#and yourself that it's not worth doing

[genericpuff]

Do you have any advice on being more confident when talking about your own comic? Whenever I bring up/talk about the fact that I make a comic, I always feel super akward and like I'm just annoying the other person lol(also sorry if you already saw this! I sent an ask earlier but I'm not sure if it went through becuase I used a kaomoji at the end and I never got a little message saying that the ask whent through lol)

I definitely did see your first ask, I've just been working through them as best I can, sorry for the wait :' )

So I don't really have any solid advice because like... frankly I feel like I'm also not great at talking about what I do?? Especially when it comes to my original projects. I know that probably sounds wild coming from me but when I talk about my comics, especially in real life, it does still feel like I'm in high school trying to talk about my hyperfixation with the adults around me haha I used to just gush about the stories I was writing and somewhere along the line I kind of lost that passion, maybe I outgrew those ideas or maybe I became a little jaded from it feeling like no one cared, much like what you described.

I think it really is just a matter of owning it and being true to yourself. Confidence isn't something tangible that you can just gain, it's a habit you have to form. I heard a saying once that stuck with me: confidence isn't the answer to the question, "Will they like me?", it's simply finding peace in, "If they don't like me, that's okay. I am enough." And that extends to your work.

If it means you have to fake it till you make it, then so be it - like I mentioned above, it's a habit, not a sudden transformation. You will go through times where it's hard, where you don't feel confident in yourself, but what matters is eventually getting back up and continuing on.

Surrounding yourself with others who have the same goals as you can also be super helpful. I have communities I'm in made up of other creatives, comic artists, etc. and that makes for a great support circle of people who know the struggle and can offer support. We deserve to have ourselves uplifted by the people in our lives, not brought down.

Personally speaking, I'm not even working on my original projects currently, I'm hoping to get them back on track over the winter but it's been hard on me mentally because I know I'm gonna be returning to a piece of work that doesn't get much engagement out of a few people who have stuck around, which has been something I've been struggling with for years now. I'm trying to be both positive and realistic with what I can handle, what I want to put up with, and what exactly I want to get out of what I'm putting in. I want to regain that confidence I used to have in the stuff I do, talk about it with the same passion I used to, even if things don't turn out the way I hope.

So yeah, I guess let's try and be more confident together :' )

[chamerionwrites]

Also, there is so much hand-wringing over the ethics of BDSM and while obviously it is worth taking care about ...sensation seeking is a thing. Many, many people enjoy eating habanero peppers and/or watching movies that make them cry. The conceptual leap from there to the idea that it's possible for sex to hurt good is a very short one, and sometimes it REALLY is as simple as that.

[transannabeth]

btw if you borrow dvds or cds from library you can rip them onto your own blanks or onto your hard drive or whatever. librarians don’t care and they won’t know if you do it or not

[slfcare]

be critical of yourself in a way that lifts you up, which means: catch yourself when you're thinking mean things about yourself / correct yourself when you're imagining what negative opinions others might have about you / encourage yourself to do better next time in a gentler and more optimistic way / never strive for more without acknowledging how far you have already come. it's okay to be nice to yourself.

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[golyadkin]

I cannot express enough that if your reaction, as a hobby artist, to not getting that many notes on your art is to say "maybe I should just stop doing art altogether" you need to stop posting art to tumblr

not necessarily forever, not even for long, but just stop putting your art on here and start doing it for you again, remember why you enjoyed doing art in the first place and stop relying on the attention of faceless people on the internet for your enjoyment of your hard work

believe me, I get it, nothing crushes the artistic soul quite like labouring for hours on a piece only for it to get like 10 notes, so you need to find your own source of joy in the act of creation and a lot of the time that means making art and not showing it to anybody

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[shitpostingkats]

Alabasta Ace is so funny.

Like the strawhats keep commenting that Ace is so polite and restrained compared to Luffy but like. This dude drags himself out of the ocean just to thank them for looking after his brother and offer to help wash dishes. Mans asks "Are these guys bothering you?" and proceeds to blow up an entire fleet with his bare hands. He trips over himself to make sure all of Luffy's crew likes him and no, really, you don't mind that he's a weirdo???? That we, I mean he, are feral little insane guys who take up space and emotional labor and are kind hard to handle? Really???? Cool cool cool hey just a reminder I can help out with anything that needs doing. I got lost in the desert but donnut worry in the 0.6 seconds since you last saw me I have somehow acquired water and provisions for several weeks. Don't ask me how!

Peak oldest sibling behavior.

[reality-detective]

Be mindful of others and yourself. 🤔

[synfl0w3r]

I am running off of raw cookie dough and yuri fanart, god cannot strike me down

[anglerflsh]

Ophelia'd

[clownsuu]

Small detour of what I usually post, but I absolutely wish (other) clown the best of luck during these confusing and almost hopeless times- nobody knows how to deal with such amount of attention in such short amount of time- a blessing and a curse to behold

[canisalbus]

hypothetically speaking how powerful would Machete be if he got competent therapy and came out 100% problem-free?

Hard to say. He might be less ambitious actually. He's extremely driven and hardworking in both iterations and it's mostly thanks to his low self-esteem. He's a compensating and overachieving perfectionist and feels like if he's not giving it 110% at all times he's doing an unsatisfactory job .

[positivelypositive]

🌟

you are enough...

...even on the days when you feel like a failure. even when you feel like you could have done more. even when you people tell you otherwise.

you are enough then, just as you are enough now. be proud of who you are ✨

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

YES! JOIN ME IN THE DELCIOUS DUNGEONS!

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness