#I graduated college AND had a mid-20s life crisis | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pineapplerightsideupcake · 9 months

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Do you have tips on how to deal with fear of success/self sabotage due to growing up in a toxic home? I’m scared of leaving because everything I’ve tried mostly didn’t work out, and my parents have exhausted me, and emotionally beat me out of being excited for the future. Im suppose to graduate college this year, but I can’t because I wasn’t allowed to transfer and had panic attacks during online college so I had to stop. I just feel….so stuck and miserable. I spent majority of this year wasting money binging and ducking up my teeth and health in the process. Ik it’s not good for me, and now I actually have the resources and can save $ to leave, but I’m still scared. Of the guilt but more so that even if I leave my toxic house, I’ll still be miserable. I’m worried that secretly all along I was the problem and using my parents as an excuse. Sounds irrational I’m sorry but it’s the truth. Please what advice would you give me? Thank you.

First, you need professional help if you’re binging and puking (I assume you got autocorrected there). Whether you mean that you’re binging and purging your food or if you’re binging alcohol and vomiting, you need more help than I can give here.

What I can help with is in reassuring you that happiness is not a random state that just happens. It’s something we choose and build for ourselves. What’s so amazing about that is you don’t have to just sit and hope for it to happen. You can control it. You can make it for yourself. I think one of the hardest things to unlearn for people from toxic situations is that we don’t control our own lives.

I liken it to surviving a storm. You leaned to make yourself small. You learned to look for and respond to danger at all times. You learned to never let your guard down for a moment. And so it’s natural to think your happiness is tied to the wind.

But it’s not. You don’t have to hope and appease the wind. You can grow up and leave. You can choose to build a better life and to learn healthy coping mechanisms. Yes, it’s work. Yes, it takes time. But it is so so worth it.

Early 20s is when most mental illnesses peak. Statistically speaking, it only gets easier from here.

As soon as it’s financially possible, move out. Limit contact with toxic people. Look after you. Figure out what happiness looks like for you. Then make it. A little bit each day.

And to address your most heartbreaking question- of whether the problem was really you all along- I can promise you with 99.9% certainty that you aren’t. I’m likely closer in age to your parents than to you and let me promise you that there is nothing a child or teen can do that justifies cruelty or neglect. The adult is always responsible for their behavior.

But just to fully reassure you, let me promise that if you are the problem, you won’t heal or get better any more than if it wasn’t your fault by staying in a toxic environment. Even if in the 0.01-% case where you’re the toxic one, you can’t hope to change stuck where you are. I saw my aunt go through a mid life crisis that wasn’t cute. She became very cruel because she was miserable and while it’s correct to say she was the toxic one, she never would have changed for the better if she hadn’t left my uncle and my cousins and got her shit together far away. She also didn’t become that way in a vacuum.

But again, I am 99.9% confident you’re a perfectly lovely person with toxic parents. And no matter what you deserve a chance to be happy.

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bumblebuzzapiary · 2 years

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“I’m not sure why they seem to gravitate towards an empty honey pot of all things, but they seem to prefer it over the other slime toys! I guess they just like the smell of leftover honey?”

ask by Anonymous !

#slime rancher #slime rancher 2 #bumble slime #slime #ask blog #IM SO SORRY GUYS #THIS HAS BEEN AN ABSOLUTE WRECK OF A YEAR #I graduated college AND had a mid-20s life crisis #and now i had a seasonal full time job as a park ranger #and that was exhausting #I felt so bad leaving this blog behind for a bit #but now that Slime Rancher 2 is here #and my seasonal job is coming to a close #I feel inspired again TuT

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usernoneexistent · 2 years

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The Nowak Family

This family starts with a dangerous Grindelwald acolyte and an American-German informant.

"As many during the time of Grindelwald's terror would remember of the murderous duo, the Rosewood siblings, Hetty and Oscar. Originally, the line ended with them — one in Australia and the other residing in Azkaban. However, I have received word from a trustworthy source that Oscar had an illegitimate daughter in the USA and that his bloodline continues. Let's hope that murder doesn't run through their veins, or else our safeguarded community will be in danger once again..." - Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet 2019

Nancy Elke Johnson (face claim: Liv Lisa Fries)

Born into a magical family of fifteen, Nancy was born somewhere in the middle of her siblings. Her mother moved from Germany to the states to avoid a dire financial situation, only to run into the worst economic crisis in the mid-20s. Her father was an American wizard and took in her mother, who already was a single mum of five and her grandmother, Nancy’s great-grandmother.

Tired of always working and caring for the family after dropping out from Ilvermorny, Nancy would sneak out and party hard at the speakeasies. There she met Oscar Rosewood, by then calling himself Tadgh O'connor. She was aware of his fearsome and bloody reputation but pursued a romantic relationship regardless. While Nancy wasn't much fan of a of Grindelwald, she would often spy for Oscar and gather information for the cause.

Early in their love affair, Nancy gave birth to their only child, Lena. Unfortunately, Lena was born without magic, so Nancy made the illegal move to live with the non-majs so that Lena had a normal life. Oscar was constantly in and out of their lives due to being hunted by hit wizards and Aurors for his crimes. Until one day in 1944, he disappeared entirely, only for Nancy to find news of his arrest in the newspaper.

For the rest of her life, she remained in the non-majs world and was never charged when MACUSA found out, as it was after the re-appel of Rapport's law.

Lena Hetty Nowak née Johnson (face claim: Rachel McAdams)

Despite being born a squib and having a murderer for a father, Lena had a relatively happy albeit poor upbringing. Her mum found work as a clerk and kept magic to a minimum so that Lena would feel ordinary.

Her father, Tadgh O'connor, was in and out of her life. Her mother only told her that he was a travelling salesman until her mother sat her down one day when she was fourteen and finally told the truth. Lena was shocked and refused to believe it initially but eventually accepted it. She never told anyone else except for her current husband about it.

Lena was fairly popular in high school and later went off to college to study to be a nurse. She met and got engaged to her first love there. They married in 1952 but divorced three years later; they never had children together.

Lena volunteered as a nurse during the Vietnam war after her divorce through the Red Cross. There she met a doctor, Dr Szymon Nowak, whom she fell in love with and had the classic work romance. They married in a small ceremony within a year and continued their work at the military hospital in south Vietnam for a couple more years before having their first child, Aleksandra.

They had three more children, Zofia, Jan, and Hanna, back in the states. Lena was paranoid the entire time that their children possessed magic; however, none of them ever did. Though in 2009, when she got word that her grandson, Flynn, was a wizard, she collapsed out of shock but kept silent as she didn’t want it to haunt him, and the same applied to her other granddaughter, Harper.

Dr Szymon Nowak (face claim: Piotr Adamczyk)

Szymon is a second-generation Polish immigrant. His family managed to make something of themselves, allowing Szymon to study at Havard medical school. Within six years, he managed to graduate with high grades. Though after a year of practice, Szymon felt he could do more, and his time came when the Vietnam war started; he volunteered at the military hospitals.

In 1955, Szymon fell hard for a beautiful nurse, Lena Johnson. He was surprised to learn of her magical heritage, but it didn't stop him from loving her. They married shortly after and left in 1958 with their newborn daughter to Boston, Massachusetts. He worked in public hospitals again, and later when he retired, he became a part-time lecturer.

Their oldest daughter, Aleksandra, followed in her parent's footsteps in studying medicine and became a doctor herself. Their second child, Zofia, was their feisty and bit a more rebellious child who decided to join the military to become a mechanic. Their only son Jan went into a completely different field of nuclear engineering, and their youngest, Hanna, became a homemaker and was the first to get married of the four.

Jan Nowak (face claim: Josh Lucas)

Jan is the third child of the Nowak brood and naturally has science through his blood. Though instead of medicine, he was interested in physics and nuclear sciences. During elementary school, he always partook in science fairs and did well for himself. His parents helped too naturally and were excited that he was interested in sciences.

During middle and high school, Jan always preferred soccer over American football and played for the team. Later, he studied nuclear engineering at university as a cleaner and better alternative power source for global warming and running out of fossil fuels.

After graduating from university, Jan met his first wife, Susan, and they had a son together, Michael. Their marriage was a rocky one, and they realised that they rushed into marriage too early. They divorced after five years together, but they had a very amicable relationship and co-parented their son well.

His mates invited him years later to join them on vacation to Ibiza, and there at one of the bars, he met an English woman, Elizabeth Lewis. What was meant to be a one-night stand turned into a long-term relationship. Elizabeth then moved to America, and Jan took his time. After three years of dating, they married and had their first daughter, Isla. But Elizabeth was homesick and wanted to move back to Southampton near her family. Jan didn’t want to move far away from his other child, but he moved nevertheless.

They had Flynn and Harper later in England and Jan was always tighter with his two youngest. He shared his sports passion with them and always noticed that Flynn’s talent for sports. While he was surprised about Flynn’s magic abilities and later Harper he accepted it more readily and was prepared to send them to Hogwarts. Elizabeth not so much. Jan was surprised of his own magical heritance when his news spread about his grandparents.

Elizabeth Nowak née Lewis (face claim: Samantha Spiro)

Elizabeth Lewis is an English muggle raised in a middle-class family in Southampton, England. As a young girl, Elizabeth always got what she wanted and prided her intelligence. She went off and studied to become a pharmacist and purely believes in science as she finds that magic is nonsense for children.

Elizabeth managed to get into Oxford university and later worked for a private pharmaceutical company as she climbed the work ladder. She met her fiancee at work but broke up with him she found out he was cheating on her. To get over the heartbreak, her best friends booked a flight to Ibiza to drink and party to forget about him. On a bar-hopping spree, Elizabeth accidentally spilt her drink on an American man, Jan Nowak. Neither intended for a relationship to develop, but it did, and soon Elizabeth found herself in America to be closer to Jan. They married and had their daughter, Isla. Still, Elizabeth wanted to be back home in England even though she knew it would mean Jan leaving his first son.

Jan reluctantly agreed and moved to Southampton near her family. They had two more children, Flynn and Harper. Elizabeth was dumbfounded when she found out that her son had magic. She refused to send her son off to Hogwarts and wanted him to stay on the plan she had for all her children but was later forced to accept that Hogwarts was better for him. When Harper received her letter, Elizabeth didn’t take her chances like with Flynn and allowed her youngest to attend Hogwarts too.

Isla Helena Nowak (face claim: Jessica Barden)

Isla is an ordinary muggle, and like her mother, she purely believes in science and thinks magic and the supernatural to be a dumb fairytale story. She is the oldest and the clear favourite of her mother, following in her footsteps in pursuing a career in sciences at a prestige University. Though like her other siblings, she has her father’s sports appetite but in cycling and later partook in several cycle marathons for charity.

She always struggled to get along with her younger siblings, especially her brother, Flynn. Though it usually came from a place of a bit of envy that he could have an alternative path instead of university. Later, when she, along with the rest of the family, found he had magic, Isla grew envious that he gets to go to a boarding school, which is a castle and has superpowers which can be used for better things. The living apart situation did distance Isla from her siblings but closer to her mother.

Isla went to Oxford university and studied biomedical sciences for her bachelor's and master's degrees. She moved there and lessened her contact with her family. Isla found work as a microbiologist later on.

Flynn Gabriel Nowak (face claim: Belmont Cameli)

The only son of Jan and Elizabeth, Flynn is stuck between his two sisters though he always gets with Harper better than with Isla. While he never got either of his parent’s intelligence, he had his father’s sports talents. He is a muggleborn by definition but doesn’t know or at least for a long time didn’t know of his great grandparents.

Flynn had always found school hard to concentrate on and could never sit still. He frustrated his mum and teachers, but they never would look further into why and would continue to cause trouble while never it being his intention. Though at the tender age of six, his father noticed his talents for sports, particularly football. Flynn loved being on the pitch, moving and found that he could go with his gut. He made it far to the team for the junior championship league.

All his coaches agreed that Flynn would make it far but were surprised by his disappearance for nine months a year in high school. His parents would excuse him that they had to send him to boarding school after a suspicion involving magic, and he is practising there. The reality was that Flynn was at Hogwarts and maintained his practice through quidditch. While not the same thing, Flynn tried his best to keep up with his football, still keeping his path in life.

After being told all those years that he would make it big as a footballer, Flynn failed to make it into the Southampton team. Being crushed by the fact he watched everything he worked for the crumble in front of his face though he remained optimistic. Flynn knew education wasn’t for him, so he went for the next best thing he was good at, quidditch. Despite finding work as a reserved beater, he lost his passion for sports and was the first so uncertain of himself and his future.

As luck would have it, he and his siblings received a large mystery inheritance from the passing of his grandmother, which led his father, his aunts, his siblings and cousins to learn of their magical heritage. Flynn decided to use it to travel and see where life took him. Though he lost that money quickly and didn’t want to turn to his parents for help, so he worked odd jobs as a waiter or in the kitchen. Initially, as a way to make quick money turned into a passion again for making food. Flynn loved the adrenaline rush that came with cooking and trusting his gut that he started to work as a chef apprentice and later decided to venture on his own, opening a restaurant with his best friend, Jonathan King @whatwouldvalerydo.

Harper Ilona Nowak (face claim: Aimee Lou Wood)

Harper is the youngest of the Nowaks and, like her brother, a muggleborn. Avoiding their mistake the first time with Flynn, her parents allowed her to attend Hogwarts immediately after getting her letter.

Harper was neither interested in science or university nor sports. Instead, she would love to daydream and try out many things and partook in many clubs at her primary school. She has always been creative, always crafting stuff as gifts for her loved ones. When she received her acceptance letter to Hogwarts, she was ecstatic to be joining her brother, Flynn, at Hogwarts. However, Harper was sorted into Hufflepuff, but she quickly found friends.

At Hogwarts, she was excited about the arts and quickly learned how to use magic to bring her art and crafts to life. Though in her third year at a quidditch match supporting her brother, she caught a flying stray quaffle with her bare hands. It hurt, but it got Harper intrigued about quidditch prompting her to play chaser for fun.

Later in life, Harper rejected the idea of the university too, which upset her mother, but she opted for an art course at college instead. She works hard as a children's illustrator for both muggles and wizards.

#family profile #nowak family #oscar rosewood #nancy johnson #lena nowak #szymon nowak #jan nowak #elizabeth nowak #isla nowak #flynn nowak #harper nowak

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weightlessau · 5 years

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midlife crisis [ateez; jongho]

2.7k words

prompt from reedsy:

“I’d like to buy a plane ticket to your furthest destination today,” you told the airline employee

please pretend that everyone in ateez can speak fluent english or that y’all can speak the same language idk... 。(*^▽^*)ゞ

It's completely normal for people in their 30s and 40s to question their life and choices they made along the way. This became such a widespread problem that it even got its own name: the Mid-life Crisis.

People have the desire to go through drastic changes in their life even if they already have established a life of their own.

This phenomenon however should not be common for young people in their 20s or even teens, people who have not even begun making a life of their own.

Or so the elderly think.

After graduating high school, you didn't know what to do with you life. You didn't know what to do in college either so you just went and got a job as a hair and make up artist after an apprenticeship to apease your parents and at least do something with your life and for your future. At least you could earn some money while being hopeless with your decision.

But the months came and went and a year later, you still didn't know what to do.

So you just up and went and went to the airport the very same day.

"I'd like to buy a plane ticket to your furthest destination today," you tell the airline employee.

You must look crazy to them. Tousled hair, clothes not matching and dragging a heavy suitcase behind you, demanding a flight as far as possible.

But this employee seems to be used to your type of customers as she just glances at you for a second before starting to type on the computer in front of her.

"We have a flight to South Korea in about two hours, if that's alright with you?"

"Perfect." You hand over the necessary money and dash towards the gate to put your baggage away.

And not even a day later, you land in a completely new country, surrounded by unknown people.

Well, apparently not as unknown as you thought. Something special must be happening because a gaggle of girls push against the barrier of the arrival gate next to you. Is someone famous coming to Korea?, you ask yourself, but ultimately decide not to stick around for the drama. You need to find a place to stay first.

Just as you are about to turn away from the turmoil a hand grabs your arm and pulls you away from the crowd. You try to rip your arm away from the man dragging you, but you are surrounded by eight more of them. A panicked scream crawls up your throat. You just arrived a minute ago! Is this really how you're going to die? Your mom warned you to be careful with strangers.

Before your scream can burst out of your mouth a hand clasps itself over your mouth, almost covering half of your face.

"Please, don't scream," the person dragging you pleads with you. Why does he sound panicked? You're the one getting kidnapped!

As if he can read your thoughts, he continues, "we're not trying to kidnap you, I swear."

Finally, the boy that held your mouth closed sees that you won't shout anymore and releases you mouth.

"Who are you?" you burst out, tears springing into your eyes. Being surrounded by at least five strange men at once is more terrifying than you could have imagined.

"Oh no," one of them says with a frown on his face, "please, don't cry. We just tried to get away from the fans."

"That doesn't make it any better!" A pout forms on your face as you try to surpress the tears.

An even taller man, with prominent eyebrows, speaks up, "We were about to be mobbed by our fans, so we had to find a way to get around them, unsuspected."

"Are they here for you guys?"

"Yeah, kinda." The tallest of the bunch admits and scraches the back of his brown hair.

"And why, for the love of god," you ask exesperated, "would you grab me for that?"

This time the smallest of the group speaks up, the one that grabed you, you glare, "I don't know! I panicked, okay?"

"No! Not okay! Do you know how," you take a deep braeth, "Do you know how terrified I was? I thought that I was getting kidnapped." He let go of your wrist.

"She could distract the fans while we get in the van?" a quiet voice chimes in from the back. He is quite pretty, you have to admit.

"And why would I do that, princess?" you bite back snarkily.

Ignoring you nickname for his friend, the other large man with fiery hair replies enthusiastically, "we'll get you a room to stay in!" he says as if it's the best idea, "if you don't have one yet, that is?" he adds.

"You're lucky, I don't," you glare at each one of them once more before you stomp over to the fans after getting the managers number, for insurance.

"Guys, look! Over there!" you squeal loudly and point to the opposite direction of the boys' van.

Later you find out that they do, in fact, not have a room for you to stay in. The company deeming it a waste of money to get you a hotel room, so, to keep you quiet, they let you stay in their dorm for the while. Most (your mother) would flip out and ask you why the hell you would accept the offer to live together with eight boys in a dorm. The only answer you have is that you're broke and a cheapskate, who doesn't have a job and who just arrived in a foreign country recently. Even if you die, you're not going to leave much behind. That sounds dark, but you're in a Mid-life Crisis and don't really think that anything in life has worth or meaning. And what does it matter if the boys kill you? At least they're nice while they do it, giving you a warm bed next to Mingi's bed and delicious food, made by Wooyoung himself.

You have to stay with Mingi while his roommate, the youngest of the group, Jongho, has to suffer on the living room couch for his elders.

You are just about to enter the kitchen, for one of those delicious meal times, when you happen to overhear a conversation going on between Jongho and his members.

"My back is killing me, hyung. The couch really isn't comfortable," he moans as he hunches his own back a few times to relieve the pain.

"Bear with it a little more, Jongho. You know Mingi can't sleep on the couch because of his back and you were the one volunteering to sleep there," Hongjoong answers him sympathetically.

"And you know that we can't just throw her out or move her from bed to bed the whole time. We brought her into this mess and I bet they aren’t all that comfortable with the arrangement, too," Seonghwa adds.

Mingi walks up behind the sitting figure of Jongho and begins massaging the tense muscles in his back. He feels bad for being the one to offer you a place to stay and not even being the one to suffer because of his mistake.

That's when you decide to walk in with an apologetic expression, "I can take the couch, guys. It's no problem."

All eight of them startle from your sudden appearence at the doorframe.

"I don't want you to feel uncomfortable in your own home," you talk to Jongho directly.

"No," he shrugs Mingi's hands away, "what are you talking about?"

"I heard you talking, Jongho," you roll your eyes and finally sit down at the table.

With a shake of his head and his left hand, he tells you, "I still won't make you sleep on the couch. I can endure it until you find another place to stay at. It's no problem to me. I'm still young and perfectly healthy," he insists and ends the conversation completely, cutting you off whenever you want to object.

It's time for bed for everyone at the dorm, as Hongjoong likes to tell you all, even though he is a hypocryte and never actually goes to bed himself. After a few minutes of restlessness, you decide to do something against your parched mouth and leave Mingi's soft breathing behind you as you quietly tap over to the kitchen. While you gulp down the cold water, you notice heavy sighing coming from the living room, along with rustling, indicating a lot of tossing and turning.

Before you can change your mind, you quickly make your way towards the sounds of the obviously still awake Jongho.

"Jongho?" you still ask into the dimness to be sure.

"Hmm?"

"Don't be stubborn. I can take the couch for a few nights."

"No need, (y/n)."

"Well," you exhale, "if you don't want me to sleep on the couch and I want you to sleep in your own bed, why don't we share?"

"Share what?" he questions.

"The bed, you stubborn dummy. It's big enough for the both of us."

Nervously you hold you breath, waiting for his answer in the dimly lit doorway to the living room. You hear rustling before Jongho appears in front of you, arms full of his blanket and pillow, "alright, let's go." In the end you share the bed. Although you estimated that both of you would fit comfortably just fine, you still are awoken by the boys giggling like little school girls and phones in your faces.

Groggily you open your eyes a little more, trying to make out where you are and feel a heavy weight on your waist and warmth in front of you. That's when it dawns on you.

You try to rip yourself out of Jongho's tight embrace, but to no avail. It even gets tighter.

"Jongho," you whisper, glancing back at the boys recording behind you with possibly the reddest face you have ever had, "Jongho," you try again a little louder and still struggle against his grip. He wakes up to see your tomato-like face and immidately flashes back, hitting his head on the side board of bed in the process.

The boys seem to have a field day with your reactions and struggle to hold their phones steady on you faces, before Seonghwa decides that it's enough and they should leave you two alone. But of course that little shit doesn't close the door before shooting you both a suggestive wink.

In spite of you two barely being able to look into each others eyes the whole day, Jongho comes back that night and sleeps in the same bed as you again.

This continues on for two or three more weeks, before you finally find a job and your own cheap place to stay in. Coincidentally, you are able to get a job as the new make up and hair stylist of Ateez, the ones giving you the job not knowing who you really are to the boys.

After weeks of this arrangement you had with Jongho the two of you became much more comfortable with showing this contentment openly through skinship. Though you like hugging Jongho, the boys love it even more when you do that.

"Well, well, well. Would you look who we have here, Sangie."

Speaking of the devil. The worst of them all, Wooyoung and Yeosang.

"I see them, Woo. Jongho looks awfully comfortable hugging (y/n) for someone, who always screams bloody murder whenever we try to do the same, don't you think?"

"Leave us alone," Jongho says nonchalantly and waves them off behind your back. You, on the other hand, aren't as casual as Jongho and burn up brightly, hiding your face in the crook of his neck. You knew you would regret, coming to the dorm for a visit.

You feel Jongho's heartbeat pick up, when you bury your face in his nape. Maybe he isn't as uneffected by the teasing as you thought.

Wooyoung's cackling laugh echoes through the hallway when he and Yeosang leave you two alone again.

"Fuck it," you hear Jongho whisper before he pulls you away from him at an arms length to look you in the eyes. Your confused look greets him, questioning why he broke your embrace.

"What's up?" you ask, tilting your head, looking into his deep brown eyes.

Not meeting your eyes, he takes a deep breath to calm his hearthbeat, "I feel these things and I don't know what to do anytime I'm with you except hug you and wish to maybe kiss you and cuddle with you and tell everyone that I can cuddle with my partner if I want to and whenever you leave I look forward to seeing you again the second you're not in my eyesight anymore and I really like you," Jongho rattles down in one breath, eyes darting around, still not meeting your face, which has morphed from confused to a bright smiling face.

"Will you maybe, possibly, consider being my girlfriend/boyfriend, maybe?"

You smile up at him. You also like him, have been since you started falling asleep to his soothing voice lulling you to sleep at your nightly talking session after Mingi had already fallen asleep.

"I maybe, possibly, do want to be that, Jongho."

bonus (suggestive):

You finished everyone's make up and hair and the last member is sitting in the other make up chair with your colleague. You finally get to relax your feet and sit down on Jongho's lap, his hands coming up to rest on your hips instinctively, as you talk innocently with each other, not caring for the other staff members in the room. They're used to your PDA anyways, seeing as you two never actually get a moment alone, away from everyone else. They're so used to it that even Seonghwa looks away. At the beginning of your official relationship he watched you two with hawk eyes to ensure that you didn't do anything naughty, the 'innocence' of the youngest still very precious to him.

You're using the time before he has to go on stage to finally catch up after hectic running around during the styling.

"-and then I found the lipstick in a purse I haven't used for like two months!" you rant to him, him smiling fondly up at you, "Can you believe it? I don't even know how it ended up there! I really nearly came late to work for that shit."

"It looks really good on you, baby," Jongho compliments your lip color, that you spent precious minutes searching for that morning.

"Thank you," you smile down at him and go for a kiss.

Before you can reach his lips, he leans back slightly, "nuh-uh," he tutts, "no, kissing, babe, sorry. You worked so hard on my make up so no ruining it."

You pout at him which vanishes as an idea pops into your mind. "You're right," you agree with a devious smile, but still lean towards him again.

This time you aim further down. You press a light, brushing kiss (or two) onto his sensitive neck and leave him a shuddering mess underneath you, as you bend back towards the side of his neck. His hands tighten on your hips, maybe as a warning for you or maybe as a way to control himself and his pressing urges.

Thankfully you are in a corner of the room, your kisses unseen by the rest of the crew.

Just to tease him a little more you drop another kiss onto his sensitive neck and suck a little before letting go again. A quiet sigh leaves him accidentally when he slants his head to give you easier access, your hands trailing up his sides and making their way into his hair. You are mindful not to mess up his hair, but can't resist tugging it to give you even more room to kiss. Your lips drag down a path on his neck, biting and kissing on random spots, careful not to suck a mark minutes before the show begins.

"(y/n)," he breaths out into your ear, making you shiver as well.

"Stage in five, everyone."

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sfusummerfestival · 4 years

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Artist Spotlight: Renee Calvert

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨 While we'll be taking a break in 2020, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop supporting our amazing artists and vendors. Starting off this year's artist spotlight is the talented Renee Calvert!

🎨 Introduce yourself! I’m Renee Calvert, and I’m the creator behind the online comic The Epic Odyssey of Thomas McLean! The story is about a young man fresh(...ish) out of college, who, in struggling to figure out his life, gets whisked into another world and gets dragged into an epic quest to save the world. It’s currently on hiatus while I work on the next update, which is pretty special and also animated...

Aside from my comic, I work full time in the animation industry (mostly as a compositor these days but I wear a lot of hats) and perform locally with the podcast/live show Geeks Versus Nerds.

🎨 How did you come up with the concept for your webcomic ‘The Epic Odyssey of Thomas McLean’? What was it that inspired you?

I started plotting out the concepts for Epic Odyssey in 2009. I had just graduated college (in the middle of the last recession!) and was struggling to find my place in the world. Mostly by fantasizing about going through a magic door and living out the kind of heroic fantasies I liked reading about. These fantasies evolved into a story about a group of people in their early 20s coping with the various things I was struggling with at the time, but with cool monsters to fight and a world to save. When I began attending Academy of Art in 2010 for my Masters degree, I worked on the story some more and it solidified into The Epic Odyssey of Thomas McLean.

I was inspired by games like Kingdom Hearts and Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the kind of narratives you find in power metal songs by bands like Gloryhammer. Who doesn’t want to live through the mid-20s crisis of figuring out who you are while also fighting a dragon with heavy metal?

🎨 Describe your art style in a few words!

It’s what happens when you watch lots of Disney growing up, get really into Inuyasha, chase it with a lot of JRPGs, and then send it to art school to learn about character artists such as Steven Silver and Sean Galloway. I always want to find the sweet spot between the expressiveness of anime and the more grounded stylization of western cartoons.

🎨 How do you combat writer's block when writing new stories for your series?

I’ve had the story outlined for years, so if I get stuck (or, more often, if I’ve written myself into a corner), I can just refer to my outline and figure out how to get from where the story currently is to where it needs to go next. It’s more or less all in my head, the challenge is getting it out of my head and onto your screen! I do take frequent-ish breaks in updating, too, to combat burnout.

🎨 What kind of advice can you give aspiring artists or creators looking to put their work out there?

When I first started reading and making webcomics, it was the wild west. Anything and everything was out there, and while it did lead to some infamous comics out there, that frontier spirit of “I’m just gonna do it!” is something I miss. There’s so much good work on the web now, it’s a little overwhelming and even a bit discouraging. I know I struggle with jealousy and not feeling like my art is good enough compared to many of the popular webcomics out there, but that’s okay.

If you’ve got a story to tell, tell it. If you spend forever worrying about whether it’s good enough or if your art is good enough, it won’t get told. You’re the only person who can tell the story you have in your head and heart, so just get out there and do it. You’ll probably learn a lot along the way too, and that’s great. Do your best and share what you’ve got with the world, and don’t be afraid that it won’t be good enough, because the internet is a huge place and there will be someone out there who likes what you’ve got to offer.

Work hard, be kind, and don’t be afraid to share what you’ve got with the world.

🎨 You can find more of Renee’s work at http://theepicodyssey.com or follow her on her social media pages:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Renee_Calvert Facebook http://facebook.com/epictommclean

#sfu summer festival #sfusummerfest #summerfest

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jjkfire · 4 years

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hello, do u have an estimate of when the new chapter of sweet saccharine will be published?🥺

haha uhhh i honestly can’t give you a date, sorry! do join the sweet saccharine tag list if you haven’t already so i can tag y’all whenever i post it. but realistically, try me will be updated before sweet saccharine, so.... there’s that haha. if you haven’t seen it, you can go to the bottom of this post to see a preview of the next SS chapter.

i’m gonna put the full reason as to why i am taking so long to write anything... tldr is that i’m just doing a ton of different things atm! but you can read the full story down below

I'll be honest and say that my writing has been sitting on the back burner for some time. i get in a few 100 or so words here and there but I haven't dedicated like a full day to writing in a while. the truth is, I'm really so busy at work!!! and this working from home thing has my work schedule all messed up. it just feels like my work day is stretched because I can't focus so I end up working for a much longer time 😔

also i feel like I have to learn 501 things to keep up with my job but you guys know me haha I love to learn anyway so it's all good but it's just that it eats into my writing time.

and 🤪 I know you guys are tired of hearing me say this but I've really doubled down on learning how to trade and invest. and before you scroll away, no it’s not a scam. warren buffett built his fortune through investing. and i just really want some of you to know that you can generate income with investing so please please please take advantage of it. of course i’m not going to be as rich as warren buffett lmfao but it's a really nice hobby that pays me and writing unfortunately doesn't. like... I love writing! it's amazing!! but it's just the amount of time put in versus the money I get from it is like zero... which is totally fine lol I don't think people want to pay for my writing anyway HAHA and yes, yes, not everything has to be about making money. but i so so so hope at least like one person here followed my advice and invested in that crash in March (my posts were on feb 29 and march 15th respectively and the market hit the lowest point for the year on march 23rd). i literally put my money where my mouth is and bought when i said to buy.

i bought shares of square (ticker: $SQ) at 45 dollars in March and it is 142 dollars today (as of writing, August 13th). meaning I made 97 dollars from one share alone. and if i sell it tomorrow even minus tax it's like give or take 86 dollars profit. all this from just clicking buy. if you can buy one bts concert ticket worth 300 bucks, and considering the concert was cancelled this year, you could’ve bought 6 shares of square with that money and you’ll be 510 dollars richer today. or if you’d rather buy a company you’re more familiar with, had you bought one Apple share at 230 in march and you sold today at 459 dollars, you would have made, minus tax about 201 dollars. (and tesla was 361 dollars in March and it’s 1620 dollars today... yeah that’s NOT a typo). anyway these returns are soooo much more than what your bank is giving you. your bank gives you next to nothing. let me be generous and say right now (since they have severely cut interest rates) they give you 1.8% interest... if you put 300 dollars in the bank, you will accumulate 5.4 dollars in interest at the end of a one-year period....... versus $270 to buy 6 shares of square and then $510 profit if you sold today. do you see what i’m saying???? (you can also do paper trading first if you are scared. meaning use pretend money but it will follow real market prices so you can see how you fare in the market). I'm digressing from your question but!!! financial independence, we want it.

so if I can get just one of you to care about personal finance or investing, my life is made. it’s never too late (unless you are close to retiring then you should think hard about it) and never too early to start. i started in my senior year of college and that’s only because i’m not American and had to get a ssn. if you’re american.... and you have money that you know won’t severely affect you if you lose it, I highly suggest learning about investing. but, make sure you have a solid personal finance foundation too. the tldr is pay off high interest debt, track your expenses in excel or mint or whatever just track it so you can see where you’re wasting money and where you can cut back, take advantage of cash back on credit cards, never pay your credit card bills late, have a 3-6 month emergency fund set up, and then finally learn how to invest. once you do that, if you really want to you can graduate to learning how to trade options. which i do! and this means on top of what i make from investing, i make a few extra bucks every week.

[anything i said is not financial advice. as in don’t go out and buy square right now just because i talked about it. i’m asking you guys to learn about investing. do your due diligence about the companies. do you believe in them? do you think they’ll be here in 10 years? are you planning to invest in the company long term or you have an exit price where you want to cash out quick profit? do you want to do a bogleheads 3 fund portfolio? are you someone who wants to put your money in individual stocks or put your money into an all encompassing etf like VOO or SPY? it’s a tried and true method and investing in an etf on average over a 20 year period gets you more money than stock pickers or some hedge funds and definitely your bank as it returns about 7% on average every year. just learn!!! it’s not as complicated as it seems i swear]

anyway, that is the long winded answer on why i haven’t written in so long.... but please learn about investing please please please please. if you’re american you have so much more at your disposal aka your roth IRA account (you don’t have to pay taxes on your gains if you invest with this account but you can only take out the principal amount. after you are 59 and a half you can take out everything at zero tax cost) and also your 401k (if your company offers it and is doing matching, take the match PLEASE). you might get a second chance at investing at discounted prices again if the fed ever lets the market collapse in some sense lol but i think they will prop it till the election at least. anyway a financial crisis appears every give or take 10 years. also as long as you do dollar cost averaging, you should be fine. think if you bought at all time highs mid feb this year then held your stocks, bought some more when the market went through the shitter in march... then as of writing, right now, you’ll still be making profit if you sold. On August 13th, SPY (an etf that tracks the S&P500) literally closed two dollars shy from the all time high which was in mid to late feb of this year. so uhhh if it isn’t already clear, please learn to invest. whether you wanna enter the market now or wait till post election is completely up to you but PLEASE LEARN. idk if any of you ever read my financial rambles till the end but if you have questions you can message me and i can always direct you to the appropriate resources. i can show you all the videos and articles and posts i’ve read to date. don’t wait to start learning. you can learn and then wait to invest but whatever the case is, if you already have the knowledge you’ll be ready whenever there’s a good chance to invest. okay?????

#sweet saccharine #replies #anon

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theworryjournal · 4 years

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Body Positivist Police

You know the number of body positivist influencers I follow? You wouldn’t believe it but I also follow a few animal/pet profiles on social media that promote body positivism. A very “LOL” moment when I realised that’s how intensely I’m battling body positivism. If there’s one of me, then there are many like me right? A very millennial problem to possess, yet so subjective. You know what I don’t get though, how do I expect someone living outside of my body to help me normalise what’s happening within and on my body? No matter who I follow or what they preach, you can never normalise what I see when I look in the mirror or what I feel when I touch ME. No matter how many stretch mark photos I see, no matter how many uneven breasts I see, no matter how many paunchy human beings I see, its never enough. Do you feel that dissatisfaction? And eventual remorse? Well, I do and I couldn’t fathom, why not? They are doing it, I sort of look like her or him, so its okay. Its not. Its really not (because growing up, I never saw a body like mine up on the big screen and I still don’t see it). Especially those 1000 word essay type captions I see, the ones that do not have a TLDR version saying how they overcame this or that (no disrespect to the ones who have such posts, no offense intended, just normalising), still doesn’t help.

I’ve batted an issue with weight, almost all my life (at least since I hit puberty, in my head that’s when my life actually began). Not weight exactly because I’ve weighed healthy (according to all the WHO standards) but the way I “looked” to myself, in the mirror. I was never satisfied. I always found my thighs too heavy or ��thunderous” if you wanna call it. I’ve always found myself too paunchy, there have been times when I’ve breathed short and heavy so that I’m able to hold my shape at a party (WTF right?). I’ve always caught myself staring for too long at my classmates’ (in high school) legs or arms, how they don’t jiggle and mine always did (and still do). I would starve myself, skip lunch and feed my lunch to the dogs. 4 years of braces and hating on my frizzy and curly hair, you would think growing up helps right? Newsflash, not really. Freud was right. if you don’t figure your childhood out, it’ll be your midlife crisis. Then came my 20s, 4 years of braces and 3 teeth short after, joined college and suddenly I was one of those girls that men looked more than twice. Men and women of all races wanted to look at me twice or felt the need to tell me that I looked “good” or they like how I’m dressed or how it accentuates so and so. I was being talked about, I was a standard to many girls. I couldn’t believe myself. I would still look at myself in the mirror, unsure. When I was eventually used to it, I was satisfied. My idea of satisfaction is allowing myself to eat an extra serving of rice (yes, I’m South Asian) or more meat or extra desserts. I discovered this new found confidence that glowed within me and helped me walk with my chin up because men wanted me. They wanted my sex. I was so confident, I was audacious. Happy. This new treatment mollified everything and I soon forgot I ever had issues with the way I looked. You know, until I was in my early 20s, I didn’t think I was a looker. That someone would look at me twice. It was in my 20s, that I heard someone call me beautiful. Pretty. A looker. Hot. Sexy. Cute. That hair is exquisite on you. Then I graduated and transitioned to my mid-20s. Being a professional and all that jazz.

Slowly that confidence began to chip away. Maybe because I didn’t have men/women constantly validating me? Or that constant flow of attention? Then came the string of online dates and I got my next (best, apparently) constant source of attention and validation. I wasn’t out there hunting for validation for my wounded ego, it just came my way and of course I lapped it up. I was so used to that by now. I was hungry. With the “Do you know the kind of effect you have on men” to “Come on! You are being modest. You are fetching for compliments, aren’t you?” Well, no. I’m not. I really don’t know how I look. I don’t “believe” how I look. I mean, how can you believe in something you have no understanding of right? I also began noticing that every problem/hurdle I faced in my life, the first to erode, was the way I looked. That’s when I realised that the most fragile part of me is that, what I see when I look at the mirror. Bad relationship and I “let myself go” and ate whatever I could eat. That’s when I saw the scale dip to the higher end, something that’s never happened before. And now, I was unhealthy and of course I didn’t like what I saw either. That didn’t affect me then because he didn’t think I looked bad. He was attracted to me, even if I wasn’t. Then he left and the veil lifted. An alarm went off and I saw her. Me.

I was sad. Moping everyday. I stopped looking at the mirror. I stopped dressing well. My self-esteem left the building. Being quarantined didn’t help for sure. I knew I was dipping into being unhealthy and finally found that courage in me to face myself and my body. I started eating healthy. Tried not to deprive myself of anything. I exercised (overdid it in the beginning to an extent where I almost injured myself but now I’m learning). It wasn’t easy. I would beat myself bloody (metaphorically) if I cheated or overate or didn’t stick to my regime or didn’t exercise. Now, I’m slowly transitioning. I’m having conversations with my body in front of the mirror. I love looking at myself in the mirror now. I love my hair. I love my skin. I love my stretch marks. I love eating cupcakes. I eat loads of rice. I’ve a paunch and I love it. I sometimes make it talk to me, you know like how kids do it. Yet, there are days when its really difficult. When I’m bloated and I feel like everything I did has gone for a toss. When I look at my arms and think they’re too large. At least, those days are lesser in number than the happy ones. I like taking pictures of myself now and uploading them, regardless of who thinks what. Especially pictures that show my paunch or arms or thighs. I breathe deeply and through my belly now. I finally don’t add as much value as I did when someone compliments me. I thank them and tell myself you bet I do. Because I do. I really do.

Today I’m 26, a vegan (because animal husbandry is going to drive us to extinction), slightly overweight, paunchy, thunder thighs, beautiful curly hair and hairy sometimes. I eat healthy and unhealthy, I exercise whenever I can and I’m happy. I’m “satisfied”. I still follow those pages and like every post because I’m supportive. I realised that no matter how much positive energy you surround yourself with, its never gonna be enough until you fill your insides with it. I look in the mirror everyday because I like who I see, she makes me happy. I don’t upload photos so that someone else validates it or to help someone else see if I can, so can you. No. I do it because it makes me happy. I’m celebrating, everyday. This body. This smile. This hair. This skin. Every time I hit a block and have difficulty accepting a part of my body, I photograph it and look at it again and again. Until I’ve normalised it for ME. When someone says, do you have any idea the kinda effect you have on people, I genuinely know the answer to that because I’ve that same effect on myself, when I look at myself in the mirror. I’ve created this masterpiece today and I’ll fiercely protect her.

Its funny how I came to realise that I need to normalise it for myself, every time I’m intoxicated and my inhibitions dropped, I would see someone else in the mirror. A woman fierce from within. Appealing from within. Her personality defining her features. Her personality and her looks amalgamating and reflecting off of my mirror. I would suddenly find every part of my body so appealing and almost turning on. When it would wear off, I wouldn’t see that anymore. That’s when I realised, I’ve to do it for me. Just like how all these influencers are doing it for themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love makeup, dressing up and being complimented. The only difference is I do it only to accentuate what I already am and have and not to change the way I look or am.

TLDR- You gotta do it. You gotta do it for yourself. I mean, you live in that body. You feel its feelings. You masturbate with that body. You dress that body. How can someone else do it for you?

The irony is that my profession is helping others eat healthy and maintain a better lifestyle, I’m a nutritionist. I didn’t plan to be one at all. That’s a story for another time. The universe sure does work in mysterious ways.

Normalise it. Feel it. Accept it. Love it. We’re on each other’s team. Kinda tired of having to throw my hands in the air.

#bodypositivity #me #its okay i guess #mental health #doitforyourself #cantstopwontstop #healthy #strong #independant #notalone #courage

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arcticdementor · 5 years

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America today is in the grip of a gradually building crisis that, despite its manifest importance, somehow managed to remain more or less invisible for decades — at least, until the political earthquake of 2016. That crisis is the collapse of work for adult men, and the retreat from the world of work of growing numbers of men of conventional working age.

According to the latest monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "work rates" for American men in October 2019 stood very close to their 1939 levels, as reported in the 1940 U.S. Census. Despite some improvement since the end of the Great Recession, Great Depression-style work rates are still characteristic today for the American male, both for those of "prime working age" (defined as ages 25 to 54) and for the broader 20 to 64 group.

Unlike the Great Depression, however, today's work crisis is not an unemployment crisis. Only a tiny fraction of workless American men nowadays are actually looking for employment. Instead we have witnessed a mass exodus of men from the workforce altogether. At this writing, nearly 7 million civilian non-institutionalized men between the ages of 25 and 54 are neither working nor looking for work — over four times as many as are formally unemployed.

…

Among economists and policy analysts who have examined these unsettling trends, the general consensus is that declining male workforce participation in modern America is mainly a structural, demand-driven problem — a matter of evaporating local jobs, and especially jobs requiring limited skills, in an increasingly dynamic and globalized marketplace. Exemplifying this received wisdom is the Council of Economic Advisers' 2016 report on declining male labor-force participation rates.

…

But what if this assessment is not correct? If the diagnosis offered by today's conventional wisdom is wrong, then the prescription — more and better schooling — is unlikely to solve the problem by itself. There can be no arguing against more and better education for America, of course; more and better education appeals on its own merits, as it offers our society and its citizens all sorts of incontestable benefits. But as an instrument for redressing the long-term "flight from work" by men in modern America, more and better education may prove to be of more limited utility than many of us might hope.

This is not to deny the important role of structural economic change in America's current labor-market troubles, especially for those with limited education and skills. But the standard "demand-side" explanation of these travails is manifestly incapable of accounting for a number of critical aspects of the ongoing decline of work for men in modern America.

…

Four key facts about declining male labor-force participation in the U.S. demonstrate that the prevailing "demand-side" narrative about the problem needs to be revised and qualified — perhaps significantly qualified.

First, there is the uncanny regularity of the prime-age American male's long march out of the labor force since the 1960s. As may be seen in the figure below, U.S. prime-age male "inactivity rates" (or not-in-labor-force rates) have been rising at a remarkably steady tempo since the mid-1960s. This monthly exodus from the workforce has been so steady since 1965 that it almost traces a straight line. (With an r-squared of 0.96, we might even be tempted to call this a "social-sciences straight line," considering how unruly observed social patterns for collections of human beings tend to be.)

…

Second, there is the pronounced and increasing disparity in labor-force participation rates among different sub-regions of the country. Modern America has witnessed increasing dispersion in state-level prime-age male labor-force participation rates since at least 1980. Moreover, major, enduring, and sometimes even widening gaps in prime-age male labor-force participation rates are evident for geographically adjoining states (compare, for example, Maine to New Hampshire, or West Virginia to Virginia or Maryland). If declining participation rates were a consequence of demand shocks to the labor force, economic theory would suggest the national labor market would move toward equilibrium over time, implying, among other things, eventual convergence in participation rates among states. Just the opposite, however, has been taking place in America for most of the period in which the decline in male labor-force participation rates has been underway.

Third, there is America's curiously poor prime-age male labor-force participation-rate performance in comparison with other affluent never-communist democracies. Between 1965 and 2015, U.S. levels fell faster and sank lower than in any comparable country, with the exception of Italy (where official employment figures notoriously neglect "unofficial" work income). Yet America's race to the bottom in prime-age male labor-force participation is not readily explained by lackluster economic growth (which could also be called sluggish demand). It is true that the U.S. is believed to have grown more slowly than most of these countries over that half century, but this should be unsurprising given that most of these countries were enjoying "latecomer" or catch-up growth over this period in relation to the longtime U.S. "frontrunner." Even so, U.S. labor-force participation-rate trends were also distinctly poorer than those of countries whose pace of growth lagged behind America's over that half century: for example, Denmark and Sweden, to say nothing of Greece.

…

Fourth, and by no means least important, dramatic differences in prime-age male labor-force participation rates exist within the less-educated segment of that population, indicating that low labor-force participation is actually not a necessary fact of life today for American men with limited education. As I have demonstrated in other work, a gap of roughly 25 percentage points separated the labor-force participation rates of foreign-born and native-born prime-age male high-school dropouts in 2015. Elsewhere I have shown that the gap in labor-force participation rates between married and never-married prime-age male high-school dropouts was on the order of 20 percentage points as of 2015. If we go further and parse participation rates by marital status and "nativity status" at the same time, even more radical differences emerge.

…

As of 2018, the U.S. prime-age male labor-force participation rate for foreign-born high-school dropouts was 93% — all but identical to the national level for prime-age males with college degrees. Rates that year for never-married immigrants without high-school degrees were lower (88%) — but nonetheless comparable to the national level for prime-age men with some college training. Married native-born prime-age male high-school dropouts had distinctly lower labor-force participation rates than immigrants (78%), although it is worth noting such performance put them roughly on par with America's prime-age men who held high-school degrees but had never married.

On the other hand, labor-force participation rates for native-born, never-married prime-age male high-school dropouts are in an abysmal class all of their own: Their rates nowadays hover just above the 50% mark, meaning they are not only close to 25 points below those of married native-born high-school dropouts, and well over 30 points lower than for never-married foreign-born high-school dropouts, but also nearly 40 points lower than for married foreign-born high-school dropouts.

…

What economists call "demand-side effects" cannot plausibly account for America's overall men-without-work predicament — and might not even account for most of it. While more education may always be better than less, we cannot expect more education to solve a problem that a lack of education did not cause, and it is clear that male worklessness is due to much more than just a shortage of skills and training. We can discern a more realistic role for education if we consider other dimensions of the crisis: what economists would call the "supply-side effects" and "institutional effects." In this taxonomy, the more relevant pieces of the puzzle are family structure, government-benefit dependence, and mass incarceration and felonization.

To start, although discussion of family structure and its consequences is held to be in poor taste or even off-limits completely in some academic and political circles these days, the strong relationship between family structure and employment status for men is undeniable. Simply stated, family structure is a powerful predictor of male labor-force participation rates (among other things). Overall, labor-force participation rates in 2018 were 10 percentage points lower for never-married prime-age men than for their currently married counterparts — and the discrepancy in work rates was greater still. Even after controlling for age, ethnicity, and education, married men are decidedly more likely to be in the workforce than men who have never married. This "marriage effect" is so powerful that married prime-age male high-school dropouts generate labor-force participation rates in the same league as their never-married, college-graduate peers. Analogous but somewhat less powerful effects are seen when we drill deeper into family life: Irrespective of marital status, education, and ethnicity, a prime-age man is more likely to be in the workforce if he lives in the same home as children under the age of 18, regardless of his race or education.

…

The second factor contributing to worklessness that must be considered is dependence on government benefit programs — including disability programs intended to provide income, goods, and services to working-age men and women who are prevented from working or seeking work due to physical or mental impairment. The U.S. government has a multiplicity of such programs. Though they were designed as social-insurance platforms, evidence suggests they are increasingly used as income-support mechanisms for men on a work-free life track. (Current data suggest that most men who are not in the labor force have dropped out for the long term, at least one year and perhaps much longer.)

…

Beyond these supply-side factors, there are "institutional effects," or structural barriers to entry into the workforce. And when we think about our men-without-work problem and contributing institutional effects, we cannot miss the distinctive new American phenomena of mass incarceration and mass felonization.

…

If the men-without-work crisis in America actually comported with the description of it in much of the economics and policy literature — that is to say, if it were basically a demand-side problem — then the task for the U.S. education system (broadly construed) would be fairly straightforward and in a sense comparatively easy. The education system would "only" have to provide the needed but missing training and skills to rising generations of youth and existing generations of working adults in order to rescue them from occupations, fields, industries, and sectors that were dying due to lack of demand.

But as our post-Great Recession economic expansion completes its 10th full year and moves into its 11th, the dissonance between the demand-side narrative and actual conditions on the ground is increasingly jarring. In America today, we have at the same time both an incipient labor shortage and Depression-style work rates for men. The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for September 2019 reported 7 million unfilled positions in the U.S. workforce. And at this writing, there are roughly 1.7 million prime-age male high-school dropouts and 3.6 million prime-age men with just high-school degrees in America who are neither working nor looking for work.

While many jobs in the modern economy require a college education or advanced degree, not all the open job slots in the JOLTS survey are for computer coders or chemical engineers. To the contrary, more than 800,000 of these unfilled positions are in "accommodation and food services"; almost three-quarters of a million are in "retail trade"; and more than 300,000 are in construction. Whether or not one happens to regard such work as attractive or sufficiently remunerative, the fact of the matter is that most of these positions do not require any higher education, and a great many do not even require a high-school diploma. Recent reporting has put a human face on the paradox of a country awash in low-skill jobs at a time when millions of men with high-school diplomas or less are out of the workforce. In these accounts, positions go unfilled because of a lack of interest by non-workers, or because of unreliable applicants who do not show up for work regularly and on time, or because applicants cannot stay sober or pass drug-screening tests.

These are devilishly difficult problems, rooted in far more than a lack of skills, and it seems unreasonable to expect the U.S. education system to fix such joblessness, or even make an appreciable difference. Yet we expect just that because, at a time when so many other institutions in civil society are in disarray or retreat, the school system is not only still standing, but still largely trusted and respected. As other institutions of civil society fail or fade, educators and trainers are loaded down with ever more responsibilities and assignments previously undertaken by others. Teachers must be not only teachers, but surrogate parents, secular confessors, makeshift therapists, boot-camp drill instructors, financial advisers, de facto cops on the beat, even truant officers or dress-rehearsal probation officers. Little wonder they cannot accomplish all these missions — much less the more modest but hardly trivial duty of inculcating academic excellence.

…

Improving training for the working (and non-working) adult population must also be a high-priority objective, but of course this is easier said than done. "Life-long learning" has been little more than a slogan for the past generation. Serious consideration must be given to the many different possible avenues and methods for advancing this goal. Our federal system would seem well-situated to offer a laboratory for local experimentation in this realm, and there are real challenges to work through: Reaching workers is one thing; reaching non-workers is something else again. Among non-workers, the unemployed may generally be easier to reach and train than those not in the labor force, precisely because the former by definition want jobs. Reaching those who have dropped out of the labor force completely may require major and systematic changes in the way we deal with other public-policy issues, such as welfare programs, sentencing, and re-entry. We may want to consider, for example, whether our disability programs could be entirely overhauled under a "work-first" precept, with an emphasis on training and skills for those who could indeed function in the workforce. And we may want to think about the potential for skills training under different auspices and modalities for ex-offenders, to help them address the challenge of finding employment while repairing their reputations.

In these and other ways, the U.S. education system might make inroads against the men-without-work crisis. These policy interventions might have positive effects, but we would do well not to over-promise benefits and results. The men-without-work crisis in America today is in large measure a consequence of long-term historical transformations in American society. More schooling will not repair the family or the other institutions that formed the foundation for male work in America until very recently. For that we may need to await the next Great American Awakening.

#nicholas eberstadt #national affairs #neet #unemployment

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planets-and-prose · 7 months

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Meet My OC's: Deborah

Picrew linked here, and as always, more info under the cut!

Physical Description: Deborah is about 5'2" and very pale. She has auburn hair that's kind of in a shaggy, overgrown bob because she cut off her super long hair by herself and it didn't turn out AMAZING but she doesn't care that much anyway so it lives. She wears kind of bulky clothes, slowly leaning a little more butch but "acceptably" so, jeans and flannels vibes. Green eyes, wears glasses, and has hearing aids because she has quite a bit of hearing loss (since she was young). Is more heavyset, definitely the least athletic type build out of all of them.

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Summary: As many of those who've attended one know, college campuses are some sort of insular world of their own. They're tiny communities, full of burnout, existential crisis...and, well, in the case of a mid-sized private college known for its environmental studies and biology programs, there are...things beyond human understanding.

In a series of short stories, follow five individuals in various stages of their own journeys as they band together to keep their community safe from any forces that choose to harm it, and attempt to better understand this new world that they've been thrust into. And...also, try to maybe not die in the process. That's important too.

Genre: NA...Urban Fantasy

Themes: Found Family (if I ever don't put that, please assume I've been replaced), the American college system, stages of life, personal growth, marginalization, lgbt+ relationships, community.

General Triggers: mentions of discrimination, probable violence, definite body horror (transformations specifically), general trauma, language, more will be added as discovered and all excerpts will be tagged appropriately.

Characters:

Dr. Semira Adams, a sweet 46 year old Southern environmental studies professor/monster hunter specializing in the...unique biological features of the surrounding forest and how it's shifting to adapt to them.

Briar Rackham, a 28 year old TA and graduate student for Dr. Adams. They're a model grad student--straight A's, volunteering with nature camps for kids in the nearby cities, working on an excellent dissertation, LGBTQ+ rights advocate...and a recently turned werewolf.

Also: Worldbuilding re: werewolves!

Achaemenes (Kay),a 24 year old super-super-super senior in pre-med who's delaying his studies as long as humanly possible. Because graduation means there's no excuse to keep away from his hometown, a tiny rural community that's a well-hidden cult, half-populated by fae.

Also: Worldbuilding re: fey!

Dawn Solace, a...well, her body is 21 but her actual age is 39. So let's go with 39-year-old vampire who continues to work with music and theater at this college that she now calls her home.

Also: Worldbuilding re: vampires!

Masumi Yoshida,a 26-year-old whose whole life is a lie. According to her family, she's working on two very intense double majors and holding down an excellent internship on the side. In reality, she works at the chain burger joint on campus, telling her coworkers that she had to drop out due to a family tragedy and is just saving to enroll next semester when that's the last thing on her mind.

Deborah McCaen,a 20 year old junior, dual majoring in history and anthropology, with a focus on oral tradition and mythology. After being homeschooled her whole life, she moved away to college and found a love in understanding the "demonic creatures" told of in the fantasy books she wasn't allowed to read as a child.

Writing:

To be added as more is posted!

#continuing ed sots#wip intro#new wip#paranormal#supernatural#supernatural elements#werewolves#no vampires yet#yet#fey#fae#urban fantasy#fantasy#continuing ed: sots… See all

planets-and-prose

Last Line Tag

I was tagged by @the-down-upside-finch (their post is here)! So here this is! :)

Half of [Briar] wanted to help Dr. Adams and make sure their favorite professor, basically their surrogate mom, made it back safe, and the other half wanted to run home, go back to bed, and hope this was all an awful, fucked-up dream.

No tags for now, basically an open tag, bc I have like two more of these that I'll do throughout the evening! :)

#tag game#continuing ed sots#thank you for the tag!!#oc: briar

planets-and-prose

Meet My OC's: Dr. Semira Adams

Full Name: Semira Naomi Adams (Maiden Name Baker)

Age: 46

Gender: Cis Female

Sexuality: Heterosexual (yes I know, I finally made a straight OC)

Occupation: Tenured wildlife biology professor/researcher by day, monster hunter by night.

#oc: semira#oc: dr adams#ya bitch cannot decide on a tag#continuing ed sots#continuing education#meet my ocs#oc questions… See all

planets-and-prose

Continuing Education: Vampires

Basic Info: Vampires are undead creatures who are mostly human, but whose bodies function essentially like someone in a coma’s would. They can transmit vampirism to other individuals as well.

Creation: Vampires are made by one vampire sharing blood with another. In rare, occasional cases, saliva can do it, but this has only been recorded in highly immunocompromised or immunosuppressed individuals. For this to work, saliva would have to enter the bloodstream directly during a bite.

#continuing ed sots#my worldbuilding#worldbuilding#my ocs

planets-and-prose

Meet My OC's: Deborah

Full Name: Deborah Esther McCaen

Age: 20

Gender: Female. But said with all the confidence of that person raised super sheltered who just learned about gender being a spectrum. (Spoiler: a they will sneak into the pronoun list at some point in this story. Not at all based on real experiences--)

Sexuality: Straight. But, again, said with the confidence level of someone who has never understood what sexual attraction is much less how it might apply to someone of the same gender. (Spoiler: this too will change lmao)

Occupation: Student, studying a fun little history/anthropology double major, focusing on oral tradition and myths. And who maybe reads a bit too much about cryptids.

Personality: Deborah makes the word "awkward" seem put together and smooth. She was homeschooled and oh boy it shows. She does not know about most social norms and was INCREDIBLY sheltered from anyone outside her church, so like...making friends? Normal conversation? Not really. She also definitely has a touch of the 'tism, and that manifests in both struggles reading social cues and not quite realizing that when people ask "what type of stuff do you like?" that a 30 minute rant about Mothman is not perhaps the most socially acceptable response. But she takes promises and bonds seriously, a stayover from the religion she was raised in, and is loyal to a fault to the people who give her time of day.

Other Important Stuff: My lovely little disclaimer here. I don't mean any disrespect to the way that I'm portraying the LDS faith, I'm just portraying some experiences that people who had adverse experiences with the church might have had, particularly as a queer person. I know a great number of individuals who find a lot of comfort in the church, but as someone who did not, I want to tell that story too.

#continuing ed: sots #continuing education #my oc's #oc: deborah #my writing #my wip

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ofnine · 4 years

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meet ailsa!

At a glance SHE may look like HAYLEY ATWELL, but in reality they’re just 38 year old AILSA Ó CLÉIRIGH, a HUMAN here in Barton Hollow. They are a MEMBER in the HUNTERS. They work as a DEPUTY SHERIFF here in town and are known for being CONSCIENTIOUS and CYNICAL. I’d watch my back if I were you...

BASICS

Full Name: Ailsa Mairéad Ó Cléirigh

Nicknames / Monikers: Ally, Lili (both rare)

Current Titles: Deputy Sheriff

Former Titles: Valedictorian ( Yale Law School )

Gender & Pronouns: cis female & she/her

Date of Birth: 17th February, 1982

Place of Birth: Cork, Republic of Ireland

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Romantic Orientation: Biromantic

APPEARANCE

Faceclaim: Hayley Atwell

Height: 5 ft 8 in

Eye Colour: Brown

Favoured Expression: Half-smile.

Accent: Eastern Mid-Coastal, exhibited here ; the Irish can sneak out into her voice when she’s excessively tired, or has returned to Ireland for any considerable length of time.

Clothing Style: Either suits, waistcoats, or comfortable, when she’s not working; obviously, then, she’s got to be in uniform. If she could get away with waistcoats all the time, she sure would.

TRIVIA

MBTI Type: INTP-A

Hogwarts House: Slytherin

Theme Song: A Rush Of Blood To The Head by Coldplay

Favourite Movie: Anna Karenina (2012), dir. Joe Wright

Preferred Weather: When it’s sunny, but not humid, so the weather isn’t out for murder and she can just perfectly enjoy it. The sky’s big, blue and beautiful.

Favourite Food: She doesn’t often have it, but she can’t resist a McChicken sandwich with cheese and extra lettuce sometimes, with the classic McDonalds fries. If you don’t eat your fries first, she doesn’t trust you.

Favourite Drink: Wild Cherry Slurpee. Yes, still.

Favourite Book: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

BIOGRAPHY

The Sheriff likes to say that Ailsa Ó Cléirigh is the closest person he’s ever met to famed literary detective Sherlock Holmes, and he wouldn’t necessarily be far from the truth; she’s gotten so far so quickly because she’s always been so observant and deductive to the extreme. It’s also why the Sheriff is so keen to keep her around at Barton Hollow, and on side with his ideas about supernaturals.

She works hard at what she does, and she’s got the level but cynical head that means she can’t be blinded by what often trips people up: ‘thinking the best in people.’

Ailsa has been a natural pessimist since she was very young — even before she moved to America from Ireland — and Ailsa would attribute a grand deal of that to her parents. Her parents’ attitude of always pushing her harder, barely acknowledging the achievements she did make; it made a lonely child of her, perhaps, and an overachieving one.

( Which is a combination those of the modern age just know too well, isn’t it? We all know what happens to the kids who get on Gifted & Talented, or whatever; the same applies all the way up to her prime academic achievement. Graduating valedictorian from Yale Law School. )

She spent some years pursuing a career as a lawyer. And it was through this — when she was in her mid-20s — that she met now-Sheriff Grayson, who is, to this day, her boss. At the time, Ailsa wasn’t sure of her life. There was the deductive reasons: what would be most lucrative, what was most available, and it was the Sheriff who first told Ailsa Ó Cléirigh to pursue what she wanted; what drove her and made her motivated so that she wouldn’t regret doing it when she was out of time.

That led to her current career path, and they were both founding members of Barton Hollow; he became the Sheriff, and she his deputy, or as he’d say, ‘the logician to balance out the madness.’

After a while, he entrusted Ailsa with the truth of his being a hunter, and with the reason behind that. So used to his approval and support, she decided to help him. The reasons for his anger seemed rational enough, but it’s always been something she’s had somewhat of a moral crisis about.

She’s more hesitant, which makes sense on the surface — with her deductive nature considered. You probably wouldn’t guess she’s wrestling with herself about the whole situation, with condemning the many for the actions of the one.

( After all, if the supernaturals took the same attitude, the human race would be done. )

CONNECTIONS

Green Light — An on-again off-again connection ( okay mayhaps if someone wants to bring Chris Evans for this I would vibe ) between Ailsa and a supernatural muse; it happened before her boss drew her into the world of the Hunters, and this was actually likely the cause of the breakup. But however much they’d like to pretend, love isn’t so easily severed; they both despise that they’re still doing it, but they are simply drawn together.

College Rival — Ailsa narrowly beat her college rival to be Valedictorian of her class at Yale Law School. The rivalry’s been going on since they were both very small, and the tide shows no sign of turning any time soon; I’d love them to be a mundane but not a hunter, who thinks the hunters are — frankly — insane.

Tell Me — Ailsa’s best friend in the world, and it’s the story of best friends that are a little closer than the dictionary-accepted definition of ‘friends.’ There’s been feelings there since they were young, but neither of them have ever taken the step; but there’s the pact that if they’re single by 40 they’ll get married. ( They’re almost there. )

Someone To You — A supernatural who’s trying to draw Ailsa out of the world of the hunters. They think she’s salvageable, and it’s certainly slow going. A kind gesture here, a coffee there, they see what’s really at the core of Ailsa Ó Cléirigh; a lonely brand of child from the start, never recognised for her talents, so when someone ( the sheriff ) finally did, she found she’d follow them to hell.

Stakeout — Probably a vampire who’s got an interest in Ailsa, and who thinks the best way to get back at the Barton Hollow Sheriff’s Department would be to turn their poster girl.

#bartonintro

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theeyesinthenight · 6 years

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Hey, I know I don’t make a lot of personal posts, but I wanted to let my followers know something.

I’m in my mid 20s, and when I was in high school (when I founded this blog!) and in college I frequently went through periods of time where I was exhausted, miserable, and thought my life sucked. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I had a lot of toxic coping mechanisms like sleeping erratic hours or refusing to eat and then bingeing on really unhealthy foods. I had really, really toxic relationships with both romantic and platonic people, and I let myself get wrapped up in other peoples lives instead of focusing on my own, because I was miserable and felt trapped. I couldn’t really consistently build good habits, because every time anything went wrong I fell to pieces.

I graduated about eight months ago, and since them, little by little, my life has gotten better. I travelled some, I worked a few different jobs that were in my field and every time I worked a new job I got a better idea of where I wanted to go with my career. I had to take a hiatus to help out my family during a crisis, but I did that well and without resentment, which (given my family history of insane amounts of drama) isn’t something I could have done a year ago at all, let alone well and without several weeks of near catatonia as a response.

Last week I got my first post-college apartment, that I can afford, and I live in a city that I visited a ton and got to know through the people I met here. Cost of living is low, wages are pretty decent, and there’s fun stuff to do here.

This close-to-year has been a time of learning that it was okay to be selfish, to prioritize my own mental and physical health and to do so by identifying and naming my own needs and desires. I used to be indecisive and felt trapped and awful, and simply making choices for myself fixed like 85% of them, and I couldn’t have made those choices unless I stopped feeling ashamed about having needs and desires and being a human being with quirks and preferences.

So, while this was all rambling, I wanted to tell anyone who’s still in high school, or college, or finding their own way, that it’s okay to focus on yourself, and to focus on tending to your own needs, and on trying to accomplish the stuff that you want. I also want to tell you that a lot of stuff really will just get better as you get older; you get more privacy, more experience/context in problem solving (which for me cured a lot of my anxiety; repeatedly being exposed to stuff that I had to do, that terrified me, and that I survived and performed okay at and now I know how to do, like cancel a cable subscription or go to a car dealership and tell them they sold me a lemon), and you’ll be under a lot less scrutiny from everyone in your life.

(Also, building the habit that you will consistently try to build new, good habits even when your life has fallen apart recently seemed to work really well for me, so trying to try is a skill I recommend for everyone, always, at all times.)

Trust that everything’s going to be okay.

#personal shit

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newstfionline · 6 years

Text

Gen Z Is Coming to Your Office

By Janet Adamy, WSJ, Sept. 6, 2018

Sean McKeon was 11 years old when the 2008 financial crisis shot anxiety through his life in Hudson, Ohio. He remembers his father coming home stressed after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the bank where he worked. A teacher asked classmates if their parents cut back that Christmas. They all said yes.

That unsettling time shaped the job plans he hatched in high school. “I needed to work really hard and find a career that’s recession-proof,” says Mr. McKeon, now 21. He set his sights on a Big Four accounting firm. He interned at EY in Cleveland and will become an auditor there after graduating from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, next year.

About 17 million members of Generation Z are now adults and starting to enter the U.S. workforce, and employers haven’t seen a generation like this since the Great Depression. They came of age during recessions, financial crises, war, terror threats, school shootings and under the constant glare of technology and social media. The broad result is a scarred generation, cautious and hardened by economic and social turbulence.

Gen Z totals about 67 million, including those born roughly beginning in 1997 up until a few years ago. Its members are more eager to get rich than the past three generations but are less interested in owning their own businesses, according to surveys. As teenagers many postponed risk-taking rites of passage such as sex, drinking and getting driver’s licenses. Now they are eschewing student debt, having seen prior generations drive it to records, and trying to forge careers that can withstand economic crisis.

Early signs suggest Gen Z workers are more competitive and pragmatic, but also more anxious and reserved, than millennials, the generation of 72 million born from 1981 to 1996, according to executives, managers, generational consultants and multidecade studies of young people. Gen Zers are also the most racially diverse generation in American history: Almost half are a race other than non-Hispanic white.

With the generation of baby boomers retiring and unemployment at historic lows, Gen Z is filling immense gaps in the workforce. Employers, plagued by worker shortages, are trying to adapt.

LinkedIn Corp. and Intuit Inc. have eased requirements that certain hires hold bachelor’s degrees to reach young adults who couldn’t afford college. At campus recruiting events, EY is raffling off computer tablets because competition for top talent is intense.

Companies are reworking training so it replicates YouTube-style videos that appeal to Gen Z workers reared on smartphones.

“They learn new information much more quickly than their predecessors,” says Ray Blanchette, CEO of Ruby Tuesday Inc., which introduced phone videos to teach young workers to grill burgers and slow-cook ribs. Growing up immersed in mobile technology also means “it’s not natural or comfortable for them necessarily to interact one-on-one,” he says.

Demographers see parallels with the Silent Generation, a parsimonious batch born between 1928 and 1945 that carried the economic scars of the Great Depression and World War II into adulthood while reaping the rewards of a booming postwar economy in the 1950s and 1960s. Gen Z is setting out in the workplace at one of the most opportune times in decades, with an unemployment rate of 4%.

“They’re more like children of the 1930s, if children of the 1930s had learned to think, learn and communicate while attached to hand-held supercomputers,” says Bruce Tulgan, a management consultant at RainmakerThinking in Whitneyville, Conn.

Gen Z’s attitudes about work reflect a craving for financial security. The share of college freshmen nationwide who prioritize becoming well off rose to around 82% when Gen Z began entering college a few years ago, according to the University of California, Los Angeles. That is the highest level since the school began surveying the subject in 1966. The lowest point was 36% in 1970.

The oldest Gen Zers also are more interested in making work a central part of their lives and are more willing to work overtime than most millennials, according to the University of Michigan’s annual survey of teens.

“They have a stronger work ethic,” says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor whose book “iGen” analyzes the group. “They’re really scared that they’re not going to get the good job that everybody says they need to make it.”

Just 30% of 12th-graders wanted to be self-employed in 2016, according to the Michigan survey, which has measured teen attitudes and behaviors since the mid-1970s. That is a lower rate than baby boomers, Gen X, the group born between 1965 and 1980, and most millennials when they were high-school seniors. Gen Z’s name follows Gen X and Gen Y, an early moniker for the millennial generation.

College Works Painting, which hires about 1,600 college students a year to run small painting businesses across the country, is having difficulty hiring branch managers because few applicants have entrepreneurial skills, says Matt Stewart, the Irvine, Calif., company’s co-founder.

“Your risk is failure, and I do think people are more afraid of failure than they used to be,” he says.

A few years ago Mr. Stewart noticed that Gen Z hires behaved differently than their predecessors. When the company launched a project to support branch managers, millennials excitedly teamed up and worked together. Gen Z workers wanted individual recognition and extra pay. The company introduced bonuses of up to $3,000 to encourage them to participate.

After seeing their millennial predecessors drown in student debt, Gen Z is trying to avoid that fate. The share of freshmen who used loans to pay for college peaked in 2009 at 53% and has declined almost every year since, falling to 47% in 2016, according to the UCLA survey.

Denise Villa, chief executive of the Center for Generational Kinetics in Austin, says focus groups show some Gen Z members are choosing less-expensive, lower-status colleges to lessen debt loads. Federal Reserve Bank of New York data show that nationwide, overall student loan balances have grown at an average annual rate of 6% in the past four years, down sharply from a 16% annual growth rate in the previous decade.

Lana Demelo, a 20-year-old in San Jose, Calif., saw her older sister take on debt when she became the first person in their family to attend college. “I just watched her go through all those pressures and I felt like me personally, I didn’t want to go through them,” says Ms. Demelo. She enrolled in Year Up, a work training program that places low-income high-school graduates in internships, got hired as a project coordinator at LinkedIn and attends De Anza College in Cupertino part-time.

Gen Z is literally sober. Data from the Michigan survey and federal statistics show they were less likely to have tried alcohol, gotten their driver’s licenses, had sex or gone out regularly without their parents than teens of the previous two or three generations, Ms. Twenge, the San Diego State professor, found.

They grew up trusting adults, and Gen Z employees want managers who will step in to help them handle uncomfortable situations like conflicts with co-workers and provide granular feedback, says Mr. Tulgan, the management consultant.

When Mr. Tulgan’s company surveyed thousands of Gen Z members about what mattered most to them at work, he heard repeatedly that they wanted a “safe environment.” He is advising clients to create small work teams so managers have time to nurture them.

“I was in no rush to get a driver’s license,” says Joshua Berja, a 21-year-old San Francisco resident who waited until he turned 18 to get one. He lives with his parents to save money, runs errands for his mother and picks his father up from work.

Gen Z is reporting higher levels of anxiety and depression as teens and young adults than previous generations. About one in eight college freshmen felt depressed frequently in 2016, the highest level since UCLA began tracking it more than three decades ago.

That is one reason EY three years ago launched a program originally called “are u ok?”--now called “We Care”--a companywide mental health program that includes a hotline for struggling workers.

Mr. Stewart, of College Works Painting, says he wasn’t aware of any depressed employees 15 years ago but now deals frequently with workers battling mental-health issues. He says he has two workers with bipolar disorder that the company wants to promote but can’t “because they’ll disappear for a week at a time on the down cycle.”

Smartphones may be partly to blame. Much of Gen Z’s socializing takes place via text messages and social media platforms--a shift that has eroded natural interactions and allowed bullying to play out in front of wider audiences.

In the small town of Conneaut Lake, Penn., Corrina Del Greco and her friends joined Snapchat and Instagram in middle school. Ms. Del Greco, 19, checked them every hour and fended off requests for prurient photos from boys. She shut down her social media accounts after deciding they “had a little too much power over my self-esteem,” she said.

That has helped her focus on studying at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., to become a software engineer, a career she sees as recession-proof. When the last downturn hit, she remembers cutting back on gas and eating out because her parents’ music-lesson business softened.

“I learned a lot about the value of money,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to have a very secure lifestyle, secure income.”

She says the negative experience with social media made her want a professional LinkedIn page, and she took a seminar at college to learn how to do that.

The flip side of being digital natives is that Gen Z is even more adept with technology than millennials. Natasha Stough, Americas campus recruiting director at EY in Chicago, was wowed by a young hire who created a bot to answer questions on the company’s Facebook careers page.

To lure more Gen Z workers, EY rolled out video technology that allows job candidates to record answers to interview questions and submit them electronically.

Getting employees comfortable with face-to-face interactions takes work, Ms. Stough says. “We do have to coach our interns, ‘If you’re sitting five seats away from the client and they’re around the corner, go talk to them.’”

Mr. McKeon, the Ohio student, sees a silver lining growing up during tumultuous times. He used money from his grandfather and jobs at McDonald’s and a house painting company to build a stock portfolio now worth about $5,000. He took school more seriously knowing that “the world’s gotten a lot more competitive.”

“With any hardship that people endure in life, they either get stronger or it paralyzes them,” Mr. McKeon says. “These hardships have offered a great opportunity for us to get stronger.”

#Generation Z #workplace and Generation Z

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stalewhitebread · 2 years

Text

post #396

I wrote this meme in 2008. 20 years ago from 2008 was 1998, 15 years ago was 1993, 10 years ago was 1998, 5 years ago was 2003, and so on.

Maybe I'll do another 20 year meme from 2022.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 18 Aug 2008

If you told me 20 years ago that I'll live to see adulthood, I wouldn't believe you because I was too busy worrying about not having the same expensive designer clothes all the cool kids in my freshman class wear. I thought I would totally die if I don't get that Calvin Klein label on my jeans. I was also preoccupied with getting away from school bullies who wanted to pummel me into a bloody pulp.

If you told me 15 years ago that I'll get my first real boyfriend, I wouldn't believe you because I was too busy bitching and moaning about my minimum wage retail job and looking for a way to get my foot into the door of higher paying corporate jobs.

If you told me 10 years ago that I'll graduate from college, I wouldn't believe you because I was too busy being angsty over life in general.

If you told me 5 years ago that I'll have the means to move out of my mother's basement and into a place of my own without the assistance of a spouse or roommate, I wouldn't believe you because I was too busy reeling from a broken relationship and was seeing nothing but red from the great betrayal.

If you told me 2 years ago that I'll get a green belt in kung fu, I wouldn't believe you because I was too busy holding on to what little's left of my sanity.

If you told me 1 year ago that I'll open a Second Life account and grow attached to an avatar of my own making, I wouldn't believe you because I was too busy trying to convince myself that a certain guy whom I wanted a serious relationship with isn't a selfish jerk.

So far this year, I've finally found the courage to get up and walk away from a toxic group of friends and yet another relationship that was clearly not working out as I had hoped. I haven't figured out where my next scenery is yet.

In the next year, I hope to see my finances stabilize after dropping big money on renovating my kitchen and bathroom this past spring.

Two years from now, I'll probably be making plans to return from my self-imposed exile to a community that shall not be named.

Five years from now, I'll be 39. Will I become a crazy old cat lady?

Ten years from now, I'll be 44. How bad will my mid-life crisis be?

Fifteen years from now, I'll be 49. I'll probably be asking what have I accomplished so far in life that is worth mentioning.

Twenty years from now, I'll be 54. Should I expect to make it to old age?

#text post #picture #pictures

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thechanelmuse · 6 years

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It all became real the summer before my senior year of college. It was 2010, and my home phone still had a cord, which I wrapped around my fingers as I waited not-so-patiently for the apathetic representative on the other end to tell me the bad news about my student loan debt. My father was in front of me, his typically ruddy face redder than usual. “A 9.25 percent interest rate?” he yelled, “How can you put that on a kid?” It was clear he was worried, and he had every right to be — as the cosigner of my loans, my debt would be his responsibility, too.

The loan, ironically called a "Smart Option" loan, has a variable interest rate that fluctuates based on changes in the financial market — which may have been explained to me at the time (I truly don't remember), but I know I didn't fully grasp what that meant. Either way, neither of my parents wanted me to take it — I could tell that much. My mother didn’t even have to say it, as she sat wordlessly next to me on the couch. Like most working-class parents, she couldn’t fathom paying more than $30,000 a year for my education (let alone $60,000). My father, an electrician who worked nights driving Amtrak trains to put himself through trade school, only earned his associate’s degree in his mid-30s. My mother held a few random part-time jobs over the years while she devoted herself to raising my brother and me, but she never graduated from high school. The concept of attending a private college, let alone paying for it, was completely foreign to them. They wanted me to chase something bigger than they ever had access to. They just didn’t want “bigger” to mean drowning for the next 20 years in an all-consuming pile of debt.

At this point in my education, after two years of private college (and one in a public university), I had already taken out eight substantial loans totaling over $67,000, whose repayment I hadn't even begun to contemplate. Knowing how much debt I had already amassed, my father tried to impress upon me the difference between this new loan and all of the others I had already taken out — whose average interest rate meted out to a little under 6 percent — and why this loan would be harder to pay in a sea of already-hard-to-pay debt. I knew racking up one more loan and another $24,000 wasn’t ideal, but what was the alternative? Dropping out? Transferring to a new school and hoping my credits would translate? Leaving all the relationships I had cultivated with students and professors alike behind? So I chose to take the loan. In my final year of college, with my back against the wall, Sallie Mae made me an offer I did not know how to refuse.

Now, eight years later, that loan — one of nine that left me $95,000 in debt upon graduation (because, yes, interest does accrue while you’re in school) — very clearly marks the exact moment when I lost control of my own financial destiny.

According to a February 2018 study published by the Levy Economic Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank at Bard College, there are 44.2 million Americans with student loans, which adds up to about $1.4 trillion in debt. There already exists a myriad of research-driven articles that wax on the impact of the student loan crisis on the future of this country (screwed), our economy (broken), and the weight of the loan crisis (crippling). Those are all important to read, but this story isn’t one of them. I've learned that citing the national student loan debt totals in the trillions doesn’t get across how this massive problem impacts us individually, in real life. So, I'd rather talk honestly about what it’s like to live this… to explain in everyday dollars and cents how I get by living in a debt spiral, month to month, paycheck to paycheck.

When I was 18, I fully believed that taking out student loans was the only way to achieve my dream and my parents’ dream for me — to transcend my working class upbringing. I was desperate and uninformed and, because of this, I entered into a dangerous relationship with a loan company that will last half my lifetime. Now, I’m finally facing up to the brutal details (after years of sticking my head in the sand) and learning the ins and outs of my debt — and the truth is mind-blowing.

Part of the problem lies in how complicated it is to find that truth in the first place. Navient, as Sallie Mae’s student loan division is now known after it splintered into two companies in 2014, doesn’t make it easy to access the specific details of your loans; sure, it's online portal does have a tab that says “Loan Details,” but inside that section, only the money you still owe is listed (not the money you’ve already paid).

(You can also see here that the interest rate for that loan isn’t 9.25 percent anymore. Because it's a loan with a variable interest rate, it’s up to 11 percent — a fact I only learned when I called to ask why my monthly payments had increased. As my lender matter-of-factly loan-splained, “We’re not legally required to disclose when we change your interest rate, as per the contract.” I had missed that clause in the multi-page contract I signed when I was 20.)

In order to determine how much money you’ve actually paid to a loan, you have to browse your “Account History” and download a jumbled Excel file that’s filled with extraneous details that don’t make simple addition or subtraction easy. (That's if the files work at all — my browser crashed repeatedly for weeks just trying to get this information. When I called Navient to report this, they offered to mail me the details, which they said would arrive within 18 days.)

Maybe it’s technically difficult to list what a client has paid thus far on that details page… or maybe that information made readily available and visible to the world would catapult most borrowers into fits of rage. It’s hard to tell, and my repeated calls to Navient media reps for comment received no reply. No matter why it's so difficult to find, the truth behind my payments and how they were allocated stopped me dead in my tracks. I had no idea so much of the money I was paying did nothing but abate rising interest, barely touching the principal sum.

For example, the worst of my nine loans looks like this:

#college debt #student loan debt #sallie mae #i keep thinking about all the money one of my sisters is gonna owe.....

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ordinarytalk · 3 years

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Personal stuff sad rant under the cut about my new job. Not happy stuff, so probably don't read if you can't handle a mid-life crisis that I've been having more or less constantly since age 21.

It's getting late and I'm putting off going to bed because I don't want to have to deal with trying to sleep again. I woke up last night at 3 or 4 in the morning and had a panic attack, and I wasn't able to sleep for hours until it was almost time to wake up for work. Again.

I've been having panic attacks all this week. For the last few weeks, really, but it's been ramping up, and it's all mixed with these big, indigestible globs of despair.

It's just...I'm a health inspector now. And I hate it. I gave the job a good try, and it's better than my old job, but that's like saying that sitting in a cold mud puddle is better than being on fire.

Everywhere I go, I am hated. People working restaurants panic when they see me, and when I point out things that are dangerous that need to be fixed, they go from passive-aggressive to shouting at me to breaking down close to tears because what they need to do to be legal costs money. I can't eat anywhere anymore. I'm hated. I had severe social anxiety going into this job, and now I have to fight down panic attacks in the parking lot when I pull into restaurants for inspections before I go in. And I do this every day.

Every day. Every single day. I get eight days off a month. Every other day, for the rest of my life, is going to be this. There isn't anything better. There isn't anything else. I will never be anything more. There is nothing to look forward to. Every dream that I ever had for my future is dead, any potential I may have once had is wasted. This is it.

This job is the best prospect I can get with the utterly useless Master of Public Health degree that I'm in debt for. Nothing else pays as much as this job, and this job pays crap, for the amount of debt I have.

I wake up, exhausted and too early, and put on clothes that are ugly and uncomfortable and required, and do something very difficult that I hate doing for most of the day, and then I'm so tired at the end of it that I can't do anything else. I just sit in my filthy, lonely apartment, and dread going to sleep because then the next day will come faster.

I've been behind on the work assigned to me since I started in April. There was a huge backlog waiting when I came in, since inspections had been building up while they were trying to hire someone. I'm working as hard as I can, but the pile just keeps going. I got five new plan review applications today, and each of those will take most of a day to finish, but I also have to do several dozen inspections, and I can only get two or three of those done in a day at the most, but I also have to finish a few dozen temporary event applications, which need to be done at the office which is an hour drive round-trip and take several hours apiece to do, but I also have to respond to several dozen emails and phone calls that come in for me every single day that are tasks that all take 15-20 minutes to do, and no matter how fast I go it feels like I end every single day with a bigger to-do list than when I started it. I'm bad at this job, and I constantly feel like I am failing, and everyone hates me.

I keep on telling myself things will be better once I catch up, but I don't know if that's ever going to happen. And even if it did? I would still be doing a job I hate every single day, and every single day I would be meeting people who hated me, and having people yell at me, or argue, or try to hide things, or cry. One man pointed a knife at me.

There's a lesson I thought I learned once, but I was never very good at remembering it. I was raised to always think of everyone else first and myself last. If I wanted to be a good person, I owed the world my help, no matter how little I wanted to do it. If someone else is cold, give them your coat. If someone else is hungry, give them your food. If someone else is tired, give them your labor. If someone else is busy, give them your time. Give, give, give, and never, ever take. This is what I was taught. And I tried to be good. I really, really did. Like every person with a martyr complex before me, some part of me is so convinced that I'm bad that I feel like I have to spend the rest of my life making up for it.

But here's the lesson I learned: If you are very good, and very kind, and very obedient, and always say yes when someone asks for help, and never say no, then smiling people will gently take you by the hand, full of joy and gratitude, and they will lead you into hell.

I first realized this the summer after I graduated college. I had not been accepted into any of the medical schools I applied for, and I was not able to process that. I spent the summer teaching swimming lessons and lifeguarding, like I had every other summer since I was 16, but the summer was about to end, and for the first time in my life, I wasn't required to go back to a school in the fall, and I didn't know what to do.

An old high school teacher contacted my mom, saying that some ladies had been asking for help with a caregiving job, and that I was absolutely the perfect person for it, since I was so naturally kind and caring and giving. Mom sent me to the ladies, and I went because I don't say no. The ladies met me at a house, and smiled and told me how grateful they were, how much they needed me here, and they took me by the hand, and led me into the basement. The basement was dimly lit, and smelled of piss and shit, and three adult men were laying on small cots and moaning. The ladies happily told me how I would come here every night, alone, and stay with the three men until the morning, rolling them and washing them when they soiled themselves. I would start next week. I would be paid minimum wage with no benefits. The room stank. The men writhed and moaned. The air was orange tinted from the single lightbulb. The carpet was dark brown. The ladies were so, so grateful I was here. They knew I was a kind, caring, loving, good person.

I went home and felt absolutely nothing. I felt absolutely nothing for hours, until I took a shower and broke down sobbing. I called them back and told them I couldn't take the job. It was the first time I had ever said no to someone, and they were horrified, and my parents were disappointed, and I was shipped off to Madison within the week, and I didn't learn the lesson well enough, because I kept on trying to be what other people wanted me to become. I was supposed to be a doctor, so I kept on trying to get into med school until I had a mental breakdown, and then I got the public health degree because I thought it was the next closest thing to doctor after I failed, and by the time I finished it and realized the size of the hole I'd dug myself into, it was too late. There's no way I can crawl out of this without an enormous amount of money, and none of the jobs available to me pay that much, because they're all jobs for people who "love their work" and "care about humanity" and "care about people and not salaries."

I'm sure people are grateful I'm a health inspector. I'm sure people are thinking, "oh, I'm glad someone's doing that job, that's a necessary job, you're keeping society running, unsung hero, you should be proud." These are the things people think when someone else does a horrible job that no one likes, but which must be done so that the modern world keeps working. That's what you think about the home health aides, the teachers, the immigrant farmhands, the cleaning crew.

I don't know how to end this post. I keep on looking up increasingly implausible jobs that could pay more and be less stressful, like truck drivers or swinging bridge operators. I'm not going to get them. The closest thing I have to an escape plan is to wait a few more years until I qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and then....I don't know? Quit for a minimum wage job that will slowly lower me into poverty? Do another fireworks tent? Die, I guess?

It's late, and I'm tired, and I'm old, and I'm sick of panic attacks, and I've failed at everything I've ever attempted in my adult life, and I don't want to go back to work on Monday.

#personal stuff

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