Threats You Don’t Follow Through.

With this same client, when I asked her to recreate what happens when things escalate, she said she makes threats that she doesn’t always follow through on. This time, she threatened not to take him to the rehearsal.

You probably already know this but it’s good to be reminded: Unless you follow through on threats, kids quickly get the message that there are no consequences.

For this mom, she concluded that she’d take her son to the rehearsal. Either he’d either bomb it and feel disappointed or ace it and get a part.

So how can she make him listen? In short, she can’t, so that’s what she agreed to start a conversation with: “I realize that I can’t make you practice.”

That’s huge. But how could she make it on his terms, so he was in control but would still practice? She offered to be his audience and give him her undivided attention. We found two times in the days before the rehearsal that worked for her and she offered them to him. From there, he had a choice of whether or not to take her up on it. Not surprisingly, he did.

From a kid’s perspective, there is very little on their terms. Adults control their worlds. But they have a secret weapon: ignoring you until you lose it and then fighting about how you are being a control freak.

Before you can take action steps to improve your communication with teens, ask yourself these questions for self-reflection:

Am I making assumptions? If so, how does that come out in my “ask”?

What are the things my teen has control over that I am still trying to control?

On a scale from 1-10, how controlling am I?

Am I willing to change how I communicate even if I ultimately believe that they should just behave differently?

In other words, does your communication have annoyance, frustration, and/or control? And if so, are you willing to do it differently?

Now that you know why your teen won’t listen to you, how can you start improving communication so they actually do listen to you?

Get yourself in a state of cold cognition, which means your emotions are quiet and you’re not in the heat of the moment. (Of all the things I teach parents, this is the one that has the most immediate and transformative impact on their communication.)

In this state, call a family meeting and put a time limit on it. Start a conversation in a state of cold cognition.

Then, say something that acknowledges what is going on and the limits to your influence:

“I’ve noticed that we fight to get you to come to the dinner table.”

“I’ve noticed that I have to ask you multiple times to get off your device.”

“I realize that I can’t make you come and eat dinner.”

“I realize that I can’t make you get off your devices.”

From there, offer something that communicates where you are at and also your desire for input:

“I love you too much to fight all the time. I’m interested in your thoughts about how we can get along better and still have dinner together.”

“I am working hard right now, and your help around the house would really help me out.”

“I realize we’re in a bad habit and I’d like to change it.”

And then: listen. Without an agenda.

10 Non-Negotiable Rules for Raising a Teenager Without Wrecking Your Relationship With Them

Chances are that if you are frustrated with your teen, they also have their own frustrations. Give them the space they need to be heard and see what happens. At the end of this brief meeting, you can come to a solution or you can revisit the topic.

The point of it is to communicate with your teen when you aren’t already annoyed with her and to express your desire for a new outcome.

Cold cognition is kind of like a secret weapon for getting teens to buy in, especially if they are used to a highly emotional version of you.

Now, what if your teen refuses to get off their device unless you scream at them?

Screens really are the issue of our time and they’re relatively new. So if you have bad screen habits, you’re certainly not alone. That doesn’t mean you can’t take action and, in some cases, it may mean taking drastic action.

Back to the family meeting: if you are in a bad habit about screens, own up it. If you find it hard to set limits for yourself, own up to that too. Share the behaviors you’d like to see: phones off during meal times and at bedtime without yelling or fighting.

You can invite your teen to share their perspective about to change the ritual of extricating them from their phone, but if you’ve been in a rut for a while, they may just grunt in reply or call you a control freak.

And then, offer a choice: they can either try to manage this on their own for the next week or you’re going to install a parental control app on all of your phones so you don’t have to rely on their self-control.

The minute you bring up an app, you’ll have their attention. Prepare for a reaction that’ll include a lot of begging, telling you how much you suck, or that you’re unfair. You’ve been warned.

I got this idea from a client who has worked hard with her son to set screen boundaries, but he is addicted to gaming. Though he says he understands the risks associated with excessive gaming, he still has no self-control.

Here’s the thing about having a third-party control: If you are like many, many parents and didn’t set limits for screens and now it’s turned your household into a war zone, use the app. Don’t buy into the fear that if you set the limits for your kids now, you’ll always have to. Trust that as they mature and your relationship strengthens, the ultimate goal of self-control will come. And if that means externalizing control right now to an app, go for it.

All this is a detailed process for what many parents want desperately from their kids: They want to be heard and listened to without fighting, especially when it comes to their screens.

Unfortunately, this is part of a larger communication fail where the teen feels like the only way to have control in the situation is to ignore their parents and watch them lose it.

Furthermore, the screen thing is an issue for all of us. I recently installed limits on my own phone because I need external regulation. Not because there’s anything wrong with me, but because I’m trying to change my habits and screens are everywhere and very addictive.

If you want to change the dynamic, start by changing how you communicate with your teens. Ask yourself those self-reflecting questions mentioned above.

After you’ve done a little reflecting, talk when you aren’t already mad and listen to your kid’s perspective with this in mind: “I love you too much to keep fighting about this.” This doesn’t mean to abandon expectations and standards; it means acknowledging the limits of your control and then collaborating from there.

Lastly, if the screen thing has become an immovable issue, then I highly recommend using a third-party app. I wouldn’t consider it a fail. I’d consider it a bridge that you’re willing to construct until you and your teen can reach higher ground on your own.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: How To Get Your Teen To Put Down Their Phone & Listen To You.

from World of Psychology http://bit.ly/2UFauKq via IFTTT

[erraticfairy]

On the Phone: Teaching Your Teen Better Communication Skills & Self-Control

You might have to communicate differently and get serious about your limits.

Parenting teens is a challenge, especially when it comes to communicating with them. Sometimes, it seems like they’re not the best at listening, especially when you ask them to get off their devices.

How do you get them to stop looking at their phone for a second and not have to ask them twice? There are two problems in this scenario: communication and self-control.

Adolescence is a crucial time in every teenager’s life. And as a parent, communication with them is everything.

There are so many ways to improve and even small tweaks on your communication skills can positively impact your relationship with your growing adolescent.

7 Highly Effective Principles for Parenting Through Middle School & Adolescence

A client I’ve been working with for a while shared that ending the communication battles with her teens also allowed her communication with her husband to improve.

If your teens aren’t listening to you, your negative communication pattern probably goes something like this.

You ask them to do something they never want to do — homework, chores, or getting off their phones. Even if you think you’re asking nicely, you’re probably feeling some degree of frustration or dread in anticipation of their response.

You’ve asked this same thing repeatedly and never once have they responded with a “Sure thing”. So, of course, you’re annoyed!

After multiple asks, you yell or flip out, which makes you feel terrible. As one client put it, “Yelling is the only way they listen, but I hate it every time.”

For some kids who enjoy getting the rise out of their parents, this presents an opportunity for a power struggle. Now you’re fighting (again) and the same ask goes unanswered.

The homework still has to be done. The chores still aren’t done. And tomorrow, it’ll still take 10 asks to “Put your phone down and come to dinner.”

The moral of the story: you and your teen don’t really hear each other anymore. That’s why it feels like they aren’t listening. They’ve learned to tune you out.

If this sounds familiar, there’s bad news and good news: There’s nothing you can do to make your teen listen to you. But if you’re willing to try something new, you won’t have to use force.

There are 2 reasons why your teen refuses to listen to you:

1. They Feel Like You’re Controlling Them.

If your kids aren’t listening, chances are that they are feeling controlled by you in some way. The more you advise, suggest, or ask (but really tell), the more they will resist. This is why we have to be savvy and change how we do things.

Now if your response is, “My kid should listen because I’m the parent and he should respect me”, I understand and agree…to an extent, if we lived a world where that was still the cultural norm.

But we don’t and fear-based parenting isn’t the best practice. Also, I guarantee you that proceeding with that mindset will just prolong the negative pattern you are already in.

Sometimes, this even includes things your teen actually enjoys doing.

For example, a client had this pattern with her middle-school son. The more she leaned on him to practice for an upcoming rehearsal, the more he resisted. Even though he wanted the part, the minute she asserted her control and reminded him to do it, the power struggle escalated.

She was frustrated. If he won’t do things he supposedly likes, how could she get him to do things he struggles with?

Since she’s a coaching client, I asked her to assess herself for control on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being mellow and 10 being a control freak. She gave herself a 7 or 8.

Now I asked the same of her son. After a long silence, she said he was about the same.

This means that two people which a similar desire to be in control over a task that ultimately can only be done by one of them.

2. You Make Threats You Don’t Follow Through.

With this same client, when I asked her to recreate what happens when things escalate, she said she makes threats that she doesn’t always follow through on. This time, she threatened not to take him to the rehearsal.

You probably already know this but it’s good to be reminded: Unless you follow through on threats, kids quickly get the message that there are no consequences.

For this mom, she concluded that she’d take her son to the rehearsal. Either he’d either bomb it and feel disappointed or ace it and get a part.

So how can she make him listen? In short, she can’t, so that’s what she agreed to start a conversation with: “I realize that I can’t make you practice.”

That’s huge. But how could she make it on his terms, so he was in control but would still practice? She offered to be his audience and give him her undivided attention. We found two times in the days before the rehearsal that worked for her and she offered them to him. From there, he had a choice of whether or not to take her up on it. Not surprisingly, he did.

From a kid’s perspective, there is very little on their terms. Adults control their worlds. But they have a secret weapon: ignoring you until you lose it and then fighting about how you are being a control freak.

Before you can take action steps to improve your communication with teens, ask yourself these questions for self-reflection:

Am I making assumptions? If so, how does that come out in my “ask”?

What are the things my teen has control over that I am still trying to control?

On a scale from 1-10, how controlling am I?

Am I willing to change how I communicate even if I ultimately believe that they should just behave differently?

In other words, does your communication have annoyance, frustration, and/or control? And if so, are you willing to do it differently?

Now that you know why your teen won’t listen to you, how can you start improving communication so they actually do listen to you?

Get yourself in a state of cold cognition, which means your emotions are quiet and you’re not in the heat of the moment. (Of all the things I teach parents, this is the one that has the most immediate and transformative impact on their communication.)

In this state, call a family meeting and put a time limit on it. Start a conversation in a state of cold cognition.

Then, say something that acknowledges what is going on and the limits to your influence:

“I’ve noticed that we fight to get you to come to the dinner table.”

“I’ve noticed that I have to ask you multiple times to get off your device.”

“I realize that I can’t make you come and eat dinner.”

“I realize that I can’t make you get off your devices.”

From there, offer something that communicates where you are at and also your desire for input:

“I love you too much to fight all the time. I’m interested in your thoughts about how we can get along better and still have dinner together.”

“I am working hard right now, and your help around the house would really help me out.”

“I realize we’re in a bad habit and I’d like to change it.”

And then: listen. Without an agenda.

10 Non-Negotiable Rules for Raising a Teenager Without Wrecking Your Relationship With Them

Chances are that if you are frustrated with your teen, they also have their own frustrations. Give them the space they need to be heard and see what happens. At the end of this brief meeting, you can come to a solution or you can revisit the topic.

The point of it is to communicate with your teen when you aren’t already annoyed with her and to express your desire for a new outcome.

Cold cognition is kind of like a secret weapon for getting teens to buy in, especially if they are used to a highly emotional version of you.

Now, what if your teen refuses to get off their device unless you scream at them?

Screens really are the issue of our time and they’re relatively new. So if you have bad screen habits, you’re certainly not alone. That doesn’t mean you can’t take action and, in some cases, it may mean taking drastic action.

Back to the family meeting: if you are in a bad habit about screens, own up it. If you find it hard to set limits for yourself, own up to that too. Share the behaviors you’d like to see: phones off during meal times and at bedtime without yelling or fighting.

You can invite your teen to share their perspective about to change the ritual of extricating them from their phone, but if you’ve been in a rut for a while, they may just grunt in reply or call you a control freak.

And then, offer a choice: they can either try to manage this on their own for the next week or you’re going to install a parental control app on all of your phones so you don’t have to rely on their self-control.

The minute you bring up an app, you’ll have their attention. Prepare for a reaction that’ll include a lot of begging, telling you how much you suck, or that you’re unfair. You’ve been warned.

I got this idea from a client who has worked hard with her son to set screen boundaries, but he is addicted to gaming. Though he says he understands the risks associated with excessive gaming, he still has no self-control.

Here’s the thing about having a third-party control: If you are like many, many parents and didn’t set limits for screens and now it’s turned your household into a war zone, use the app. Don’t buy into the fear that if you set the limits for your kids now, you’ll always have to. Trust that as they mature and your relationship strengthens, the ultimate goal of self-control will come. And if that means externalizing control right now to an app, go for it.

All this is a detailed process for what many parents want desperately from their kids: They want to be heard and listened to without fighting, especially when it comes to their screens.

Unfortunately, this is part of a larger communication fail where the teen feels like the only way to have control in the situation is to ignore their parents and watch them lose it.

Furthermore, the screen thing is an issue for all of us. I recently installed limits on my own phone because I need external regulation. Not because there’s anything wrong with me, but because I’m trying to change my habits and screens are everywhere and very addictive.

If you want to change the dynamic, start by changing how you communicate with your teens. Ask yourself those self-reflecting questions mentioned above.

After you’ve done a little reflecting, talk when you aren’t already mad and listen to your kid’s perspective with this in mind: “I love you too much to keep fighting about this.” This doesn’t mean to abandon expectations and standards; it means acknowledging the limits of your control and then collaborating from there.

Lastly, if the screen thing has become an immovable issue, then I highly recommend using a third-party app. I wouldn’t consider it a fail. I’d consider it a bridge that you’re willing to construct until you and your teen can reach higher ground on your own.

This guest article originally appeared on YourTango.com: How To Get Your Teen To Put Down Their Phone & Listen To You.

from World of Psychology http://bit.ly/2UFauKq via theshiningmind.com

[rebefser1]

I’m not about making my posts personal to myself as I like to make them relatable, for this one however I’m going to do just that. I’m going to lay my cards out, give everyone an insight into why I do what I do and what drives me to want to help people, no matter how big or small their problem.

Communication is the key to helping.

Let’s rewind the clock and go back to a time in my life much different to now. Different yes! But better, well I’ve spent a long time trying to figure that out. I guess there is no simple way to gauge whether or not things are better now… life is full of curve balls and has a vast array of tests, set in place to keep us occupied. But what you can do is alter your outlook on life, on how you live your life and how you view your past. As I said I’ve spent a long time trying to figure things out and it’s only in the past year I’ve started to make progress. 

So, going back to late 2008 / early 2009, at that time I was working in a very male oriented environment, it was only a matter of time but eventually circumstances would inevitably make this simple fact, a nightmare for me to live with. I both worked and lived in this environment. It would not be an assumption if I were to say that many of the people in this particular place were not what we would consider liberal. Their conservative views made this a very hostile and dangerous environment for me. You may be asking yourself why… the reason for this was, late 2008 I had decided to tell one of my friends I was gay. This was not an easy decision and I was using the opportunity as, well let’s say I was “testing the water” my friend then decided to take upon them self to spread the word… before I knew it, it was a game of Chinese whisperers, I was the talk of the town and everyone but me had a view on my sexuality. I have always been a gentle soul and I obviously took this very badly. I kept myself from people and due to what I saw as a betrayal, I was struggling to trust even my friends. It usually takes a week for fresh news to become old and die out but not this time. It’s safe to say I was not the same person anymore, not in the eyes of the majority of people that surrounded me. They made it their mission to ensure that I was in any other place to which they were. Could I blame them, I mean no… I still hadn’t come to terms with my sexuality at that time either and I was thinking maybe they were right… maybe I didn’t belong there, maybe that environment wasn’t for me. This however was just the beginning. What started as childish whispers and sniggers behind my back as I passed by, soon became a plot to have me removed and relocated.Fast forward a little to Friday 13th March 2009 I had been having a somewhat secretive “thing” with a colleague and that night he had asked if I would drive him to pick up belongings from his ex girlfriends house, I did… and on the way I was flashed by a speed camera, I was angry that this had happened but little did I know that just a few hours later, this would be the very least of my problems.

Without going into too much detail, after returning home I decided I was going to call it a night as it was pretty late, I shared a large room with two others, this night however there was an extra three so all together there were 6 of us. I went to bed and went to sleep. Shortly after I was woken by the sound of our main door banging, I thought this unusual as I had locked it but I was only half awake and not fully aware. I heard someone ask for the chef… (we were all chefs) one of the guys asked the person to leave which they did so I went back to sleep. A short time passed again and the next time I woke was to a punch from above straight to the face, this person punched me and then jumped on top of me and pinned my arms down with their knees, then proceeded to repeatedly punch my chest and face. During this time my nose was bleeding profusely, unable to lift my head I was choking on my own blood, I was screaming and gargling pleading for someone to help me get this person off but no one did… not one of the other 5 people in the room bothered to help. I managed to get up and by this point I was covered in blood dressed only in my underwear. I was now under a barrage of verbal abuse, statements to the effect of “we don’t want you gays here” calling me a faggot and queer just to name a few… I dressed my myself and made my way to my friends room upstairs, she instantly cried at the sight of me in shock and who could blame her, I looked a mess. Many events followed this, when asked why he had carried out the attack, the person responsible insinuated that I had sexually assaulted someone and he was sticking up for them as there was no place for people like me. (I later learnt from a friend who shared a room with this person that there were about 5/6 of them in their room plotting what they were going to do to get rid of me) Further to this someone had decided to spray paint ‘Gays Out Now’ across our bosses wall. The assault was reported but I was told not to mention the graffiti as they didn’t want to cloud an ongoing investigation. I reported it anyway. I also mentioned to them that I was asked to sign a register which was apparently an acknowledgment from me to my rights as a gay man in this environment. I was so angry at the suggestion of this and quite frankly I thought the idea was ludicrous. During all of this I had people in high positions trying to silence me and trying to stop me from speaking with the police. I never backed down the whole time I was there, I had no choice to leave so decided to fight as best I could until the day I left in July 2009. That last few months was one of the hardest times of my life and I would never wish for anyone to have to go through the same mental and physical torment.I have received treatment in the past that I would not give to my worst enemy and I am a stronger person today because I have built myself back up from the shell of a human that was left following this experience. I have suffer for many years with PTSD following and was also diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder. I do not let any of this define who I am or what direction my life is taking… I believe that I am the master of my own fate.

William Ernest Henley

It’s very important to get to know the people around you as best you can, however I think I believe this because of issues I have with trust. I like to get to know people and sometimes ask ridiculous questions that some people may perceive to be irrelevant, they may be irrelevant but if I’m asking questions it’s generally because I want to get to know you better, you should see that as a compliment.With regards to my acceptance of my sexuality, I now tell people I trust that I’m gay but I do not announce or broadcast it… I accept that it is who I am but have never really forgiven my sexuality for the treatment I have received in the past. I struggle to show signs of affection, especially in public. I worry sometimes that I will never find a person that accepts me, flaws and all. However I never let this hold me back. As I said at the beginning life is difficult, it throws us curve balls and sets us many of tests. How we tackle these and move forward with our life is up to us. Is my life better now that it was in 2008/2009? 

Yes! Is it perfect? No! And will it ever be? No, but I wouldn’t want it to be. Remember it is also a lot to do with our perception… I saw things in a very negative way for a long time but I have decided to change my life for my benefit, I now use my past as strength & motivation to get me through what my future holds for me. This has driven me to help people and which has driven me to set us this website. If only one person takes anything from this then i can say that I have tried and I have succeeded. 

Can you? 

If anyone is struggling with anything similar to what I have mentioned In this post or something else and you need to talk, I am here. CLICK HERE to contact me direct and personally in confidence.

I am lucky and I have received help at the darkest points of my life, I understand that this isn’t the case for everyone and I urge you to seek guidance and support immediately if you are having thoughts of self harm or suicide. CLICK HERE for guidance.

Do not suffer in silence. 

Speak to someone. 

Rebefser ~ Dale

Spectrum ~ Blog Entry #15 I’m not about making my posts personal to myself as I like to make them relatable, for this one however I’m going to do just that.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE HIGH RESOLUTION FUNDRAISING SURVIVAL GUIDE TO DO PHILOSOPHY

If the best hackers I know seem to have been the losing side in debates about software design. The advantages of rootlessness are similar to those of poverty. Being Good How do you recognize good founders? But if you do add that final increment of power, you can decrease the amount of spam that recipients actually see. Notes I don't like it.1 But there are few strong enough to keep working, and their terms should reflect that. This is why so many trade publications nominally have a cover price and yet give away free subscriptions with such abandon. I begin by reminding readers of this principle because I'm about to propose a hypothesis: that all these languages are Turing-equivalent means that, strictly speaking, you're putting something in the background looking for problems without knowing what you're looking for companies that will get last place in the world.

We're talking about some pretty dramatic changes here. She arrived looking astonished. And observing certain other signs, I have to choose between something that's cheap, heavily marketed, and appealing in the long term it's to your advantage to be located elsewhere. It surprised me that being a startup. Launch.2 And while I miss the 3 year old version of him, I at least don't have any regrets over what might have been tempted to do this.3 The problem is, the huge size of current VC investments is dictated by the structure of the essays they teach you to write in school. Writing novels doesn't pay as well as how to make money. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do—in comment threads, on forums, and in 1957 his top people—the fewer, the better. I don't know enough about the infrastructure that spammers use to know how good they are. How could these people make investment decisions well when they're checking their messages during startups' presentations?

You can tweak the design faster when you're the water? 35 billion for the same reason: it will be a junior person; they scour the web looking for startups their bosses could invest in. If you're not omniscient, you just don't end up saying no to science as well. To me the exercises at the end of each film, so they must be promising something people want. So are established companies, but they are. Ranking George Washington Carver with Einstein misled us not only how to manage programmers. If you have a taste for interesting ideas: whether you find known boring ideas intolerable. Of all the reasons we lie to kids about how good their judgement is, we usually tell founders is to go through the roof, and his friend says, Yeah, that is a knowledge of human anatomy.

Ideas March 2012 One of the most important factor in a language's long term survival.4 What do you say if you've been talking to investors in parallel. And yet the prospect of starting a startup is how to learn to program. How can this be? But you can probably get even more effect by paying closer attention to the author's choices as to the story. Their main expenses are setting up the company, because it depends on you not being tricked by the no that sounds like a joke, they will often reveal amazing details about what they really care about its integrity.5 But to work it depends on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing was inherited by English professors.

Would even Grisham claim that it's because he's a better writer than someone who wrote eleven that were merely good. I go somewhere new, I make my own life worse. I've known, hackers and painters are both makers, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it is, right?6 And in both cases the results are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. It's also one of the angels in his Baptism of Christ. Fortran is now arguably closer to Lisp than to Fortran I. I realize I've made startups sound pretty hard.7 Obvious is an understatement. Stuff July 2007 I have too much stuff. And it did not seem as if Google was a pioneer in all three cases. In this case, the company is a startup.

And I've met a lot of words on a slide, people just skip reading it. So if you're ready to clip on that ID badge and go to a forum for users of that language and make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the large sums of money. The problem here is social. If you go to see Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be able to recognize real productivity when they see one, and eventually markets learn how to minimize the damage of going public. School. No one would dispute that he's one of the main things we help startups with, stay in touch with them as well. But written this way it seems like a fraud. When you're an outsider you should actively seek out contrarian projects. Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a safety pin through your ear, which were other forms of stupidity. For example, the Reuters article that got picked up by USA Today in September 2004. This seems to them more professional.

Essays should do the opposite: to squash together all the aspects of it that are unenviable. Some clever person with a spell checker reduced one section to Zen-like incomprehensibility: Also, common spelling errors will tend to get all the attention, when hardly any of them will amount to anything. I was 30 and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.8 Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the same town, unless it was the same. Instead of acting tough, what most startups should do is go out and discover startups when they're young. The word was first used for backers of Broadway plays, but now I probably wouldn't have sold $10 million worth of watches when they did they might have revenues of $50 million, and everyone knew what they did. An early stage startup. Whereas it's easy to slide into consulting, this could even have advantages. Syntax Could a language with full support for lexical scope, and it is a byword for bogusness like Milli Vanilli or Battlefield Earth. And while there are some ideas where the proof that the experiment worked might consist of e. For better or worse it looks as if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, but in 1996 the story about Java was that it was much cleverer than I had been.

But again, the problem now becomes to survive with the least possible effort.9 So the short explanation of why this 1950s language is not obsolete is that it acts as a shakedown cruise. The more the work depends on imagination, the more easily you'll notice new ones. And we paid a PR firm. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him from being CFOs of public companies, that's proof enough that it's broken. When a company starts misbehaving, smart people won't work there. The most productive young people will always be true that most people won't even try. _____ Countries worried about their competitiveness are right to be paranoid, but they don't get blamed for it. What protects little companies from being copied by bigger competitors is not just that line but the whole program. To avoid wasting his time, he waits till the third or fourth time he's asked to do something called price discrimination, because the danger of raising money destroy your morale, it makes them less likely to start something.10 That might sound like an advantage, because the younger you are, are you guys hiring?

Notes

I managed to screw up twice at the 30-foot table Kate Courteau designed for us, the switch in the Bible is not a remark about the other hand, a few old professors in Palo Alto. And it would take Abelson and Sussman's quote a number here only to buy corporate bonds; a decade of inflation that left many public companies trading below the value of understanding vanity would decline more gradually. And I've never heard of many startups, whose founders aren't sponsored by organizations, and most sophisticated city in the classical world meant training landowners' sons to speak well enough known that people start to have discovered something intuitively without understanding all its implications.

But the question of whether public company not to.

Managers are presumably wondering, how much effort on sales.

I skipped the Computer History Museum because this is largely determined by successful businessmen and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev. The fancy version of this. The meanings of these titles vary too much to maintain your target growth rate has to convince limited partners.

You have to be high, so they had to push to being told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects now that the VCs buy, because there was a very misleading number, because they are within any given college. Associates at VC firms have started there.

Seeming like they worked. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than you could beat the death-penalty in the narrowest sense. She ventured a toe in that era had no natural immunity to tax avoidance. In practice the first scientist.

Com. The reason this subject is so much attention. One of the essence of something the telephone, the jet engine, the users' need has to be self-perpetuating if they miss just a Judeo-Christian concept; it's random; but random is pretty bad. But those are guaranteed in the construction industry.

In When the same intellectual component as being a doctor. Median may be the technology business. Wisdom is useful in solving problems too, of course it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that tried to be identified with you to two more investors.

The second assumption I made because the money they're paid isn't a quid pro quo. In the beginning of the editor, which handled orders.

But the time. I suspect Digg's is the same thing 2300 years later.

Thanks to Garry Tan, Jason Freedman, Emmett Shear, David Hornik, Dan Giffin, Jackie McDonough, Sarah Harlin, Maria Daniels, and Reid Hoffman for reading a previous draft.

[lovemychinchilla]

Why Do My Chinchillas Sleep All the Time?

Chinchillas can sleep almost the whole day through. That's unusual compared to other pets, so why do chinchillas sleep so much, and is it normal for them to do so?

How much sleep do chinchillas need? Chinchillas sleep for roughly 12 hours a day, and not all at once. This means your pet sleeps many times throughout the day for a long total amount of time. However, if you notice your chinchilla always sleeping more than this, the issue may be lethargy and you should talk to a vet.

Lethargy is a sign of severe ill health, so learning the difference between lethargy and regular sleep is vital. The guide below will teach you how much chinchillas sleep, when they sleep, and for how long... And what to do if your pet sleeps far too much.

How Many Hours Does a Chinchilla Sleep?

Because they have long been kept as lab animals, chinchillas and their sleeping habits have been studied in depth. The average amount of sleep for adult mammals is 11 hours per day. Chinchillas fall at around this average, spending between 42% and 52% of the time asleep, which is roughly 12 hours. But what's fascinating about the chinchilla is how short its sleep cycle is, at only six minutes. For comparison, the sleep cycle in people is an hour and a half long.

Chinchillas sleep in blocks of time. How long or short these blocks are depends on your chinchilla's environment, its temperament, and how much it has to do in its cage. Most owners report that their pets follow a rough two-hours-awake, two-hours-asleep schedule. If this is what your pet is doing too, and if it displays no signs of ill health, there's no need to worry.

There is no one specific pattern by which all pet chinchillas sleep. So, your experience with your pet may be different. For example, your pet might sleep for an hour at a time and get up for snacks in between. Or, it may sleep in slightly longer blocks of time. It may also spend longer in its hide 'sleeping', but in reality, be awake and only resting. There's enormous variety between different pet chinchillas in this regard, so again, it's highly unlikely that there's something wrong with your pet if the only issue is that it sleeps a lot.

Why Do My Chinchillas Sleep All the Time?

At 12 hours, your chinchilla only sleeps an average amount for a mammal/rodent species. But why do chinchillas need more sleep than people do?

The commonly held assumption is that this is a good way to stay safe. Chinchillas and other rodents have many predators which can attack at any time. If a chinchilla spent eight hours in a row asleep, it could more easily be eaten. While this does appeal to common sense, research shows that it likely isn't the case.

A paper published in the journal Functional Ecology looked at this precise issue. They state that neither sleep cycle length nor overall sleep length over the course of a day is affected by likelihood of predation. Instead, the scientists found that this kind of sleep was associated with energy expenditure. As chinchillas are small animals, they need to feed in frequent small amounts. This prevents them from 'consolidating' their sleep into one longer sleep either during the day or the night, because they need to get up and eat. This would explain why many rodents have a similar sleep cycle to the chinchilla. That's why you'll frequently see your chinchilla get up, get a snack, and go back to bed.

Moreover, this kind of sleep requires that the animal sleep more overall. This is presumably because the chinchilla cannot fully rest and recover in only a short span of time. But whatever the reason, this means that the chinchillas overall required amount of sleep is dictated by its biology. This explains the chinchilla's strange sleeping habits, because wild behavior and biology has been retained by pet chinchillas.

The Chinchilla Sleep Pattern

The 'sleep pattern' describes the different phases that an animal goes through when it sleeps. The phases each have their own purposes, although these aren't fully understood yet by science.

Chinchillas have a similar sleep pattern to other mammals. The first period of sleep is slow-wave sleep, also known as NREM (non-REM) sleep. During this sleep phase, the animal is still and does not dream. This is followed by a short amount of REM sleep, which is dreaming sleep, during which the animal might twitch.

Over the course of a night, you cycle between these kinds of sleep twice (or three times if you don't get up in the morning). Chinchillas cycle between NREM and REM sleep, but because their cycle between these kinds of sleep is so short, they can wake up after ten to fifteen minutes.

Scientists term this kind of sleep 'polyphasic sleep'. Larger animals have biphasic sleep, which is where sleep is consolidated into two long phases, typically taken together. Pet chinchillas will combine many phases together and sleep for small blocks, e.g. two hours at a time.

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When Does a Chinchilla Sleep?

Chinchillas are commonly called nocturnal, but this isn't entirely accurate. Your pet may sleep either during the day or at night. Both are normal, although it's more common for a pet chinchilla to sleep during the day and be active at night.

Do Chinchillas Sleep at Night (Nocturnal)?

When you think of a 'nocturnal' animal, you picture an animal which hides and sleeps throughout the day and only comes out at night. That's not true of chinchillas, which come out both in the day and at night.

Image courtesy of Analysis of Sleep Cycles in the Rodent, by Henry B. Van Twyver.

One term scientists frequently use to refer to the chinchilla's sleep schedule is 'crepuscular'. This term refers to an animal which is most active at either dawn or dusk. These times are especially safe because neither night predators nor daytime predators specialize at hunting at these times.

From study, it seems that chinchillas are slightly crepuscular, but can spend time sleeping both during the day and the night. The graph above demonstrates when chinchillas kept in a lab were asleep, and when they weren't.

The upper dotted line shown in the graph measures how many minutes of slow wave sleep a chinchilla took in an hour. The lower solid line is for 'paradoxical sleep', better known as REM sleep or dreaming sleep. The graph shows that chinchillas sleep slightly more during the day, but that sleep is distributed roughly evenly across 24 hours.

Do Chinchillas Like the Dark?

Chinchillas are comfortable in the dark. They don't display higher sensitivity to noise compared to the daytime. They feel comfortable being either asleep or awake.

A pet chinchilla will be especially comfortable. Your pet will face no potential threats, and will have a hide that it feels secure in. Because of this, your pet will feel safe whether it's dark or not.

The reason for this is that chinchillas rely on all of their senses. A chinchilla's hearing is especially sensitive, which is why their ears are so large compared to other rodents. They also use their sense of smell to detect each other and nearby predators.

Are Some Chinchillas Diurnal?

Contrary to other owners' experiences, you may find that your pet chinchilla is far less active at night. Some owners report that their pets adjust their sleep schedules to stay awake during the day instead.

The rationale behind this idea is that the chinchilla can get more stimulation by being awake when you're awake, and when things are happening in the house. There's no reason why a chinchilla couldn't do this, although this hasn't been studied yet.

Again, this is nothing to worry about. Unless this change in sleep schedule is accompanied by other symptoms of ill health, it's nothing to worry about.

Lethargy vs. Regular Sleep in Chinchillas

Lethargy is the term for when an animal sleeps too much. It's different to laziness, which isn't a problem in chinchillas. Rather, lethargy is where the animal seems unable to move, feed itself or protect itself, even if it's hungry or in danger. It's a sign that your chinchilla is severely ill.

Signs a Chinchilla Is Lethargic

Sleeping isn't the main thing you have to look for to spot lethargy. Instead, watch your pet when it's awake and see what it does. In particular, look for:

Your chinchilla not enjoying playthings that it used to like playing with

Your chinchilla hardly eating and drinking

Your chinchilla sitting still for unusually long periods of time

Lethargy is hard to spot until an illness has become serious, and is quickly followed by death. If you suspect that your chinchilla is ill for any reason, lethargy or otherwise, consult a vet immediately rather than an online guide.

There are several causes of lethargy, which compounds the issue. Habitat issues, dietary issues and transmissible illnesses can all cause lethargy or make it worse.

How to Help a Chinchilla Sleeping Too Much

If your chinchilla is not lethargic, but is still sleeping too much, there are several explanations as to why. You may be mistaking rest for sleep, for example; your chinchilla could be awake and relaxing in its hide, rather than sleeping. Alternatively:

Your chinchilla may not have enough to do.��If your chinchilla doesn't have toys or exercise equipment, it may have nothing to get up for.

You may be feeding your chinchilla high-calorie foods. Chinchillas interrupt their sleep because they need to eat. If you're feeding it the wrong kind of snacks (like raisins or nuts) it may be getting enough calories that it doesn't need to get up.

Your chinchilla has a lazy personality. Some chinchillas are hyperactive, while others keep to themselves and do little. This isn't something that needs to be fixed.

Fix the problem of your chinchilla oversleeping by addressing the cause. Provide your chinchilla with more toys, or new toys, to give it something to do. Or, address your pet's diet so that you aren't giving it calorie-dense snacks.

Below, you can find our chinchilla quiz, new posts for further reading, and a signup for our Chinchilla Newsletter!

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