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surveys-at-your-service · 3 years

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Survey #426

“insatiable furnace, burning up our surplus / watching all essential life become another servant”

Are you a brunette? Yep. It is way past due time that I get it dyed... What is your favorite channel on TV? I don't really watch TV, but if I did, I'm pretty sure it'd probably be Discovery. Have you ever been to Chicago, IL? Yes!! It's my only experience with a truly BIG city, and though I'm not a city person, the experience was pretty magical. It was something I wasn't even remotely used to. Just so much life and business and energy to feel there. Who was your first friend? Brianna. She was the sister of my older sister's best friend. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas. :') Do you regret your last kiss? Nope. Have you ever taken a karate class? No. Who was the last person to tell you ‘I love you’? My mom. Have you ever been to the Statue of Liberty? No. Do you live on your own? Noooo. I don't think I ever could. I would have to stay VERY busy, or else the loneliness would kill me. Hell, even if I was very active in stuff, I still don't know if I could. With how bad my depression is capable of being, it doesn't sound smart at all for me to move out unless it was with somebody. Are your the oldest child? No, I'm the middle kid. How many X-rays have you had in the last 2 years? Two, maybe? One for my legs and the other for my teeth. Are you on good terms with your last ex? Yeah, we're best friends. Do you have scars you don’t like to talk about? Nah. Do you freak out if a bee/wasp flies near you? ... yes lol. What subjects in history interest you most? The Holocaust. It's just so... shocking and extreme that it's oddly fascinating, but of course horribly sad. Are you superstitious in any way? Nah. How do you get rid of anxiety? Do what? Are there any items of jewelry you never/rarely take off? Yeah, my two rings, my lip piercing, and tragus piercing. Has a song ever made you cry before? There are many. ^If so, what about it brought you to tears? Again, I said "many," so this would be a horribly long list. There are four though - "Eternally Yours" and "Another Life" by Motionless in White, "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, and "The Mortician's Daughter" by Black Veil Brides - that I really, really try to avoid, because I WILL cry. They're all associated with Jason for one reason or another. "Stairway to Heaven," especially, is absolutely forbidden for me to listen to. Would you consider yourself open-minded? Very, honestly. Have you ever met someone online that you wanted to meet in real life? I've met Sara! :') There are a handful of others I'd love to meet, too. Tell me about the last thing that made you laugh until it hurt. Wow, I have no idea. I don't remember the last time I laughed THAT hard. When you graduate, what color will your gown be? Ugh, it was this insufferable red. We got to vote on it, and I really wanted navy instead, as it looks more formal and not as obnoxious to me, but red won. Do you own a gun? No. My household legally can't because of my suicidal history. What color of shirt are you wearing? It's a black tank top. Do you use any acne medication? Nah, I don't really get acne anymore. Are you emotional or very stoic? I'm emotional as shit. Have you ever watched an anime series, start to finish? A few. There's Fullmetal Alchemist (as well as the Brotherhood expansion), Deadman Wonderland, and Ginga Densetsu Weed. I've seen bits of others. Which baby animal is your favorite? MEERKATS!!!!!! :') Once they reach three/four weeks, they're fucking precious. I also really like kittens. Do you like jam on your toast and biscuits? Sometimes. Have you ever reread a book? It is very, VERY rare I do this. The only cases I remember are for Because of Winn-Dixie and Meerkat Manor: Flower of the Kalahari. Do you have any religious symbols in your home? I think Mom has some religious quotes on the walls? What religion do you identify with, if any? None. What is you favorite flavor of pudding and/or yogurt? I love chocolate pudding, but I'm not very big on yogurt because of the sourness. I can sometimes eat a cookies 'n cream one, but occasionally I'm like "ew." We’re going to the best amusement park ever, first ride you choose is? One of those water rides where you go down a big slope. Did you have intense night terrors as a child? No. Know anybody who works in a tattoo parlor? No. That'd be dope. Have you ever had a piercing get infected? Ugh, yes. Worst was the first time I got my tongue pierced. It was early into infection though, thank God; I ended up having to take it out and get it re-pierced later. Have you ever shoplifted? No. Do you hate when people say, "Everything’s going to be fine,“ when it’s not? Sometimes. It can feel kinda dismissive of your extreme situation, and sometimes, things simply won't be okay. Like, you can't tell that to someone on their death bed. Do you check your fire alarms when you’re supposed to? No, oops. Are you a shorts-wearing kind of person? Absolutely not. Nobody wants to see my legs, not even me. Is your grandparents’ house obsessively tidy? My grandma's sure as hell was. She was very old-fashioned and "proper" and took cleanliness and manners very seriously. Do you know how to jumpstart a car? Nope. Would you date someone 8 years older than you? Probably. What did you do today? I WENT TO THE GYM AND DID A FULL HOUR OF EXERCISE!!!!! :') For once I am SO fucking proud of myself. I left drenched in sweat, but I also left with a feeling of great accomplishment. I'm going to be going twice a week now with a personal trainer. (: Who was the last person you fell asleep with? Sara. Have you ever punched a hole in the wall? No. People doing that shit terrifies me. Have you ever felt replaced? Sure have. Have you ever kissed someone who was high? No. If you caught your significant other cheating on you what would you do? I don't have a partner, but hypothetically, leave their ass in a blink. I don't fuck with those kind of people. Do you know who Jeffree Star is? Well, yes. I watch him on YT sometimes and (astonishingly) love his music, and I find his work ethic extremely inspiring. That man knows how to hustle. What’s your favourite alcoholic beverage? Probably sangrias. When was the last time you saw a photo of your ex? "The" ex, it's been years. I've removed all pictures I have of him, irl and digitally, because it's triggering for me. How many push-ups can you do? Probably zero. Do you play any games on your phone? There's Pokemon GO, DragonVale, and Dragons of Atlantis that I play semi-regularly. Have you ever received a compliment from a stranger? Yes. Have you ever shaved your face? Just my upper lip to avoid the lady stache, ha ha. What colour is your front door? It’s white. Do you take the stairs or the elevator? If an elevator is available, I will ALWAYS use that. I have an extreeeemely hard time getting up stairs because of having just about no leg muscle. Do you get motion sickness? No. When was the last time you went to your favourite restaurant? Oh man, it's been forever. :/ Olive Garden sounds soooo good right now. Do either of your parents have any tattoos or piercings? No. Well, Mom has her earlobes pierced once, but that's it. Are you desperate for anyone’s approval, in particular? It's funny, even though he hasn't been a part of my life for years, I still desperately crave what I think would make Jason proud. There have been many times where my mind has wondered to what he would think of me now... and I know it's not good. Are there any activities you enjoy doing, but can only do for a short amount of time before you get bored or tired of them? Reading. When was the last time you felt hopeful, and why? Today, after finishing my workout at the gym. I think, finally, that I may be taking another stride forward in life. Do you find yourself asking for the same things for your birthdays and for holidays? Ha, yup: a new tattoo, 100%. What is something someone recommended to you that you disliked/hated? Girt's recommended some music to me before. He loves sharing songs he likes with me. Of course I didn't tell him it sucked, ha ha. What’s a fact about the last person you kissed? She is very passionate about animals, reptiles in particular, and is simply amazing with them. If you had a child, would you rather have a girl or a boy? A girl for sure. Has anybody ever accused you of doing drugs? No. Have you ever fallen asleep with the last person you kissed? Yeah. Honestly, do you think that you will wanna settle down in the same town you’re currently residing in? HELL no. I hate this place. Does anyone call you darling? If so who? Sara does sometimes. Are you close to any of your cousins? No. Are you a romantic person? I think I am. What’s the coolest thing you’ve seen out the window of an airplane? Mountains. Have you ever been in the mountains when the moon and stars were up? NO BUT FUCK I WANT THAT. Just lay in a grassy spot with some s'mores or something and just ~vibe~. Do people like your hair? I get complimented on it a bit. Have you ever held birdseed and a bird came and ate out of your hand? Yeah, at a bird sanctuary. Could you ever live in Alaska? Hell yeah, I'd enjoy that. On the main page on YouTube, what’re the three recommended videos? There's one by a WoW gold maker, a song by 3TEETH, and a video of bullsnakes hatching. Do you really care how many friends you or anyone else has on Myspace/Facebook? Couldn't care less. I only "friend" people I know and care about. Does your significant other have any piercings? I'm single. Do you ever get bored of yourself? Oh, all the time. I feel like I'm extremely dull and plain and, well, boring. How many band shirts do you own? Which? Oh goodness, I have no idea. I own a lot. Do you go to shows mostly for the music, the moshing, or the merchandise? I go for the music. It's nice to buy merch, but it's SO expensive that it's dumb. Moshing, I think is just stupid. Have you ever had anything pierced that you don’t have now? Many places, actually. So many holes closed because piercings had to be taken out when I was in the psych hospital. I was so annoyed. Who were you with the first time you watched the last movie you watched? I was alone. Do you have any twins/multiples in your family? Are they identical or fraternal? No. What is the highest number of jobs you’ve had at one time? One. Is your mom a good mom? She is the actual best. Last thing you threw in the garbage? The crust of some leftover pizza I had this morning. I generally eat the crust, but this time it was WAY too hard.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''altaer" by 3teeth

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petulantskeptic · 3 years

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Death of the calorie

For more than a century we’ve counted on calories to tell us what will make us fat. Peter Wilson says it’s time to bury the world’s most misleading measure BY PETER WILSON The first time that Salvador Camacho thought he was going to die he was sitting in his father’s Chrysler sedan with a friend listening to music. The 22-year-old engineering student was parked near his home in the central Mexican city of Toluca and in the fading evening light he didn’t notice two tattooed men approach. Tori Amos’s hit, “Bliss”, had just started playing when the gang members pointed guns at the young men. So began a 24-hour ordeal. Strong willed and solidly built, Camacho was singled out as the more stubborn of the pair. He was blindfolded and beaten. One robber eventually threw him to the ground, put a gun to the back of his head and told him it was time to die. He passed out, waking in a field with his hands tied behind his back, almost naked. Camacho survived but, traumatised, he sank into depression. Soon he was drinking heavily and binge eating. His weight ballooned from a trim 70kg to 103kg. That led to his second near-death experience, eight years later, in 2007. He remembers waking up and blinking at bright lights: he was being wheeled on a stretcher into a hospital emergency ward, with an attack of severe arrhythmia, or irregular heart beat. “A cardiologist told me that if I didn’t lose weight and get my health under control I would be dead in five years,” he says. That second crisis forced Camacho belatedly to deal with the trauma of the first. To help with what he now understands was post-traumatic stress disorder, he started having counselling and taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. To address his physical health, he tried to lose weight. This effort propelled him to the centre of one of the most fraught scientific debates of our age: the calorie wars, a fierce disagreement about diet and weight control. Today, more than a decade after his cardiologist’s stark warning, Camacho lives in the Swiss city of Basel. He is relaxed and confident, except when two topics come up. When he recounts his kidnapping his gaze drops, his smile vanishes and he becomes noticeably quieter, although he says his panic attacks have virtually disappeared. The other touchy topic is weight control, which causes him to shake his head in anger at what he and millions of other dieters have gone through. “It’s just ridiculous,” he says with exasperation and a touch of venom. “People are living with real pain and guilt and all they get is advice that is confused or just plain wrong.” The guidance that Camacho’s doctors gave him, along with a string of nutritionists and his own online research, was unanimous. It would be familiar to the millions of people who have ever tried to diet. “Everybody tells you that to lose weight you have to eat less and move more,” he says, “and the way to do that is to count your calories.” At his heaviest, Camacho’s body-mass index – the ratio of his height to his weight – reached 35.6, well above the 30 mark that doctors define as clinically obese. Most government guidelines indicated that, as a man, he needed 2,500 calories a day to maintain his weight (the target for women is 2,000). Nutritionists told Camacho that if he ate fewer than 2,000 calories a day, a weekly “deficit” of 3,500 would mean that he would lose 0.5kg a week. With a desk job as a planning engineer in a Mexican hospital, he knew it would take real discipline to trim his pudgy frame. But as his kidnappers had quickly realised, he is an unusually determined character. He began getting up before dawn each day to run 10km. He also started accounting for every morsel of food he consumed. “I filled in Excel spreadsheets every night, every week and every month listing everything I ate. It became a real obsession for me,” says Camacho. Out went the Burger King Whoppers, fried tacos packed with pork and cheese, and tortas (Mexican sandwiches filled with meat, refried beans, avocado and peppers). Out too went his usual steady flow of beer and wine. In came carefully measured low-fat cheese and turkey sandwiches, salads, canned peach juice, Gatorade and Coke Zero, with three Special-K low-calorie diet bars a day. “I was always tired and hungry and I would get really moody and distracted,” he says. “I was thinking about food all the time.” He was constantly told that if he got the maths right – consuming fewer calories than he burned each day – the results would soon show. “I really did everything you are supposed to do,” he insists with the tone of a schoolboy who completed his homework yet still failed a big test. He bought a battery of exercise monitoring devices to measure how many calories he was expending on his runs. “I was told to exercise for at least 45 minutes at least four or five times a week. I actually ran for more than an hour every day.” He kept to low-fat, low-calorie food for three years. It simply didn’t work. At one point he lost about 10kg but his weight rebounded, though he still restricted his calories. Dieters the world over will be familiar with Camacho’s frustrations. Most studies show that more than 80% of people regain any lost weight in the long term. And like him, when we fail, most of us assume that we are too lazy or greedy – that we are at fault. As a general rule it is true that if you eat vastly fewer calories than you burn, you’ll get slimmer (and if you consume far more, you’ll get fatter). But the myriad faddy diets flogged to us each year belie the simplicity of the formula that Camacho was given. The calorie as a scientific measurement is not in dispute. But calculating the exact calorific content of food is far harder than the confidently precise numbers displayed on food packets suggest. Two items of food with identical calorific values may be digested in very different ways. Each body processes calories differently. Even for a single individual, the time of day that you eat matters. The more we probe, the more we realise that tallying calories will do little to help us control our weight or even maintain a healthy diet: the beguiling simplicity of counting calories in and calories out is dangerously flawed. The calorie is ubiquitous in daily life. It takes top billing on the information label of most packaged food and drinks. Ever more restaurants list the number of calories in each dish on their menus. Counting the calories we expend has become just as standard. Gym equipment, fitness devices around our wrists, even our phones tell us how many calories we have supposedly burned in a single exercise session or over the course of a day. It wasn’t always thus. For centuries, scientists assumed that it was the mass of food consumed that was significant. In the late 16th century an Italian physician named Santorio Sanctorius invented a “weighing chair”, dangling from a giant scale, in which he sat at regular intervals to weigh himself, everything he ate and drank, and all the faeces and urine he produced. Despite 30 years of compulsive chair dangling, Sanctorius answered few of his own questions about the impact that his consumption had on his body. Only later did the focus shift to the energy different foodstuffs contained. In the 18th century Antoine Lavoisier, a French aristocrat, worked out that burning a candle required a gas from the air – which he named oxygen – to fuel the flame and release heat and other gases. He applied the same principle to food, concluding that it fuels the body like a slow-burning fire. He built a calorimeter, a device big enough to hold a guinea pig, and measured the heat the creature generated to estimate how much energy it was producing. Unfortunately the French revolution – specifically the guillotine – cut short his thinking on the subject. But he had started something. Other scientists later constructed “bomb calorimeters” in which they burned food to measure the heat – and thus the potential energy – released from it. The calorie – which comes from “calor”, the Latin for “heat” – was originally used to measure the efficiency of steam engines: one calorie is the energy required to heat 1kg of water by one degree Celsius. Only in the 1860s did German scientists begin using it to calculate the energy in food. It was an American agricultural chemist, Wilbur Atwater, who popularised the idea that it could be used to measure both the energy contained in food and the energy the body expended on things like muscular work, tissue repair and powering the organs. In 1887, after a trip to Germany, he wrote a series of wildly popular articles in Century, an American magazine, suggesting that “food is to the body what fuel is to the fire.” He introduced the public to the notion of “macronutrients” – carbohydrates, protein and fat – so called because the body needs a lot of them. Today many of us want to monitor our calorie consumption in order to lose or maintain our weight. Atwater, the son of a Methodist minister, was motivated by the opposite concern: at a time when malnutrition was widespread, he sought to help poor people find the most cost-effective items to fill themselves up. To see how much energy different macronutrients provided to the body, he fed samples of an “average” American diet of that era – which he believed to be heavy in molasses cookies, barley meal and chicken gizzards – to a group of male students in a basement at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. For up to 12 days at a time a volunteer would eat, sleep and lift weights while sealed inside a six-foot-high chamber measuring four feet wide by seven feet deep. The energy in each meal was calculated by burning identical foods in a bomb calorimeter. The walls were filled with water, and changes in its temperature allowed Atwater to calculate how much energy the students’ bodies were generating. His team collected the students’ faeces and burned that too, to see how much energy had been left in the body in the digestion process. This was pioneering stuff for the 1890s. Atwater eventually concluded that a gram of either carbohydrate or protein made an average of four calories of energy available to the body, and a gram of fat offered an average of 8.9 calories, a figure later rounded up to nine calories for convenience. We now know far more about the workings of the human body: Atwater was right that some of a meal’s potential energy was excreted, but had no idea that some was also used to digest the meal itself, and that the body expends different amounts of energy depending on the food. Yet more than a century after igniting the faeces of Wesleyan students, the numbers Atwater calculated for each macronutrient remain the standard for measuring the calories in any given food stuff. Those experiments were the basis of Salvador Camacho’s daily calorific arithmetic. Atwater transformed the way the public thought about food, with his simple belief that “a calorie is a calorie”. He counselled the poor against eating too many leafy green vegetables because they weren’t sufficiently dense in energy. By his account, it made no difference whether calories came from chocolate or spinach: if the body absorbed more energy than it used, then it would store the excess as body fat, causing you to put on weight. That idea captured the public imagination. In 1918 the first book was published in America based on the notion that a healthy diet was no more complicated than the simple addition and subtraction of calories. “You may eat just what you like – candy, pie, cake, fat meat, butter, cream but count your calories!” wrote Lulu Hunt Peters in “Diet and Health”. “Now that you know you can have the things you like, proceed to make your menus containing very little of them.” The book sold millions. By the 1930s the calorie had become entrenched in both the public mind and government policy. Its exclusive focus on the energy content of food, rather than its vitamin content, say, went virtually unchallenged. Rising incomes and greater female participation in the workforce meant that by the 1960s people were eating out more often or buying prepared food, so they wanted more information about what they were consuming. Nutritional information on foodstuffs was widespread but haphazard; many items carried outlandish claims about their health benefits. Labelling became standardised and mandatory in America only in 1990. The emphasis and use of this information shifted too. By the late 1960s, obesity was becoming a pressing health concern as people became more sedentary and started eating highly processed foods and lots of sugar. As the number of people who needed to lose weight grew, changing diets became the focus of attention. So began the war on fat, in which Atwater’s calorie calculations were an unwitting ally. Because counting calories was seen as an objective arbiter of the health qualities of a foodstuff, it seemed logical that the most calorie-laden part of any food item – fat – must be bad for you. By this measure, dishes low in calories, but rich in sugar and carbohydrates, seemed healthier. People were increasingly willing to blame fat for many of the health ills of modern life, helped along by the sugar lobby: in 2016, a researcher at the University of California uncovered documents from 1967 showing that sugar companies secretly funded studies at Harvard University designed to blame fat for the growing obesity epidemic. That the dietary “fat” found in olive oil, bacon and butter is branded with the same word as the unwanted flesh around our middles made it all the easier to demonise. A us Senate committee report in 1977 recommended a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet for all, and other governments followed suit. The food industry responded with enthusiasm, removing fat, the most calorie-dense of macronutrients, from food items and replacing it with sugar, starch and salt. As a bonus, the thousands of new cheap and tasty “low-cal” and “low-fat” products which Camacho used to diet tended to have longer shelf lives and higher profit margins. But this didn’t lead to the expected improvements in public health. Instead, it coincided almost exactly with the most dramatic rise in obesity in human history. Between 1975 and 2016 obesity almost tripled worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation (who): nearly 40% of over-18s – some 1.9bn adults – are now overweight. That contributed to a rapid rise in cardiovascular diseases (mainly heart disease and stroke) which became the leading cause of death worldwide. Rates of type-2 diabetes, which is often linked to lifestyle and diet, have more than doubled since 1980. It wasn’t only wealthy countries that saw such trends. In Mexico, middle-class urban families such as Camacho’s got fatter too. As a child Camacho was fit and loved playing football. But at the age of ten, in 1988, he was one of many young Mexicans who started stacking on weight as increasing trade with America saw cheap sweets and fizzy drinks flood the shops, a process known as the “Coca-colonisation” of Mexico. “There were suddenly all these flavours you had never tasted, with chocolates, candies and Dr Pepper,” Camacho remembers: “Overnight I got fat.” When his uncles teased him about his bulging waistline, he cut back on sweets and stayed in good shape until his kidnapping 12 years later. Other Mexicans just kept bulking up. In 2013 Mexico overtook America as the most obese country in the world. To combat this trend, governments worldwide have enshrined calorie-counting in policy. The who attributes the “fundamental cause” of obesity worldwide to “an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended”. Governments the world over persist in offering the same advice: count and cut calories. This has infiltrated ever more areas of life. In 2018 the American government ordered food chains and vending machines to provide calorie details on their menus, to help consumers make “informed and healthful decisions”. Australia and Britain are headed in similar directions. Government bodies advise dieters to record their meals in a calorie journal to lose weight. The experimental efforts of a 19th-century scientist stand barely changed – and are barely questioned. Millions of dieters give up when their calorie-counting is unsuccessful. Camacho was more stubborn than most. He took photos of his meals to record his intake more accurately, and would log into his calorie spreadsheets from his phone. He thought about every morsel he ate. And he bought a proliferation of gadgets to track his calorie output. But he still didn’t lose much weight. One problem was that his sums were based on the idea that calorie counts are accurate. Food producers give impressively specific readings: a slice of Camacho’s favourite Domino’s double pepperoni pizza is supposedly 248 calories (not 247 nor 249). Yet the number of calories listed on food packets and menus are routinely wrong. Susan Roberts, a nutritionist at Tufts University in Boston, has found that labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an average of 8%. American government regulations allow such labels to understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure that consumers are not short-changed in terms of how much nutrition they receive). The information on some processed frozen foods misstates their calorific content by as much as 70%. That isn’t the only problem. Calorie counts are based on how much heat a foodstuff gives off when it burns in an oven. But the human body is far more complex than an oven. When food is burned in a laboratory it surrenders its calories within seconds. By contrast, the real-life journey from dinner plate to toilet bowl takes on average about a day, but can range from eight to 80 hours depending on the person. A calorie of carbohydrate and a calorie of protein both have the same amount of stored energy, so they perform identically in an oven. But put those calories into real bodies and they behave quite differently. And we are still learning new insights: American researchers discovered last year that, for more than a century, we’ve been exaggerating by about 20% the number of calories we absorb from almonds. The process of storing fat – the “weight” many people seek to lose – is influenced by dozens of other factors. Apart from calories, our genes, the trillions of bacteria that live in our gut, food preparation and sleep affect how we process food. Academic discussions of food and nutrition are littered with references to huge bodies of research that still need to be conducted. “No other field of science or medicine sees such a lack of rigorous studies,” says Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at Kings College in London. “We can create synthetic dna and clone animals but we still know incredibly little about the stuff that keeps us alive.” What we do know, however, suggests that counting calories is very crude and often misleading. Think of a burger, the kind of food that Camacho eschewed during his early efforts to lose weight. Take a bite and the saliva in your mouth starts to break it down, a process that continues when you swallow, transporting the morsel towards your stomach and beyond to be churned further. The digestive process transforms the protein, carbohydrates and fat in the burger into their basic compounds so that they are tiny enough to be absorbed into the bloodstream via the small intestine to fuel and repair the trillions of cells in the body. But the basic molecules from each macronutrient play very different roles within the body. All carbohydrates break down into sugars, which are the body’s main fuel source. But the speed at which your body gets its fuel from food can be as important as the amount of fuel. Simple carbohydrates are swiftly absorbed into the bloodstream, providing a fast shot of energy: the body absorbs the sugar from a can of fizzy drink at a rate of 30 calories a minute, compared with two calories a minute from complex carbohydrates such as potatoes or rice. That matters, because a sudden hit of sugar prompts the rapid release of insulin, a hormone that carries the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the body’s cells. Problems arise when there is too much sugar in the blood. The liver can store some of the excess, but any that remains is stashed as fat. So consuming large quantities of sugar is the fastest way to create body fat. And, once the insulin has done its work, blood-sugar levels slump, which tends to leave you hungry, as well as plumper. Getting fat is a consequence of civilisation. Our ancestors would have enjoyed a heavy hit of sugar perhaps four times a year, when a new season produced fresh fruit. Many now enjoy that kind of sugar kick every day. The average person in the developed world consumes 20 times as much sugar as people did even during Atwater’s time. But it is a different story when you eat complex carbohydrates such as cereals. These are strung together from simple carbohydrates, so they also break down into sugar, but because they do so more slowly, your blood-sugar levels remain steadier. The fruit juices that Camacho was encouraged to drink contained fewer calories than one of his wholegrain buns but the bread delivered less of a sugar hit and left him feeling satiated for longer. Other macronutrients have different functions. Protein, the dominant component of meat, fish and dairy products, acts as the main building block for bone, skin, hair and other body tissues. In the absence of sufficient quantities of carbohydrates it can also serve as fuel for the body. But since it is broken down more slowly than carbohydrates, protein is less likely to be converted to body fat. Fat is a different matter again. It should leave you feeling fuller for longer, because your body splits it into tiny fatty acids more slowly than it processes carbohydrates or protein. We all need fat to make hormones and to protect our nerves (a bit like plastic coating protects an electric wire). Over millennia, fat has also been a crucial way for humans to store energy, allowing us to survive periods of famine. Nowadays, even without the risk of starvation, our bodies are programmed to store excess fuel in case we run out of food. No wonder a single measure – the energy content – can’t capture such complexity. Our fixation with counting calories assumes both that all calories are equal and that all bodies respond to calories in identical ways: Camacho was told that, since he was a man, he needed 2,500 calories a day to maintain his weight. Yet a growing body of research shows that when different people consume the same meal, the impact on each person’s blood sugar and fat formation will vary according to their genes, lifestyles and unique mix of gut bacteria. Research published this year showed that a certain set of genes is found more often in overweight people than in skinny ones, suggesting that some people have to work harder than others to stay thin (a fact that many of us already felt intuitively to be true). Differences in gut microbiomes can alter how people process food. A study of 800 Israelis in 2015 found that the rise in their blood-sugar levels varied by a factor of four in response to identical food. Some people’s intestines are 50% longer than others: those with shorter ones absorb fewer calories, which means that they excrete more of the energy in food, putting on less weight. The response of your own body may also change depending on when you eat. Lose weight and your body will try to regain it, slowing down your metabolism and even reducing the energy you spend on fidgeting and twitching your muscles. Even your eating and sleeping schedules can be important. Going without a full night’s sleep may spur your body to create more fatty tissue, which casts a grim light on Camacho’s years of early-morning exertion. You may put on more weight eating small amounts over 12-15 hours than eating the same food in three distinct meals over a shorter period. There’s a further weakness in the calorie-counting system: the amount of energy we absorb from food depends on how we prepare it. Chopping and grinding food essentially does part of the work of digestion, making more calories available to your body by ripping apart cell walls before you eat it. That effect is magnified when you add heat: cooking increases the proportion of food digested in the stomach and small intestine, from 50% to 95%. The digestible calories in beef rises by 15% on cooking, and in sweet potato some 40% (the exact change depends on whether it is boiled, roasted or microwaved). So significant is this impact that Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard University, reckons that cooking was necessary for human evolution. It enabled the neurological expansion that created Homo sapiens: powering the brain consumes about a fifth of a person’s metabolic energy each day (cooking also means we didn’t need to spend all day chewing, unlike chimps). The difficulty in counting accurately doesn’t stop there. The calorie load of carbohydrate-heavy items such as rice, pasta, bread and potatoes can be slashed simply by cooking, chilling and reheating them. As starch molecules cool they form new structures that are harder to digest. You absorb fewer calories eating toast that has been left to go cold, or leftover spaghetti, than if they were freshly made. Scientists in Sri Lanka discovered in 2015 that they could more than halve the calories potentially absorbed from rice by adding coconut oil during cooking and then cooling the rice. This made the starch less digestible so the body may take on fewer calories (they have yet to test on human beings the precise effects of rice cooked in this way). That’s a bad thing if you’re malnourished, but a boon if you’re trying to lose weight. Different parts of a vegetable or fruit may be absorbed differently too: older leaves are tougher, for example. The starchy interior of sweetcorn kernels is easily digested but the cellulose husk is impossible to break down and passes through the body untouched. Just think about that moment when you look into the toilet bowl after eating sweetcorn. As with so many dieters, Camacho’s efforts to accurately track his calories “in” were doomed. But so too were his attempts to track his calories “out”. The message from many public authorities and food producers, especially fast-food companies that sponsor sports events, is that even the unhealthiest foods will not make you fat if you do your part by taking plenty of exercise. Exercise does, of course, have clear health benefits. But unless you’re a professional athlete, it plays a smaller part in weight control than most people believe. As much as 75% of the average person’s daily energy expenditure comes not through exercise but from ordinary daily activities and from keeping your body functioning by digesting food, powering organs and maintaining a regular body temperature. Even drinking iced water – which delivers no energy – forces the body to burn calories to maintain its preferred temperature, making it the only known case of consuming something with “negative” calories. A popular expression in English tells us not to “compare apples and oranges” and assume them to be the same: yet calories put pizzas and oranges, or apples and ice cream, on the same scale, and deems them equal. After three years of dedicated calorie-counting Camacho changed tack. While recovering from running the 2010 marathon in San Diego he took up Crossfit training, an exercise regime that includes high-intensity training and weightlifting. There he met people using a very different method to control their weight. Like him, they exercised regularly. But rather than limiting their calories, they ate natural foods, what Camacho calls “stuff from a real plant, not an industrial plant”. Fed up with feeling like a hungry failure, he decided to give it a go. He ditched his heavily processed low-calorie products and focused on the quality of his food rather than quantity. He stopped feeling ravenous all the time. “It sounds simple but I decided to listen to my body and eat whenever I was hungry but only when I was hungry, and to eat real food, not food ‘products’,” he says. He went back to items that he’d long banned himself from eating. He had his first rasher of bacon in three years and enjoyed cheese, whole-fat milk and steaks. He immediately felt less hungry and happier. More surprising, he quickly began to lose his extra fat. “I was sleeping so much better and within a couple of months I stopped the depression and anxiety medication,” he says. “I went from always feeling guilty and angry and afraid to feeling in control of myself and actually proud of my own body. Suddenly I could enjoy eating and drinking again.” The weight stayed off and in 2012 he moved to Heidelberg in Germany, a world away from the hectic streets of Mexico, to study for a masters degree in public health. “The idea hit me that I could combine my own experience with academic work to try to help other people overcome these various barriers that I had found.” After his masters he embarked on a doctorate on how to tackle obesity in Mexico. Today he is married to a German scholar, Erica Gunther, who has studied food systems around the world. Their diet includes things he used to shun, such as egg yolks, olive oil and nuts. Two days a week the couple stick to vegetarian meals but otherwise he devours steak, kidneys, liver and some of his favourite Mexican dishes – barbacoa (lamb), carnitas (pork) and tacos with grilled meat. His wife enjoys making a traditional Mexican sweet pastry called pan de muerto (bread of death). “Before I would have run an extra two hours to compensate for eating that but now I don’t care, I just make sure it is a treat, not an everyday thing.” Having spent years trying to forgo alcohol, he has a glass or two of wine several times a week, and goes for a beer with friends from his gym. Sweating through three or four workouts a week, he is as well-muscled as a professional rugby player. A stable 80kg, he has very little body fat, though he is still considered overweight by the body-mass-index charts, which rate many beefed-up professional athletes as too heavy. The only relapse of anxiety he suffers nowadays happens when he hears Tori Amos singing “Bliss” – the song playing when he was kidnapped – which he says “is a real pity because it’s a great song”. Today Camacho could be described as a calorie dissident, one of a small but growing number of academics and scientists who say that the persistence of calorie-counting compounds the obesity epidemic, rather than remedying it. Counting calories has disrupted our ability to eat the right amount of food, he says, and has steered us towards poor choices. In 2017 he wrote an academic paper that was one of the most savage attacks on the calorie system published in a peer-reviewed journal. “I’m actually embarrassed at what I used to believe,” he says. “I was doing everything I could to follow the official advice but it was totally wrong and I feel stupid for never even questioning it.” Given the vast evidence that calorie-counting is imprecise at best, and contributes to rising obesity at worst, why has it persisted? The simplicity of calorie-counting explains its appeal. Metrics that tell consumers the extent to which foods have been processed, or whether they will suppress hunger, are harder to understand. Faced with the calorie juggernaut, none has gained wide acceptance. The scientific and health establishment knows that the current system is flawed. A senior adviser to the un’s Food and Agriculture Organisation warned in 2002 that the Atwater “factors” of 4-4-9 at the heart of the calorie-counting system were “a gross oversimplification” and so inaccurate that they could mislead consumers into choosing unhealthy products because they understate the calories in some carbohydrates. The organisation said it would give “further consideration” to overhauling the system but 17 years later there is little momentum for change. It even rejected the idea of harmonising the many methods that are used in different countries – a label in Australia can give a different count from one in America for the same product. Officials at the who also acknowledge the problems of the current system, but say it is so entrenched in consumer behaviour, public policy and industry standards that it would be too expensive and disruptive to make big changes. The experiments that Atwater conducted a century ago, without calculators or computers, have never been repeated even though our understanding of how our bodies work is vastly improved. There is little funding or enthusiasm for such work. As Susan Roberts at Tufts University says, collecting and analysing faeces “is the worst research job in the world”. The calorie system, says Camacho, lets food producers off the hook: “They can say, ‘We’re not responsible for the unhealthy products we sell, we just have to list the calories and leave it to you to manage your own weight’.” Camacho and other calorie dissidents argue that sugar and highly processed carbohydrates play havoc with people’s hormonal systems. Higher insulin levels mean more energy is converted into fat tissues leaving less available to fuel the rest of the body. That in turn drives hunger and overeating. In other words the constant hunger and fatigue suffered by Camacho and other dieters may be symptoms of being overweight, rather than the cause of the problem. Yet much of the food industry defends the status quo too. To change how we assess the energy and health values of food would undermine the business model of many companies. The only major organisation to shift the emphasis beyond calories is one dedicated to helping its customers slim down: Weight Watchers. In 2001 the world’s best-known dieting firm introduced a points system that moved away from focusing exclusively on calories to also classifying foods according to their sugar and saturated fat content, and their impact on appetite. Chris Stirk, the firm’s general manager in Britain, says the organisation made the change because relying on calories to lose weight is “outdated”: “Science evolves daily, monthly, yearly, let alone since the 1800s.” Many of us know instinctively that not all calories are the same. A lollipop and an apple may contain similar numbers of calories but the apple is clearly better for us. But after a lifetime of hearing about the calorie and its role in supposedly foolproof diet advice we could be forgiven for being confused about how best to eat. It’s time to lay it to rest.

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immortal-teacher · 3 years

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Albert Einstein said "Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics"

Most people don't realize that sounds, shapes, colors and words are all connected through various frequency vibrations. Play a chord and there is a corresponding geometrical shape that is in place, and a color associated with that frequency and vibration! Sacred Geometry, sound, chakras

I have figured out how to make anything reality and how the universe works after experimenting with a variety of affirmations and i will explain with knowledge from many teachers that I have figured out the details and proven myself with experiments, memories, scientific explanations and more.

So everything is Frequency and Vibration or nonphysical and physical, We are all co-creators who create frequencies that create and control the material and physical world. We operate and think on frequency, including belief systems are frequencies and that controls our vibration.

Vibration is our body and the frequencies that we operate and think on control the type of thoughts we can have, how we feel, how we interact with all life and everything around us including gaining new abilities, becoming immortal or anything it seems anything is possible once you say or listen to an affirmation, subliminal, mantra, frequency or believe something long enough

then it will come true eventually. The Mastermind Principle explains how opposing frequencies cannot exist in the same area. For example during hypnosis people have proven how if i say my finger is burning hot then it will burn your skin as i get closer and start to blister.

Somebody has put down all his weight on a knife on his neck then got hit full force with a sledgehammer on his back but it did not pierce his skin because his belief/frequency

that he operates on. The frequencies also cause hallucinations based on beliefs, for example i thought people i date would reply fast so when i first got a phone in 7th grade i would message people and past girlfriends and reply fast because i didn't have many chores to do and of course really wanted to talk to my now ex girlfriend so while waiting for a reply from her, i would get vibrations from my

phone just like i got a message but when i checked then i see no messages or notifications and this went on like a hundred times until 10th grade when i got a new girlfriend(ex girlfriend) that explained why it took so long to reply, which is because she does many chores for her family, she didn't have Brothers and sisters around her age to help out.

So i first started learning about how the universe works after 5 years of searching to cure my shyness, depression and slight anger issues, along the way i did some searching into empathic abilities, how to live forever and more through many teachers mostly on google and Youtube, nothing really worked until i found this

video by "YouAreCreators" Youtube channel called "The secrets of frequency and vibration" packed full of cool experiments including how the nine solfeggio frequencies cured 16 out of 16 terminally ill cancer patients

within 70 days which i hear is the worst kind of cancer. So i started both the nine solfeggio frequencies and i am affirmations both free on YouTube at the same time, after listening to them for 2 and a half weeks then i started

waking up with this extremely blissful feeling, super energized, feeling great, thinking faster and more clearly, form more complex thoughts, process information faster, i work at top speed all day like an adrenaline rush and

it seems i have infinite energy but i stopped listening temporarily thinking it would last forever but then the great feelings gradually went away after 72 hours.

Some of my experiments that helped me discover how the universe works include listening and or saying affirmations

like "i am connected to the source, i am a part of god, i am a piece of the creator, i am wise, i am walking brilliance, i am total understanding, i am infinite wisdom, i am genius, i am over joyed, i am educated, i am infinite, i am wise council, i am energetic, i am boundless, i am brilliant, I am Happy, i am Healthy, i am invincible, i am immortal, i am loving, i am caring, kind, strong" and many more

in other people's affirmations then they all came true and when i asked questions in my head then five different times i got answers it seemed i could have never thought of.

I have even tried subliminals for faster reflexes and think fast like a human computer then started catching everything that i bumped off the shelf when trying to work faster including 3 items i dropped at the same time so i lowered my body slightly and hugged them like i could

see them falling in slow motion.

Dr. Joe Dispenza says learning makes new connections in the brain, so the more that you can repeat what you have learned, the more you are installing the neurological hardware in the brain in preparation for the experience then

when you feel the experience and emotion then your teaching your body chemically what you have intellectually understood, then the body understands better than the mind after enough practice. He said our job

is to go from philosopher to initiate to master, from knowledge to experience to wisdom, from mind to body to soul, from thinking to doing to being, from learning it with your head to practicing it with your hands and knowing it by heart.

How you think and feel changes your state of being, (end of the quote) because you think the pill or surgery will heal you then it doesn't matter if it is a sugar pill or fake surgery, it will work, that is the famous placebo effect. I read that most people get results between 21 to 85 days of any daily affirmation, frequency, subliminal, mantra etc then after 3 months of daily practice then it will be permanent.

After saying i am immortal and i am invincible for about a month and a half then i turned around and accidentally fell what seemed to be the fastest fall ever at work because the floor was really slick then i felt no pain at all and didn't even get hurt and i kept track for a month after just

in case if i needed to report it.

After saying that i do not need food to survive, i do not need food to thrive about 50 times daily for 3 days then those 3 days i ate 50%-75% less food because i felt full and could not really eat much throughout the day including my work lunch time that i usually eat the whole time.

Mahatma Gandhi said "Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny."

I found that fear or doubt attracts what you fear or doubt because I found a new technique while playing pool that I can visualize a tunnel where the white ball will go and the next ball and make the shot everytime if I stay confident, aim

the goal ball first then the white ball with the tunnel but if I doubt I'll make it or fear I'll mess up or get bumped then I can't visualize the tunnel technique so I tried relying on another technique but then I fail.

After

listening to affirmations about world peace then it gave me new perceptions that helped me because i was running on the "be nice" frequency so then i was able to tell

people the right way to do things otherwise i could report them to the FDA for leaving refrigerated food out at room temperature for hours instead of 30 minutes. They would pull out pallets of food about 6 feet tall stacked to fit the most

food on each pallet then say only one person per pallet which took this one guy 3 hours and a half to stock the shelves so now those expiration dates are wrong.

I have tried mantras and subliminals to become more attractive then 6 people flirt with me in one day, everyone was

smiling at me and i got 4 phone numbers from female co-workers because the other 2 flirting was guys but I'm only attracted to females.

Also with Aaron Doughty's help, he refers to Hawkin's scale from "fear to enlightenment" often with examples and his experiences which really helped me out but he still

does not completely know what he is talking about as far as i know but i don't watch most of his videos. I had help from many teachers and i sometimes still look for more

knowledge to improve life for the greater good of all! First

time i heard the detox frequency that is known to eliminate electromagnetic radiation, Viruses, diseases, infections, toxins, bacteria, fungal etc "741 Hz" i heard just about an hour or two then sweat 3 nights in a row so much

during winter that i woke up once each night because the sweat i was soaked in got cold so i dried off and rolled over each night but with constant use i don't notice any sweat

really if i do it daily or weekly. Music tuned to 528Hz gives us more energy daily because it returns our DNA to its perfect form also 528Hz is the frequency at which life is created and when i listen daily then i keep benefits constantly all day.

Other

people's beliefs and our own beliefs and fears influence us subconsciously that influences thoughts, abilities and choices either positive or negative but we can learn what negative and or deconstructive frequencies we operate on by listening to our thoughts and words then reverse the negative and deconstructive ones,

I figured this out because I heard weird beliefs that I didn't believe that effected me in a negative way but now I looped an affirmation video using desktop version for protection from anything negative on my cracked phone it charges slow but it works.

With a world of technology that can brainwash you on a silent frequency displayed on the patent technology website then We must brainwash ourselves for everything good and have a negative and deconstructive frequencies blocker like i listen to daily in my Daily playlist that i try to keep under 6 hours to listen 3 times daily for more effect i add more helpful videos after so i have

something else to listen to while sleeping. We can create new empowering, optimistic, hopeful, loving, gratefulness, forgiving life for all. Always think what is the opposite of the negative, remember to stay and think positive, constructive and always work with science to figure

out what is for the greater good of all and if you ever have questions google or youtube can't answer then ask me, I'd love to help and I've also gained benefits

from meditation, mantras, subliminals, mindful breathing, Orgone Pendant necklace from "wish .com" i believe that the intentions i set in my gemstones to help me

bring world peace, love and happiness to all helped because it does seem easier to teach and twice now after meeting people who told me i was wrong because they

chose one of the 2000 religions which are belief systems from other humans both times christian but my gemstones start shocking my leg when they fill up to much of the negative energy and shock my hand if i touch them, stronger than static shock, like those electric shock pens.

Sungazing the safe way reduces needed food intake gradually to zero by connecting to earth's electromagnetic field I'm at 8 minutes but on your First day the sun should be near touching the horizon and look at

the top of the sun then left, right, bottom and repeat for 10 seconds then only increase 10 seconds once daily until 44 minutes and 40 seconds is completed then the sungazing part is done to get energy just walk on earth slow,

relaxed and barefoot for 45 minutes a day for the average person for enough energy throughout the day but i read many different stories it seems you still can drink and

eat but in the Thomas Jefferson University study they kept track of this man 24/7 for 200 days they monitored all of his bodily functions and they said he didn't eat or drink anything but he did bath and they measured the bath

water and he was healthier than anyone 20 years younger than him and he was about 70 years old.

At another university the same guy was monitored for 411 days but they didn't even believe him about not needing food or drink so i think they said he did accept some buttermilk from them.

I heard one guy rose his frequency and vibration so high that he cured everyone at an insane asylum just by walking in, they told him he could not speak to them but just being near him everyone of them past all the tests to get out within a week.

People with multiple personality disorder sometimes will have cancer in one personality then scan them 2 minutes later in another personality then the cancer is gone. One woman who got cancer i think her name might be Doloris Cannon

but before she went in for her cancer treatment, she forgave everyone in her life then went to the doctor that said after scanning her again that her cancer is gone and that's the only thing she did different in her life and i personally have forgiven everyone for my health without actually telling them and it felt like 100 pounds lifted off my heart.

If you want to know more about the Science just ask or google ~Bruce Lipton~ is a cellular biologist that has proven all the science of beliefs, fears, thoughts and choices creating our reality.

According to RC Henry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, in a 2005 essay: A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. Pioneering physicist sir James Jeans wrote

"The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter,

we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual."

I had help discovering how the universe works from Bob proctor, Aaron Doughty, YouTube channels YouAreCreators and Universe inside you, Bruce Lipton, The Placebo effect, No Cebo Effect, Mandala effect, butterfly

effect, bystander effect, the documentary on Netflix called "The secret", visual and audio hallucinations, The MasterMind Principle, police report eye witnesses having different stories, experiments, etc and

seems the mandala effect is that whatever current frequencies controlling the majority also change history for example according to thousands of people the bible used to say that sampson's girl cut his hair but now with new

controlling frequencies it now says that she had a slave cut his hair to take his power away. This relates to a recent story i heard where the recent President Trump paid his lawyer take the blame for writing something on Trumps twitter account.

I found Dr. Royal Raymond Rife's frequency list and it is over 437 pages long and the first 8 or so is the University studies and then every health problem we can possibly have and what frequency or frequencies cure that problem.

The cancer section is 3 pages long. I seen AIDS on the list and every body part we have and or metabolism for example the frequency and or frequencies that help them normalize to perfect functionality. Also i do teach for world peace, immortality or whatever else to improve life for anyone because i care for everyone but affirmations, subliminals and frequencies takes some time of listening because

they have to push back opposing frequencies like being under a foot or more of water the deeper you go then the more pressure you feel so this is why certain affirmations, subliminals and frequencies seem to take longer

to come true but please trust me i have no reason to lie, someone said something like frequencies are like seeds that you plant they may not produce fruit right away but if you water that seed then eventually it will produce fruit and they were referring to saying the affirmation long enough to get results.

Before i got benefits from starting this journey i did not even think of the concept of how the universe works but i have really put a lot of thought into explaining anything and everything in the universe to get a better understanding of how all of it works.

I plan on changing my eye color to gold to prove it to for friends, family and anyone else because after teaching hundreds of people i have noticed most are cynical and deny anything based off a belief system they have but belief is only a guide to the truth as i see it now, this is why

i could not trust religion i knew it was not me to try believing in something that seemed so made up. So i searched over 5 years learning from many teachers, hypnosis, scientific explanations and more for a variety of questions i had about life constantly thinking of new questions and eventually started enjoying learning along the way then i learned about how the universe works, so i then

started experimenting with the law of attraction, subliminals, affirmations and frequencies to prove for myself if they have complete control or not and so far every

affirmation, subliminal, frequency etc i listen to enough gives me the results i wanted so now my focus is to teach and get this information out there because i want to help people and bring world peace i already sent it to the governor of nebraska and washington but they obviously didn't bring world peace yet so i will share my message

in this video instead of in comments section of many videos to make a difference in the world. I have already started listening and saying my own world peace affirmations and subliminals to help protect myself for when

I am ready to share the truth. I only teach what i have proven through experimenting with hundreds of frequencies, subliminals and affirmations. I am working on perfecting myself in everything that i do or say with great patience.

I was listening to different frequencies on 11 tabs on YouTube before they made Anthony Sommer add in the evil 440Hz in his music after 6 frequencies like stem cell production, collagen production, etc then I felt the different energy centers in me filling up then I would feel a

Slight discomfort that went away after switching to another frequency then after the 7th frequency I felt it all in more detail, it only creates the weird feeling because I was filling up

smaller chakras/energy centers within 20 minutes then it had to use energy to distribute energy to our energy centers nearby. The 9 solfeggio frequencies fill up our 9 biggest chakras so it gives more time to distribute energy so you won't feel the slight discomfort. Aaron doughty taught

me an affirmation "i am whole and complete," it means that i do not need anyone or anything to fulfill me or to complete me, i simply relax and focus on what i need to focus on then time flys by faster so i set alarms on my phone for certain things like when i need to get things done or when i get off work.

I read and heard many stories of how people can change hair texture and or eye colors to whatever they want with subliminals and affirmations but i simply have not wanted to change my body in those ways besides being invincible, immortal, healthy, wise and or anything else to improve the quality of my life.

At www.spooky2rife.com they have frequencies with proven results from 10 different researchers and they say it is the biggest frequency database in the world. 144.72hz woke me up when i was so tired i couldn't stay awake any longer then i got back to work at full speed, i was about to clock out of work 3 hours early but then found this frequency on that site next to energy and vitality.

I should inform you that the cells in our body can be addicted to anything and that Rockefeller studied how Hitler had control over people and found that fluoride in the water and toothpaste was one way because it calcified the pineal gland, closing up our perception and stifles

Creativity and with 440Hz set as the official standard of tuning for America and Europe. 440Hz is the frequency "Humans are bad and need punishment" so when anyone listen to almost any music then that frequency grows from

inside you like a bubble constantly growing until it meets an opposing frequency because the Mastermind Principle explains how opposing frequencies cannot exist in the same area, so opposing frequencies go to war

until one survives in whatever area, the bubbles probably follow us wherever we go if we created it. So this is why people get so angry because even if they do not listen themselves other people do listen enough that the frequency bubble could be all the way out to Jupiter or Pluto.

So I use Fluoride free toothpaste, aluminum free deodorant, purified drinking water, 24/7 affirmations and the nine Solfeggio Frequencies I also avoid Television or sometimes called "Tell Lie Vision" because it tells you lies. I also avoid listening to music other than the nine Solfeggio Frequencies.

So it is important to learn consciously how to counter balance this problem. The nine solfeggio frequencies, subliminals and affirmations help and also learning to be like water, for example as water flows through life down the river it does not stop before hitting a rock, it simply goes over and or around the rock, practice makes perfect also we need to change the standard of tuning for all music.

I heard once "if you think about nothing then you become nothing." I think that once the affirmation etc becomes permanent then it becomes like your identity so if being immortal is one of your affirmations then it would not matter

if you think about nothing since you are immortal. I've heard of a story I think it only took 4,000 people to meditate on world peace for it to come true all around the world during the meditation but affirmations can do the same!

Please use this knowledge for the greater good of all it helps if you write down affirmations and put it on something you do daily like taping it to the middle of the tv

so you read it daily before watching tv or on a doorknob etc please include "There is peace throughout all time and space now and peace will always be here and everywhere" Please share this message everywhere you can on all social media accounts and in person you can summarize this and or show them this message.

For the disbelievers, not trying to be rude because someone said this to me once I looked up the definition and you should to but they were right so my perspective changed.

You are cynical and you have no right to tell me what you think negatively without doing the work to prove me wrong. I put years into my experimenting with about a hundred affirmations and scientific explanations that's why I

can explain anything and everything in the universe. I'm authentic I can't only believe in anything I hear so I search for proof and then prove it true or not with a variety of ways.

I share the truth. I'm not insulting you but simply informing you of the behavior your displaying. Experience and proof always win rather than thoughts and beliefs.

The frequencies constantly fill up your energy centers but some

are good some are bad like an opera singer break glass with her voice. That energy is probably used for survival first then healing, then perfect health our body knows how

to use the energy then once you have healed up and healthy then the energy fills up faster because it takes less energy to maintain health than to become healthy and then you feel great all the time but you still got to keep listening to the frequencies all day everyday until your

full then I think you can listen to higher frequencies but I haven't got there yet like 10,000 Hz but frequencies research is still happening so make sure whatever you listen

to is beneficial to you and others around you because 10,000 hz hurt my back for months until I realized it was causing the pain probably because I needed to fill up on the nine solfeggio first before upgrading further. Beliefs can make anything reality so anything can be true but I know the highest truth and here I share with you.

I'm giving you the highest truth so now is the time to use this knowledge I offer tested and proven so everyone will be peaceful if I get enough of you to listen, think and or say

these affirmations, "Everyone and everything is immortal, There is peace throughout all time and space, everyone feels unconditional love for everyone and everything, everyone is happy" and more repeat all day everyday for faster

results please, We see life through the lens of our belief so I try to wake people up with a variety of experiments, related famous people quotes, scientific explanations, etc

I'm currently doing 2 more experiments for no sleep affirmations and no food for a month or longer, when I get hungry I simply think, "I don't need food to survive and thrive" about 5-10 times then I'm not hungry again for many

hours then repeat when hungry. If I feel discomfort then I think, "I feel great" about 5-10 times then it becomes true. Beliefs make anything reality, make anything true but belief is harder to control consciously but with affirmations you think or say exactly what you want a few times

then it becomes reality, some things take longer because people around you operate on opposing frequencies. If we have more people think or say the affirmations then the

Faster they come true or possibly might take a few people just to make certain affirmations come true like "everyone is immortal" this affirmation probably has the most people operating on an opposite frequency because even spiritual people believe they are meant to die.

Proof and experience always win rather than thoughts and beliefs. When I first heard about affirmations I didn't believe they would work, I ignored them until I found a video by YouAreCreators called "the secrets of frequency and

vibrations" talking about how the nine solfeggio frequencies cured the worst cancer within 70 days for 16 terminally ill cancer patients which sounded more scientific proven due to me remembering an opera singer breaking glass with her voice so I figured there could be good

and bad frequencies for people to and I was right. YouAreCreators put frequencies with affirmations so I decided I can try both at the same time thinking only frequencies would benefit me but they both gave me many

benefits, every affirmation came true after about 2 and a half weeks listening about 24/7 and I started waking up with

this extremely blissful feeling everyday, super happy, infinite energy, thinking faster, better memory, processing information faster and working like I was on an adrenaline rush all day everyday but before the adrenaline rush only last about 5 minutes a day.

Many experiments feeding rabbits equal amounts of fat makes them 60% fatter except the ones that were getting petted and loved they were healthy. Split a pile of rice in 2 talk negative to one pile then positive to the other overtime positive will look better but negative will be completely black. Or with plants growing, same thing.

How do drugs like marijuana affect my Aura and energies? And how can I recharge or reinvigorate my energies?

This Awareness indicates that this plant, that known as marijuana, is in fact, a teacher plant, that which is known as a plant that can have an effect on one who has ingested it. That this particular plant is seen to create an opening in one’s waking consciousness wherein higher perceptual awareness is activated. Thus, entities may become more psychically and spiritually aware.

That this plant can have the effect upon humans wherein it opens one’s inner consciousness to those higher vibrations and octaves of a divine nature or frequency, often causing one to enter into that cosmic level known as higher self-realization.

This Awareness indicates that entities would benefit greatly in developing a clear understanding of the essence and effects of certain plants, drugs and chemicals. That when the aura is in a weakened state, there is much potential for that which is known as possession or negative thought-form or astral attacks.

That when an entity is in a weakened state, that this is when those attacks mostly occur. Thus, when an entity is ingesting large amounts of that which is known as the teacher plant, that of marijuana, that this particular plant as being that which is least destructive to the entity’s aura.

Wherein, other drugs such as alcohol, may have a more destructive effect on one’s aura, often blasting holes in one’s auric layers, creating even greater weakness and vulnerability to those astral or energetic attacks. That in general, that of alcohol expresses more of a depressant effect whereas, that of marijuana produces that of a more euphoric or positive effect.

This Awareness indicates much of the perceptual effect depends upon each entity’s individual preferences, attitudes, beliefs and purposes in using such plants or drugs. That there are many methods of restoring and to reenergize one’s energies when one chooses to stop using such plants or drugs.

That there is seen the concept of fasting in order to remove such residual chemicals and energies from one’s bodily functions, wherein such herbs as comfrey or chamomile or peppermint are consumed, that this appears to be of a general effect in removing such residual effects. That also lemon juice appears as effective in removing such toxins and poisons.

Technically it's fasting without being hungry if you use Affirmations, I think " I don't need food to survive, I don't need food to thrive, I feel great" between 5-15 times then hunger pains go away, if I repeat more then it lasts longer that I don't need food. I have had no food for 7 days now and I have started noticing that all of my abilities are improving like hearing and feeling better etc.

Hence, the action of fasting is seen wherein one’s cellular structures begin to hunger for that residue, that drug, that plant’s chemical and in that hunger, attempts to open wider and wider in an effort to absorb energy.

Whereby, in that process of yearning and moving towards each other, the old residues remaining within the cells begin to move into the elimination process and out of the bodily functions, creating a cleansing effect. That this can take approximately a few weeks to a few months, depending upon each individual’s personal expressions and habits.

That also there is seen the ingesting of fresh water and the consumption of only proper foods of a healthy nature. That also exercise appears as a form of internal cleansing. That also walking in nature or by large bodies of water may have a beneficial effect upon the entity in need of such cleansing.

This Awareness indicates that another important method of toxin removal is seen as simply restricting one’s intake of this plant and refusing to ingest any amount of it. That this method appears as one of the best methods to removing this plant’s residual waste products from one’s body, this being seen to take an average of 3 weeks to 3 months or longer, depending upon each entity’s daily intake.

That some entities may only need a few weeks of cleansing, while others may need a longer period of time in order to attain that perfect state of health.

I've learned from the best then figured the highest truth out myself through experimenting with all knowledge this world had to offer I literally focused only on self improvement and figuring out all the details piecing all the

pieces together for an all inclusive explanation. Don't act like I couldn't figure out the highest truth just because you didn't discover or experiment like I have. Go big or go home that's my motto. I know 100% what I'm talking about

without a doubt because I was fully dedicated to figuring this out since I barely talk to anyone due to me being shy because my empathic abilities are stronger than most but if you think not then ask some questions I can answer any question with truth.

honestly people worship many things with over 2,000 religions your choice to believe in that caused your experiences from my experience current controlling frequencies change the past and it seems because I was determined to find the highest truth after experimenting then

I found it like that quantum physics picture you sent me explains how I'm right. I experiment to prove what I believe to be true to ensure I have the highest truth, have you read my full message at the top of my facebook page pinned to the top? Not the bio but the top post

We can't rely on anyone to give you all your knowledge or you limit everything about yourself. Use discernment carefully, none have the right to deny the highest truth without putting in the work to prove it true or not using the information from the one who knows the highest truth which is me.

There is ego, basically it's like selfish only cares for what it wants and thinks it's always right because technically it is right because beliefs create reality but knowing beliefs create reality can enlighten you but only if you know it as fact like me. Affirmations make anything reality. Wake up obviously your ego has taken over to be so unknowing about life yet think your truth is the highest truth

Does not matter if they all lie because I have used many methods to prove what I have figured out, have you not read my top pinned facebook post with all my experiments? I only refer to other people, quotes, scientific explanations, etc if it aligns with what I have proven that's why I have insight into things you have never heard of.

I'm a man, we all need to grow our hair out never cutting, trimming or waxing because after 3 years we get all enhanced abilities and they enhance more overtime.

I accidentally grew my hair to long and got all enhanced abilities that's how I figured it out, I was playing soccer every week then one day all my abilities improved double and

it was so cool but I was soaked in sweat had to keep drying my face to protect my eyes using my shirt but then it was soaked and I never ran out of energy it was so cool so that night I was like now I need to cut my hair because it traps heat make me sweaty but then I thought wait maybe

my hair gave me the abilities so I searched google "why should I grow out my hair" and found many experiments by the US army talking about how they were hiring Native American Indian trackers for their unique tracking skills and so the younger ones joined for money but forced to cut

their hair then the army said why did you lose your ability and they said "my dad says we get our power from our hair" so they had 10,000 takes like 10 different types of tests with their hair and they did great on everyone of them.

The army would try sneaking up on them while sleeping and the indians would wake up before danger got close and got away and they did hand to hand combat with the best of the army but due to their faster reaction speed they

beat the army every time and more tests but they got the 2 people with the highest scores to redo every test but one had to cut their hair so they did and after the haircut he scored some of the lowest scores of everyone who took the test and the guy who kept his hair kept his scores really high!

By teaching so many I continue to learn new ways to convince people I'm right except for the stubborn that think they know part or all of the highest truth, if think your

cup is full meaning you think you know the highest truth and don't make room to question your own beliefs then you have accepted a lie blindly.

We have many cups but the cup of knowledge must save room to question everything to find the highest truth

My mom said believe in whatever you want but I have gone to church for a while but I always knew to take religions as a guide yes learn from them but don't be to focused on one religion I've learned from Sevan Bomar who read every religion 3 times but I knew I had to look deeper from all teachers.

My boss once told me I had to stop teaching people while I work so I asked myself later why do I need to teach this anyway (trying to cope with that hard decision) then

right away a voice came in my head and said something like "you need to share the truth for world peace, that's why I created over 330 million species so we can hear all the different healing sounds but now we have separated from nature."

Currently I listen to world peace, immortality, no sleep affirmations in my playlist I made it way shorter to get results faster but I say, "I don't need sleep, water or food" but I still drink some water because I want to mainly focus on no food or sleep due to me sharing my message all day. Also think "I feel great and I am healthy"

It seems we need to focus on only a few affirmations at a time because if you listen to a hundred different affirmations then you only give each a little energy daily which might not be enough to make it true

The difference from being in higher and lower vibrations, some are like I get angry when blah blah but happy when blah so technically they don't operate at the same time so that's how they can both be inside you but in different parts

of the body. This is why we need Aaron Doughty's help to learn how to maintain higher vibrations. That's why I'm no longer angry in times I would get angry, feel peaceful, unconditional love like being able to really trust myself and

the universe it's all good and important because affirmations only work if you say the affirmation like a million times a day instead it's better to learn consciously how to stay on those really high vibrational states of being.

Scientist had a group of people hooked up to machines to measure emotions and had them watch a slide show of random pictures but some were babies or evil related and they found that the brain responded to each picture 8 seconds before they seen it. This shows how the higher self tries to prepare us for the future.

Your higher self basically lives a hundred years all instantly every moment using what knowledge you have at the time but due to this you will experience things that you will eventually understand because you learn about it later in life and believe it to be true later in life.

Bruce Lee said to watch words that is why its called spelling

Think, say and or listen to affirmations subliminals frequencies and mantras for, "I have 100,000 dollars" the more

often you repeat then the faster you get the money.

The energy of "I have 100,000 dollars" will expand outward from you every time you repeat "I have 100,000 dollars" literally mind controlling people to give you money I got 6 people trying to send me money now.

I heard of this experiment they volunteer for that gay people have sex with women but either stay gay or become bisexual so I think it proves gay people are meant to be in the world but I only am attracted to women. Also the only thing repeated twice in the bible is "Ye are gods"

Affirmations subliminals frequencies and or mantras work for everyone because they work with energy. If you change something physical with physical things then the problem will manifest in a different way, it works through subconscious fears.

I did some research though in the library of congress they have 15,000 legit research places send results of marijuana experimenting and they concluded that there are

no negative side effects of marijuana use they said if your pregnant though don't smoke because the babies lungs are still forming so I used to smoke but once I reached enlightenment I realized marijuana has a lower vibration

than enlightenment on David R Hawkins scale somewhere from fear many between til enlightenment so I decided to quit the little use I used to do completely and then after about a week then I started feeling great to rise up to the vibrational level that my knowledge is at.

Aaron Doughty on YouTube helped me reach enlightenment, every vibration has an ego difficult to get past without Aaron Doughty

I could listen to music any kind but I always didn't really like most of it and I later found out why, Hitler also used 440Hz to control people and now it is the official standard

of tuning for America and Europe that frequency basically is "Humans are bad and need punishment" this is why violence is in big cities because many people listen to that and get brainwashed without even knowing it

Just like they claim God has spoken us into existence, Affirmations, subliminals, frequencies and mantras make anything reality, for example, "I am happy" will make you happy once said enough times but if you say, "I want to be happy" then you will simply want to be happy. Basically you get what you say, think, believe, etc.

Remember some affirmations come true faster than others because of the Mastermind principle, for example people don't eat all day long but people do believe all day long that they will not live forever so that's why require no food affirmations will come true faster than I am immortal affirmations.

Some affirmations come true faster than others because people emit frequencies while they operate on them

Since we use energy even when the affirmations are true we should continue the affirmations to keep them true or we will use up all the energy then it is no longer true unless you continue the affirmations

when I say affirmations for example "I am Happy" then I create energy to be happy but the affirmation needs to be repeated enough times within a certain amount of time to continue accumulating enough energy to become true

The only bible verse repeated twice is "Ye Are Gods" we can change anything with Affirmations, subliminals mantras and the nine solfeggio frequencies, I have figured

out how to make anything reality and how the universe works after experimenting with hundreds of Affirmations, subliminals, the mantras and the nine solfeggio frequencies.

There is simply energy and energy can be used anyway we choose, I've used subliminals and mantras to become attractive to make people attracted to me that didn't even notice me for a year but that day everyone was smiling at me,

flirting with me, showing off their best achievements and giving me phone numbers, read my top pinned facebook post and all of my comments on it because I've put years of research and hundreds of experimenting into it even after figuring out how to make anything reality and how the universe works

Loop the video by clicking and holding on it while on the desktop version it will say loop click it then if on it then it shows check mark by the loop option then make it full screen then open up wifi settings to get the looped video to go to small screen so you can do other things on your device while you listen to the subliminals

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kbear3201 · 3 years

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Sims 4 Legacy Challenge

I fell in love with Lilsimsie’s Not So Berry Challenge, this challenge was inspired by it but I made sure to make it different. Gen 10 Is the closest this gets to her challenge but it is still different. Originally I was going to assign colors but ended up deciding against it which you may notice with some of the traits. I like to give my sims one negative trait to make things more realistic and fun for myself. Some Sims have more of a loose story so any story tellers can tell their story as they please.

I admit I’m still playtesting this challenge, if I find things that need changes I will come back and fix them, if you play please help me find anything that’s ether too hard or makes no sense.

I have a few bonus Sims, some of which are not yet listed as I haven’t completed them.

I don’t have a set of challenge rules as I want people to play this as they wish, whether you make it a rags to riches or just play with the challenge itself.

Now for the Challenge:

Gen 1: Passionate Painter

You have a fiery love.. For art! Art has always caught your eye more than people ever have, and you’re honestly fine with that. Painting is your passion! You can really express your emotion with it, but some people will never understand. No one would suspect, but you’re a health nut.

Traits: Hot Headed, Self-Assured, Art Lover.

Aspiration: Painter Extraordinaire

Challenge Goals:

Complete your aspiration

Reach level 10 of the painting skill

Reach level 10 of the Painter career

Keep all of your first paintings (small classic, medium classic, large classic, etc.)

First date must be at museum

Only eat healthy foods

Make at least one of each painting

Have two kids

Gen 2: Friendly Baker

Food can be art too, and it's also yummy. You are a people person, and your favorite way of making friends is through treats and parties! Treats brings people together and tastes so good while doing so. You love treats, maybe a little too much. People are surprised you love sweets so much when your founder was such a healthy eater.

Traits: Glutton, Outgoing, Self-Assured

Aspiration: Friend to the world

Challenge Goals:

Complete your aspiration

Reach level 10 of Baking skill

Keep your Founder’s first ever painting

Make at least one of each item in the baking list

Have at least 5 friends, including your forever best friend from childhood

Have a penpal

Be good friends with your sibling

Have more than 1 kid

Gen 3: Master Chef

Growing up you had all the treats you could ask for, but there's so much more to food!

Traits: Foodie, Perfectionist, Outgoing

Aspiration: Master Chef

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of Cooking and Gourmet Cooking skills

Complete Aspiration

Inherit Founder's first painting

Make at least one of each item both the Cooking and Gourmet Cooking list

Don't let anyone else cook or get quick meals

Only make cake for someone's birthday

Gen 4: Classical Genius

Your parent's comfort has always lied in food, but for you, it's music. The Violin has always had such a pretty sound that seems to calm your soul and speak to you. It's history is so fun and it's become your passion. From a little girl you've played a violin and over the years have grown in love with it.

Traits: Music Lover, Perfectionist, Creative

Aspiration:

Challenge Goals

Reach level 10 of Violin skill

Only listen to classical music

Inherit founder's first painting

Have 50,000 simoleons in savings at once

Be an adult before having kids

Have all of your children reach A student as child and teen

Have 1-3 kids

Gen 5: Rising Star

Your parent is all for the violin, but singing and playing the guitar is so much more fun. You love writing music after writing a love song for your first lover and after that you find it's your passion. You start publishing your songs and earn a following, landing you a spotlight and a voice in the world.

Traits: Creative, Ambitious, Clumsy

Aspiration:

Challenge goals

Reach level 10 of singing career

Reach level 10 of guitar before you reach adult

Inherit founder's first painting

Have two partners before ether being with your forever Sim or deciding to stay single

Don't get married

Have 1 "oopsie" child, can be any of your lover's (or someone else’s)

OPTIONAL

If you have get famous, reach at least 4 stars of fame

Gen 6: Humble Farmer

For two generations your family has been tainted with riches and that's how you grew up. But you start to realize as a young adult that money is nothing but a distraction, true riches come from land and hard work. You move away with your parent's blessing and almost nothing to start a farm you can be proud of.

Traits: Outdoor Lover, Vegan, Clumsy

Aspiration: Freelance Botanist

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of the Gardening Career

Move out as a young adult with only 20,000 simoleons and get the biggest lot available

Complete your aspiration

Inherit founder’s first painting

Don't get a Job

Only sell your crops (and crafts if you pick one up)

Have at least two crops for each season (if your crop can grow in more than one season it counts as one for all the seasons)

Have at least 3 kids, helping hands make lighter loads

Gen 7: Romantic Adventurer

Growing up on the farm, you're not afraid to get your hands dirty. Adventure calls your name and you’re ready to answer. As a child you enjoy finding time capsules and frogs and exploring all types of mysteries. As a teen you find your neighborhood’s hidden world and as an adult you explore every inch of the Jungle. Beyond that, you dream of finding someone to take on these adventures.

Traits: Outdoor Lover, Jealous, Romantic

Aspiration: Jungle Explorer

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 or Archeology and Selvadorian culture skills

Complete Jungle Explorer Aspiration

From childhood, find frogs and collect time capsules

As a teen, find your neighborhood’s hidden world (Sylvan Glade for Willow Creek, Forgotten Grotto in Oasis Springs, Cave of Soulani, etc) If your neighborhood doesn't have a hidden world you may pick a hidden world of your choosing (leave Sixam for gen 10)

Inherit founder’s first painting

Explore the entire Jungle in your lifetime

Marry your third partner

Marry as an adult

Have at least one family adventure

Take your kids to the beach every weekend

Gen 8: Ocean Protector

The beach has always held a special place in your heart, it was the one place your parents brought you that really made you feel like you were a part of a family. Your parents never noticed your depression since teenhood and it sticks with you through your entire life. When it’s almost your young adult birthday, you run away to Sulani and find your beloved beach is in danger of nasty pollution.

Traits: Outdoor Lover, Gloomy, Child of the Island

Aspiration: Beach Living

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of Fitness skill ONLY THROUGH SWIMMING

Reach level 10 of Conservationist career Environmental Manager Branch

Complete Beach Living Aspiration

Inherit founder’s first painting

Have a best friend that lives in Sulani

When you’re about to age into a young adult, move to your best friend’s house

As a young adult, move into your own lot in Sulani

Invest lots of your time with your family, maybe even too much

Find suitors for all your children

Gen 9: Marine Biologist

Growing up on the beach, you love it as much as your parent does. But while they work towards saving it, you want to work towards learning about the creatures you’re saving. You love your parent but they never give you space and when you talk to them about it they’re very dismissive. You become very dependent on your parent.

Traits: Child of the Ocean, Gloomy, Genius

Aspiration: Angling Ace

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of the fishing and Parenting skills

Reach level 10 of the Conservationist career Marine Biologist

Complete Angling Ace Aspiration

Inherit founder’s first painting

Don’t move out of your childhood home until your parent dies

Marry your suitor and have 2 kids with them

After your parent’s death, devorce your suitor

Remarry a Sim with the Good trait and have at least one kid with them

Support all your children’s choices

Gen 10: Space Explorer

Your Parent has always supported all your dreams, you were always close with them and loved the stories of all the crazy creatures that live within the Sim world, but what about elsewhere? You look to the stars and dream of what could be out there, maybe you should be the one to find out. Your a funny Sim who enjoys making your friends and family laugh, which makes space life a little less tedious

Traits: Genius, Bookworm, Goofball

Aspiration: Nerd Brain

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of Handiness and Rocket Science Skills

Reach level 10 of Astronaut career Space Ranger Branch

Complete Nerd Brain Aspiration

Inherit founder’s first painting

Have a close relationship with your parent

Build a rocket

Visit Planet Sixam

Marry as an Adult

Marry a co-worker

OPTIONAL

Meet an Alien (If you want to add occults to your story

BONUS SIMS

Gen 11: Unflirty Romance

While your parents heads were in the stars, yours was always in the books. You find it fascinating that someone can take your mind into whatever world they want to and you dream of sharing your own ideas with the world. You write Romance which some find strange due to you not being one for romance, what can you say? It’s so much easier in the books.

Traits: Bookworm, Creative, Unflirty

Aspiration: Bestselling Author

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of Writing and Logic Skills

Reach level 10 or Writer career Author Branch

Complete Bestselling Author aspiration

Inherit founder’s first painting

Self Publish books until you reach level 6 of Writer career

Write 1 book for each child and gift it to them

Besides your children’s books, only write romance novels

Marry your best friend

OPTIONAL:

If you have Get Famous reach at least 3 stars of fame

Gen 12: Dr. Unflirty

Can you find love if it’s scary? Your Parent always wrote about romance but never displayed it for you. You want to find happiness with someone but will that be possible? You refuse to give up but dogs are so much easier! You love them and dream of caring for them as a vet. However, one little accident proves to make this harder than you originally thought.

Traits: Unflirty, Good, Dog Lover

Aspiration: Soulmate

Challenge Goals:

Reach level 10 of Charisma, Veterinarian, and Photography skills

Reach level 5 of Pet Trainer skills

Reach level 3 of any part time job before adult

Inherit founder’s first painting

Wait until you’ve raised the money to move out of your parents house

Make extra cash selling your pictures

As an Adult quit your babysitting job and become a vet

Have one child as a young adult (teen if you have the mods for it) this is your only child

#Sims #Sims4 #legacy #legacy challenge #challenge

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reximusprimus · 3 years

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On Tidying My Life, Day 3

Today’s goals were to clean the bathroom and get some real groceries. I was armed with a list for both tasks. I got up and had my tea, I did my morning meditation, and I had absolutely zero motivation.

I dragged myself into my room and got dressed. I watched a few videos, procrastinating. Finally I worked up the motivation to clean. I put on my tunes and set to work. First step was to organize the cupboards and drawers. I put loose, tall items into a topless bin. Then I set to work going through my makeup. I let go of several pallets that I loved but never used. It weighed heavily on my heart, as I love makeup.

Makeup items purged, I placed them into a clear box with a lid, carefully making sure everything fit nicely. Next I went through my various Ipsy bags and their contents. I placed the ones I wanted to keep into another clear box and closed it. I tucked them away under the sink. Then I purged my drawers and organized them. So much more space!

I got out some other clean bins and put all my menstrual supplies in one and some assorted items in another. I put them in amongst the toilet paper boxes so they all fit neatly.

Then I cleaned the mirror, wiped down the counter, and cleaned the toilet inside and out. I felt so satisfied with the bathroom and snapped a few pictures. This feeling is addictive and I want to keep it up. I never want to get messy again.

Then I went to the store and bought my groceries. I listened to music while making my selections. I bought more produce than usual, and considered each meal I would make with the items. This made my trip much more productive. It became less about quick solutions (though I have a lot of those, still) and more about mindfully plotting out meals I want to make in the future.

Next week, I plan to make my favorite soup (white chicken chili) and I want to just eat more mindfully and purposefully. Then I came home and made space in my pantry, discarding trash and items that were either expired or I just didn’t like. With the new space, I put away my groceries. I breathed a sign of relief. Thanks to state assistance, I won’t go hungry or exclusively eat ramen. I am beyond grateful.

Then I went to my parents’ house for dinner. I took an impromptu nap on the club chair while waiting for dinner. Then my dear friend and unofficial big sister and her girlfriend stopped by to drop off her shower curtain and bath mat that I’m taking off her hands. She’s going to be living out of her van and traveling for the next 6 months, so she doesn’t need most of her possessions.

After a delicious dinner, I went home. I set the bath mat to wash (it’s covered in her dog’s fur) and settled in to relax.

I feel good about today. I was really struggling with my depression, but I was able to rally and get done what I wanted to do. I’m very proud of myself today.

#personal #tidying #konmarie #marie kondo #groceries #space shower curtain #space

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charliemcarthy · 3 years

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“GET TO KNOW ME” TAG GAME

rules: answer the questions and tag people you’d like to get to know better!

Tagged by: @djnicklesanddimes

What do you prefer to be called name-wise?

Charlie or Char is fine~

When is your birthday?

February 26th, I’m a Pisces for sure.

Where do you live?

Upstate NY, 6 minutes from Ontario, in the woods.

Three things you are doing right now:

Listening to music. (Always listening to music. I fall out of bed with headphones on.)

Rping Transformers with my gf.

Trying to figure out future plans for my forestry job for Spring, watching trail making videos and brushing up on my plans so I don’t feel so overwhelmed like I got last year.

Four fandoms that have piqued your interest?

Mystery Skulls, FNAF, BatIM, getting back into Venom as well

How has the pandemic been treating you?

Eh. I work at home and my side jobs were either substituting at the schools around here or the little forestry gig I got going on as I carve trails in the woods out back. (28 acres that back up to about 100!) I expected my business to falter in the spring-summer, when COVID became more widespread. It did not, and I’m very grateful. My best business was in October, Ive also taken the time to work on me more, as I think everyone has. Since August 2019 I’ve lost 70 pounds, so im very proud of my progress in that sense. I’m not very social, and now I’m not social at all, and it’s starting to get to even me.

A song you can’t stop listening to right now:

Ahh, shit. Songs are like potato chips for me, I can’t pick just one! Have three ;)

Jason by the Midnight (SO FUCKING CATCHY.)

Spirits in a Material World by the Police

Handsome Devil the Smiths

How old are you?

School, University, occupation other?

Freelance llustrator, works weekends/sunny days in forestry. It’s hard work but fun! my main job is so creative all the time my brain gets exhausted and hard labor lets me burn steam!

Do you prefer heat or cold?

Lately I’ve been preferring heat due to weightloss. It’s nice not being sweaty all the time! But I also don’t mind being chilly, I can always bundle up in a hoodie.

Name one fact that others may not know about you.

My grandpa was a magician, and he taught me a lot of his tricks over the years. He liked sleight of hand with cards/items/prediction, I am def rusty with items/stage magic, but it’s hard to not let old instincts kick in when someone asks you to cut a deck >>; Another fun one is changing a dice score by making your second die hit the first.

Are you shy?

Eh, nah. I’m more standoffish. People mistake my silence for shyness but over the years shyness has curdled into honest to god disinterest and difference. I am so tired/depressed and I just...don’t care anymore what people think of me. I’m also told I can come off as intimidating.

Pronouns?

She/her

Biggest pet peeve?

Hypocritical actions and narrowed mindsets.

What is your favorite “dere” type?

Lord I don’t even remember them anymore. What’s the cute one? Deredere…? That one. I guess. Idk.

Rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be.

Hums. I live with my parents still, basically in an apartment above them. but I pay for everything I can, I have my truck Kenny, and a job that does pay just not frequently enough. I would love to live on my own but that…definitely hasn’t been the year for THAT. But im also focusing on bettering myself, while trying not to see my life being over at 30, even though I feels like it. I guess…5/10? I’m very fortunate and need to remember that everyone's experiences are different. Hard to chart all that out.

What’s your main blog?

This one!

List your side blogs and what they’re used for.

Charlieslowartises: art! Also my most popular/most active blog :D

And-she-was-trying: weightloss blog

I have a few older ones that still around but inactive.

Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends?

Ive had a few people try strike up friendships for...less than good reasons. Some want free art from me, some want a free therapist, and one person used to compliment me+my art skills by saying my art wanted them to commit suicide due to my level. Please do not ever do this. Our friendship, if there is any to be found, will be obtained naturally. Through mutual appreciation and respect. I am not a very friendly or warm person to begin with. I will be less so if I sense your intentions are anything less than simple companionship.

That being said, for every person that I have had to turn away or ignore, I have twice as many friends on here that I am perfectly content with and love to talk to! Or, if you are a client and I accept your jobs without fail, rest assured you are a friend as well <3

I’ll tag whoever wants to do this, too tired to grab names lol.

#meme #long post #text #thanks for the tag miranda!! <3 <3 #words #get to know me

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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Hi Ellie!! I hope u dont mind this ask ❤Do u have any advice on how to do stuff on your checklist and not get overwhelmed? I can hardly do one thing out of my to do list and then i get severely depressed for not being able to do anything. i dont think i can function like a human being sometimes. anyway youre so cool ellie!!! i admire you loads!!! - help asked from one adhd struggling teen

HI anon ! I’m sorry for not answering sooner i had a beautiful answer ready and then Tumblr just ate it T_T anyway i don’t mind at all i think it’s awesome that you’re asking me ! this is honestly still something I’ve struggled a lot with. here are a few things that helped me (keep in mind i’m not a professional and this is only my personal, limited point of view) :

- ofc the first thing is to get as much help as you can, there are lots of people out there who can help. Generally talk to people around you about your problems ; often they want to help and just don’t know how : i know the tendency to feel ashamed and keep it in but that’s not good. Some people might be a bit ignorant so maybe keep a few ressources on hand you can send to people to educate them if that’s an issue ; and educate yourself so you feel more secure and legitimate in your opinions.

- one thing that’s helped me lots is to go on #ADHDtwitter and #Neurodiversesquad because a lot of people on there are actual adults who are sharing both their struggles but also tips on how to actually manage the symptoms and have full and happy, if messy, lives. It’s very inspiring. It helped me a lot to feel understood, less alone and gave me a ton of ideas. Some accounts to start with : @ danidonovan - @ blkgrllostkeys @ ADHD_Alien (her comics are so cute) @ dustyexner plus lots of others

- regarding having trouble doing things, this is definitely a Big Damn Problem for adhd folks. the concept of the emotional Wall of Awful really helped me with this, you can find more about it in this Youtube video by the awesome How To ADHD channel (all her videos are so helpful !! have a look!) basically the idea is that we accumulate emotions linked to certain tasks based on unhappy past emotions that make it a lot harder for us to do things and that building it down takes a lot of time and effort but there are ways to work with/around that. learning to process, connect to and be more mindful of our emotions is a huge task, but it’s often a central one.

- don’t try too hard to be neurotypical aka ‘normal’. find the solutions that work for YOU. If they’re a bit weird ? Whatever. The point is that it works. You will probably end up having weird routines that make no sense to others but it doesn’t matter as long as it helps you. Be creative and don’t be afraid to think outside the box. I’ll give you an example : one of the reasons i hate going to bed early is because late at night is when i feel the most free of outside obligations and therefore i don’t want to give that up. So instead what i’ve been trying to do from time to time is a ‘clown hour’ where i basically give myself permission to do whatever the fuck i want (within reason lmao) but in an active way ; basically indulge my rebellious inner 8 yr old. Last time I ended up watching martial arts videos on youtube and practicing kickboxing kicks on the Mulan soundtrack and then put on funeral music and improvised my own eulogy by thinking about what i would like people to say about me after my death. Lmao that sounds completely wack when explained to other people but the point is - stuff like that really helped me reconnect to the idea that my time is mine to do with as i please, not just late at night. Anyway my point is : make it fun, make it a game, try things, experiment. Our brains crave novelty and if they don’t have it and feel burdened by shame, pressure and expectations of course they get depressed and stuck. Give your brain the fuel it needs to work.

- just accept that sometimes you’re going to be a mess. it’s okay. you can be a bit of a mess and also live a fully, happy, joyous life. our society puts so much pressure on us to have this Perfect Instagram Life where everything is polished to unrealistic standards and gives us the idea that your morals are linked to productivity and if you are not constantly striving to be a Model Consumer Pretty Picture you are a Bad Person and a slob/lazy/unworthy/etc and all of that is...toxic garbage of the highest order that everyone should unlearn but especially us. related to that i would be careful with use of social media, tailor it to only give you content that makes you feel good/intellectually engaged/creative because it’s so easy for us to go into bad comparative spirals.

- tied to that be careful of your own perfectionist drives. it’s veeeeery common for adhd people to want to overcompensate their perceived shortcomings by wanting to be perfect. aka you haven’t done anything in weeks and all of a sudden you have this insane to do list where you expect yourself to turn your entire life around in a week. well, not going to happen. i’ve found it so important to limit myself. for instance what i do now is i forbid myself to put more than 5 items on any todo list. once i’ve cleared items i can add more, but not before. it’s a lot less scary that way. also prioritizing is very important so you don’t get bogged down in details.

- try to be mindful of your own energy. a big tendency of adhd people is to overpromise and underdeliver because we are enthusiastic and we want to please people but we are bad at estimating time/energy it will need. learn more about your own boundaries, what things are hard for you to do (for me, it’s socializing in groups) and what gives you energy (for me it’s writing, reading and walking in the woods) and try to balance that. learn to say no, it’s tough but necessary. So that you have enough left for the tasks you need to do.

- create an environment that is benevolent and helpful for you in which to work/do things and that generates positive emotions. Get yourself a cute notebook. Put on happy music. Don’t forget to feed yourself. Don’t give into the urge of punishing yourself. You deserve happy good things - not overindulgence as escape - but our brains thrive on short term rewards. Bundle the unpleasant tasks with more stimulating stuff (for instance i always listen to podcasts while cleaning/grocery shopping etc). Create pleasant little routines for yourself (for instance one of the first things i try to do in the morning is do a little drawing of my emotions, it makes me happy, then i have tea and i plan my day.). Put on alarms constantly so you don’t lose track of time, but with a cool song. Find yourself cheerleaders who can encourage you in a positive way. Stuff like the pomodoro technique, timing yourself while doing a task, etc, can really help. Or telling yourself you will do a thing for ten minutes and stop when it’s unbearable, etc. Prioritize joy, pride, affection, desire to help, altruism, love, curiosity, interest and passion as motivators, instead of anxiety, guilt and shame.

- find ways to build self esteem and confidence in your own skills. it’s often a lack of that that can block you from doing what you need to because you might be afraid of screwing it up. what I did for a while, for instance, is to keep a record of the stuff i did everyday and then extrapolated the skills i displayed from that. another thing you can do is make a list of simple skills you want to learn and find ways to do that, like youtube tutorials, etc. especially when it’s practical stuff and quick to learn, it can really feel so good, and make you more familiar with a sensation of success (and if you fail it can be a fun experiment gone wrong, and self discovery, you don’t have to be good at everything.)

- find ways to challenge yourself. depression happens for adhd people when we let ourself stagnate, isolate ourselves because of shame, and get into this idea that we are subhuman and we don’t deserve good things. that is false. you deserve a happy life. and our brains crave novelty. find your passion and indulge in it, find the things that make your brain come alive (as long as they’re healthy ofc). if you’re not sure what that is, just keep trying. you will find it. but resist the temptation to make your life smaller and smaller. you might mess up but that’s okay. it’s human and it will make for interesting stories later. instead of trying too hard to ‘fix’ yourself, focus on developping your positive sides. it will give you energy, self-respect and draw you forwards like a rocketship. we thrive on passion, not reprimand.

- anyways : i know how tough it can be. depression is really something i struggle with, too. and doing things remains Hard. but my point is, you are not alone, and you are not broken. chances are you too, like most adhd people i know, are a fun, creative, compassionate person with a heart of gold and so much to give. our main enemy is most often the shame that comes with living in a world that is not adapted to us. but the truth is we are just playing the game of life on a much harder setting than a lot of people, and we don’t even have the manual. of course it’s going to create struggle ! so i think the best thing to do for yourself is cultivate a sense of compassion towards yourself, self acceptance, and humor.

- as a teen you probably have a limited margin of autonomy to make your lifestyle fit your needs but - there is so much potential for it to get better ! as you grow in self knowledge and ability to make your own choices, you will find the right solutions and your life will get so much better. i have heard so many stories like this. since i got diagnosed, too, my life got a lot better. i won’t lie, it’s a lifelong process. but there is so much possible. give yourself time. you are so young, and you are definitely a human being. being human is struggling with being flawed and vulnerable and imperfect. i know the world can be shit sometimes, you probably got some negative messages - especially from your own brain bc depression definitely lies to you ! but don’t let yourself be guided by ignorance and fear. you deserve better. i bet you’re also super cool. the happier you are, the better off the world will be. so invest in yourself. educate yourself, develop your self knowledge, be kind to yourself, and keep making little steps. you’ll get there. <3

#adhd #actually adhd #neurodiversity #mental health #depression #anon asks

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penworlds · 4 years

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Yes, I am a writer. Yes, this’ll probably be a blog about writing and roleplaying. But do you know what’s more important than writing and roleplaying ?

That’s right, you !

So here’s a list of things I want everyone to do in order to prepare themselves for a day full of successful writing and roleplay !

SELF CARE LIST :

1. Start your day off by making your bed ! Making your bed at the start of your morning makes you feel less cluttered and more productive.

2. Drink Water ! Guys, take this from someone who used to thirst myself like crazy — I mean, I would go almost a whole day without water. Drinking water not only gives you energy during the day, but also helps flush out the toxins in your body, especially the ones that retain unnecessary fats and bacteria ( sorry, that’s the nursing assistant coming out of me 😓)

3. Please, please, please make a healthy breakfast ! Again, I’ve been in the position where I would skip breakfast and rush to start my day. Heck, I used to wait until 5:30 pm to eat a single thing. It’s not good for you, so make sure you eat a proper breakfast before starting the day !

4. Skin Care ! If you don’t have a skin care routine now, that’s okay ! I literally just started with mine about two weeks ago. But let me tell you, it makes a difference ! It makes your skin look and feel healthy; plus, you get a nice confident boost !

5. Take vitamins and medicines, and make sure to brush your teeth, too ! These speak for themselves.

6. If you meditate, stretch, do yoga, pray or read your Bible ( or any religious or non - religious text ), give yourself about 15 - 20 minutes to do that in the morning ! Giving yourself some quiet alone time is healthy and very much needed before tackling the days To - Do list !

7. Turn on some fun bops ! Listening to music will motivate you as you start your day, and stimulate your brain while you do your chores — because guess what ? Yep, that’s what’s next on the list !

8. Start on your chores, schoolwork or work assignments ! I know, it doesn’t sound that fun. But you’ll thank yourself later for starting on your work as soon as possible. And if you did the other items first, you’re completely ready to tackle your work !

* If you have anxiety, adhd, depression, ect., try starting your cleaning routine by simply focusing on one area of each room to declutter per day ( that way you don’t overwhelm or stress yourself out ) !

Remember, you’ve got this ! You are doing great, you’ll get through the day ! And even if you don’t do everything on this list, just putting in the effort means you’ve tried your best, and that’s what matters !

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indecentpause · 4 years

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Writeblr Q&A

from @reeseweston!

Fill it out, post your answers, and tag some pals.

1. When did you first learn you enjoyed writing?

When I realized I could use it as a vehicle for storytelling and nobody would look at me and I wouldn’t even need to be anywhere nearby. More specifically: grade school, although I can’t remember when exactly. I started writing poetry in third grade so probably then!

2. Tell us about the first project you ever wrote.

Oh gosh I will remember this for the rest of my life: I was in preschool and we were doing activities in 15 minute intervals. I got to the writing table and froze. I wanted to draw fairies and elves and make a story about them living in a mushroom house, but the teacher was sharing projects and I was so scared I wouldn’t do it right/be good enough/etc etc normal kid with anxiety worries. So 15 minutes later I had a blank page with nothing on it. But then I went home when my parents picked me up and I wrote that story in my journal where nobody would read it unless I said they could, and I felt so free. I can’t even describe how it made me feel.

3. How does your favorite media shape who you are as a writer?

The Winnie the Pooh books by AA Milne shaped a lot of how I use pattern/repetition/description and even punctuation to set a mood or scene and tell a story.

4. What's something you've wanted to write, but aren't sure you could? (A tv show, a genre, a style, a time period, a video game, etc)

A MUSICAL I always wanted to but then I realized I can’t write music, haha.

5. What is the thing that keeps you from writing the most?

Definitely symptoms of my mental illness problems. Anxiety, depression, shitty attention span. That’s why I was crying earlier here, haha.

6. How do you deal with an inner editor?

I listen! I know they say you shouldn’t but I edit my project every time I open it to write something new, not in major ways, but in little tweaks here and there. I’ve been told some of my first drafts read like final drafts, and that’s why.

7. How long have you been writing?

Since preschool! My first Real Story was in third grade though.

8. What is your general writing process? Do you write chronologically? Do you do a lot of planning?

I just do what I can when I can. When I plan it’s often just in my head, or bouncing ideas around with people in my life, coming up with little headcanons and stuff. I write as I think of the scenes, so like. Once I wrote the end first and had to figure out how to get there, so that was fun!

9. Assign a scent to your writing style.

Sage, frankincense, sandalwood.

10. One book you hope everyone reads?

Of mine: In the Lion’s Teeth. Of others: any poetry by Shel Silverstein.

11. What is it about your least favorite genre that makes it your least favorite--and how might you change that to better appeal to you?

I just don’t find sci-fi in general that interesting. Maybe more aliens and planets that don’t look exactly like humans and Earth. More ladies and people of color. More queer folks. Less actual science and more crazy bullshit that makes sense in world. I know these books are out there!!! I’ve seen the lists!!! I just have to find them.

12. Design a "collector's edition" for your first novel. Include items that might be of interest to your audience.

My first RELEASED novel was The Fairy Portal, so we’re going with that since I don’t remember which my first finished one was. There’d be a second book that had illustrations and lore about the different Fair Folk, the spells used and how to recreate them. A little trinket like a keychain or something, something shiny and pretty. A soundtrack if I could get all the approvals.

13. If one thing was real from your project, what would you want it to be?

Pretty much everything I write is realistic, like, even the magic parts? But it would be cool to have The Fairy Sight that easily.

14. What's something you always include in your work? Do you have any other Easter eggs?

I cross over names of background characters a lot. Every story that takes place in Chicago has certain locations, the same for Phoenix. The place Jordan and Darcey go to on their weekend trip in Two Heartbeats on One Page is the same place Gavin and the others hole up in in Plague.

15. What is your favorite passage from your own work?

Chayton’s hoodie is half-draped over the back of his chair, one cuff dragging on the floor. It’s the same dark blue as his t-shirt. At one point when you weren’t looking, he swapped out his black gloves for black and pink striped fingerless ones. His fingers tense and untense, involuntary twitches against the paper cup. His perfectly shaped and cut nails, with little flecks of paint underneath, scratch against the thin cardboard. A breath of steam rises up from his coffee and every now and then, he purses his lips and blows it away.

Hanging fairy lights offer most of the lighting, soft and low. They’re just enough to make out the menu behind the order counter. The green and blue bounce off of Chayton’s face, his cheekbones, the angle of his nose, softening the sharp lines, and in the dim light, his eyes and lashes look so much darker.

This isn’t my favorite favorite but I’ve written like 15 books and a million short stories and this is the first thing that came to mind.

I never know who to tag anymore. :( How about if you saw this on Reese’s blog, you do it too!

#writeblr #tag games #writer q&a #ask pause things

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crinkliedfries · 4 years

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for the musicals ask thing: hamilton -🐸

this is probably going to get long so i’ll put it under the cut

Funniest lyrics:

honestly. for some reason all of aaron burr, sir, gets me, but. specifically:

-“Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir? / That depends, who’s asking? / Oh well sure, sir, / I’m Alexander Hamilton, I’m at your service, sir, I have been looking for you / I’m getting nervous / Sir… I heard your name at Princeton, I was seeking an accelerated course of study when i got sort of out of sorts with a buddy of yours I may have punched him, it’s a blur, sir, he handles the financials? / You punched the bursar. / Yes!”

-“He looked at me like I was stupid, I’m not stupid,”

-The whole. introductions of laurens, mulligan, and lafayette (i almost spelled it lafayeet help)

-”Then King George turns around, runs a spending spree”

-”‘Onarchy? How you say, how you say, ‘anarchy?”

-”To socially advance, instead of sewing some pants!”

-“Burr, check what we got/Mister Lafayette, hard rock like Lancelot/I think your pants look hot/Laurens, I like you a lot”

-“Burr, you disgust me./Ah, so you’ve discussed me, I’m a trust fund baby you can trust me”

-All of Farmer Refuted gets me every time

-Same for all of King George’s songs

-“Yo… let’s steal their cannons!”

-”Your excellency, sir!” “Who are you?” “Aaron Burr, Sir?/Permission to state my case?” “As you were” “Sir/I was a captain under General Montgomery/Until he caught a bullet in the neck in Quebec/And well, in summary/I think that I could be of some assistance/I admire how you keep firing on the British/From a distance” “Huh” “I have some questions, a couple of suggestions on how to fight instead of fleeing west” “Yes?” “Well—” “Your excellency, you wanted to see me?” “Hamilton, come in, have you met Burr?” “Yes, sir” “We keep meeting” “As I was saying, sir, I look forward to seeing your strategy play out” “Burr?” “Sir?” “Close the door on your way out”

-”To be their secretary? I don’t think so.” “Now why are you upset?” “I’m not.”

-”Watch this obnoxious, arrogant, loudmouth bother…”

-”Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after him!”

-”You are the worst, Burr.”

-The comparison between Hamilton and love/death/life in Wait For It (i understand that it’s not. Actually funny but,,, out of context it’s just. “ah yes, the four uncontrollable things in life: life, love, death… and hamilton.”)

-”LEE DO YOU YIELD” “YOU SHOT HIM IN THE SIDE, YES HE YIELDS”

-Non-Stop. A lot of it is funny

-What’d I Miss

-The Cabinet Battles

-Hamilton refusing to say M*cbeth and then saying it anyways in Take a Break

-All of Washington on Your Side

-All of the Adams Administration

-”John Adams shat the bed, I love the guy, but he’s in traction,”

-”And they say I’m a francophile–at least they know I know where France is!”

- “Talk less!/Burr!/Smile more!/Burr!/Don’t let ‘em know what you’re against or what you’re for!/Burr!/Shake hands with him!/Burr!/Charm her!/Burr!/It’s eighteen hundred, ladies, tell your husbands: vote for/Burr!”

-”I have never agreed with Jefferson once/We have fought on like seventy-five different fronts”

-”Here’s an itemized list of thirty years of disagreements” “Sweet Jesus”

Most relatable lyrics:

-”Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for,”

-”Oh, am I talkin’ too loud? Sometimes I get over excited, shoot off at the mouth”

-”I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory/When’s it gonna get me?In my sleep? Seven feet ahead of me?/If I see it comin’, do I run or do I let it be?/Is it like a beat without a melody?/See, I never thought I’d live past twenty/(Where I come from some get half as many)/Ask anybody why we livin’ fast and we laugh, reach for a flask/We have to make this moment last, that’s plenty”

-”It’s hard to listen to you with a straight face”

-”My dog speaks more eloquently than thee” (@ my father specifically)

-”Don’t modulate the key then not debate with me!” (sometimes)

-Honestly,,, you’ll be back, kind of? it could also just be because i listened to it after an argument with my father, one of the first times i actually,,, stood up for myself. but i relate to it in the sense of “oh yeah that’s an actual thing people do and someone’s kind of been like that to me”

-”Any hope of success is fleeting”

-”Your reputation precedes you, but I have to laugh” i guess?

-”I have some friends!”

-”Watch this obnoxious, arrogant, loudmouth bother”

-“Oh shit…”

-”love doesn’t discriminate/between the sinners and the saints/it takes and it takes and it takes/and we keep loving anyway/we laugh and we cry/and we break/and we make our mistakes…there are things that the homilies and hymns won’t teach you…death doesn’t discriminate/between the sinners/and the saints/it takes and it takes and it takes/and we keep living anyway/we rise and we fall/and we break/and we make our mistakes…life doesn’t discriminate/between the sinners/and the saints/it takes and it takes and it takes/and we keep living anyway”

-”He dismisses me out of hand”

-”Indecisive from crisis to crisis”

-”What is the meaning of this?”

-can i please put guns and ships. please.

-”at least i have a friend with me”

-”we had a spy on the inside"

-”What comes next?/You’ve been freed…You’re on your own. Awesome. Wow! Do you have a clue what happens now?”

-”I’m curious, bear with me… I intend to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt”

“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?/Write day and night like you’re running out of time?”

-”Talks for six hours!”

-”I know I talk too much”

-”I’ll keep all my plans close to my chest/I’ll wait here and see which way the wind will blow…watching the tension grow”

-”I’m a polymath, a pain in the ass, a massive pain”

-”i hadn’t slept in a week”

Most profound lyrics:

-”If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”

-”Raise a glass to freedom/Something they can never take away/No matter what they tell you”

-”How can I keep leading when the people I’m leading keep retreating?”

-”dying is easy, young man. living is harder”

-”The gossip (in new york city) is insidious”

-all of wait for it

-”Duel before the sun is in the sky/pick a place to die where it’s high and dry/leave a note for your next of kin/tell ‘em where you been. pray that hell or heaven lets you in”

-all of history has its eyes on you

-”Why do you write like you’re running out of time?/Write day and night like you’re running out of time?/Every day you fight like you’re running out of time/Keep on fighting.”

-”What are you waiting for?/What do you stall for?/…then defend it.”

-”But the sun comes up and the world still spins”

Prettiest lyrics:

-All of Helpless!! It’s just,,, a pretty song

-”Oceans rise, empires fall” (the way it’s sung!!)

-”From your sister, who is always by your side”

-all of wait for it

-all of that would be enough

-all of dear theodosia

-certain parts in take a break

Most uplifting lyrics:

-”In (new york) you can be a new man”

-There’s just. something about my shot that feels uplifting?

-”Raise a glass to freedom/Something they can never take away/No matter what they tell you”

-All of Schuyler Sisters?

-”From your sister, who is always by your side… and the hope that you provide,”

-all of stay alive

-all of that would be enough

-”Keep on fighting”

-”But the sun comes up and the world still spins”

Most depressing lyrics:

- “Talk… less. Smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for,”

-”It was my parents’ dying wish before they passed.”

-”I remember that night I just might regret that night for the rest of my days”

-all of wait for it

-all of history has its eyes on you

-The Laurens Interlude

Character with the best lines:

Either Hamilton, Burr, or Jefferson

i’m stopping here because. it got long but

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wroughtbetwixtfanfic · 5 years

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Love, Blood, And Rhetoric, Ch 4.

Fandom: The Society.

Summary: Campbell’s just trying to survive in the new world. He knows he can make it– it’s everyone else he’s worried about.

Rating: Mature.

Tags: Canon Divergence, Mental Health Issues, Family Issues, Substance Abuse, Complicated Relationships, Consent Issues, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Mild Sexual Content, assuming Elle and Campbell are both 18 for the sake of things, Underage Drinking, PTSD, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, implied eating disorder, Fix-It, Campbell has mild ASPD, and is actively trying to not be awful

Word Count: 4295

Ch 1 || Ch 2 || Ch 3 || Ch 5 || AO3

It was week one of the new rules.

The first day, a group text went out saying that food people already at home could be kept, but anything still in stores would be rationed immediately. People had three days to pack and move homes. Work schedules were posted at the church. Campbell felt relieved at getting clean-up duty; it would keep him busy and give him something constructive to do. Unfortunately for Elle, she got stuck with meal prep for lunch. She sighed, but gave him a little wave and made her way to the cafeteria to start.

He hadn't known what to expect when he got to the hardware store, but it was bad. Broken out windows, a burned out car, lights smashed out. There were some other guys already there, passing out tools and making lists of what needed to be done. Grizz showed up with an SUV to tow away the burned car; Campbell helped him hook it up, before moving on to some poor sucker who was looking at a ladder like it was going to bite him.

"Here, I've got it. It's alright."

The boy looked cautious, and a little confused, but then he offered a weak smile of gratitude. "Thanks. I don't do well with heights."

"I don't mind." Campbell shimmied up and eyed the lights that needed to be replaced. "Have someone send me up some bulbs, yeah?"

Everyone worked until a text went out that it was time to eat. Lunch was almost a nightmare. Campbell had known from the start that, at some point, he was going to have to face the fact that avoiding meat was no longer an option. It had been ten years. It still made his stomach turn thinking about it, but well, there wasn't going to be a lot of room to be picky. Lucky for him, this time, there was a vegetarian option.

"I convinced them to make a plain marinara," Cassandra said quietly as she sat next to him at a secluded table in the corner. "But we won't be able to do that forever."

Campbell stabbed a piece of pasta, pretending it was his uncle's face. It was their family's fault they were in this mess to begin with. "Thanks. We should gather up a list of people with allergies, though. They're gonna matter more in the long run."

"True. Lily has been asking about gluten, and I don't think it was just a fad diet thing. We can't have what happened to Emily happen to anyone else. Maybe we could have a dedicated space in the kitchen for people with allergies. Or even use a kitchen in another restaurant."

"You're also gonna have to figure out what to do for people who are diabetic or just need different meal times."

"Yeah. Well, this is just the first day; it's going to take some time to get it perfect. We'll figure something out."

"Of course." Campbell glanced up from his food. "How's the ticker going?"

"I have enough medicine to last me a while. Longer, if I take the bare minimum. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere any time soon."

"Good. What are you doing over here, anyways? You're just starting to get some good PR."

"Mm, I actually have a question for you. You know that I've formed a committee to help figure things out around here."

"I saw."

"I was wondering if you wanted in." Cassandra held up her hand when Campbell opened his mouth to object. "I asked Harry, but he said no. If you were there, I don't know, maybe he'd feel less bitter."

"Oh, I highly doubt that. We're having a little not-exactly-lovers quarrel at the moment."

"Please, Campbell? You're realistic, you're brutally honest when it counts, and we need someone who can be objective. It'd be good for you."

"Why don't you ask Allie?"

Cassandra hesitated. "She and I already had a fight over that. I told her the town would see us as the same person, but..." She let out a slow exhale. "Allie is too impulsive. She doesn't listen."

"And you think the relationship between you two will smooth over if she knows you picked me over her? No, Cassie. Hard pass."

"You said yourself, you're the idea guy."

"Then write my ideas down and pass them off as someone else's ideas, if you want anyone to agree to them. No one will take you seriously with me there, and then we'll all be fucked."

Biting her lip, Cassandra leaned back in the plastic chair and examined her hands. "Fine. But still, Harry is going to be a problem. You know that, right?"

Of course he knew it. Harry wasn't a bad person, not really. Like most guys their age, he was young and foolish and had a mouth he never really knew when to shut. He was avoidant, insecure, and took things way too personally. He was still pissed Cassandra won class president, and that had been months ago. Yeah, he was gonna be a problem. Campbell munched on his garlic bread while he considered the options, not that there were many. "I'll see if I can talk some sense into him. Get him to join the committee."

"I'm sure he would, if you said something. He listens to you. He trusts you."

"Maybe he trusts me, but he doesn't listen to me. Harry's a frightened puppy who falls behind whoever he think can protect him. But he doesn't listen to anyone."

"But you'll try? For me?"

"For you."

"Thanks, Campbell."

She smiled, and then she was gone, off to go do leaderish things. Campbell sighed to himself, finishing his lunch and heading back to work; he didn't get to see Elle, but they were all busy and trying to get used to their new lives. There'd be time to talk later. Him, he had an entire street of shops to help repair. With them all working together, the hardware store was almost completely cleaned up by the end of the day. They still needed to fix the other stores, but it was slightly less of an eyesore, and Campbell was too tired to think about what was in the stuff Will's crew served for dinner.

The days oozed by, and Campbell settled into the routine of it. He really only got to see Elle in the mornings and after the work day was over, but at least there was always enough time to cuddle in and read or watch a movie together. It was quiet. Peaceful. She never asked much of him, and he didn't expect anything from her. Was that what it felt like, to have a normal life? Whatever it was, Campbell found himself slowly, very slowly, starting to relax.

"You're in a better mood," Cassandra commented the next day at breakfast as she hung up prom posters outside the cafeteria; Elle and a few others gave them a long glance as she walked by. "I think you might be the only one."

"Who knew that all I needed to get my head right was to ditch the assholes making me miserable? I don't know, like all this sucks in a lot of ways, but there's no snotty soccer moms looking down their noses at me."

"Mental health symptoms often improve with a decrease in stress."

Campbell reflected on the last few days. Any time he walked around town, before, he felt like people were staring at him. Whispering about him. Paranoia? Maybe, but Campbell knew plenty of times he'd entered a room of chattering people and had it go silent. West Ham didn't take kindly to oddities. Since they'd arrived at this strange clone of West Ham, though, that sort of thing had eased up. He still wasn't eager to be around people or associate too closely with Cassandra, just in case, but a sort of uneasy truce had fallen over the town. People were trying to get along. Those who couldn't manage to be civil to Campbell just left him alone. It didn't seem a coincidence that Campbell's temper had mellowed at the same time.

He didn't expect it to last. If there was one thing he'd noticed over the years, it was that his best behavior came and went on a regular basis. It's not like he ever stopped being what he was. ASPD, anxiety, depression, OCD, whatever people had going on in their heads, it didn't just disappear, even when things seemed better. It just meant people were coping. But it was still a break from the constant screaming inside his head, and the ever-present anger was just a dull simmer. He'd take it, even if it wasn't permanently gone.

Will passed out little cards to everyone, asking about dietary requirements. All anonymous. Elle managed to join Campbell for lunch, filling out her little card next to him. He let her peek over at his, and she let out a little hum. "I noticed that you didn't eat meat. When did you become vegetarian?"

"When I was little. Saw a dead animal, never got over it."

"At least we have someone who'll eat all the tofu we've got in the freezers."

"Yum, yum. Love me some bean curd." Campbell leaned over and kissed Elle lightly on the shoulder. "I did wanna ask you something. I saw you looking at the prom posters. Wanna go with me? It might be fun."

Elle's eyes brightened. "You want to take me to prom?"

"Of course I do."

"I thought you didn't like crowds?"

"Well, if it's for you, I can handle one evening of socializing."

The thought turned his stomach a little, but Elle let out a happy sound and tugged him into a tight hug; her curled his arms around her and breathed in her scent, smiling. He knew he wasn't a great person. He'd fucked up more times than he could count. But things were looking up, and he wanted Elle to be happy. If that meant a night of dressing up like a yuppie and swaying around to bad music, Campbell would suck it up for her.

He sneaked a look at one of her dresses that night when she was in the shower. Cassandra allowed the clean up crew to take one item they wanted or needed as payment for a job well done, so Campbell chose a royal blue dress from one of the fancy shops downtown. It was more revealing than anything else Elle had, but Campbell had seen the kind of magazines Elle read, and would see her fawning over the super skinny models with sexy clothes. Maybe she was just too scared to buy something like that for herself.

In all the way things were changing for the better, one thing had changed for the worse. Harry was ignoring Campbell. He'd ended up with dinner serving duty for the next three weeks; the algorithm was random, according to Gordie, but Campbell wondered if someone hadn't fudged it a little to teach Harry some humility. It didn't seem to be working. Instead, Harry was withdrawing into himself, and completely brushed past Campbell at dinner to go sit alone, slumped over and picking at his food.

Maybe most people didn't notice or care, but Cassandra picked up on it five or six days after the big argument. She tugged Campbell aside at lunch, crossing her arms over her chest. "What did you do to Harry? He's acting like he's been kicked."

"Ever considered maybe it's the fact that he went from being a rich pretty boy on his way to law school, to dishing out slop and having his home become the opening scene from Home Alone?"

"Seriously? That's it?"

"I told you some people were gonna take it hard, being forced to share spaces. We're not the only people here with problems, you know." Campbell glanced over to where Harry was sitting. Harry looked back at him for a split second, then turn away. "Some of us have lost more than others."

Cassandra pursed her lips. "I'm not changing the plan. If we run out of water or electricity, he's going to be in even worse shape."

"You asked. I answered."

"And that's really it?"

"Yeah," Campbell lied. "Yeah, that's it."

Cassandra didn't look convinced, but she let it drop. Thank fuck for that. Campbell didn't know what he was supposed to do. Their fight must have been part of the problem, considering Harry was avoiding him like the plague, but Campbell had been as nice as possible about it. And what did Harry expect, anyways? Right place, wrong time. It wasn't that Campbell had magically moved on. There was still a familiar longing in the back of his mind. At the end of the day, though, Campbell was going home to Elle. He was cooking snacks for Elle, playing Scrabble with Elle, practicing Spanish with her and listening to her sing in French while they cleaned the house. She didn't know Campbell's deep, dark secret, and she didn't ask; they just existed together, and damn it, Campbell was happy.

Sometimes you had to give up on one love, to keep another. Even if it hurt like hell.

Whatever heartache Campbell had left faded the night before prom. He folded the dress he'd gotten Elle up and placed it in a box, presenting it to her at dinner. "I hope it's okay," he said. "I kinda had to guess what you'd like."

"What's in it?"

"Just a little something for prom."

Elle perked up, pushing aside her dinner of lettuce and water to take the box. She lifted the lid and pulled the top of the dress out, her eyes going wide as she examined it. A light blush crossed her cheeks. "Oh! Campbell, I don't know if I can accept this."

"Don't worry, I didn't steal it or anything like that. I got it for cleaning up downtown. You don't like it?"

"No, I... I love it. I do, thank you."

Campbell took her hand and brushed his thumb across her skin. The stammer in her voice didn't lie. "There's something wrong."

"I really do like it. It's just..." Elle frowned. She squeezed his hand, looking over to the pile of plain lettuce on her plate. "I've been trying to lose some weight, and it shows a lot of skin. I don't know."

"There's nothing wrong with your body, Elle. You're gorgeous just the way you are."

"Say that to every major magazine."

"With the models who are airbrushed to convince you that you need to buy all sorts of expensive junk, and every other week there's some new bullshit miracle diet?"

"Campbell, that's not--"

He shook his head, cutting her off before she could defend those trashy rags. "Just try it on. If you don't like it, we can raid someone's closet and find something more conservative, but you deserve to feel as beautiful as I think you are."

"Fine." Elle leaned in and gave Campbell a chaste peck on his lips. Their first kiss. She smiled a little and pulled away, before Campbell could kiss her back. "Thank you. I guess I really would rather have a bagel with this."

"Then we shall go home and find you a bagel."

"And cream cheese?"

"Absolutely."

They got up and were heading towards the door when they passed by Harry's table. He was sitting with one of the majorly unpopular kids, whispering something about offering up his expensive cars in exchange for... something. Campbell paused. Trading workshifts? It was against the rules. It'd be easy enough to just let Harry go ahead, get caught, and get who knew what sort of punishment. But Campbell knew Harry wasn't just being lazy. He was struggling. Getting punished for having a hard time adjusting didn't seem right.

"Are you okay?" Elle asked.

"Yeah, I just need to talk to Harry. Can you go on ahead and I'll catch up to you?"

"Sure. I'll be outside."

The first kid had turned Harry down, so he'd moved on to some poor ginger who looked like he'd never had an ounce of fun in his life. "Move!" Campbell barked at him. The kid picked up and scrambled away without a single glance back. Harry glared at Campbell as he sat down, but Campbell barely blinked. Harry could just be mad about it. "What are you doing? Trying to get out of work is just going to make things worse for you."

"This is fucking humiliating," Harry snapped. "The others talk down to me like I'm a child, or haven't worked a day in my life. Nineteen people moved into my house and no one even bothered to see if they were people I'd get along with. They don't pick up after themselves, they make messes everywhere--"

"Hey, hey. Breathe. Let me talk to Cassandra about it after prom. Everyone will be in a better mood then."

"I don't care. I'm done."

"What do you mean?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again. "Nothing. I didn't mean anything. I'm just frustrated, okay?"

It was a complete lie. Campbell knew exactly what Harry was talking about. "Come spend a couple days at my house. We have room. There's some food left, too. You can get some rest and I'll make us lunch. We can play some video games or something."

"I can't."

"Harry, c'mon. Don't do this to yourself."

"That house is all I have left of my family, Cam. Maybe you don't miss your parents, but I miss my mom. I miss my sister. I miss my..." Harry's voice cracked. He shook his head and curled in on himself. "I'll be okay. Just give me some time. Please."

Campbell sat down next to Harry. Harry sighed, but didn't move as Campbell leaned a little closer. "I can give you time, but listen to me. Remember when we first met as Cassandra's party?"

"Yeah, I do."

"You told me that you'd decide for yourself what I was like. You didn't care what anyone else said. Have I ever done you wrong, in all this time?"

"No. You haven't."

"Then do what I'm telling you now. You think I like picking up trash? Cleaning up after the fucks that were at your party, after they went all apeshit on the town? No. But you need to play it smart until we get back home. Understand?"

"Did Cassandra tell you to say that to me?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Cassandra and I are related. We share the common sense genes. I'd be telling you this either way."

Harry gave a hollow chuckle. "We're not gonna get home, you know. Something's wrong here. The committee of hers won't find anything. We fucked up, somehow, and now we're trapped."

"Then the smartest thing you can do is smile, nod, and try to get along. I don't want you getting hurt."

"Yeah. I get it. Must be the apocalypse, if you're getting all worried about me." Harry looked to Campbell. He smiled, just for a split second, before it faded again. "You better get going. I know Elle's waiting for you."

Well, that was a dismissal. Campbell stood and left; Elle was waiting for him under the trees, the fading summer light making shadows from the leaves dance across her skin. He was lucky. Damn lucky. That's what he had to focus on. They went home and Elle tried on the dress, keeping the door locked so he couldn't peek; she came out in her pajamas, with a bashful smile on her face.

"It fits," she said. "I'll wear it."

"Aw, I don't get to see?"

"You get to see tomorrow night."

Campbell pouted, but laughed when Elle grabbed his hand and tugged him into his room for a particularly ruthless game of Battleship. He lost twice, but it was worth it. Elle had a cute little way she'd smile when she got a hit, and she'd throw her fists up into the air when she won.

"I guess you win the night," Campbell said as he plucked the little red and white pegs from his board. "Unless you wanna make this next game winner takes all?"

"What does the winner get?"

"Whatever they want."

Elle tapped her index finger on her lips. "Hmm." Her eyes narrowed, and she seemed to regard him with hint of suspicion, but then she shrugged and picked up her board. "I'll take that bet."

Sucked for her, because Campbell won the last round. Elle groaned and pretended to flip her board, before flopping backwards onto the bed. Campbell smirked. "Do you concede?"

"Never." Elle peered over at him. "What do you want for your prize, if I did?"

"Maybe you could stay with me tonight?"

"Just sleeping?"

"Just sleeping."

He didn't want to be alone. Not after all the shit with Harry. Not that he'd admit to it, because he was trying to ignore it and trying not to look like a fool in front of Elle, but it struck a nerve he hadn't felt take a hit in a long time. He hated having useless emotions. And in situations like the one they were in, pining over your best friend when you had someone who liked you already was about as useless an emotion as you could get.

"Okay, but I get breakfast in bed tomorrow."

"Deal."

Campbell waited until Elle bounced off to take a shower, and then texted Dillon. He was a member of the committee, so Cassandra must have trusted him a little, and he was one of the least offensive people who was living in Harry's home. Hey, can you keep an eye on Harry? He's not talking to me and I need someone to call me if anything's wrong.

Sure I can do that, Dillon texted back.

Thanks. Drumming his fingers on the phone, Campbell opened his texts and scrolled down to Harry's messages. I was serious about everything I've said, okay? If you need me, call.

There was no reply. Campbell hadn't expected one, but he hoped it was because Harry was pissed still and not because Harry had gone and done something terrible. It was tempting to just go over there. He should have, he knew he should have, but Elle was standing in the doorway of his room in her cutest pajamas with a little smile on her face. It was late, and Campbell didn't want to run out on Elle. If something was wrong, Dillon would call.

Elle turned out the lights and curled up with Campbell in bed. resting her head on his shoulder. He drifted off first. The last thing he remembered was her kissing his temple, and tugging the blankets up around him. When he woke up the next morning, Elle was sleeping on his arm, and he couldn't feel his fingers. Campbell managed to wiggle loose without waking her up. A quick glance at his phone revealed no new messages, no calls. He sighed. Maybe no news was good news after all.

Breakfast in bed was the last of the eggs, done up as an omelette with cheese and the a scrap of ham that needed to be eaten before it went bad. Campbell stared at the inside of the fridge. Soon, they would have no choice but to just go to the cafeteria for all their meals. All that would be left soon was the stuff in the freezer or in tubs. Emergency provisions. If things went sideways and no one managed to figure out food, he didn't trust most of the populace to make sure he and Elle survived.

"Hey," Elle yawned as she came down the stairs. "That smells good."

Campbell closed the fridge and tried to look as cheerful as possible. "Morning. I thought you wanted breakfast in bed?"

"Kinda, but I wanted to come help more. Want me to make coffee?"

"Sure."

Watching her pad around the kitchen and make coffee was a joy in and of itself. She yawned again, rubbing her eyes and running a hand through her tussled hair. Campbell grinned as she loaded up the coffee pot and zoned out watching it. Precious. She was precious. There weren't many people that he'd felt he would do anything to defend-- Sam, Cassandra, Harry-- but he knew right at that moment that whatever happened in the future, he would do whatever it took to make sure she was okay.

She caught him staring. "What's wrong?"

Campbell opened his mouth, words right on the tip of his tongue. You're beautiful. You're important to me. I think I... But then his phone buzzed in his pocket. "Nothing's wrong. I'm just glad we both like dark roast."

"Drink of the gods."

He murmured an agreement as he pulled out his phone and checked the messages. He paused, blinked. It was from Sam. It was short and to the point, which was unlike Sam. Can I come over? Campbell frowned. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Sam. He wanted to. But what did Sam want? More of his things? Maybe he was worried Campbell had gotten rid of stuff. Who knew what shit their parents had convinced Sam that Campbell could, or would, capable of.

Campbell replied, curiosity getting the better of him. What time?

Now, came Sam's answer.

Okay. See you soon.

"Who's that?" Elle wondered as Campbell tossed the phone onto the counter.

"Sam. He's coming over in a few minutes."

"Oh? Is everything okay?"

Campbell shrugged, stroking Elle's shoulder as he walked towards the front door. "He probably just forgot something he needed or has something from Cassandra. I'm sure everything's fine."

Either way, he was about to find out.

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dermagain · 6 years

Text

So after logging in for the first time in- honestly I wanna say a year 😟- I found a private message from someone asking me what has been helping me get better

and like an idiot I immediately accidentally deleted the message. So, sorry person that I can't message you back, but I'm gonna post this and hopefully you'll see it. I've been through a lot of major life changes in the past couple years and haven't really been on tumblr at all (sadly! I've been on a limited data plan too, so I deleted the app). I hope you've all been well in the meantime and are managing ok

This is going to be a very long post, but I'll try to break it up into paragraphs that will make it easier to skim for what you find useful. Quick warning, I'm going to be mentioning eating disorders a few times, but without going into details. First off, I'll go into a couple of the big developments in my life that are derma-relevant. A few months ago I was finally diagnosed with bipolar II, which consists mostly of depressive episodes, but has to be treated differently than unipolar depression, since antidepressants without a mood stabilizer can cause bipolar cycling. I'm now on a mood stabilizer, which is working well, and I'm finding that without bipolar cycling I have less anxiety, leading to less need for self-soothing rituals, which for me leads to less picking. If you might have an underlying condition that's exacerbating your picking, please go see a doctor/psychologist/psychiatrist if you can and haven't already. It took me several of them over several years to be taken seriously, and I'm going to follow up with a separate post with some of the details on how I finally got through to the professionals, in case that's helpful. Another change in my life is that I've relocated, moving out of state after (mostly) living where I come from into my adult years. Being away from all the places and things that pull me back into old traumas and outdated anxieties has helped A LOT. Of course, moving isn't a solution for everyone, and it requires some money and a lot of freedom, and it's stressful... my point is really just that external circumstances play a big role in how we feel and behave and it's worth making whatever positive changes you can. They won't "fix" your derma, but if you can focus on some of your other goals you may find that you're picking less. But of course, change just triggers some people, so it's very important to take what you know about yourself into account on this one. Now, to address the question I deleted, I'm gonna lay out a bunch of the strategies that were working for me before all that: I read a post by someone in the derma community several years ago recommending the book The Four Day Win by Martha Beck, and read it. I wish I remembered who suggested this or where, so I could give credit, but this was probably 5 years back and I have no idea. It's a diet book, but many of the chapters apply to reducing any behavior that you're trying to break out of, and adapt well to skin picking. I had a hard time pushing through the book because I'm extremely anti-diet and firmly believe that advocating dieting is also advocating eating disorders. Several members of my family have struggled with eating disorders, so there were times when I wanted to throw this book across the room, but ultimately I found it helpful. You can probably get a copy from your local library if you want to read it, but I'm also going to give a capsule version here of what I found helpful/adapted from the book for my own use. The premise is that instead of setting ourselves up for failure by trying to do something difficult *indefinitely* (sticking to a diet or not picking, for example), we only commit to four days at a time, and give ourselves a reward when we complete a four day cycle. The rewards, for me, were something small and concrete, usually buying myself something inexpensive that I wanted. When the four days was up, I was allowed to pick all I wanted, but then would start another four days of not picking right after. If four days is too long to manage, you can always use shorter times. I would often do 3 days, but if 2 or even 1 whole day is more realistic for you it's more important to set a very specific time and then reward yourself at the end. You have to be consistent with the reward, not giving yourself the reward anyway if you do pick, and not sacrificing it (to save money or whatever) if you do make your goal. It's like training an animal, except we are the animal we're training. Make sure your rewards aren't anything you pretty much need, since that becomes a system of punishments for not making it, and in order to work this has to be a system of rewards for doing well. It's an entirely positive system. I would sometimes get myself a larger reward if I didn't pick (or barely picked) between 3 or 4 day no-picking periods, but didn't plan ahead for that because you really need to keep your mind on the short term when doing this. If I did pick when I wasn't supposed to, I would sometimes give myself a reduced version of the original reward if I made it to the end of the original 4 days without doing it again. For instance, if I was going to buy a new set of paint brushes, I might scale it back to choosing an individual brush. Or if I felt like it was realistic, I would start another 4 days immediately after lapsing. Being as realistic as possible is important for this one. Another thing I would do is keep a log of where on my body I was picking, when, how many individual spots I was going at, and any particularly pertinent facts like an unusual mood or triggering event. I was putting it in the calendar on my phone so the time was recorded automatically, and I had a system of abbreviations that kept it easy. An entry might read "f4, a2 (blood), s4. Very anxious", which would mean I picked at 4 spots on my face, 2 on my arms to the point of drawing blood, and 4 spots on my shoulders, and that I was experiencing an unusual degree of anxiety. I would differentiate between my arms and shoulders because my shoulders are a particular problem area for me, but I also pick at my scalp sometimes, so I would indicate my scalp with an "h" for head, since "s" was shoulders. If I picked at an area enough that I couldn't say a specific number of spots, I would just say "bad", like "a2, sbad, l3" would mean I picked 2 spots on my arms and 3 on my legs and really took it out on my shoulders. Of course, you would adapt your log to what is most pertinent or useful for you. The log served a few purposes. For one, just having more awareness can be really helpful, also I would actually sometimes hold off on picking just because if I did it, I would have to acknowledge it in writing. I would sometimes stop myself in time to put down a number instead of "bad". It also makes it easier to see when you've been doing pretty well lately, and feel good about it. Prepping to pick helped too, instead of denying that I was going to do it until the very last minute and then going at it impulsively. I would get home at night or in the afternoon and wash my hands with antibacterial soap first thing, then rinse my face and put on a face mask that I could keep on for a couple hours. Its best if you can do that without being in front of a mirror, which could mean using your kitchen sink or covering your bathroom mirror. If you can't do that, try not to even glance at the mirror if you can manage. I got pretty good at keeping my eyes down completely while going through this routine. When I eventually had to rinse off the mask, if I did get sucked into picking at least my hands and face were clean and the skin on my face was in pretty good shape so the damage was minimized and the spots I picked at wouldn't flare up and get infected from getting all the dirt you pick up outside in them (gross, I know). Honey works pretty well in place of commercial face masks, cause it's a physical barrier and great for your skin, but you have to be more committed to avoiding mirrors, since you can still see your skin through honey. Besides face masks/honey, there were other physical barriers that helped. Pretty much everyone comments on this, but it bears repeating. I would wear shirts at home that were tight in the sleeves so getting at my shoulders wasn't convenient, which honestly is something I need to get back in the habit of doing. As you can probably tell from all the past-tense, I'm doing well lately, but my arms and shoulders are what I go for most when I do pick. If there were only a couple visible spots on my face, I would cover them with band-aids, and I would sometimes wear gloves at home. I've also made lists for myself of anything that's helpful, meaning both practical tips and alternatives to picking (even if they sound dumb or obvious), and information that it's helpful for me to remind myself of. I have an old list in front of me right now, and some of the suggestions on it are super simple, but were actually helpful for whatever reason. Some of them actually strike me as kind of self-shaming now, but inspired me at the time. Whatever works, I guess. Here are some of the items from the list (the not-shamey ones): Wait it out. Later is better than now. Drink some water. Have a snack. Take a nap. Put on long sleeves. Consciously remember not to do it. Turn out the lights. Watch a movie. Read a book. Listen to music. This is an outgrown coping mechanism. This is an internalization of being "picked on." I don't want to let people who have treated me unfairly manifest themselves in me. DON'T do "just one" (it's never just one). Relapse is a normal part of recovery, and it doesn't determine the future. Adherence is the goal, but near-adherence is almost as good. If I can't do 100%, I can try for 90%, or 75%. It's still worth maintaining, even if it's not perfect. No comment made by any idiot is my problem. Relax and breathe. Remember to eat, sleep, and play music. I really don't need to touch my face at all except for daily skincare. Even MH "just stopped". I'll explain that last item. It's a reference to Marya Hornbacher's memoir, Wasted. Marya had a severe eating disorder for years, to the point that it almost killed her (you may know this part, it's been a popular title for a while...) Like I said, my family history is peppered with eating disorders, so I've put in my due diligence reading up on them. She reaches the point of almost dying, and then -like some kind of miracle- she "just stops" the behavior that would otherwise have taken her life. The reason I included that as a kind of affirmation isn't because I think my picking will "just stop", but rather because it's such an extreme example of how people sometimes turn a corner in their struggles and start to get better, no matter how bleak their future looked during their darkest times. Anyway, making lists like this are helpful if you can include whatever helps YOU to remember, not what helps someone else, or only things you don't think are obvious. If it's obvious and it helps you, put it on the list. If it's not clear why exactly it's relevant but it helps you, put it on the list. Then keep your list someplace handy, like on your wall or taped to your desk, or in the back of your journal. I hope some of this helps y'all, sorry it's 5 miles long, but I wanted to include everything I could think of. Love you all. Best.

#Derma #dermatillomania #skin picking #CSP #BFRB #bipolar ii

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