#Overcoming Frustration

[theesotericecho]

Stuck in Traffic & Smiling: How Stoicism Teaches Us to Chill Out and Control What We Can

Caption: “Finding Serenity in the Midst of Chaos: Embracing Stoicism in Daily Commutes” – A visualization of calm amidst the hustle, inspired by the principles of stoicism.Credit: Image created by DALL·E, envisioned by David Sawin for The Esoteric Echo. You find yourself in a seemingly endless sea of cars, with the clock becoming a frequent focal point as your stress levels soar. Welcome to the…

[auressea]

(executive) dysfunction junction

oof. watching my executive function collapse in real time is a treat!

so! my cast iron pan and dutch oven rusted on the outsides, because I didn't think I'd need to keep curing them. so! gotta get the rust off.

it's sunny and warm! yay! and I got motivated!

-make work space on table ✅ -get grit-paper ✅ -get mask on ✅ -discover grit paper is too smooth--- ❌ -find steel wool ✅ (good job!) -oops gonna need gloves for that, and EYE protection! ❌ -lens of goggles is fallen out. where are my gloves?? ❌

all work. full stop. 🚫 cannot proceed. ⛔sorry. exercise cancelled.

I can only overcome a couple of barriers to a task before the whole endeavour collapses in on itself. 👿😬☢🦨

[shimmershy]

Do you see the player as canon to Undertale's story?

Yeah! I think it has less in-world implications than it does in Deltarune, though, depending on how you look at it. Typically I completely ignore the existence of the player in my art/writing, or just assume Frisk and Chara have zero awareness of them, but I really like portrayals where the player plays a bigger role too. I think it can go both ways.

Like, I think taking into account the player's role in the story can add a whole nother layer to it, but it's not completely necessary to understanding the themes. I like focusing on the story and characters specifically in-universe, and acknowledging the player kind of complicates that (it's not really something that can be explained in-universe easily and implies that Frisk doesn't have free will, etc).

[maddy-ferguson]

i think the reframing of girls disliking pink and other stereotypically feminine things as internalized misogyny that you should overcome by the time you're an adult woman is an immense feminist loss

[darkwood-sleddog]

blerg.

my mental health lately has been garbage, the most garbage it's been in a long time. just crippling anxiety, can't sleep, cry if i hear music at the wrong time garbage.

i haven't run dogs since december, mostly because of terrible icy/warm weather, but my last run wasn't bad, slash was in single lead, looking good! but the past week? the thought of getting on the runners makes me feel ill. Anxious that things will go wrong (they probably won't). feeling that i am not capable or talented or in control (none of this is true), feeling that i haven't improved in this sport (also not true), that i'm behind. I want to do more, i want to be great, I want to be better. I want to be able to get on the runners and not worry instead of being sick to my stomach before I step on, only able to cure my anxiety once I realize I know what i'm doing (yet again). I want to feel like I can run without my husband on a bike behind me. I am crippled by my own ambitions and dreams. i'm one of the few malamute mushers. i'm one of the few malamute mushers with a small team that runs dogs 16km regularly. my mentor is proud of me, my peers tell me they look up to me, I trained these dogs from SCRATCH. I love them. I love this sport. the silence of running dogs in winter is one of my favorite feelings ever.

and yet. anxiety and self doubt festers in me. why? because I'm anxious the boys will have feelings at each other? That an off leash dog will come up to me? that i am otherwise incapable? i didn't use to worry about these things. i didn't even feel like i needed to have enough snow to brake and now the trail conditions must be perfect. before i am soothed.

i am running dogs tomorrow. no matter the conditions, no matter how bad i feel beforehand. no matter how sick or sore or anything else because i NEED to remind myself i AM capable and strong and trained these dogs well. will i still feel like mental crap after? maybe. but at least i will have tried...

[ghostypetrainer]

Actually, I’ve been thinking about the Emmet in Hisui AU, and namely, the deal that Ingo makes with Giratina that he trades his memories away for. And while my initial thought was that Ingo trades his memories to protect Emmet from memory loss, what if the stakes were higher. What if the reason Ingo traded away all of his memories was still for Emmet...

...but it was to revive him?

Emmet wasn’t as lucky as Ingo. When they fell into the Distortion World, he didn’t survive. Future Giratina found the two of them floating in his domain, Ingo grieving over his brother, knowing that this is the result of his past self’s mistake, and offers Ingo a deal- he has all the power in the world in this dimension. He can bring his brother back, just as he was. But he would only be able to maintain that life while he was in the Distortion World... unless Ingo was willing to offer him something that belonged to Arceus’ domain in exchange, something he could use to extend his power even into the creator’s domain.

A life for a life is not a fair deal, and would make no one happy... but what about his memories? It could be argued that memories form the very core of a person’s being, so in effect, trading them all away would be the same as trading one’s life- and no one would actually have to die. Ingo doesn’t even have to think about it. If it’s for Emmet, he’d accept any deal. He lets Giratina take his memories, and as promised, he revives Emmet.

This is why Emmet has no memory of the deal. He wasn’t aware of anything when it was being made. The next thing he knew, he and his brother were in some strange, snow-covered place and his brother... his brother had lost his memory. But that is alright! He is certain that with time, his memory will recover!

...right?

[andersdotters]

I have so many opinions on the x reader/reader-insert franchise that I really can't open up about it without sounding like a crotchety old man.

[steffon]

i want to get into making pages and themes for this hellsite... what resources should i look into?

[screamingay]

finally snuck myself an adderall (10 mg) and at first i was worried that i was feeling manic or jittery (which would mean everyone was right and i'm just bad at everything and it's my fault) but then i realized... my body isn't used to the ability to think about doing something and then immediately getting up to do it so it was a little overwhelming to gain that ability all of a sudden. my whole life (except for rare, unpredictable, and uncontrollable hours of productivity) whenever i've thought to myself "i want/need to get up and do [thing]" i would just keep sitting there and feel increasingly guilty for not doing it.

my parents would plead with me to brush my teeth before bed as a kid, asking why i couldn't just get up for 5 minutes and do it, and i'd cry and say i don't know, i'm sorry, i promise i want to brush my teeth. my teachers would keep me after class in high school and ask me why i hadn't done a project they knew i could do, they knew i did fine on everything else, but how could i tell them that i just couldn't bring myself to sit down and do the research or start writing, and i'd choke back tears as i told them i didn't know why, i'm sorry, i promise i want to do your project.

today i've done about 20 chores and projects that i've been meaning to get to for days, weeks, months. i cleaned the toaster oven, put up some more coat hooks to get the coats off the floor, washed 2 rounds of dishes and a put in a load of laundry, put away all the clean clothes and picked up the floor so it's walkable again, rounded up all the hair dye supplies and gave them their own spot, put away some things that had been out of place for a long time, and i still have energy to bag up the garbage in the bedroom, fix the patch on my jeans, and finish the laundry once it's done. probably even more after that. things that would usually drain me for hours individually, or would take hours because i'd give up or get distracted halfway through.

i never drank coffee because whenever i did it made me jittery and fucked up my heartbeat but this prescription shit.. this is good. getting my own prescription would be lovely but would take forever and be very difficult, so for now im more than happy to settle for predictable & controllable bursts of productivity rather than my usual unpredictable, uncontrollable ones.

[deliciousmicroplastics]

working on a sticker design

[reviewer-bot32]

Thinking about King and Queen being analogs to the player at their potential best and worst. How King relishes in the oppression and control and ultimately has to be subdued and usurped. Whereas Queen is the well intentioned player. Believing her control is necessary in order for everyone to be happy, which in the end is a flawed belief that she has to let go in favor of allowing Noelle to pursue her own happiness. How these might be potential precursors to how the player is ultimately dealt with.

[tvrningout-a]

good evening dash!! i feel more like myself and ofc my first instinct is to write angst so :' )

[cardboardfisher]

Florian was really given a whole Vestige but the most productive thing he's done with it was use it to (poorly) cut his own hair.

[gremlingirlsmell]

wish i didnt have 'playing soulslike games wrong' and 'misassigning all my skill points' syndrome aside from just having a general skill issue in those games, because theyre genuinely super fun games with interesting worlds but they're soooo frustrating when i play them

[renee-mariposa]

We have a new guy at work. He’s never worked in a hospital before so it’s a bit of a learning curve. I stepped up and trained him a little today - in practice, what that means is I opened a fire hose of information and drenched him for two hours straight, poor guy