#I worked really hard and I was able to treat myself

[icefire149]

I do need to think harder about my 2022, but off the top of my head I still can't believe these things happened:

-Saw Hadestown live with most of the original cast!

-Saw MCR live!

-Saw Lil Nas X live!

[deoidesign]

.

[goldkirk]

.

[toytulini]

reeeeeeally wish. it didnt feel. like the needs of my body vs the needs of my brain were actively in fucking conflict with each other in a way that makes it impossible to function or exist

[orcelito]

Ykno the suckiest thing about being broken up with for someone else is that like. Well I'm doing generally fine, all things considered, but I Am kinda sad thinking about the things I've lost and all the casual affection that I can't have now.

But she's out there having all the affection she wants from her coworker, and it's just like. Damn this feels so skewed and SO unfair.

[softshuji]

Sometimes it feels like my mom punishes me for things I can't control and it's actually kinda really upsetting.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I think I've been touchy lately about my feelings of access to/participation in generativity. I've been feeling really overwhelmed lately by how much needs doing and how much disparate but necessary information I'm keeping in my head. I should probably get back into my thought maps for the work on the yard and house, because I think that will make it easier for me to empty my head when I'm not actively trying to work on something.

[dan-crimes]

I love writers I love when they ramble on abt characters and their motivations, their core values and the reasons why they react to things in certain ways and having character interactions work off of each other due to their differing ways of viewing the world and in general I just love character analysis

[soggiedsocks]

i know its my own fault i'm in this situation but i'd really love if people could stop reminding me of that every time i try and ask for help to get out of this situation and get better and stop it from happening again. no one wants to acknowledge that hey maybe the guy who got to such a mental low point that he attempted suicide isn't actually just magically doing okay when he's got no one IRL to support him and that frequently being reminded of the fact that he repeatedly fucked up massively and that he has been asked to move out ASAP when he is already incredibly fucking sorry and working on addressing things and doing everything he fucking can to try and move out within a month without also jeopardising his healthcare and his longer term housing options. like sorry i already know ive hurt people and i feel incredibly fucking bad about it but im doing my best to stop it from happening again and shoving all my other shit aside so that I can do all the things I need to do to move out ASAP and i do not appreciate the constant insinuation that im not doing enough, especially right after i've talked about how much i'm struggling in all of this. If it was within my power how long things take I would not still be in this house, hell if it was within my power I wouldn't have had any of this happen, but it happened and everyone is all dealing with the consequences and just because it's my fault doesn't mean I chose for this to happen or that I can't also be struggling and it sucks when the one person in all of this who will even talk to me just constantly puts me down and then tries to suggest they're being compassionate for talking to me at all when I never asked for them to be the middle man and I'd actually be doing much better and probably able to make a lot more progress if on top of all the shit I'm dealing with I didn't have them there to remind me of things I already am all too aware of.

[goldeunoias]

Tw:internalized racism? I guess?

[virtualgirladvance]

Hi, my name is Lan I'm a 30yo Australian transfem currently living with family. A lot of you know me from this blog or my sideblog , @virtualgirlafterdark , where I'm a funny little robot girl. Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder for me to be that kind of person, and it's affecting both myself IRL (depression, anxiety, isolation, etc) and who I am here. I don't want to beg or take advantage of anyone, but I could really use some help.

Ever since I moved back in with my family this year after a tough breakup and a couple hospital stays, things have gone from bad to worse and I'm worried about my safety and future here. Everyday I'm stuck with abusive people who don't treat me as human, and the threat of violence keeps growing. Today somebody punched a hole in a door, so now we just have a door with a hole in it. I don't know how much longer I can stay here, and I've been looking for a job but haven't found anything due to how remote I am. My disability payments aren't even enough to live in a shared house, let alone by myself, which would be ideal and safer.

If you enjoy my content you can tip me here and I'll be making a fansly/OF soon and continuing to stream on Twitch and potentially other places. I want to do more, but right now it's just so hard because of my environment. I'm in between meds as well which definitely isn't helping and I'm super overwhelmed and having trouble right now.

Please consider helping by reblogging or donating to my Ko-fi

Current goal is $2500 to cover a rental deposit and move somewhere I'll be safe and able to work from.

Thank you so much for reading, I really appreciate it.

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

-

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

[katya-goncharov]

i'm genuinely scared i'm going to get fired from my job just for the stuff i struggle with bc of being autistic, and i don't know what to do about it

[krawdad]

Massage therapist saying the equivalent of "oh shit that's actually really bad" over and over isn't instilling a ton of confidence but I guess I at least finally have someone who knows what they're doing actually working on me. Years too late by this point but I'll fucking take it.

[number44newseries864962]

Need to rant for a minute because even though I have very much been enjoying the fruits of my efforts learning how to sew vintage style clothes, I just swapped out old fatphobia (nice plus size vintage clothes never making it to stores) for new fatphobia (trying to find patterns). Cause it doesn't end at what clothes you're able to buy already made.

I finally bought a Friday Pattern Company pattern the other day, and man it made the bare minimum feel like I was being spoiled. The sizes go up to 7X (that's XL, XXL, 1X, 2X, etc, so there's 9 sizes above L) they had a thin and a fat model on the cover! Usually I'm barely lucky enough to get an XL, and I'm just expected to guess how it's going to look on my body. The majority of their patterns have two differently sized models on the covers, and all of them have that full range of patterns inside.

It is so hard to find good plus size patterns, even if they're available, many companies just scale up their mediums and I can't guarantee they're actually sized correctly for a different shape. As good as Friday is, them and other modern indie pattern companies aren't easy to find.

Okay well what if I went another step deeper, what if I forgo patterns all together and decide to be completely independent and draft things myself?

Then I'll need a plus size dress form. I got lucky and found one at an antique mall for 50$ but these are incredibly rare and more expensive than smaller ones. I'll need to learn how to draft patterns, something that was taught to me on a XS form by my college and nearly every tutorial out there. Drafting close fitting clothes for fat bodies is a completely different skillset, because all that extra fat is much squishier and shifts more. Measuring yourself correctly and getting the shape you're looking for is far more important. Before I even got there I'd need to sketch out what I wanted to make, right? Well the patterning book my family got me only shows you how to draw tall, skinny people. A beginner would have to look up their own drawing references and tutorials because what what supposed to be a super accessible beginner's guide to fashion has decided their body isn't normal enough for the baseline tutorial.

We're expected to be the ones who put in the extra effort. Digging to find the pattern companies that fit our shape and actually prove they can, paying extra in shipping or driving farther to pick them up. Having to search specifically for plus size tutorials for drafting and sketching. It's always treated like it's not part of the beginner's experience to be working with a fat body, that's just going to make people more frustrated and lost and less likely to pursue something they're excited about! Especially if it's in response to already being frustrated about the lack of clothing options.

We need a little positivity to this post so to end on a high note, here's me modeling the blazer I just finished with a shirt I made a couple years ago!

Being able to finally wear clothes I really feel like me in has been an amazing confidence boost. It's not fair that there's so many roadblocks in the way for someone who looks like me who just wants to wear things they enjoy.

[theambitiouswoman]

Questions To Ask Yourself If You Want To Become The Best Version of Yourself

What do I really care about? What things are really important to me?

What am I good at, and where do I need help? What am I strong in, and what could I get better at?

What do I want to achieve soon and later? What things do I want to do soon, and what are my bigger, long-term goals?

Am I trying new things and not just staying comfy? Am I doing things that might be a bit scary but good for me?

How do I deal with problems and when things go wrong? What do I do when stuff doesn't work out?

Am I nice to myself when things don't go well? Do I treat myself kindly, especially when things are tough?

How do I use my time, and what's most important? How do I plan my day, and what things matter the most?

Am I learning new stuff regularly? Do I keep finding out new things?

Do I have a good balance between work and fun? Do I make sure to have enough time for work and for things I enjoy?

Do I have good friendships and avoid bad ones? Am I friends with people who make me feel good?

Do I take care of my body? Am I eating well, exercising, and sleeping enough?

Do I think about my feelings and thoughts? Do I pay attention to how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking?

How do I deal with stress and make myself calm? What do I do when I'm stressed out?

Do I help others and make the world better? Do I do things to make people's lives nicer?

Do I have good habits and get rid of bad ones? Are there things I do every day that are good for me? Are there things I should stop doing?

Do I learn from what people say about me? When people give me advice, do I listen and try to get better?

Do I say no when I need to? Do I tell people when I need space or when something isn't okay for me?

What makes me really happy? What do I like to do that makes me feel great?

Do I use money wisely? Am I good at saving and spending money in smart ways?

Do I believe I can improve and get better? When things are tough, do I think I can get through them and learn something?Am I being kind to others and making them feel good? Do I treat people nicely and make them happy?

Do I learn from things I do wrong? When I make a mistake, do I figure out how to do better next time?

Do I try new things, even if they scare me a little? Do I give things a shot, even if they seem a bit scary?

Am I spending time with people who care about me? Do I hang out with folks who like me for who I am?

Do I eat healthy foods and move my body? Am I eating good stuff and getting some exercise?

Am I sharing and helping others when I can? Do I give stuff to others and lend a hand when I'm able to?

Am I paying attention when people talk to me? Do I really listen when others are speaking to me?

Do I take breaks and do things I enjoy? Do I give myself time to rest and do things I like?

Do I say sorry and make up if I hurt someone? When I make someone feel bad, do I apologize and try to make things better?

Do I imagine good things for myself in the future? Do I think about cool stuff I want to do?

Do I stop and relax when I'm feeling stressed? When I'm worried, do I take a moment to calm down?

Do I ask for help when I need it? Do I tell someone when I can't do something on my own?

Do I try my best, even when things are tricky? Even if it's hard, do I give it my all?

Do I pick up after myself and keep things tidy? Am I good at cleaning up and keeping things in order?

Do I use my time for things that matter most? Do I do important stuff before other things?

Do I think about good things that happened today? Do I remember all the nice things that occurred?

Am I okay with making mistakes and learning from them? Do I know it's okay to mess up sometimes and learn from it?

Do I show appreciation for the people around me? Do I let others know I'm thankful for them?

Do I take deep breaths and relax when I'm upset? When I'm mad, do I breathe and try to calm down?

Do I believe I can do better and keep growing? Do I think I can get better at things and keep getting smarter?

Am I happy with who I am right now? Do I like myself just as I am?

Do I feel okay when things don't go as planned? When stuff doesn't work out, do I stay calm?

Do I think about good things about myself? Do I focus on the nice parts of me?

Do I let go of things that make me sad? When something makes me upset, can I move on from it?

Do I notice when I'm feeling worried or scared? Am I aware of when I'm feeling nervous or frightened?

Do I believe I can do things even if they're tough? Can I do hard things if I try?

Do I try to make my mind peaceful? Do I relax my thoughts when they're racing?

Do I find things that make me feel relaxed? What can I do to feel calm and at ease?

Am I patient when things take time? Can I wait without getting upset?

Do I talk kindly to myself in my head? Do I say nice things to myself in my mind?

Am I curious about things and want to learn? Do I like to find out new stuff?

Do I think about good times and happy memories? Do I remember fun things that happened before?

Do I try to understand how others feel? Can I tell what others are feeling?

Do I imagine nice things happening in the future? Can I think about good stuff that might come?

Do I take time to rest and be by myself? Do I give myself breaks and quiet time?

Do I let go of things I can't change? Can I forget about things I can't do anything about?

Do I believe I can do things even if I don't know how yet? Do I think I can learn new things?

Do I tell myself I'm doing a good job? Do I give myself a pat on the back?

Do I stay calm even if things are really busy? Can I be relaxed even when things are crazy?

Do I know that I can make mistakes and it's okay? Do I understand that everyone messes up sometimes?