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bondsmagii · 3 years

Note

Regarding this cat that is perhaps not a cat at all. Definitely not MY cat.

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Orla McDonald, regarding a cat that is perhaps not a cat at all. Original statement given July 3, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

It started after Bella died. Or I suppose, after I thought Bella died. Bella was – is? – my cat, or at least I think she is, or was. I got her as a kitten and she’s now seven years old, if she’s actually still alive at all, which I’m pretty sure she must be as I saw her just this morning, when I was on my way here. Bella is a beautiful cat, long-haired, that grey colour they call blue and that I never understood until I looked at Bella when the light was just right and I could see she did look kind of blue after all. She has eyes to match, too – big and sea-blue, like you could dive right in – and she’s more photogenic than I am. Temperament wise, she’s a very chill cat. She likes to relax in the sun, stretch out over the sofa, basically just laze around as the lady of the manor. Altogether a very typical cat, right? Nothing remarkable at all.

Well, all apart from one thing. Every so often, perhaps once every few months, Bella just goes wild. It’s not like, you know, her time or anything, because she was fixed as a young cat because God knows I can’t be doing with kittens. Apparently it’s normal for cats to have times of the day where they just go crazy for some reason, running around and making a mess and yowling, but she doesn’t do that. It isn’t every day, or even a once a week thing. And it doesn’t last for a brief period of time, like what all the things I’ve read have said. She’s fine for months, chilling out and sleeping on the sofa, and then one day she’ll just wake up and it’s like a wild animal has moved into my house. She doesn’t go outside as a rule, because I worry too much about her, and usually she’s fine with that. But when she enters this state she will absolutely get out of the house no matter what. As soon as I open the door to go to work or to put the rubbish out, Bella will shoot out through even the tiniest gap and off she goes. There’s nothing I can do about it at all. Once – and only once – I tried to stop her, and she clawed up my arm so badly I still have scars. It was the first and only time she’d ever scratched me, and I was stunned. It got the message across, though. I’m not happy about it, but I have no choice but to let her out. I worry about her, but it’s not like I can stop her, and also I don’t particularly want her in the house when she’s in that mood? It sounds neglectful, I know, but she really does just rip the place apart.

There’s a lot of danger when it comes to cats outside, and I live right by a main road, and yeah. I won’t go into detail, but the inevitable happened. I wasn’t too shocked? I mean, I think deep down, I always knew. That’s what happens, right? Obviously I was devastated, and finding her was… well, I didn’t find her, I should say I found out, because she had a collar and the driver… God, I feel so sorry for her too, you know? She was so good about it, she could have just driven off because that’s what most people do when someone hits a pet on that road – my neighbours just let their cats run wild and I’ve called the RSPCA so many times but anyway, that’s not the point. The driver was only a young girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, couldn’t have been driving long. She brought Bella up to my door, wrapped tight in a blanket like she was sleeping. Thank God there wasn’t any visible injuries. We even talked for a little bit; I tried to reassure her that I didn’t blame her, that it wasn’t her fault, but I don’t think she believed me. How could she? I still think about her even now, wishing that I could somehow explain that Bella was still alive, but… I’m not even sure that’s what’s going on, but if it makes her feel better, right? I don’t know. I brought Bella into the house and I just sat with her for a while, talking to her. Calling her a little idiot, asking what got into her. Telling her I loved her. You know. That kind of thing. I held her in my arms and rocked her like she was a little baby, and after some time – I’m not sure how long, maybe half an hour? – I became aware that she was moving. She was moving around in the blanket like she was trying to get out, and in my shock I let go and the blanket fell into my lap and out she jumped. She even gave me an indignant little meow as she did so, like I’d been deliberately keeping her in there. She sat, washed a paw, and then trotted into the kitchen where I kept some food laid out for her. I just sat there in shock.

I mean, cats have nine lives, right? That’s what they always say. I’m not sure what Bella got up to on her other trips outside, but as far as I knew, she’d never lost a life before. She’s always been a healthy cat, no scares, no accidents until that one. I get that it’s just a saying, but something in me wondered if there was more to it then. I was sure she was dead. She might not have been, because admittedly I didn’t check for a pulse or breathing or anything, and the accident had just happened so she wasn’t cool or stiff. The only proof I have is the weight there was to her when I took her from the young driver’s arms. It’s called a dead weight for a reason; it wasn’t the sleepy heaviness she had when I would try and get her to budge over at night, or how she would go deliberately limp when I lifted her away from something she wasn’t allowed to eat. This was a different kind of weight, and while I’ve been fortunate enough to have never handled any kind of dead body before then, I just instinctively knew what that weight was; what it meant. It was so heavy – literally the absence of all life. She was dead, and then she wasn’t, and of course I was glad for it but I was naturally very uneasy.

After a couple of days I brought her to the vet. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t stop analysing her for signs she might be acting differently, or I suppose for proof that I hadn’t somehow imagined it. I explained what had happened to the vet, but I suppose I chickened out of saying that she was absolutely dead – I don’t think the vet would have believed me. Or at least she would have explained away how I must have been mistaken, and I know I wasn’t mistaken but I also know I would have probably been so eager to believe her that I would have convinced myself I was, and I don’t know. I just said she seemed dead, and then she was fine. They put Bella through a bunch of tests and scans and sure enough everything showed up just fine; their best guess was that she hadn’t been struck at all, but had maybe just had the life frightened out of her and passed out or something, like how a person can get a shock and faint. I suppose that’s not impossible? Something about the vet’s choice of words struck me, though. Frightened the life out of her. It really did seem like that was what had happened – like whatever made Bella Bella had been… taken. Or vanished. Like the fear had replaced it entirely.

That’s not to say Bella was a frightened cat after that. She acts much the same, if I’m honest. She’s still pretty chill, she’s still always lazing around not doing much of anything, but there’s something just off about her. There’s a look in her eyes that I can’t quite explain. Have you ever seen an animal and you’re kind of like oh my God, it looks like a little old man or old woman or something? There’s just something about the face that looks so human, or they pull an expression and you just know what they mean? It was kind of like that with Bella’s eyes – they looked human. Sometimes she looked at me with an understanding that was beyond… beyond what a cat should be able to conceptualise. I know, I know, we don’t actually understand as much about animal intelligence as we’d like, and we don’t know just how much about their environment they do or do not understand, but I’m telling you it was different with her. She had never acted like that before and I’d never seen her look like that before. It’s so strange. I considered maybe some kind of brain damage affecting her personality, but the vets found absolutely no injuries at all. I even took her back to ask about it, just saying that she was acting out of character, but they could find nothing wrong with her that time either. Scans came back fine. She was her usual self with the vet. I felt – I feel – like I’m going insane.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, I’ve started noticing some… really odd things. A couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night, just wide awake like something had deliberately woken me. I couldn’t remember hearing anything, but I just knew that something, some noise, had woken me. I sleep deeply, too, so it would have to be some noise – I mean, I’ve actually slept through a fire alarm once, it’s that bad. Whatever happened had to be some kind of I don’t even know, explosion or something, or it had to have happened very close to where I was sleeping. I sat up and turned on my light, and my bedroom door was fully closed. I never fully close it because Bella likes to come in and out, but it was completely closed and when I went over to look, there was a crack in the wood running from the top and bottom of the panel where the handle was attached. It looked like it had been slammed shut with extreme force, and I suppose that’s what woke me. I was confused, obviously, and I didn’t even consider the implications until I heard footsteps on the stairs. Thankfully they were running away from me, but I heard them as clear as anything – thud thud thud on the stairs, like a fully grown man in heavy boots. I was absolutely petrified. I had these horrible thoughts of some creep sneaking around in my room while I was asleep, but nothing was moved and there were no prints on the carpet and the room didn’t feel like anyone had been in there. It didn’t seem as… well, as simple as that, so I found the courage to ease the door open and peer out. The house was still and silent, and as I crept towards the top of the stairs I knew that I was definitely alone in the house – there was no other presence. I finally looked around the corner and down the stairs and the only thing I could see was Bella’s vague outline, sitting at the bottom of the stairs and looking right at me, her eyes glinting in the dim light.

I don’t know why she frightened me so much then. I think it was because of the glow of the streetlight outside, coming in through the frosted glass of the front door. I suppose the effect of the glass could have caused it, but for a moment her shadow… didn’t match. It was elongated, jagged, like her joints were all harsh angles. Like a bare tree in winter, all knots and wild angles, sharp and rough. Whatever fur she had didn’t show up in the shadow – she looked short-haired or even hairless, and her jaw was longer and more canine. I took a half-step back and from that angle her shadow looked normal again, and she meowed at me and trotted quite normally into the living room and out of sight, but I didn’t miss the way she looked at me. I got the distinct impression that she knew I had seen.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. Even writing this, I feel stupid. I do think maybe I should go and speak to someone, because now I’m laying it out I do wonder if I might have just suffered a horrible shock thinking Bella was dead, and then I’ve just created this strange story around the whole thing. Maybe she was fine. Maybe she did just faint. Maybe it’s all in my head. I have no idea, but something about it just doesn’t seem that simple at all. I keep going back to that old saying, that cats have nine lives. Perhaps I’m thinking too deeply into it, but I have to wonder if those lives are all the same one. I mean, does it just refer to close calls? That they get lucky and get more tries? Or do they get nine separate lives? If they do, where do they get the extras from? Is it still theirs, or does it come from… somewhere else?

I don’t know if Bella is still a cat, but even if she is, I don’t think she’s still… my cat. Or maybe she is? I don’t know. I’m still glad she’s here, but… well. I sleep with my door closed now. With the chair against it. And that’s not really normal, is it?

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends.

This is certainly one of those statements that makes me wonder why I’m here. An unnerving story, yes, but I do wonder if this isn’t an exercise in creative writing or perhaps as Ms McDonald said: some kind of post-traumatic episode following the shock of believing her pet to have met an unpleasant end. If it is, I imagine that the shock will eventually wear off and Ms McDonald will stop believing that her pet cat has been possessed by some kind of entity, or whatever she believes is going on. There isn’t much to investigate in regards to this, either – the nature of the incident makes it very difficult to ascertain facts, and checking with the veterinary clinics in the area of the address Ms McDonald provided was a waste of time. They either don’t remember any such cases, or they are not inclined to discuss patient information.

As for Ms McDonald herself, she has since moved away from the property and left no forwarding address. The house is, as reported, situated on a main road and the residents there suffer all the frequent calamities from having one’s front garden directly attach to a road with a 60 mile an hour speed limit – collisions with pets and cars emerging from driveways, and occasional car-house collisions. A few neighbours remembered Ms McDonald and reported that she was a pleasant and completely unremarkable young woman, causing no trouble and certainly never acting like she might be suffering from any kind of mental distress. A few neighbours also recalled Bella, having seen her stalking through their back gardens or, more frequently, sitting in Ms McDonald’s living room window. Nobody reported anything strange about the cat at all; certainly not elongated shadows. It was impossible to track down the driver of the vehicle said to have struck Bella with the information provided with this statement, and with that any potential leads were exhausted – though I confess to not being entirely sure where they might have led to even if we had found them.

Not exactly debunked, but certainly not worth filing away as open. I’m considering creating a new designation for statements containing material perhaps better discussed with a therapist.

End recording.

#tma #statement prompts #my writing #fakements #long post #anon #asks

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lochrannn · 3 years

Link

Warnings: Sexual Content (M Rating)

Characters: Lila Pitts; Diego Hargreeves; Allison Hargreeves; Klaus Hargreeves; Hargreeves Siblings (background)

Relationship: Lila Pitts/Diego Hargreeves

Roommates AU; Fake Marriage; Slow Burn; Mutual Pining; Emotional H/C

Chapter 4/?

Of course it’s been something that, at the very back of her mind, has been causing her no small amount of stress, but Lila has been doing a very good job of just completely ignoring the topic. Only, when her co-worker Nandi, a med student from South Africa, asks Lila how much longer she’ll be staying in the country, now that she’s dropped out of her degree, does it fully register with her that her student visa has expired and she’s into the last three weeks of her grace period. After that, she’ll be in the country illegally.

Lila smiles at Nandi brightly and tells her that she’s not made a decision yet and that she’s looking at a couple of options.

On her break she goes out into the alley and bums a smoke off one of the teenage busboys who seems to be working at the restaurant that’s right next to her café, even though she’s not had a cigarette in years, and contemplates what to do.

And predictably she comes up short.

So after her shift ends, she heads to the public library and finds several volumes on immigration law for research, because she doesn’t want to ask one of the librarians.

After an hour of frustratedly thumbing through the books, the only short term solution she has found is to get married to a citizen.

She’s back at square one with no idea what to do, when she leaves her books on the collection cart and heads out into the rainy evening.

By the time she walks in through the door, she’s not sure if she’s just breezed straight through panic and worry or whether she’s just too numb to feel it, but at the smell of cooking food, she immediately follows the aromas to the kitchen and for a moment gets distracted at the door by the sight of Diego gently stirring something on the stove.

Apparently sensing her arrival, Diego twists around to look at her and says, “Oh hey, I didn’t hear you come in.”

Lila drags her eyes up to meet his and belatedly realises that she’s unabashedly been staring at his arse in a pair of perfectly fitted jeans.

“Uh…” she says dumbly.

Somehow she’s got so used to him not being around over the last few days that coming home to someone in the flat is completely throwing her for a loop.

“I’m making gorditas,” Diego says, having turned back to stirring and making idle conversation, “d’you want some?”

When she doesn’t answer right away, still dealing with the whiplash of her day, Diego turns back around and asks, “Hey, you ok?”

Lila scrambles for an answer and, trying to avoid telling Diego that the sight of him all sexily making food has made all the thoughts in her brain combust, she accidentally lands on the other truth and blurts, “Yeah, uh, fine… just dealing with some visa troubles!”

Diego’s expression turns into one of such genuine concern that Lila instantly regrets being the cause of that.

“Ah shit! That sucks,” he says. “Anything I can help you with?”

Lila snorts loudly, “Thanks, but I doubt there’s anything you could do… short of marrying me,” she adds in a sarcastic tone.

There’s a beat where Diego looks at her with a completely blank expression and she knows it’s not the cooking that suddenly makes the temperature in the small kitchen go up a couple of notches. Then he makes a face that’s half smirk and half shy smile and something behind Lila’s ribs cracks at the sight and she hopes she never has to see it again, because she hasn’t the foggiest idea how to respond to it.

“Ha! Yeah,” Diego says then, pointing at her with his spatula and then turns back to the stove again.

“So, uh, d’you want some?” he asks, with a strained kind of casualness, not actually looking at her, and this time Lila is quicker to answer, “Yeah… yes, thanks! I’ll just go get out of my work clothes!”

Lila hurries into her room and then leans against the closed door for a moment. What the fuck is wrong with her? Only a few days ago, she was accusing Diego of being weird and now she’s joking about getting married. This is ridiculous!

She pushes off from the door and begins taking off her work clothes to change into something more comfortable.

Lila’s only justification for her odd behaviour is that she really is stressed out by the idea of having to leave the country. It’s not like she couldn’t start out again somewhere else, Australia maybe, the main thing is, she knows she can’t go back to England, too many bad memories there, but she just doesn’t want to.

She’s been floating about her whole life, and even though what she has going on right now isn’t exactly conventional, to her it feels like a respite. Maybe it won’t be permanent, but here in this city, with her job, and her flat, she’s been feeling significantly more settled than she has in a while and she doesn’t want to have to give that up so soon.

If only she could just marry Diego…

Is that really such an insane solution? Lila thinks to herself, while pulling on a pair of leggings.

She would pay him, of course, and she knows he needs the money. It’s a terribly weird thing to ask your landlord/recent lover/friend but Lila just cannot conceptualise any other solution. And he’s been remarkably patient with her antics over the last few days, maybe he’s actually a lot more relaxed about this sort of thing than she thinks. She can at least make the offer, worst case scenario they go back to being awkward around each other for a few days and she’s sure they’ll be back to normal in no time at all.

Lila makes her way back towards the kitchen and finds Diego already in the process of piling food onto the small table that barely has any room in the first place.

There’s a plate with little flat and round doughy things and a few dishes with different steaming fillings in them. There’s a decidedly spicy smell in the air and Lila can’t help the way her mouth starts watering.

“Yo, don’t just stand there, take a seat!” Diego says with a chuckle and Lila heads straight for the table and says with a laugh of her own, “Don’t have to tell me twice! Fuck that smells amazing! Did you make all of this yourself?”

“Uh, some of the fillings are made up of leftover takeout from the last couple of days,” Diego answers with a bit of a bashful shrug as he sits down across from her and shuffles around some of the dishes so he can squeeze one more onto the table, “but I made the gorditas and added some shit to the fillings,” he amends a bit more confidently.

Lila takes one of the little dough pockets and immediately starts spooning in different salsas and pastes. She doesn’t ask what’s in them, just picks up the dishes and gives them a sniff to decide which ones she wants.

“Mmmm!” she hums almost desperately when she takes her first bite. She looks up at Diego who is looking back at her with a glint in his eyes and chewing delightedly on his own food.

“Fuck, this is good!” Lila says, rudely not even having swallowed all of her mouthful.

“I know, right!” Diego answers with a chuckle.

They fall into easy conversation. At one point Diego gets up to get two beers from the fridge to wash down the food and Lila tries to get comfortable on the hard kitchen chair by tucking one of her feet underneath herself and her knee up under her chin.

After they run out of gorditas, Diego uses some slightly stale bread to finish up the rest of the fillings and then gets up to pile the dishes into the sink.

“I can do the dishes!” Lila offers, seeing as she’s been mooching off of Diego’s labour all evening.

“Nah,” Diego says, “dinner’s on me!”

As he starts filling the sink with water, the sudden domesticity of the scene reminds Lila of her plan to actually ask Diego for help.

She excuses herself and heads back to her room and while she’s rummaging through her drawers looking for her cheque book, her pulse starts speeding up and she tries to calm her nerves.

If he says no, she thinks she can handle the fallout of that, though she’ll still be lost for a way to stay in the country. But right now, she’s almost more anxious about what happens if he agrees. But tonight has been one of the most pleasant evenings she’s had in months and probably the most fun she’s had with anyone – she’s strenuously not thinking about the amount of fun she had sleeping with him. Diego’s her only real friend in this city and if after everything they can manage to hang out like this, then, Lila tries to convince herself, they can be pretend married for a while without it being too awkward.

Diego’s drying his hands on a dishtowel when she comes back into the kitchen.

“Diego?” Lila asks, tentatively.

“Mh?” He doesn’t properly acknowledge her as he reaches up to put the clean plates back into the overhead cabinet.

“Earlier… you asked if you could help me with my visa troubles…” Lila feels ridiculous. She’s always been confident and able to ask for, occasionally even straight up demand things. She has a sneaking suspicion that if it were anybody else, she’d just slap the cheque down on the counter and inform them of her plan, but somehow here with Diego, she’s just so unsure of herself.

Diego turns around and leans against the stove top. “Yeah?”

“I… uh… I’d pay you of course! I have money. Turns out I don’t have the same sense of pride as you,” Lila says with a slightly wistful shrug, “I took my mother’s money when she died, felt like it was the least I deserved after the way she treated me my whole life…” she drifts off.

“What do you want to give me money for?” Diego asks, crossing his arms but there’s a peculiar expression on his face that Lila can’t quite read.

“Will you…” She cuts herself off, she can’t ask him like that, “Would you marry me? You know, for money, so I could get a visa?”

Diego’s eyes go really, really wide. Clearly he did not expect her to ask that question and Lila immediately decides to backtrack, “No, you’re right, that’s insane! Forget I asked, I’m sure I can work something out somehow. I just need to do a bit more research and then…”

“Yeah, ok!” Diego interrupts her firmly and Lila’s mouth snaps shut.

She stares back at him and Diego looks no less harassed than when she first asked but he also seems resolved.

Lila panics. “You really don’t have to, I’m sure there’s loads of options. And honestly, if I’m just careful about it I’m sure nobody’s going to find…”

“I’ll do it!” Diego interrupts her rambling again and Lila can’t quite believe her ears.

“Diego, it’s illegal!” She says almost desperately.

“Are you trying to talk me out of it now?” Diego asks with no small amount of exasperation. Then he laughs, but with very little humour in it, “To be honest, the United States government and I have a slightly different understanding of what illegal means in this context.”

That gives Lila pause and she raises her eyebrows, questioningly.

Diego looks down at where he starts scuffing the toe of his shoe into the grout between the tiles, his arms are still tightly crossed.

“I was born in Mexico. From what I can piece together my mother brought me over the border when I was only a few months old. She died soon after that. The only things I have my father to thank for are my siblings and my citizenship. So yeah, I’ll help you.”

They’ve agreed to go down to city hall the next day to apply for a marriage license. No point in delaying the process, this way they can start the visa proceedings before Lila is officially illegally in the country.

After agreeing to get married the ease with which they spent the evening flies out of the window again and they quickly retreat to their separate rooms.

Diego’s lying, still dressed, on top of his comforter waiting till he can’t hear Lila moving about anymore before he’ll head to the bathroom to get ready for bed himself.

He doesn’t regret agreeing to Lila’s plan, not really. It’s fucked up that she has to even resort to something like this to avoid getting thrown out of the country, and honestly, had she asked he would have said yes even if she hadn’t offered him money.

But it’s less messy this way, a clean business arrangement. He already feels just a little bit guilty, because he’s not sure he didn’t also agree out of some sudden selfish fear that she’d leave. He pushes that thought back down as well, because what should he have done, say no just because he can’t quite handle his feelings for her? That wasn’t really an option either.

He breathes out heavily when the light in the hall goes off and gets up from the bed to go brush his teeth.

#otp: just be gentle #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #dielila #diego x lila #diego/lila #tua #the umbrella academy #fanfic #ongoing fic

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princepestilence · 6 years

Text

2018′s “worth it” things.

This has been the best year of my life so far. I’ve said that most years since my twenties kicked off, I’m pretty sure, but this one is head and shoulders ahead of the pack on basically every front and in some ways I literally couldn’t fully conceptualise until it happened to me. Obviously, not everything about this year was most wonderful--this health news is going to do a lot of fucking around with next year--but I’m so grateful for 2018. Twenty-gayteen, hero of years.

[hbomberguy voice] 2018 Was Brilliant, and Here’s Why:

remember how I got disqualified in the heats for the 3MT in 2017 and it kind of crushed me for a little bit? Well, this year, I got second... in the final, in front of a crowd of over two hundred people, on a stage with bright lights and microphones and video recording, the whole everything. I came second, even though I was the youngest person there, working in TAEM (as compared to engineering or sciences), talking about fictional monsters. It’s been long enough that I’ve sort of forgotten the rush of that feeling, but I actually did it. I went from not even getting through a little faculty heat to being off by outright winner by like a single point. Quote me, in 2017: “I’m going to look back on this year’s failure as the last time it happened to me, before I became the (exceedingly good) version of me I will be by next year and all years after.”

did my first radio appearance, the day after the 3MT. Only a few hours to prepare (emotionally, intellectually) and it went decently well, I think! I really liked it and it’s cemented that I want to do more of this whenever possible. I really like audio work; I love talking to people, with people. I want work--or projects, I don’t need money for it to be good for my soul--that lets me do that.

I met my girlfriend. She’s amazing and I love her and I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with her over the last nine months or so, and that’s brought so much to my life. My world has gotten bigger and more wonderful from knowing her, from sharing what she loves and cares about with her, and frankly I can see so many ways I’ve changed for the better since we met, because of her influence. I like to think I’ve had an equally--or perhaps almost equally? she’s really done a lot for me--positive effect on her life, and I very much intend to continue on that front. She’s so clever and kind and so goofy and I look forward to talking with her every day. When I think how closely we got to never meeting, I almost believe in fate. Last December I said, after a crush didn’t turn out: “Something else can happen now. I’m hoping someone who can return my feelings will walk into my life eventually. Soon would be nice, of course, but I can wait.”

I went overseas to Canada and the US for the first time, and I met friends I was sometimes worried I’d never get to meet--or at least not for years. It was so wonderful I don’t really have appropriate words to articulate it. The happiness I had is so much bigger than my vocabulary can manage. Getting to hang out with Kaitlin in Vancouver each evening, going to Gastown and finding magic ghost dogs in the park and discovering the wedding by the sea and, of course, Alan, Brandon, and Tori, is an experience I’ve missed ever since I left. Getting to spend time in the US with two families I care a lot about, going to Harry Potter world, and going to Soft Power and midnight ice-cream afterwards, and the tar pits, and poke in the park, and bubble tea--sorry, BOOB tea--any time of the day felt like meeting myself from a parallel universe. It suddenly felt real, how easily I could call that time and place a home. I will be back soon, I hope.

I met Bill Moran again, but this time I was performing my first proper slam poem. He liked it a lot and we had a few words at the end. His set was, naturally, incredible and I can’t wait to see him perform again next year. I’ve done several poems since then, and they’ve been so well received by the slamily, I’m still kind of emotional thinking about it. Poetry has become a huge part of my life this year, and I’m so glad for it.

on a similar note, less of a big deal but still neat: I set up a writing shop on a forum and accidentally out-competed the entire site. It was so fun and easy to write poems and things for people, and I really enjoyed it. It’s made me realise I actually thrive by sharing work, and I need to find more opportunities and ways to have that sort of interaction with “fans.” Also: wrote a few games for mafia, went pretty well.

I’m getting on better with my siblings. We’ve always had rocky moments, because of age differences and personality/worldview clashes, but this year has turned out remarkably peaceful, particularly between myself and my little brother, and I’m relieved and grateful. For a few years, I was a rotten older brother, and I’ve felt a lot of guilt over that. I wanted to do better and I think slowly and cautiously things are improving between us.

didn’t play a lot of games in general--but did play a lot of Spyro in the last few months, and it brought me so much joy, all the more excellent for being at a time when I really needed it. This little purple dragon was basically my constant companion while I recovered from my surprise hospital adventure, which made that otherwise fairly stressful, uncomfortable time not only bearable but fun.

I went to the 200 Years of Frankenstein conference! It was so cool and I got to talk to a lot of people, and make new friends. I lived with a good friend for a week and although I was exhausted by the end of it, I am so so glad I went and got to experience it all. I would have been heartbroken to miss out on this, since it won’t happen again in my lifetime. 300 Years of Frankenstein is a long way off.

I taught a whole cohort for the first time and I loved it. I loved them. I miss teaching those classes and I wish I could go back in time and do it again. I feel so fortunate to have been given the opportunity and it really bolstered my confidence re: teaching. The students gave me the loveliest feedback afterwards, and it makes my heart glow thinking about it.

made a D&D character, and a Blades in the Dark character! The idea of playing these kinds of games honestly really stressed me out--it feels ways to close to like, improv comedy or improv acting or literally improv anything, which I hate, I’m intimidated by spontaneity--but I made the characters and I love them both so so much. I haven’t got to use either of them yet, but it’s so... nice. Refreshing. Liberating, to actually let myself like a character I’ve made. I want to do that so much more. 2019, OCs Year. I also want to play these games, and maybe even run a few. DMing seems in my wheelhouse and I kind of want to try it?

my hair is really long and at least once every day I think about how much I love it. This was such a good decision I made in 2018, and I’m glad I stuck with it all year, even when I was tempted at times to cut it. It looks really good and, although I’m not quite sure how to articulate the thought, I feel like me. I feel I look like myself. I did not feel like this at all when my hair was short and I literally never liked it much.

found a number of new podcasts that I adore. Made a nice habit in the winter of having a candle-lit bath and listening to an episode to relax and treat myself.

I feel like there’s so much else to include but this year has felt so so long, January feels like two years ago. But I guess that speaks to how much good was in this year, that I can’t easily recall close to all of it.

#2018 resolutions

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fidelishaereticus · 6 years

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age and identity

So as you may be aware, I have been experiencing Some Angst lately to the tune of “my age feels viscerally wrong and repulsive to me and i can’t live with it.” In trying to parse why i feel this way, i’ve come to the following (tentative) conclusion: Age (or our conception thereof) informs a major component of our social and personal identity, and age, like gender, is largely a social construct. That’s why I’m experiencing this particular (very familiar) cocktail of angst. And before you assume that I’m going to slide from here straight into nope-ville like that girl who claimed to be transracial, LET ME ASSURE YOU: THAT’S NOT WHERE I’M GOING WITH THIS. I know the equivalency only reaches so far, but as someone who has experienced and worked through gender dysphoria, it’s been a helpful analogy for me, so I’m gonna go ahead and articulate it.

It’s like this. Our conceptions of gender spring from a cultural elaboration upon a biological reality (namely, sex and mild sexual dimorphism) that we’ve oversimplified and dichotomised. Where we go wrong is when we mistake the parts that we made up (or the parts we can choose and change) for genetically determined and unalterable facts, when we assign the whole package of gender and tell people it’s all biology and they can never change it and consequently can never have valid access to any identity outside that box. I think (i hope) people are starting to appreciate what a load of bull-crap that whole practice is. But we pull some very similar bullshit maneuvers with age. We’ve based our conceptualisation of it off a biological reality (namely, human development and ageing), but we’ve oversimplified and elaborated upon that reality to the point where we often mistake things we made up about it for deterministic truths. People really do “identify” with ages and assume social roles based on them. And sure, a lot of that is good and healthy and helps society to function. But much of what we think of as age-determined traits are not actually age-determined at all, and that can be hurtful. It’s horrifying to be told that some aspect of your personality that’s purely you—something you feel you wouldn’t be yourself without—has an expiration date well before your death. It’s horrifying to know that you’re allowed full access to your identity now, but in a few short years that privilege will be taken from you, and you’ll be expected keep living without it. To keep living as not-yourself. It’s horrifying.

Unfortunately, age isn’t exactly like gender, and the same solutions won’t apply (i’m not going to argue that people should be allowed to be “trans-age”---that’s inappropriate and insulting). I think the best we can do with age is to work hard to divorce the socially constructed aspects of age from the age-range they’ve been assigned to. This with the following very important caveats:

1. I absolutely concede that the chronological timing of one’s birth is a fact of the physical universe.* How we conceptualize that chronology and how we “count” from there is technically a social construct, but it’s a very useful one and i’m not suggesting we overturn it. It’s good to have ways to describe reality and keep track of when things happened, and we should do so with as much scientific rigour as possible.

2. Different developmental phases coincide with being closer to or further from the time of one’s birth, and those are not social constructs either (though there is often much more variation in how the patterns unfold than people imply). These differences must be taken into consideration where necessary. 3. Arguably the most important developmental difference is that which distinguishes an fully developed human from one who is not. How we as a culture define “child” versus “adult” is obviously a social construct (and has indeed changed a lot throughout history), but there’s a very important reality behind that one. Throwing that distinction out the window would be a pretty Terrible Idea on many fronts, and I’ll never suggest that we do it. There are however definitely large swaths of it that could use revision (see: the idea adults can’t or shouldn’t enjoy certain fun activities anymore, or the idea that children don’t deserve certain forms of respect.

On the whole, however, I think we ascribe way more to age (even to very specific age-numbers) than can be justified by biology, and i would very much like to throw all of that useless garbage out the window for the reason of: it makes me sad. I know I’m not the first person to propose this, but i feel like it needs saying bc imho we’re still doing a very shitty job of throwing it out the window or even talking about it in productive ways. I don’t exactly how to begin throwing it out the window more effectively, but i would really like to. It would eliminate well over half of my daily angst and identity discomfort if I could be free of it.

For an example (and the rest of this is just rambling): I don’t want to be complimented on being “young at heart”: i want to do away with the notion that my age has anything to do with how energetic or creative or silly or fun-loving or whatever I am. Because it really doesn’t. I know people mean well, but what i hear is: you were expecting me to be Boring bc i’m old. And to me that feels just as shitty as being told i was “really strong for a girl” (1. I don’t identify as a girl and 2. hi there sexism thanks for implying that girls are weak). And I don’t “identify” as an age. It’s just,,,a fact that i have no control over, like the fact that I’m 5′1. Yean, I was born in a certain year, and have presumably been kicking around since and have had time to reach full maturity, and statistically it’ll be pretty weird if i’m still around in 75 years or so. But other than that?? I don’t wanna hear about it. I don’t want to hear “bright young 20-something,” i don’t want to hear “old hag” i don’t want to hear it. I don’t want people to look at me and try to guess my age and then make bullshit assumptions based on that. oh but ~medical complications~ you might say! we have to look out for the fragile elderly yeah, whatever, medical complications are between me and my doctor. also? tons of people have medical complications in their 20s. ON AVERAGE older people are more fragile but it’s not set in stone. Some people in their 70s are more constitutionally robust than some people in their teens. AND THAT’S FINE. if you need medical attention you need medical attention, at any age, and it doesn’t make you any less valuable. and if you don’t? you don’t. oh but ~experience~ you might also say and ok, to an extent that’s fair, but ALSO NOT SUPER CLEAR CUT like,,,,idk man. some people in their early 20s are Experienced af its like they’ve already lived 1000 years and Done Everything its wild. and some older people? it’s like,,,,have you ever left your house? I was really a Child well into my 20s, in a lot of ways—not in that I was a whiny brat who couldn’t take care of myself, but in that certain parts of my brain and body were just very slow to reach full maturity. experience and maturation happen very differently in different people. ugh, anyway, i could do this with almost everything we “assume” about people based on age, there are always exceptions to trends, and then on top of that there are LOADS of assumptions that are pure cultural bullshit (for an obvious one: Adults don’t play make-believe, they have Put Away Childish Things). I’m done with this shit. I don’t wanna hear it.

*unless you want to get into whacky theoretical physics re what even is the physical universe in which case i have no idea so don’t ask

#age #stuff and thinks #ageism #identity #about me

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escarlatafox · 6 years

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@mackledberries hey. I wanted to try talking to you again if that’s ok. I wanted to try and help you understand some different points of view.

It’s been a while and you might not really remember me. I went off to China for half a year like I said I would, came back and have been busy with other things. I hope you’ve been alright.

This is probably going to be very long, and for that I apologise. I like writing out long things and do my best to be very specific about the points I’m trying to make. There’s also, I think, so much to address that can’t even fit in this one post.

Let’s start off. I want to ask you. How many people do you think, if you quoted them something from the first ten seasons of the simpsons, would get the quote? What if you started talking about an episode from the first ten seasons of the simpsons? How likely do you think it would be that they would have seen, or at least know about that episode?

Now what about the past ten seasons of the simpsons?

Let’s narrow the category of people down to “people who like the simpsons”. People who have seen, and enjoy the show. What do people mean when they say “I love the Simpsons”?

There’s no secret of the fact that The Simpsons is long past its peak. I think I can comfortably say that we Simpsons fans are fully aware of this. There is some extensive debate and discussion about the decline of The Simpsons and exactly when this gradual fall took place, what episodes were turning points, etc.

I want to mark out two points of reference for how the show in its current incarnation differs from its classic era. The cultural relevance of the show (and by extension, how many people are paying attention to the new episodes?), and the show’s quality. Or in other words - how true is the show being to itself and its characters, as they have been established?

I’ll distinguish between “classic simpsons” and “post-classic simpsons”. even though we can argue about where the cutoff point between each should be and the fact that the show has arguably gone through more stages than just those two. I recognise all of those complex particularities, but when I say “classic simpsons” I’m assuming that a specific era comes to your mind that at least roughly aligns with my own, and when I say “post-classic simpsons” you also have a good idea of what I am talking about.

I think the two of us have fundamentally different ways that we approach our conceptualisations of The Simpsons and Simpsons canon, and that that is the source of some of our differences, so there are some things I’d like to map out here.

Simpsons, during the 90s, was classic Simpsons. It was at its most culturally relevant. It impacted pop culture a great deal and the vast majority of people were keeping up with it, watching the new episodes, and cared about the content of those new episodes. The show was itself because it had known no different. The foundations for its characters were laid down.

We then, during the 2000s and 2010s, witness a split. The cultural relevance of post-classic Simpsons rapidly diminished. Far less people were paying attention with every new episode. No one really cared anymore. And as the extensive debate among Simpsons fans demonstrates, the show had changed. It wasn’t the same anymore.

The entity known as “The Simpsons” was, however, still present in popular culture during this time. you would still see stuff about it, people write thinkpieces, there’s merch, there’s discussions, it maintains a kind of relevance. But here’s the important distinction I want to make: Classic Simpsons was the driving force behind the vast majority of any relevance it continued to maintain, the vast majority of any discussion stimulated on the topic of The Simpsons.

Post-classic Simpsons continues to put out new episodes, but is no longer relevant to people. People, at large, don’t care anymore. They aren’t paying attention. Classic Simpsons is still relevant to people, to this day, it has endured in minds and memories.

When people say “I love The Simpsons”, by and large, they are talking about classic simpsons. The distinction hardly needs to be made because recent Simpsons has fallen so out of relevance. So little people are paying attention or care. But they do care about classic Simpsons.

And The Simpsons characters, due to the incredible cultural relevance they gained and (thanks only to classic Simpsons) maintain to this day, are icons, in and of themselves. They are iconic. They are representations of concepts, of ideas, not just the character that they themselves embody. They encapsulate that, but also so much more. And what they encapsulate can be different depending on the individual. ...Well, with this paragraph I’m mainly just talking about Lisa. But we’ll get to that. It can apply to the other characters too.

Modern-day Simpsons is fundamentally different from classic Simpsons, it is for the most part poorly written, distinctly lacks cultural relevance and very, very little people care about it. And the characters are handled poorly.

You seem to take nearly 30 years of Simpsons canon and episodes all as one cohesive whole, and construct your opinions of the characters purely based on that.

I take other factors into account. If the current state of the show fundamentally suffers from bad writing, is culturally irrelevant compared to its former glory, and handles things badly, I’m not going to give it the same amount of weight as I do for the older episodes, obviously there’s a lack of cohesion and continuity in the show’s canon and you can pick and choose stuff.

What I don’t get is... why would you let something the modern-day show does ruin your perception of the show in its classic era? I’m not just talking about Lisa here, but rather ANYTHING that you hate that the show has done recently that does not align with classic Simpsons. You have the power to ignore it, I promise. At the very least, you don’t have to treat it with the same level of severity as if it was classic simpsons.

My view is that classic Simpsons is classic for a reason. It’s untouchable in any way by modern Simpsons. And this is the majority view btw, because people tend not to keep up with modern Simpsons and don’t care about it, even if they love the classics. It doesn’t have the same canonical weight, not by a long shot.

Classic Simpsons and modern Simpsons are two distinct entities. There was a lot of grey for a while there, debate over the cut off, but wherever the cutoff was, it’s long past by this point.

You take Lisa Simpson as a single whole, a single character spanning almost 30 seasons.

I have classic Lisa, maybe an ~intermediate/transition~ Lisa, and a modern Lisa, sometimes a Lisa Simpson who embodies all three, who has existed consistently for those thirty years as you assess, or sometimes I play around and add the first two Lisas together and leave out the third, modern-day Lisa. and then there’s Lisa Simpson the icon.

Neither of our approaches are necessarily wrong.

Correct me if I’m wrong about any of this, but from what I’ve seen of your blog, you don’t actually really have anything against classic-era Lisa. I recall you mentioning that you started hating her from the episode “On A Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister” onwards. Which is from the sixteenth season. So your perception of Lisa Simpson from seasons 1-halfway through 16 promptly soured as a result, since you aren’t inclined to treat parts of the show as separate entities(?).

Let me assure you that the Lisa Simpson who holds all the power and the love and the sway and the adoration and the fans that you complain of is the very same Lisa that you don’t have a problem with, for the most part, if this is the case.

Classic Lisa is loved by Lisa fans. She is my favourite Lisa, and who I would say is everyone’s favourite Lisa.

Classic Lisa is a symbol. A symbol of many things, including speaking out against injustice and standing up for what is right. The image of Lisa Simpson comes to represent these principles even when it is not classic Lisa. Because remember, classic Lisa is the one people remember and care about.

In a post of yours, you ask if people have been paying attention for the past few seasons. The thing is, of course they haven’t, and it’s strange that you even ask.

You are right to ask this in one respect: the Lisa speaking about the Apu issue was indisputably modern Lisa, airing in a modern Simpsons episode, and she has been modern Lisa for years and years. Your response to the outcry is: “this is completely in character for modern Lisa”.

The thing is, people were upset that the image and icon of Lisa Simpson and all of the things that represents, carrying that image, spoke and exhibited an attitude that contradicts classic Lisa’s. Not just that, even, because remember how I mentioned above that Lisa became an icon, I daresay to many girls everywhere like myself, inspiring them and becoming a rolemodel of sorts. Lisa Simpson, the symbol, was being used in a manner incongruent of what Lisa Simpson, the symbol, represents, even when this is occurring on a modern Simpsons episode. Because this is a character who looks the same, sounds the same as classic Lisa, and beyond classic Lisa has become a symbol. A symbol in whatever form of media she is in, in whatever year. And the symbol spoke and it didn’t match expectations.

The solution is not to argue that Lisa Simpson should not be symbolic of these things, and that her fans are the ones who have it wrong and that somehow they misunderstand her character. Because whether you like it or not, Lisa has become a symbol for these kinds of things, and she was one of the few characters that were able to be rolemodels for little girls like myself in the way that she was. I don’t think the solution is to tear that symbol down. You’d be tearing down an image in the media of a smart little girl who speaks her mind, who is depicted as passionate and with a bright future ahead of her.

Because I don’t know where I would be without Lisa Simpson. She was such a source of inspiration for me. As a little girl I admired her, practically worshipped her, because here was another little girl and she was really intelligent, who showed that it was good to work hard and be unafraid to speak your mind, stand up for yourself and for what is right, care about things, not stand for injustice. She’s my absolute favourite simpsons character for a reason. And this is the kind of impact she had on many other people. Would you really want to take that away, if you could?

I remember turning 8 years old and feeling really happy, because “wow, I’m the same age as Lisa Simpson!”. I felt so honoured just to share the same age as this fictional character.

When characters become so hyper-recognisable and entrenched in popular culture, sometimes they can become even more than the sum of their parts.

When I and other fans look at Lisa Simpson, we see classic Lisa Simpson, when we talk about Lisa Simpson, we are mainly talking about classic Lisa. Why? Because classic Simpsons is mainly all the Simpsons that matters and that really held any relevance. Because, as a result, the canon of classic Simpsons gets weighted much, much more heavily. Society as a whole weighs classic Simpsons canon more heavily because most people are familiar with it and have little to no clue of anything to do with modern Simpsons canon.

And when people say they love Lisa Simpson, they’re basically talking about classic Lisa.

But wait: you say. Even when they specifically refer to modern Lisa? What’s all that about?

I weight classic Lisa the heaviest, and then after that intermediate Lisa. anything after that is give or take. Those are the foundations. I don’t keep a tally of every bad thing Lisa might have done over the past five seasons and allow that to impact my thoughts on the recent eps. I mean I barely care or pay attention when I watch the new episodes anyway. If Lisa says or does something I disagree with, I do dislike those words/actions and it does impact my view of her... For that episode. Simpsons episode are self-contained basically, but, especially the modern episodes... really don’t matter, in my eyes. So everything resets and whatnot. There’s a lot of other areas I could articulate here but, yeah.

Classic Lisa is paramount, it is the primary lens through which the vast majority of people view her character, even when looking at later episodes. Because that’s the Lisa that people are most familiar with. And just because they haven’t seen every single episode or kept up with the show for the past ten years doesn’t mean their assessments are wrong. it means they fundamentally approach and treat simpsons canon differently.

And even if you do make a distinction and specifically hate modern Lisa, for the most part, you’re raging against a shell of a character that no one is actually paying much attention to anyway. Modern Simpsons aren’t culturally relevant, modern Lisa isn’t culturally relevant... I think I may be the very embodiment of those “rabid Lisa fans” that you hold in contempt. But I mean, I’m... not really that invested in modern Simpsons? Given everything I’ve said about how I treat Simpsons canon, is it really that much of a big deal? I just don’t understand. i mean I understand being upset with a lot of things about the show and stuff and the writing. that’s fair enough. Although I would like to point out another thing. I’m pretty sure that when people write for Lisa Simpson, they a) are thinking mainly of classic Lisa and Lisa as a symbol and pen her so sympathetically and stuff as a result. I think they also have the same “new episode=reset, only consider the early seasons” perspective. The way they write her doesn’t really match classic Lisa because they’ve been writing her differently for so many years. something like that b) they write her relying on the primary lens of classic/intermediate Lisa. They expect the audience to be wearing that lens. and for the most part, it works.

Like, if you only hate modern/post-classic Lisa... Your only real enemies are the current people working on the show, is what I think. And the thing is... Lisa is just one element of the bad writing that has been produced over the years. And no one particularly cares for the show as it currently is, so yeah... I think the current people working on the show would mainly be the only people you’re against. And like... the majority of Simpsons fans, including myself, are right there with you, buddy.

And apart from everything I’ve written here there are STILL plenty of things we disagree on when it comes to Lisa. But that’s no matter. I wanted to open up this dialogue with you. I want not only to help you understand some other perspectives but also get a clearer view of your approaches to simpsons canon and why you choose those approaches, etc. If there’s anything you’re curious about questions etc feel free to ask and stuff and I will like to hear your thoughts.

It’s really late for me right now and I’m absolutely exhausted so I’m gonna finish this up even though I’m not even sure I communicated across everything that I wanted to. I hope you will take the time to have a read through this and make a response. Hope what I wrote was decent enough.

#the simpsons #mackledberries #/#//#///#Lisa Simpson

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voidbeantm · 6 years

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the post-concert sadness is intense this time round and i really didn't feel like dumping this on twitter or any of my friends so it's going here ignore me just let me ramble

i really dont know what it is about concerts that leave so many people with post-concert sadness. it's so common and yet it's really hard to pinpoint a main cause.

part of it has to be the crash that comes when the post-concert euphoria wears off. it's like caffeine. the buzz is incredible but the crash is extremely draining.

maybe it's the fact that ive spent so long looking at these people and these performances through a small screen. as much as i talk about how important it is to conceptualise and treat celebrities like real people, the fact of the matter is that no matter what, celebrities never really seem like "real people". yes, they're real people but they're essentially strangers. and when you spend most of your time observing them through a screen, your brain starts feeling about them the same way it feels about fictional characters you really really like. they're real but you never really expect to see them with your own two eyes, walking and talking in front of you. there's a disconnect between how you feel and what you know rationally. suddenly, it hits you that these people are real and right there, being completely incredible. every frustrating facial expression, every surprising and dangerous dance move, every tiny moment of friendship and banter, it's real, they're doing it right in front of your eyes.

maybe it's the fact that for the first time ever, im not alone during a concert and suddenly, my anxieties leave me completely and allow me to completely let loose instead of holding back just a smidge like i always have. ive seen them twice before this but none of them were the korean concerts and ive always been alone and ive never gone this wild before. it's freeing and euphoric and we refer again to what i said about euphoria crash.

maybe it's seeing them in their most natural comfortable state relative to being onstage. the two times i saw them previously were in singapore and malaysia. it's evident that they're much more comfortable in their homeland. which, by the way, completely understandable!! for one, there's no language barrier in the way and they're free to express themselves fully without having to pause for the translator which, no matter what, will always distrupt the natural flow of banter. there's the fact that the concert hall is so so so much bigger. there's the fact that the crowd at home probably just feels familiar and comfortable. vixx and kstarlights have such a close rapport that they rarely have to guess how the crowd will react to the things they say or do. with foreign crowds that you dont perform to as often, every single time it's a gamble. there's a much bigger pressure to impress and do as well as possible to leave a lasting impression in order to grow your audience there. i dont know the right words to describe it but there was just something different about seeing them this time. they were so open and comfortable. maybe what i said about finally having friends to share this experience with earlier applies here as well in a way. when i was alone, it wasnt like i enjoyed them any less, i just felt a tiny bit less free to let loose. in the company of familiar and comfortable people, i was finally able to. it could possibly be the same for them as well.

on my end there was the whole business of sitting so far away that i watched the whole thing through either my binoculars or the display screen. i always forget that im not able to pause a real life performance and go back to rewatch parts i might have missed. during concerts, it's do or die. if you miss it, you miss it. i haven't had the chance to check fanaccounts or fancams in detail on twitter but even a brief glace told me that i most definitely missed quite a few bits. and with the amount rewinding i freely admit to doing, it's not a surprise how much i hate missing out on things.

related to the above, im actually not sure how much of me missing out was actually just me being unable to remember most of anything that happens during a concert once it is over. especially when it comes to new songs. aside from a few key parts of the choreography, i barely remember what the performances for the new songs were like. i can't remember most of what happened. this always happens to me after every single concert and apparently, im not the only one. it's like there's something about the nature of a concert that exists in a time-shifted dimension. everything exists and is held in that dimension, in that moment of time alone. you're only ever able to bring scraps of it out with you. it's like trying to hold onto a dream after you've woken up. unless you write down everything right away, it's gone. but then you see a stray photo, the odd fancam, and it triggers a memory. it's almost magic. and you can't just rewatch the performances through fancams or the dvd even though you'd have a much easier time seeing everything going on but it's just different. you'd be back to seeing them on a screen again. and dreams dont work like that anyway dreams are lived once, the rest are just disjointed memories.

finally, there is just plain old missing them. i already miss them. i just got reminded once again that they're real and in front of me over a day ago and now they're back to being images on a screen. every song i hear, every video i watch just makes me remember that, at one point, they were real. and i miss them.

honestly, this it didnt really fully hit until i boarded the plane alone and set off for home. for the first time in three days, i was without friends to fill the void or the stress of travelling on a time limit to distract me. suddenly, i just felt sad and hollow and tired. on a personal level im probably also exhausted both physically and mentally from the constant travelling, especially on a time limit as well as socially from meeting "new" people and being in the presence of people in general for a few days straight. ren and natsu were incredible and so fun (i will not ever get over what it's like to hang out with actual starlights ever) but you know how it is with introversion. even when you with people you want to be with, your energy will deplete. my brain is telling me it's going to clock out for a good few days before its ready to come back again

i dont have a satisfying conclusion to this mess of words. i dont even know how i feel now that ive bled off all of my feelings into text. it's a mix of sadness, wistfulness, and residual awe because everything i said above as well as having to say goodbye to my friends.

i dont want this long ramble to make it seem like im not grateful for the opportunity to see them in a korean concert. i absolutely am. i will cherish this memory forever. i just. i wish i were both less and more predictable of a person. if i could i want to do it again. i want to see them in a korean concert again. but i don't know what i'll be like a year from now. what if i no longer like them? some people probably find these to be blasphemous words but im not going to lie about myself. interests change. ive gone through so many obsessions in my over two decades of life. given, this is the most involved ive ever been in an interest and the only fandom ive ever made any friends in. but what if i do stop liking them? based on available data, the average length of an obsession is about three years for me. im approaching my third year as a starlight. my projected expiry date is coming up. i dont want it to. but i dont think i can stop it if it does. i shouldn't. no one is obligated to like anything they dont want to. but i dont want to not like them anymore. i dont want to lose what ive managed to find here.

#personal #rambles #long post #i hope i formatted the read more right

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crackcrocs · 4 years

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DEATH WILL ONLY BE THE BEGINNING #2

2.Disconnected/ Dissociation/ Depersonalisation / Darkness

Most days I'm not sure that I would choose to look after me... I would like to give up and scream.

consistent healing with mental health is the most frustrating thing. like how do you justify yourself to the people getting annoyed at you for your tics when you barely even know what a tic is and why you’re doing what you’re doing? people never believe your explanations, or it would take them studying you to see the reality of the depth of suffering, why I’m doing these annoying things and it is hard to explain. I can’t say that I can’t control it because that’s not completely true- it’s not like a muscle spasm completely out of control, its more of an impulse a bit like OCD behaviour. My brain follows mental patterns n finds it difficult to not get out of the cycle. its like scratching at a mosquito bite where yeah technically you can just not scratch it but it feels agonising not to and takes all your concentration not to do.

I’ve been more uncomfortable with the idea of being a person lately. i can’t conceptualise time so I get this feeling sometimes where its like , I hate the fact that I’m a person and I exist and it usually makes me super confused & I go into a misty state of mind where everything feels like it’s piling up leaving me anxious n too deep & I just feel too disconnected from everything. I feel lost when I look at my limbs; they grow heavier.

I personally try to spend as little time looking in the mirror as possible because it can be a big trigger for my dissociation. but taking pictures of my day/ what I’ve eaten helps me remember i have been present in the long run. This is why I have a complex relationship with social media, sometimes when I go on it I get depressed even though I want to be active. I cope by only looking in the mirror with other people there or when I have a specific reason to. It’s like I know my soul but my physical form confuses me.

I don’t even tell my friends I’m dissociating any more cause it’s just,, a given. I feel really embarrassingly bad. It’s one of the few things with my mental health that I try and minimise and hide from my friends- but I end up hiding myself as a whole, when my soul wants to be present but my body doesn’t know how to comply. I’m really sorry people have to deal with that, it’s so scary to be disconnected.

it’s annoying to have sucky mental health cos even when I want to get help I get embarrassed & feel ashamed that my brain is the way it is. I feel like a burden, or I don’t care enough about myself to believe I deserve help & to be healthy & mentally okay. I often realise the depth of self hate & my brain tells me I’d be better off dead.

I feel forced to engage in ‘the caste system of life’ . As humans were just expected to ‘keep calm and carry on’ but I’m genuinely tired. I can’t grasp that I ever used to work 2 jobs in a day at one point, I can’t grasp how. I feel an immense amount of distress about having to work in these times too, it’s like finally my mental is free to roam to whichever corner it deserves to feel peace without having to mask at all times, finally I get some extra time to organise my journals and paint & we’re actually still being made to feel obligated to go about our days as if everything is normal, while being tuned into a fear frequency. I feel like so many things are obfuscated with absolute lies & it’s hard to go on just because you have to but not cos you actually desire it.

I’m a great worker & communicator when I do have the energy, but I don’t have any dream job because I don’t dream to slave away to a capitalist system that perpetuates all kind of nonsense, i dream to dismantle it. Which I know I can’t do, so then I feel powerless, insignificant & small. for now I just can’t be arsed doing anything. maybe deep down I still have hope.

I’ve become more pessimistic that optimistic,I receive these death threats from my brain too In really dumb moments, & I’m like oh my gosh we have to just keep washing dishes & putting them away & putting more food in them & doing this over & over until we die.

I am someone that needs people but I have these silly built in coping mechanism. it’s like this character in my brain needs to hop to the recharge centre,it often wants to hide in my mental cavern of preservation because it feels like it’s disconnected from everything else. like how is everyone holding up jobs or education ? how will I be able to have all these good times & spoil my family & friends like I want to, if I can’t hold up a job ? why can’t my head not be such a bloody mess & why can’t I seem to conform to normality ??? My brain starts asking the questions, my brain starts caving away.

Even a long time ago my brain stopped planning for a future past 30 because of my individual situation & traumas, and mainly because the world is a horrible illusion once you grow & realise how truly powerless & insignificant it makes you feel. dissociation turns my memories into flat, unconvincing shadows.

thankfully I haven’t gave up & I’m still here with a bit more of a desire to go on- but only because of the inspiring creative loving caring people that surround me. over the years I’ve come across marvellous souls & I have the most beautiful family I could ever ask for. i would never want to seem ungrateful. I know the whole saying of ‘silence speaks volumes’ but as someone who’s always felt like they need to explain themselves for their entire life, I’ve learned that sometimes silence is necessary, to be able to fully be yourself & uplift the people in your life, you need to learn how to be comfortable & confident with your own self. I’m washing away my Shame and painting my shell shiny y’all!!!! Soon come you’ll see the armour I’ve been working on in the flesh.

My silences are not done in a sense of ‘I need to work on me only & FIRST, THEN I can worry about you’ but a ‘I’ve never put myself first & ALSO need to worry about me the way I worry about you I want all of us to eat together, I just don’t wanna be that friend that feels like they’re holding people back from doing things because I’m on pause. and of course there’s the fact that compromise is necessary to make friendships work, I want to make time & be present.

I don’t feel obligated(I genuinely do want to be there) but in my head for things to run smoothly for everyone’s sake there needs to be consistency(I don’t wanna lose the people I love & want to grow with them) but someone said to me consistency is just obligation sprinkled. and sometimes it just be like that, I hate how all my messages start with ‘so sorry for these late replies’ I hate it. the people pleaser always feels the need to explain but i feel bad because I feel like I’ve let them down already & that I didn’t intend or want to ignore them I just have a terrible relationship with my phone,social media & I’m one of the worst communicators I know, even though In person & in a comfortable atmosphere-I’m someone who can speak for the whole of both Scotland and Tanzania. I have a very all or nothing type brain.

most time I’m restless too and its like..i get hyper aware of all my surroundings and its really scary and emotional for a little bit but then i just start dissociating hella and it sucks ,, it’s become a normal state of mind or thing my brain does to sort of reject humanity and stuff & when I do ‘zone out’ there has to be a sense of awareness in my brain, I care a lot & I’m aware that those on the other side will feel left the dark from the other end.

I just get embarrassed n I don’t wanna ‘be the fuck up’ even though my brain actively just keeps doing it. I’m not even exaggerating sometimes the anxiety builds up because some eedyat from my past that I wanted to avoid messages me. or because I can’t reply to all my people at once. (I have people & connects from Tanzania, Turkey & Scotland) so my messages will pile up & then I don’t know how to start the replies & then I freak out & feel like a failed shitty friend, I also don’t wanna be selective because I WANT to speak & hear from everyone I do maintain contact with, but then my brain dissociates.

sexual abuse, physical & narcissistic abuse sucks. It doesn’t control me - but it’s shaped a part of my brain. for the time’s I’ve had to ‘cope’ & go to work as if everything is okay, further masking. the times as a kid I felt like I’d get punishment or a beating for answering back or doing something or being disobedient or ‘wrong’, it fuelled my ability at being able to mask more. I could lie for as long as I could so remember thanks to pedo paul- he also distorted & lured me into feeling easy & comfortable in highly alarming uncomfortable scenarios no child should ever have to experience.

being myself fully, feeling comfortable to be myself & explain my brain has never been easy.

another example that also made me be able to mask, is growing up in a ‘perfect’ looking family with much more dysfunction than I realised the older I aged. there isn’t necessarily a lack of connection in my family-we have a lot of love & togetherness, we know how to be a team. we’re a fast & fierce intelligent,compassionate bunch & I’m thankful enough to have 2 very understanding parents that will listen..I could’ve spoken to them about certain things earlier, I wish I did but I can’t go back. I forgive & hope they forgive me for there were still years where I felt judged, or like I’d be disowned.

I think it’s invalidating for parents to write off the so called ‘teen phase’ phase as the result of hormones and irrational teenage anger.

We now have more of a relationship yet there’s still that disconnect or connect only when I’m communicating with one of them at a time (depending on the subject matter/ setting).i can still chill with them both but sometimes chat feels forced. they have given me the reassurance that I’ll never be judged with what I share. Though at one point I felt (or in my head) like the downer child, they did project feelings of shame which I think stemmed from a ‘place of concern’ - and that was due to a lack of familial friendship. Both my parents were made to be parents & did a damn good job at raising us because despite the flaws. we remain tough, empathetic, polite,sensible, witty, charming, fun, respectable & decent which are all qualities from both of their seed.

I think they both deserved different loves or a more open one. because you see it sometimes felt they could’ve put their parent badge aside and talk to me like a friend, I’m not sure if all my siblings felt the same but I did. I’m also thankful for all the lessons & can’t discount my parents parenting, they are great. I’m not saying they failed, I just think that if you want your child to communicate with you, there needs to be a sense of comfort ability for them to be able to open up. If you force them to speak while you’ve ingrained fear, you end up pushing them further away. I guess to an extent the whole ‘ingrain’ fear into your child so they can respect you does work, but this creates sneakier children too- finding ways to get away with things because they’re worried you’ll get them in trouble for doing so. so if the communication lessens as the child grows, it’s because they didn’t feel understood, despite being listened to. Anyways I love my family still, I’m just an over thinker & sometimes I feel like there’s a lack of soul level conversation & genuine laughter. there’s grudges held but not expressed so then the atmosphere of the household begins to feel stuffy. whether or not everyone realises it, whether it’s because different personality types clash in the house, a bunch of reasons perhaps. But yeah in terms of dissociating & tying masking into it, it would happen whenever I felt in danger or like someone would think i was not good enough and hurt me.

sometimes I can be dry & just wanna listen to my peoples. but I feel like I always need to talk because of my people pleaser brain that also feels the need to fill in silences or feels rude when it doesn’t respond but the reality is sometimes my brain doesn’t allow me to be able to be consistent with social media, messaging, calls etc- I have a disconnect from social media even tho part of me loves the concept so much & the communication aspect is such a bonus (especially with international friends & family£ in turn my life feels like a dramatic podcast. for a while now there’s been more a mentally tired feeling that reigns over my brain, it all just gets a bit blurry so I have this habit of ‘checking out’ when I feel like I’m under stress & there’s a chance of more overloaded- it sort of makes my brain disengage even more. for some people reality checks help, for others they make things worse. personally when I don’t feel good enough I start convincing myself I already failed & that I’m not worthy of my family n friends & all that yap, the brain mould grows!! whenever stress arises or my awkward brain starts conspiring against itself- the zone out will begin.

I don't even realise the weight of my words, how serious and ugly it is. I am floating around. for years. I don't remember what feeling real is like. I feel like everything is fake and even though I matter I’m unimportant until I wear my skin of confidence & the that life is a game. I want to be able to feel like a normal person and believe myself, to believe that life isn’t a dream. I can't. I am just floating all the time. I just want to feel real for once and not so fake.

I do use listening to music or a podcast as a coping strategy so i have something engaging for my brain to focus on. music grounds me when de realisation gets really bad. but then there’s always knowing that more and more is just piling up. It’s like an outer body experience where you’re watching your lifeless body turn blue & there’s a timer with spilling sand but you’re frozen.

I feel this pattern from childhood of escapism is gash coming into adulthood, feeling everything so intensely can genuinely get overwhelming my heart feels like a racing car. I’m keen & determined though. I’m hopefully going to learn more about the brain, human impulses, how we think, because learning about humans helps me understand why I do things more, and that sort of seems to help. I wanna be strong enough for the people I love, I want to support them in tough times too I just don’t always have conversations- I’m sorry. being half there isn’t nice,neither fun.

I also keep thinking there’s some bigger /thing/ Reason for the universe, maybe waiting for the aliens or government to blow us up with the push of a button lol. I spend more time thinking about the afterlife but don’t do enough in my present one. most days I feel like life is a game boy. Is there a reason why everyone does what they do etc? Is society too dead to mend ? Remembering that it’s just the laws of the universe (human instinct, physics) controlling everything can help me. The master key system helps. Vsauce Thoughty2, Dr Phil Valentine and Brother Panic, Infinite waters,studying, art, music & generally scrolling through youtube helps lol. but I really wonder does anyone else feel like they are interacting with the world but their head is wrapped in plastic, so they can see and hear but are still totally but imperceptibly separated from the world, so they just can’t quite..connect?

#LCZABIBU #deathwillonlybethebeginning

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astrotranslations · 7 years

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ASTRO, “JinJin-Moonbin Gave the Idea of Taking Off Our Tops at the Concert” ①

Despite the sweltering weather, I met up with ASTRO at a cafe in Iksan-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul during the afternoon of the 1st. It was a small and quiet cafe located in the alleyway but as soon as the six members of ASTRO stepped in, a bright and fresh atmosphere overspread the place.

I welcomed the six guys, who greeted me politely as soon as they entered, to take a seat and shared with them some refreshing drinks. Seemed like they would be thirsty and feeling hasty as they busily run around, going through their schedules on a hot day. The members ordered a variety of things off the menu and shared amongst themselves, it was amusing seeing them repeatedly exclaiming how delicious the food was.

ASTRO, who paused for a bit to catch their breath, sat in a circle around the table. I started off by asking how they felt having breathless ran for over 500 days since their debut. As expected of the leader, JinJin answered first.

"Because the fans show us so much love, we’re growing together. I’m thankful that a lot of people like us. I’m also proud. It makes me want to show them our diversity as well as a more developed side of ourselves in the future. But more than anything else, my grateful heart is the greatest."

All the 3 albums ASTRO released in 2016 secured a spot in Gaon’s chart for Top 100. Their debut album, 'Spring Up', placed 91st while their 2nd mini, Summer Vibes' placed 81st and their 3rd mini, Autumn Story', placed 51st. Their most recently released album, 'Dream Part. 01', grabbed no.20 in the album chart for the first half of 2017. The increase in album sales show you straight away ASTRO’s growth. What is their secret?

Rocky answered me clearly in a calm voice.

"I think the reason why people show an interest in us is because our team atmosphere is bright and energetic. I think it was when we were promoting 'Breathless' (title track for ASTRO’s 2nd mini) that our team starting to receive attention. As 'refreshing-dols'. They said that we have our own kind of vibe and a certain energy that we exude when we’re on stage. I think that’s our secret."

Moonbin then answered me with a serious facial expression.

"I think they like how we work hard. Since our seasonal albums (their 1st, 2nd, 3rd minis and special album conceptualised the seasons) and with our current 'Dream Part. 01', they tell us that it’s nice seeing how we work hard by drawing on our own style. I think the reason why we’ve risen a bit is because they slowly develop an interest seeing that side of us and also because of our individual schedules."

I was shocked how the high schooler Rocky and Moonbin who just turned 20 had a good grasp of their own feelings. As Rocky mentioned, ASTRO have the title of 'refreshing-dols'. Hearty young boys, loveliness, freshness, these are the charms that ASTRO boast of. Throughout 2016, they wore sporty and school themed outfits and really played up their charms.

In 'Dream Part. 01' which was released this year, you can tell that ASTRO have grown a little. ASTRO, who stepped onto the stage wearing shirts and putting on heels, transformed from 'boys' to 'youths'. I asked them whether they liked their change in image and how they’ve developed.

Moonbin opened up.

"At the beginning when we made our debut, I wondered to myself if we’d suit such a bright vibe." But looking back now, I think the company dressed us well in outfits that complimented us. We showed how we were growing through our seasonal albums but in 'Dream Part. 01', showed a matured side to us. We seized an image that wasn’t completely young and promoted with it. I like it."

The other members flashed their eye smiles hearing Moonbin who coolly answered, "I like it," and it felt like they were all in agreement. What flashed through their train of thoughts then was the 'transformation' ASTRO showed at their first concert.

The members put on flashy black outfits and performed 'Every Minute', 'Again', etc. with knife-like choreographies. The masculinity you couldn’t see before was overflowing. JinJin, Moonbin, etc. took off their tops and showed off their abs, drawing an enthusiastic response from the crowd. I was curious how they came about to pulling off that event.

JinJin explained it all.

"It was our first concert so we tried to secretly hold an event without the company knowing. Moonbin and I made a promise and planned to take off our tops. There were certain things we weren’t allowed to do (because of the venue conditions) so I talked to him about it after mulling over this and that. In the end it was promised that I would take off my top on the first day then Moonbin on the second day. I did take it off on the first day but our stylist dressed me again too fast. Our CEO came up to us after the concert ended and said, "If you’re gonna take it off then do it properly, what’re you doing?" So Moonbin was going to do it the next day but the members suggested we take it off together. To be honest, we were taken aback too. We didn’t discuss about Eunwoo taking off his top as well but he did so we were shocked."

There was such a behind story. To the members, who early in the year mentioned having a solo concert as their goal this year, it must’ve been a special moment so I fully understand their desire of wanting to hold an event.

Rocky, who was listening to JinJin talk, said as he smiled, "It was fun." The other members also had elated expression across their faces, as if they were recalling the concert. JinJin ended it off, "We enjoyed ourselves doing it."

So will they be aiming for a slightly more masculine feel for their next album? Moonbin thought about it for a bit then spoke.

"We don’t know for sure yet but it will be an extension of 'Dream Part. 01'. 'Baby' wasn’t just anything simple. We matched our outfits for the first time and gave the song a sense of unity by which you can tell that we’re a team. I think of it as a foundation for us to adopt a new feel. We might come back slightly more matured."

ASTRO went around countries in the beginning of the year, expanding the scale of their promotions. I asked them to tell me any anecdotes they had if they ever came across memorable interaction fans. Moonbin earnestly shed some light.

"The styles of each country differ with every one. Japanese AROHAs really focus when we’re on stage. Without even cheering, they give us all their attention when we’re singing and performing and then show us an explosive response when we’re done. I was amazed at that kind of culture. Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong were absolutely enthusiastic. They express a lot. As for Mexico, we went there when there was KCON MEXICO and it was a mountainous place so we couldn’t catch a breath and it was really hard. It was the day where we first revealed 'Again' on broadcast and the reactions were hot so we were able to wrap up safely. I think overseas fans are really passionate since they can’t see us often."

I guess he was recalling the fans’ yells, their cheers and the waving of their lightsticks because Moonbin’s black pupils were twinkling so bright and the corners of his lips went up.

Source: http://www.vop.co.kr/A00001186483.html

Translations by @99pmh Take out with full credits

#MJ #Myungjun #JinJin #Jinwoo #Eunwoo #Dongmin #Moonbin #Rocky #Minhyuk #Sanha #ASTRO

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namelessblacksheep · 6 years

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LESSONS IN THE GAME OF LIFE

Let’s face it, the one universal truth that anyone who has been on the planet can agree on: life is hard. If you are currently sat there shaking your head vehemently denying this then congratulations you have made it, or alternatively, you haven’t and just avoid anything and everything in your life.

The thing is no one ever said life was meant to be easy. If you look at what the point of life is, you may come up with a thousand answers from a thousand different people.

Everyone’s unique take on the purpose of life will be nuanced by the idiosyncratic conceptualisation of their own life and associated hopes, dreams, challenges and so forth. However, if we bring it back to a basic process, life is simply changing through the ages and stages we pass through. The more successfully we navigate these challenges and experiences the more likely we will report having a ‘good life’.

For me at least, life is about problem-solving my way through every day, week, month and year. The rinse cycle and repeat until the day comes when my time is up. Not very romantic or eloquent I know, but having been here long enough to see a few cycles come and go, that’s the way I see it.

Life is going to throw stuff at you every day and how you deal with it is ultimately going to decide your own evolution and experience. If you avoid problems, they may go away for a bit, but the chances are until you address and master them, there’s only so far your evolution can go.

If you imagine life is a video game, with various levels and end bosses to defeat to progress to the next one, the only way you can win the game is to get through all the stages and master all the challenges.

Sometimes you learn something at one stage that is essential to be mastered to even be able to navigate one later. What if you had to learn to swim in stage one because in stage three the whole level was under water? If you were to somehow find a way to cheat your way through, you’re eventually going to get stuck later on and in all likelihood go back and graduate from stage one anyway. If you want to progress that is.

To extend the metaphor a little further, when we consider ourselves as a player in this game, our character will have various strengths and weaknesses that will help or hinder them along the way. Throughout that process we utilise our respective strengths and address our weaknesses to successfully navigate the stage, but so can other characters with different skill sets.

I guess the point I am making is that there is no definitive way to achieve something, you have to problem solve with what you have and you don’t have it, seek to find a way to obtain it.

The end of level boss is the equivalent of a test or examination to check that you have learned all you need to. This is basically giving you the license to say that whatever shit you encountered down there on level one, you cleaned it up real good. Or to invoke the spirit of the Ghostbusters, ‘you ain’t afraid of no ghost’, so give me my £200 and let me pass go. You get the point.

The thing is like any game or exam until you learn the required knowledge to proceed and successfully apply it to defeat the boss, you will keep repeating the challenge until it’s done. Should the same challenge ever appear at a later stage, and it will, you should assuming you did the work, be able to vanquish it with relative ease next time around.

Not everyone will win the game of life. Some will get stuck on a level and choose to replay it over and over again and sometimes go back a couple of levels just because they are happy to be masters of levels one through three. Some will plough through and find themselves unable to get past one bit and just give up playing at all and go seek some other game to play instead. Others might come back one day and try again with renewed vigour.

Those that cheat their way through the levels, might get to the victory stage pretty easily, but in reality, what did they learn? Chances are that when life changes the game unexpectedly, they won’t do well on level 1, whilst the true gamers will zip through the preliminaries with ease.

Okay, so enough with the video game metaphor. The point of this article is to summarise some key lessons that I have learned that may or may not be of use to people. I don’t really believe in ‘how to’ approaches to life, people that seek these out are often looking to find the shortcut to success, or to go back to the game metaphor ‘the cheat codes’. Instead, the approach is more to give some considerations, approaches and values to embrace.

The work always has to be done, but knowing where to start or reminding yourself to get back to the basics is always useful. So, the only promise here is that what is shared is to the best of my knowledge and will only be of any use if you put in the work and application to your own approach to the game.

So here��s a reservoir of knowledge and experience for you. It’s up to you whether you take a sip or wade in and the application of it is for you to tailor and adapt to your own experience.

There are no shortcuts to success

Let’s start this off the right way. The best shortcut to anything is doing it the right way as soon as possible and to keep doing it consistently over time.

Anyone who has been on a named fad diet will tell you that whilst they may have lost a lot of weight in a short time, chances are it came at a price or with consequences. Maybe they lost a bunch of weight, but didn’t lose all the fat they wanted to and therefore were just a skinner version of their fat selves. They didn’t achieve their goal and when they started eating normally again, they not only regained the weight, but they gained even more than they started. Because of the way they went about it, they got saggy skin and harmed their health because they were effectively starving themselves or not engaging in good nutrition.

The above is obviously a worst-case scenario, but you can apply it to anything. Shortcuts are just short-term solutions that in the long run can often turn out to be diversions from your original course. It can often mean taking longer to reach your actual goal. Don’t avoid the hard work required to get to where you want to be. In the end, it will probably be the shortest journey with the longest lasting impact.

If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know you have arrived?

Too often people set off on a course without really having any goal or destination in mind. They plough all of their energy and effort into something because they think they’ll just figure it out along the way. Two years down the road when their brain engages, they start to look around and think ‘what am I doing, why am I not fulfilled?’

Whilst we cannot always map out every part of our lives to the specific details, it is good to have an idea of what it is you actually want to achieve even if it’s only in the short term. Giving endless amounts of time and effort to something that isn’t fully formed as a goal or destination can mean incorrectly preparing for the journey and potentially being very dissatisfied at some later point when you realise that you have in fact just been going around in circles so long that you now find yourself in a bit of ditch of your own making.

Setting a few goals for a defined period gives a sense of control and structure for your life. If you don’t like committing to something you can’t get out (mobile contract anyone?) then just commit to something for a week or a month and see how it pans out. If you feel it’s leading you in the right direction then you can plan a bit further ahead, if not, you haven’t lost much ground.

Ultimately though, if you don’t really know what you want then maybe the first thing you should commit to is finding out what that is and then plan the steps to get there.

If you want to get fit and then just turn up to a gym and sign up for a year, but don’t really consider what you are going to do when you are there means a lot of wasted time, money and effort with no results. Don’t just follow the crowd, be purposeful and deliberate.

If you find yourself doing something just because everyone else is doing it, congratulations you are now back at school desperately trying to fit in with shit you probably don’t care about.

Your life should be as meaningful and enjoyable as possible. Given the trials and tribulations you are going to go through, you have to safeguard some ‘me’ time to do as you please.

The more you can make all aspects of your life true to who you are the better your own existence and experience will be. If you are compromising who you are just to get a job or be with someone, then chances are that isn’t going to stand the test of time.

You are who you are and you should embrace that and seek to become the best version of you that you can. By doing so you will attract the people and opportunities you want into your life.

Embrace the unique person you are and don’t be afraid to stand up for what you believe in. the crowd or group that alienate you for being yourself are just a bunch of people too scared to level up and they are just recruiting to make themselves feel safer about their own lack of courage to stand out.

The only group you should ever aspire to be part of is one that looks to grow and develop and is accepting of difference. Fitting in and conforming to the loudest and scariest voice is not that dissimilar to signing up to be a Nazi, and we all know how that ended.

Challenge your bad habits and replace them with better ones

We are an aggregation of our habits. Therefore, our lives are a product of all of our habits combined. A bit of simple maths will tell you how good your life is and how far it can go. If you have a series of bad habits, they are likely to breed new bad habits in response to the effects of said habits and before you know it you are drowning in a pool of bad habits.

It’s not easy to address habits, but figuring out the cues and triggers is the key to trying to change the associated responses. Habits don’t have to be limited to behaviours, they can be thought processes. The thing about habits is they can be changed and when you start to address one, pretty soon you will find that you are addressing others at the same time because of the interdependencies between them.

Even you don’t eliminate all of your bad habits, the aggregation over time will mean a better life than had you continued down the road of collecting new bad ones.

You are responsible for your own happiness

It was a friend of mine who said this to me one day and it really stuck with me. I think in a world full of so many other people and so many distractions it is very easy to constantly be looking outside of ourselves for things that make us feel a particular way.

Some people will go looking for that perfect partner that will validate their place in the game of life and others, having found this person, may desire a family because that too gives their life some form of meaning.

Other people will seek out a career or vocation that resonates with who they are and others will pursue material things and life experiences because these will provide tangible evidence of their time on the planet and thus through some fucked up mathematics that is beyond comprehension, this means they should be happy.

Your happiness is probably best found by looking inwards and being the best person you can be. Learning to accept and care for yourself means that all of the above will be shaped by being true to who you are.

Someone or something else cannot make you happy, perhaps they can accentuate that happiness and enhance your life in some way, but ultimately if you are not content with who you are and what you have to offer the world then you won’t be happy in the long run.

For anyone, vehemently rejecting this concept because their partner makes them so very happy indeed, ask yourself this: do you make them happy back? You might be constantly taking from them just to be happy and if they aren’t getting anything in return then the situation may not last forever.

You have to take responsibility for your own life because if you are relying on someone else all the time, life will find a way to make you realise this. Plus, if you truly love that person who makes you happy, make sure you’re giving as good as you get.

If you must have expectations, only have them for yourself

The game of expectations can be a perilous lesson for us all. How many times do we allow ourselves to be let down and disappointed by people and situations that fail to meet our expectations? Too often. Also, when you are the one who is subject to other people’s unrealistic expectations that can be pretty galling too. Fuck everyone else, focus on you.

If you think you should be doing something because it’s for your own good, then do it and leave it at that. Don’t start putting your own expectations out there for people to be aware of, because those fuckers will hold you to it. You know what I mean, you’re just about to destroy a triple chocolate slab of cake and some asshole says ‘but I thought you were on a diet’. Now that sumptuous cake is going to taste like a concoction of shit and guilt that is going to turn your stomach. That’s not what cake is supposed to taste like.

Likewise, don’t place your bullshit expectations on someone else’s shoulders either. If your partner is not conforming to the Photoshopped body image that is out there each day and you think they should be hitting the gym, well fuck you, basically.

If you want to look like a gym model then crack on and if you want your partner to look like that, pick someone who already does look like that. Chances are someone who meets your expectations is out of your league anyway (and that works both ways ladies and gents).

From a situational perspective, if you are committing hours of toil and effort towards your work in the hope that it might lead to a promotion, don’t get disappointed if it never happens.

Nothing in this life is guaranteed, and we have a habit, we humans of creating carrots to chase that was never going to be there anyway. If you do all that extra stuff because it may one day pay off, it probably will, but just maybe at a different company or in ways, you can’t yet fathom.

Bottom line if you are going to do something because you think that’s the way it should be, all power to you, but not everyone has to agree with you or follow you for that matter. Do it for you and do it because you see the value in it and sod everyone else.

Commit to positive self-talk

A little self-deprecation doesn’t hurt anyone right? Well, that ultimately depends on the audience and how long you beat a dead horse narrative. If you are one of those people who is terrified of being thought of by others in a bad way, so in order to neutralise uncomfortable situations you resort to putting yourself down, to appear non-threatening, then stop.

Being able to laugh at yourself is an admirable trait, but either do it when alone or in trusted company. There are plenty of Clint and Cynthia’s out there (basically the C word applied to respective genders) who will capitalise on this and start to use it for their own fun. Pretty soon you have put yourself in a position where you have inadvertently created a narrative about yourself that others now feel they can wade in on. These people tend to lack the ability to laugh at themselves, but they are grandmasters in piling misery on others.

If you are giving them the bullets, pretty soon those fuckers are firing at will like a crazy person with a Gatling gun. Don’t arm them. Instead, start to commit to speaking about your more admirable traits and you don’t even have to talk about yourself, act in accordance with the things that make you fun and interesting. Own like a boss and feel good about yourself.

At the end of the day, haters are going to hate anyway, at least this way you are not giving someone the power to slap you in the face. In all likelihood, the less desirables will talk behind your back or try to tear you down. See it as a chance to become more resilient and applaud yourself for not welcoming assholes into your life. Kill them with kindness and smiles, they fucking hate that. Stay in your own lane and ignore the bullshit billboards

With the rise of technology and social media, we are constantly bombarded by an array of blatant and subliminal marketing messages. These don’t just come from companies anymore, they have somehow co-opted ‘Celebrities’ and even some of your ‘friends’ into perpetuating these mythical fantasies.

If you were to believe everything that is thrown at you every day, you would be excused for thinking you’re in some Twelve Monkeys re-run or stuck on some level in Inception. It’s so very confusing you’re just like, what the actual fuck is going on here. The way a lot of people counter this is to pick a persona to conform to and follow and like all the shit everyone else in that particular echo chamber follows mindlessly. This is where you should revisit the part about following the crowd.

Bullshit billboards are the fake presentations of a great life, or more accurately a depiction of a life that appears to be better than yours. It can be quite enticing to think ‘holy cow, everyone is doing so much better than me’ and then to dive in and join them for fear of missing out. This would be a monumental mistake.

Have confidence in yourself and be true to yourself and just keep driving in your own lane. Eventually, when you get to your destination like a rock star, those billboards will likely have been replaced with a new bullshit narrative or be a dilapidated effigy to something that was never real in the first place.

If you are too busy being bothered by what is going on in the ‘real world’, which is basically code for the Matrix of bullshit we want you to be terrified of, you won’t be focused on the task at hand. Your journey is for you to travel along, if you’re busy looking up at other people’s bullshit billboards then you may crash, or if you are putting up billboards of your own then you aren’t really moving along with the times.

If you are truly happy and content with your lot, you won’t give two shits about anyone else’s. You also wouldn’t need to be seeking validation from others. If you post stuff on social media because you are looking for likes and comments, do the right thing and have a word with yourself.

If you must believe in anything, believe in yourself

If it is meaningful to you to believe in God, or Angels or the fucking Cookie Monster, that’s entirely your choice. However, if you allow these things to have power over you because of some superstitions or old wives tales that you have internalised, you need to address that.

Not taking action because ‘it’s not God’s way’, or signing a work contract because oh shit Mercury is in retrograde and that means my legs will fall off, or some other nonsensical justification to do or not do something is ultimately to your detriment. The most powerful being when it comes to your life and day-to-day experience is you numb-nuts.

I cannot prove or disprove God or anything else beyond the realms of normal human experience, but I’m fairly confident that the almighty powers above are not sat there waiting on your call. You have to crack on and do what needs to be done in this world. If believing that some higher power is backing you brings you comfort then cool, but ultimately, the person (or God) that makes real shit happen in your world is you.

There are plenty of folk on this ball of land and water who would quite happily play the role of God in your life if you let them. They tend to be a bunch of self-serving ‘Clints’ and ‘Cynthias’, who couldn’t give a shit about you. The only person who really does is you.

Never underestimate the power you have at your disposal to do good in this world, and you don’t even have to do anything for someone else. Be a selfish bastard and make yourself a better person, a stronger, healthier and more educated person than you are now. Then whoops, by focusing on yourself so much it turns out the world immediately becomes a better place and perhaps you feel up to extending your knowledge to help others. What a horrible selfish individual you are!

Imagine a world where everyone was so selfish and self-centred that they all became better people and just started to project more positive stuff from within themselves out into the world. That sounds like a truly horrible place, or does it?

For the ardent and fanatical believers, I’m not questioning your beliefs. If you want to believe in some beardy dude on a cloud that is absolutely your right, if you want to be offended by my attempt at humour just then, that too is your right. But consider this: in the vast expanse of the Universe, each human is but a mere grain of sand on a random beach of many.

Do you really believe the Almighty gives a crap whether a tidal wave washes you away? There is a certain amount of free will involved in life even for the most zealous supporter of Big G, so crack on and do something good.

Be grateful for shit, even if it sucks

The key here is to look around your life and be grateful for the good things in amongst the things you could change. In an alternate reality where all your stuff is replaced and you now only have all the things you craved, it’s highly likely that there is a bunch of stuff that you wish had come along for the ride. Perhaps you could imagine your perfect vision of your life and see what the old stuff that is part of that picture. That is the shit you really should be grateful for. It’s easy to forget sometimes the things that matter that we take for granted.

The more grateful you are for the things that matter, the more chance there is for you to work towards completing that picture in the future. If you are starting from a point of view that you have nothing worthy of a life or to be grateful for then you aren’t looking hard enough.

Life is like a giant puzzle, each of us has our own picture to complete, but there are often pieces missing. The key is: hold on to that outline that you have built to date and then start to add to it one step at a time. Over time you will achieve your puzzle box image and you will have ensured that none of the other foundational pieces went missing along the way.

Not everything we should be grateful for though has to be good for us. We should learn to be grateful for life’s challenges. I know that’s a stretch, but the truth is life is an endless struggle and once we master one thing we are almost immediately faced with another, but the joy should be moving on to the next challenge because that means you passed the other test.

What if you got stuck at one juncture and could never move forwards? Be grateful when one challenge leaves your life and no one comes along, it means you are ready for the next step in your training.

I think one thing I have learned over the years is to be grateful for the wisdom and knowledge people are willing to share with you for free. Sometimes, we hear it at a point when we are not ready and dismiss it or put it down in some way. ‘That sucks’. However, one day that free gift may become that tiny puzzle piece that joins the major parts together and you will be grateful for it then.

They say, nothing in life is free. But every day when someone offers you words of wisdom or you go online to do some research remember there is no requirement for people to put those words out there or for you to take it, but it ultimately costs you nothing. If it doesn’t ring true for you then move on and if it does then great.

Sometimes it takes many different bits of information from a variety of places to meet the need that we have. If someone doesn’t have the exact answer for you but moves you in the right direction be grateful, they just provided you with the equivalent of a shortcut and it’s your responsibility to figure out stuff for yourself.

Whilst I have just given an example of something in life that is free, I’d go so far to say that if you are getting something for nothing, maybe when the opportunity presents itself you should pay it forward to someone else. As if you are repaying a debt or kindness. It might change someone’s life.

Conclusions

The above list is far from exhaustive and I imagine at some point I will conduct a similar exercise focusing on a raft of other approaches or mantras that could make a difference. If life is a journey and we are all on different ones that would mean that there are countless roads to travel along. That would also mean many skills and experiences needed to successful ascend to the next level.

At the foundation of all of these for me are a few fundamentals. You have to take responsibility for your own life. You have to accept that shit is going to happen even if you lock yourself in a rubber room in a padded suit. You are going to get beaten up one way or another and if you don’t like it, start training yourself as a Ninja for life. Commit to doing things that build you and make you better than you were yesterday, no matter how small.

Don’t expect others to do stuff for you or to show you the way. But if they do, don’t be an ungrateful little shit about it, be thankful and when you are able to pass it on to the next person.

If you are waiting around to see if you are one of the chosen ones, let me save you time: the chosen ones are those who chose to believe that they are not. They are the ones who get up and go because they believe they deserve better, whatever that is, and they don’t rely on anyone or anything else to elicit change. All these illusions about something bigger being in control only serves to mean that those who bow to it will be controlled.

If you allow yourself to give in to your fears, or to give away your power to someone else just to fit in. You are effectively locking yourself in cell and giving a Clint or Cynthia the key. They will collect you and others like you and feed off of your power like a bunch of energy Vampires to serve their own cause. They don’t mind not getting to the higher levels when they can become the boss on the one you are stuck on.

Be you and strive for a better version. You’ll attract people who are more like you and going to prove useful for the journey ahead, then you don’t need to worry so much about fitting in. Just being you will be enough for these fellow travellers and you may teach others a thing or two. You don’t know everything, fuck, you probably don’t know shit and that’s okay because most of us are in the same boat. The ones who look like they have it all figured out are just erecting bullshit billboards at the end of the day. Or on occasion, they have successfully navigated the path you are on and are all too willing to impart a thing or two.

The more you embrace your power, the quicker your inbuilt bullshit detection system will kick in.

Where there is knowledge to be gained, don’t immediately assume the 'monkey see, monkey do' approach. The game of life doesn’t gift wrap anything. Sometimes within a package is a nugget of insight to help you along your way, but you have to apply it or break into it in a way that makes it useful. If someone handed you a toilet roll, you wouldn’t expect them to wipe your arse for you too now, would you?

There’s no reason that knowledge and its application should be any different. Now, if you can’t wipe your own arse, metaphorically speaking, perhaps that’s where the focus of your efforts should be.

“I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” - Carl Jung.

#habits #lifestyle #life #yolo #positivevibes #positivethinking #change

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thoughtsandsensibilities · 7 years

Text

Why hello, I didn’t see you there...

A bit of context

Hi there, thought I would make a post by way of introduction.

I haven’t fully decided as of yet, but I am pretty sure I am making my blog to be anonymous. My reasoning behind this fits nicely with the primary motivation for this blog. Firstly, the obvious personal aspect of a blog, mentioning activities or people, may come back to bite me in the arse one day. Posting incognito will naturally be safer (similar concept to going incognito watching porn… oh shit now you must know I am a guy - or one of the girls that admit to it... so now you know i am immature as well). Secondly, I feel I have a few bits and bobs of information currently suspended in a persistent vegetive state, accumulated over years of a passion for learning (a passion that although still exists is buried deep under a pile of metaphorical shit.

Thirdly, I am also interested in the psychological influence of this anonymity on the way I will express myself. This, when combined with the hypothesised positive psychological effects that blogging or journaling can bring, make for a worthwhile experiment. How much different will it be to other communicative social networks, such as twitter and facebook? Although both of these concepts encourage unencumbered expressionism, in my view it is severely limited by a social environment that breeds judgement and insecurity. I am not talking about free speech, of which I might add I am a staunch advocate for (in all forms even the most morally repugnant), but I am referring to classically ‘speaking your mind’ in the face of unwanted attention or critique. Thus, blogging may serve a purpose to myself, and others in my circumstances. A medium to express your thoughts and desires; a utopia in which innermost fears and emotions can be articulated without fear of judgement; a platform to resist that temptation to conform to the will of societal populism; a virtual memoir in which to pour hopes, dreams and disappointments; an electronic diary to systematically narrate your day to. The opportunities, endless. Although I am categorically saying that I will not use this blog as a personal collection of mental detritus and emotional sob stories, be fully prepared to witness a crying face emoji now and again.

So after all that bullshit, what the fuck is this blog about. This blog consists of thoughts that somehow manage permeate my brain cells, separate to all the preoccupying shit that life brings. That is not to say that the posts do not reflect on my personal experiences (this is, of course, inevitable, however some may elude to my life more directly than others). I know what you are thinking… just some more thick, sloppy BS. And while you would be 100 per cent correct, please indulge me for a few moments longer. I want you to remember that I have a life (the last time I checked) and hence me sitting down to write shit is a big deal so do not expect to read drivel, more than half of the time. These thoughts will range in content… from researched academic observations to conspiracy theories I subscribe to (no, I will not waste your time on ’jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams’ crackpot theories and am not ignorant enough to take anything at face value - further on this in due course); from my complaints about flaws in people, society and social constructions, to professions of the beauty and complexity of the world and human nature; from confessions of minor misdeeds committed to profound philosophical and existential observations about life itself. I can’t really tell you what you will be reading over the coming weeks and months, but I can say that everything I write will be poised, discerning and aim to offer at least a marginal level of insight.

I can say with a fair bit confidence that I am an interesting individual, which can partly be accredited to my intense intellectual passion for the human, spiritual, scientific and socioeconomic development of the human race. Armed with (minimal) knowledge in the academic spheres of (yes, you guessed it! another long, unnecessary, grammatically incorrect semicolon list)… history (everything and anything but a distinct focus on the human dimension and mindset behind events), political sciences (particular fascination with the interaction of actors on an international level and I am a proponent of structural realism; politically conservative in the purest sense of the term, against populist socialism), economics (my primary academic focus - development and behavioural economics are my fortes; supporter of free market economics), philosophy (fascination with metaphysics and epistemology and well as conceptualisations of value theory; impassioned atheist) and psychology (currently balls deep in existential-humanistic theories, but also have made partial sense of cognitive and social psychology). So, aside from telling you about the heaps of shit I know, the point of me listing my abstract, somewhat redundant, collection of interests is to demonstrate a love and unrelenting fascination for the species I am proud to be a part of (cos, you know, fuck being a sheep). An apt scholastic discipline is potentially anthropology, but the perfunctory and unspecific nature of the branch of study has deterred me from frequent application of the term. I am an esoteric believer in the power your experiences have in moulding the person you are, I am sure that microexpressions in my writing style have given you some clues as to my demographic profile, and the immense power of the human mind in processing and manifesting information and experiences. I enjoy leveraging this belief as well as acute observation in dissecting the world around me.

Oh and one more thing, I tend to ramble. But if you made it this far, I am sure that fact has dawned upon you by now.

By the way, apologies on the shitty design. I will take a shot at improving it when I have a bit of time and a few more posts to work with.

#introduction #new #new to tumblr

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