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wingedweasel · 3 years

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Would you rather...

Sorry for the super long post, but...

So my eyes were i a hostage situation with Twitter earlier, and I noticed a bunch of people posting things like ‘would you rather have $X or $Y?’ where x is an extremely huge amount and Y is a comically smaller amount. One was along the lines of ‘would you rather have one billion dollars all at once or 15 cents every day?’ The point of these is to bring up the idea of passive income and how it’s better to have steady income over large lump sums.

However, when it’s these comically small amounts, it would be better to have the lump sum. There was one that offered one million vs one dollar every day. Ummm, the million...? Every time. I’d choose the lump sum. Sure if it’s something like one million vs 10,000 every month, then okay, yeah, the parsed out payments would be better. I mean, yeah, it would take 10 years to get the same amount, but you would be getting more in the long run. Also, in these hypotheticals, there is no end date, so taking the monthly payment would be better since you could assume that you would keep getting the payments until you die.

But - and this is the thing that got me questioning if I was missing something - why would anyone take the super small amount? If it was $1 a day, rounding all months to have 30 days, then you’d only be getting 360 a year, 3600 in 10 years. Why would anyone want that compared to having the lump sum of 1 million?

What could you even do in that situation anyway? We’ve all seen those commercials “With $1 a day, you could save the life of a child/animal” uh...but I wouldn’t be spending $1 a day. I’d have to pay a large amount, that yes, technically comes out to $1 a day, but I wouldn’t be getting a daily charge of $1. Getting $1 a day wouldn’t help anyone. As I said before, that’s less than 1000 a year. Even if it was somehow able to pass along to your descendants, it would take 2-3 of your descendants’ lifetimes to get to 1 million. And this is all assuming that you never touch any of that money in all of these lifetimes.

I’m sorry, but no. That’s not gonna work for me. Especially if it’s something stupid like 15 cents a day. No, gimme the lump sum and I’d show you that I could make more with that lump sum than any low daily amount.

This piggy backs off my belief of ‘sort yourself out before trying to sort other people out.’ This stems from having to grow up watching the people around me run themselves ragged trying to help others out of financial binds while they didn’t have the funds to do. I’d usually get the shaft because of that, and any financial decisions I had to make - when I was actually able to make them - had to go through this kind of tiered system and rank what I wanted to do over the wants (not needs) of other people. It sucked, still does since I’m still stuck in this system because of the decisions of other people’s past mistakes and temper tantrums. But yeah, that’s why I believe that a person should help themselves before they help others. I get that this comes off as selfish or egocentric, very ‘me first’ Americanism, and on one hand it is, but it doesn’t mean I (and the hypothetical others) don’t give to the poor or help others when they need it. It just means that I don’t think it’s good for you when you are guilted (or tricked depending on how you look at it) into opening a credit card to a tire shop when you don’t even have a license so that your sister can get her car fixed even though she has a very well paid job, but for some reason can’t afford to pay her bills and continues to not learn from her past mistakes by spending all her money as soon as she gets paid, constantly going on trips to Vegas, and seems to be always doing some money spending activity every weekend.

Why are you asking if this was something that happened to me? What ever gave you that idea?

Anyway, getting back on tract of proving the lump sum is better: First, obviously, I’d pay off my debts. For me, I’m fortunate enough that it isn’t a massive amount, still a lot, but not hundreds of thousands. I won’t have to worry about a huge amount that I have to pay every month and not have to decide which bill gets the late fee this time. School loans, credit cards, not so much debits but a few people have gifted me various amounts to help pay my tuition, so I’d want to pay them back. I don’t have to because they were gifts, but I feel guilty that I had to ask them for money.

Next, I would sort out my living situation. I would move to a better neighborhood in which I would buy a house there. I would also take the time to learn to drive and buy a car. I would have to outfit my new home, and while that can take a good chunk of money, second hand stores, Craigslist and the castaways from friends would help with a lot of that. I’d need to outfit almost everything because I would not be living with anyone else except my fur babies. In this fantasy, I’m saying fuck everyone else, I’m moving far far away from my family of leeches and never seeing seeing them again. I might send birthday/holiday cards/gifts to the ones I kinda get on with like my nieces and the one uncle that is actually a decent person, but everyone else can piss right the fuck off. They took advantage of me whenever I had money - more often when I didn’t have money and somehow managed to squeeze everything out of me then - so why should I help them when I have money now? Harsh? Absolutely. Petty? As fuck.

After that, I’d invest. Obviously. If the point of the would you rather was to teach about the benefits of sustained constant income, then investing is the best way to do that. Investing in companies that have a history of doing well. Having a diverse portfolio is something that I’ve heard wealthy people talk about, so if one investment doesn’t pan out, I wouldn’t lose everything. Sounds...sound. I’d also take the time to invest in me. I’d finally be able to afford the hobbies and skills that I couldn’t before. I’d take back up with music and be able to afford lessons. I do better when someone is beside me telling me what I’m doing wrong and showing me how to do it correctly. Ex, I tried learning Japanese outside of a class setting and just couldn’t wrap my head around the basic sentence structure: XはYです. For some reason, my brain couldn’t figure out that x and y were nouns and it basically translates to X is Y. My brain freaked out, and I just couldn’t. However, day 1 of class, the figurative lightbulb went off and went “oh.” and laughed for a solid 10 minuets as soon as I got home. Musical instruments are the same way. I’ve tried to lear guitar and violin several times, but all without an instructor. Can’t do it. Hiring a personal trainer would be helpful as well. Getting someone to kick me in the butt about my fitness would go a long way in helping me reach my goals. Language tutors as well. I’ve maxed out my ability to learn at the community collage I take classes at, even though it’s been over 10 years since I took those classes, but I passed them so they’ve said screw you. While technically I could do all these things for free - there are various websites, YT tutorials, and Duolingo - like I said, I need that live teacher/student interaction for it to click.

Finally, as I said above, help yourself before you help others, so now that I’ve helped myself, I can now start helping others. Not my family. Fuck them. However, there are friends that have helped me so much over the years, and now that there is money that I can actually use - remember those investments? They’d have started to see returns by now - I can now start ‘paying’ them back for all that they did. It may not always be money that they would give, just being a shoulder to cry on meant more than anything at times so they’d deserve something as compensation for putting up with my issues. However, because I would now be in a good place. I could literally afford to go ‘here, here is a little something to show how much you mean to me and as a small step in saying thank you for all that you did.’ I could also now go, ‘I see you are struggling, so here is something that you can use to help get out of the bad situation.’ This was - and still is - something that made me feel so guilty that I couldn’t do when I was younger. I’d see a friend need something - or even just really want, we were kids after all - but I sometimes couldn’t even spare a dollar to help them. Helping others also means gifting to charity. I have always wanted to be able to donate to charities, to give money to panhandlers - I don’t care some of them use the money for drugs or alcohol, the small amount who do do that shouldn’t cause you to not give to those who don’t - remember those commercials from before? Even if some of the charities suck major ass, there are some really good ones that I would love to be a donor. I could afford to be a Patron member for certain YTers, I could donate to small Twitch streamers. Kickstarters and GoFundMes would see my name on the donor list. Animal shelters and children’s hospitals; after school programs and community centers; friends and neighbors. I could do so much.

But it certainly wouldn’t happen if I received $1 a day.

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hopelessromanticspoonie · 5 years

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To Keep You Safe

Title: We wear red so they don’t see us bleed

Chapter: 5/?

Author: hopeless_romantic_spoonie

Summary: Life as the assistant to Tony Stark was busy, but boring. All of that changed when I touched something I shouldn’t have and woke up with strange new abilities. If I thought that trying to figure out my new place in life as an Avenger was tough, I had no idea what was in store for me once I ran into the frustrating God of Mischief, Loki.

Rating: E (later on)

Notes: Friendly reminder that this is un-Beta’d, so please excuse any typos or grammatical errors I no doubt missed during revisions.

Also on Ao3 here :)

Warnings for this chapter: Blood, language, and violence

After our talk, to his credit, Loki did give me a wide berth. For the next several weeks of life on the Compound, I trained and practiced with Natasha and Wanda, hung out with Thor and Sam, and watched TV with Steve without a single confrontation–let alone sighting. The Trickster God had to have been using whatever abilities he normally employed to keep tabs on everyone to steer clear of me. And that was one hundred percent peachy-keen in my book.

Tony and Bruce finally finished their extensive testing on all things me. It was decided that the only powers the mystery box gave me were geokinesis and an increased healing rate. When I asked for a reason why this happened, I was given some medical mumbo jumbo that instantly turned my brain to mush. Long story short, they didn’t know what the box had been, only what it had done to me, and it wasn’t going away. This was my new normal.

The knowledge that this wasn’t going away was one hell of a motivator to get a better handle on everything. And because of that, my grasp on my powers improved. I could control more than one object at a time, and it didn’t drain me physically nearly as much as it did in the beginning. Nor did it require such an emotional toll. I could draw on them without bringing forth the full scope of emotional upheaval as before, although that did seem to help. There was still so much work to do, but I was getting there. Slowly but surely.

As for my physical abilities, those lessons were kicking my ass just as much as I had anticipated. I wasn’t super strong like Steve or Thor, so I had to be more thoughtful and strategic when fighting. Brute force wasn’t going to work when I was only five and a half feet tall and preferred cookies to carrots. Natasha worked on teaching me various martial art techniques that relied more on striking effectively than hammering away at my opponent with my fists. It made sense but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard as hell. I limped away from our training sessions covered in bruises and nursing strained muscles more often than not. Thank goodness for accelerated healing. I needed it to keep up with the grueling sparring sessions.

~~~

Flashing red lights and F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice echoing throughout the entire Compound jerked me out of my exhaustion-induced sleep. “All Avengers report to the Quinjet immediately. All Avengers, gather your gear and report to the Quinjet immediately.”

I lurched out of bed and ran to my closet, throwing on a pair of dark jeans and a thick long-sleeved t-shirt. I didn’t have a custom suit like everyone else, but this seemed like it would do for whatever I would tackle. I shoved a sturdy pair of boots on my feet and I was barreling out the door.

Natasha was just leaving her room, already fully dressed and ready to kick ass. We both sprinted down the stairs and through the building, crossing the lawn into the hangar. Thor, Bruce, and Captain were all running inside the jet, followed by Natasha. Tony was poised at the edge of the ramp to get inside, looking anxious as he waved people in. When I tried to rush passed him he put his arm across my chest, barring my entrance.

“No can do, Poison Ivy. You’re not ready,” he stated, leaving no room for argument.

Not that I wouldn’t try.

“But what if I-?

“Nope. You stay here with Rock of Ages. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will keep you updated. You’d be a liability. We can’t risk it.” The visor over his face retracted into the suit, allowing him to level me with a hard stare. He didn’t even glance at Vision flying into the jet while holding Wanda securely in his arms.

“Get back. You’ll get burned,” he said more softly, a paternal concern twisting his lips into a frown. He pushed me away from the ramp and jogged inside, closing it behind him.

I had no choice but to back away out of the hangar, watching uselessly as the Quinjet started up and flew through an invisible opening in the force field surrounding the Compound. Once it was gone I pulled out my phone, checking the time. At only four in the morning, it was going to be a long day if all I did was sit around and wait for them to come back.

After heading back into my room and changing from jeans and boots into athletic shorts and tennis shoes, I headed to the gym. If I wasn’t ready for this mission I was going to be ready for the next one. Even if I had to spend hours taking out my frustration and anxiety on a punching dummy until my knuckles bled.

During a break around noon, I chugged water and wiped the sweat from my brow. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., any news?” I panted.

“Sorry, Jen. All I can say is that they made it to their destination and everyone is still alive,” she responded, somehow managing to sound remorseful even as a computer program.

I snarled in frustration and threw down the now empty water bottle, punishing the practice dummy in front of me an elbow to the face. Several hours of doing my best to beat the living daylights out of the dummy and it was no worse for the wear, while the soreness and exhaustion in my limbs weighed them down considerably. But it was this or stare at the TV or wall in the living room distractedly as my mind raced with all the things that could go wrong for them on this sudden mission, and this at least wore me out enough so that I might be able to sleep later.

“Perimeter breach. Perimeter breach. One helicopter on the main lawn,” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice rang out through the compound and my phone in my pocket as red lights flashed throughout the Compound.

Just as I did that morning, I dropped what I was doing and sprang into action--despite my protesting muscles.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit,” I cursed, stopping short just outside the building. A sleek black helicopter was hovering over the middle of the Compound with four men dressed in black protective gear descending from the sides on ropes. As I watched in shock, two more helicopters came into view and began depositing their payloads of terrifying men as well.

As soon as their feet hit the ground, they raised impressive-looking guns into their sightlines and ran toward the main building. Right at me.

Ah hell.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., I could use some backup,” I grunted, crouching down behind a bush and looking around to see what I had nearby I could use as weapons. Some trees, basketball sized rocks and a giant decorative boulder were all I could see. Awesome.

“The team is still off-base, Jen,” she replied, her voice muffled from my phone in my back pocket. Super awesome.

It was a long shot, but I had to ask her anyway. “What about Loki?”

“He is handling the intruders on the West side of the Compound, Jen. Several groups have come in on foot.”

Loki was helping? What in the world was that about? Maybe it was just a chance to do something, wreak some havoc, as he had to be bored as hell cooped up here without an outlet. If his boredom and need for mayhem was keeping more men off of my back, I’d take it.

But, that still left the group in front of me for me to handle on my own. I’d never fought anyone, not really. Sparring with Nat and training with Wanda did not live up to this experience at all in terms of preparedness. I was the end of the line, though, so I had to try my best. Gritting my teeth, I focused on the ground, lifting my arms and pulling up as much dirt and debris from the grass as I could. The men slowed their advance at the peculiar sight, but only just enough to look at one another briefly before continuing. With a shout I sent the debris flying at them, hoping to blind them temporarily while I figured out what the heck I was supposed to do next. My weak plan wasn’t the most effective. I was disheartened as they crept on even as they blinked dirt from their eyes.

Plan B. I curled my fingers inward and ripped several thin branches from the tree nearest to myself. Aiming the sharp, broken ends at the men, I flicked my fingers outward and sent them flying with as much oomph as I could muster. Only one went through the neck of a man and sent him bleeding and thrashing to the ground. The rest hit their helmets or thick kevlar vests like they were nothing.

“I’m so screwed,” I muttered. My aim still wasn’t the best with multiple projectiles, and that was without having spent the morning taking out my frustrations in the gym. The adrenaline rushing through me could only do so much to compensate, and that wasn’t going to last forever.

The closest to me grabbed something off of his belt and threw it at the building behind me. I whipped my head around, tracking the beeping with my eyes to get a better look at what had been thrown. Having never seen one in real life, my brain stuttered over what it was for half a second. They had grenades?!

My feet carried me away from the building before I had made the conscious decision to move, propelling me as fast as possible from the explosive. It just wasn’t quite fast enough. The shockwave battered against me, followed by tiny pricks of pain all over the back of my body as white-hot glass embedded itself in my unprotected skin. The cry that tore through my lips was almost silent to my ringing ears, but it was enough to draw the attention of the men, who rained bullets down on me.

No time to think or run, I brought a large, decorative stone in front of me like a shield. I saw dust particles and chunks of rock fall to the ground and I struggled to keep it between me and the men. My teeth ground together and all the muscles in my body strained as I directed all of the energy that constantly coursed through me at holding up the massive weight while also slowly backing away from them. I just needed to get inside the building. I could take them out one at a time if I could get more cover. Maybe.

As soon as I was close enough to the now blown-out glass wall, I shoved my hands and, consequently, the boulder at two of the men and dashed inside, slamming my back into a concrete wall for cover and ignoring the wave of pain it brought to the new wounds I had just gotten. Thank goodness for modern minimalist architecture and adrenaline.

I took a few deep breaths and got to my knees, turning around to poke my head out to see who was left. Two pairs of legs were still beneath the human-sized boulder I had thrown, so that just left nine baddies for me to deal with. Going for broke and hoping that this was something I could do, I reached out towards a tree near the back of the group. I could feel the glowing life-force of it, from the tips of the branches to the roots.

“Here goes nothing,” I growled, directing my energy to the roots, willing them to grow. I reached out and pulled hard, and for my efforts, I saw the thick dark roots burst from the ground and race toward one of the men. They tangled around his ankles as I twisted my fingers in a circle, pulling him down and wrapping around his body. He panicked and fired his weapon wildly, trying to shoot the roots off of him, but only succeeded in hitting the stomach of one of his buddies. I urged the roots to wrap around his chest and neck, and the shooting stopped abruptly.

In the distraction of flexing my newfound powers, I failed to notice the man coming up around the wall until just before he shot. I ducked my head and the bullet lodged itself into the concrete inches from my ear, sending grit flying into my eyes. I wildly turned, flailing desperately and pulling another stone from outside to slam into the back of his unprotected neck.

As the man fell, I saw the muzzle of his gun flash before white-hot agony exploded in my shoulder.

In the movies, when someone gets stabbed or shot, usually they'll fly back dramatically and scream. They have a few seconds to mutter some last words and then it's over. Turns out getting shot isn't like the movies. I didn't fly back several feet, soaring through the air to sprawl ungainly onto the floor. I sank to sit on my heels, blinking harshly as my brain attempted to process the worst pain I'd ever experienced as it radiated from my shoulder. My hand shot up to cover the wound, trying to stem the flow of blood as it pulsed out of my body in time with my staccato heartbeat. It took several tries to take a deep breath, the action seemingly doing more harm than good as the movement tugged on my shoulder.

Gotta focus. I had to get my head in the game. The remaining seven bad guys were still coming, and fast. It didn’t matter that I was injured to them. They weren’t going to stop to give me a time out to get patched up, so I just had to keep going. My best bet on stopping them relied on my being able to see them which unfortunately meant sticking my head out of cover. I clenched my teeth as I got to my feet and let out a guttural battle cry as I turned around to face them.

I was most definitely going to die today, but when my friends returned and watched the footage, I didn’t want them to see me cowering in fear until one of them put a bullet in my brain. That wasn’t what being an Avenger was about. It was about fighting until the last breath, and taking down as many of these bastards as I could along the way. Sorry, guys. Sorry, Tony.

Heads turned in my direction, guns following suit. With one hand busy gripping my bullet wound, the other curled into a fist as I focused on bringing every single stone on the Compound lawn levitating in the air.

“Get down!” Loki shouted, running from the opposite side of the building toward me, looking the battle-hardened warrior in his leather armor. An invisible force knocked me to the ground with such force that the back of my head bounced against the tile floor.

And then everything became a blur.

Loki screaming in rage.

Deafening tearing and ripping sounds.

Bullets flying and smashing into the wall.

Warm blood matting my hair and pooling in the hollows of my neck.

Blood-curdling screams cutting off suddenly.

A pale, unfocused face.

Excruciating pain as I was jostled into strong arms.

Is this what dying feels like?

The scent of iron and sweat and leather and spice.

“I am not allowing you to die, damn it!”

And then darkness swallowed me whole.

~~~

A flurry of voices pulled me from the blissful, painless darkness.

“It’s been three days.”

“I know that. Her vitals are stable. You gotta give her time.”

“That’s not good enough!”

“What else can we do?”

I took stock of my body with my eyes closed. My limbs were heavy on the soft surface that I rested on, probably a bed. Besides the voices, a steady beeping that matched the painful drumbeat in my head. Probably a heart monitor, which meant that I was in some sort of a hospital. Itching fire burned on my shoulder, and I blamed that for the real reason why I had woken up. It was impossible to ignore, just like the loud voices echoing around the room.

“You can stop shouting in my room, for starters,” I croaked, my voice dry and scratchy from disuse. God, I sounded weak.

I peeled my eyes open only to immediately close them against the bright lights above me. Trying again, I opened them just enough to squint at my surroundings. I’d landed myself in the infirmary of the Compound once again. Not a hospital, but I had been close enough. A frazzled Tony, Natasha, and Thor appeared to be the culprits for the shouting match I’d just heard.

“If you’re going to shout, at least give me some more pain meds so I can sleep through it,” I grumbled, hoping that the bad attempt at humor would ease some of the anxiety from their faces as I tried to sit up in the bed, only to fall back down with a gasp as soon as I put weight on my shoulder. The shock of pain was enough to tell me that that was a very bad idea right now.

All three rushed over to me at once. Thor took my right hand carefully, mindful of the IV connected to the back of it, and Natasha took the left. Tony moved behind my bed only to reappear with a syringe full of unknown liquid that he injected into the IV line. Within moments a weight smothered the pain and pulled a sigh of relief from deep within me. Ahh, pain meds.

“Milady, I am so glad to see you awake,” Thor said softly, his thumb lightly stroking the backs of my fingers as he smiled down at me.

“We gotta work on your observation skills,” Nat teased, gesturing to my shoulder and giving me a thin smile.

“Pebbles, I thought I told you not to scare me like this,” Tony chided me, standing at my feet. His hands rested on my blanket-covered ankles, clutching them like I was going to run out of the room and get shot up again. That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Once was enough for me.

“What happened?” I directed my quiet question at Tony, knowing he would have the most forthright answer of the bunch.

“We have been searching for these six rocks, called Infinity Stones. That’s what Vision has in his head, the Mind Stone. This guy called Thanos is trying to get all of them together. Reindeer Games says that he wants to rule the world with it, wipe out half of everything in existence. So, we’ve been trying to track them down,” he said, brow furrowed. “We’ve already destroyed one, well, Wanda did. The Mind Stone. Thor stole it from some nut job on another planet months ago. The Space Stone was in the Tesseract, which Loki had. When he and Thor escaped Ragnarok, Loki brought it back as a peace offering. So that’s one’s gone, too. F.R.I.D.A.Y. is programmed to look for certain… anomalies that might be one of the remaining stones being used. She’s found one in New York City, but the wizard that is currently using it won’t give it up. That’s a work in progress. Something sketchy was happening in New York City, and that was the alert that she gave us. It was Thanos, with the Soul Stone, trying to get the other stone from the wizard. We managed to get it from him. Took a few licks, Steve broke an arm and Wanda a leg, but it’s destroyed now. We’re still looking for the Power Stone and the Reality Stone,” he rambled, exhaustion lining his face as he recalled the events he had rattled off.

“That’s, um, a lot to take in,” I replied, my thoughts muddled by the glorious meds I had been given. That was a lot to unpack, and I wasn’t in any state to even try to do that. It could wait for another day.

“Yeah, so, anyway, we were off fighting Grimace when those assholes from Hydra attacked here. We didn’t even know about it until we got back onto the jet and F.R.I.D.A.Y. let us know. We booked it as fast as we could, but it had been almost a whole day since…” he trailed off, swallowing thickly and gripping my ankles just a little tighter as he shifted his gaze to my blanket-covered knees.

Natasha chimed in, “Tony was able to stream a live feed from F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s cameras. We saw everything.”

“You fought valiantly against the attackers. Loki took up the battle after you had fallen, finishing it in your stead,” Thor added, his voice clear and proud. Whether it was for me or his brother, that was to be determined. I was too exhausted to worry too much.

Tony nodded to Thor and Natasha in silent thanks. “Standing up like some action hero was a dumbass move, by the way,” he paused, staring me down until I felt thoroughly chewed out.

Only after I looked appropriately shamed for my actions did he continue, “Him knocking you on your ass gave you that nasty goose egg on the back of your head. He took out the rest of the Hydra men before getting you up here. I’m not sure what voodoo he did, but he got the bullet out of your shoulder and slowed the bleeding until the doctors I called could get here,” he finished, taking a deep breath.

“By the time we arrived, you were sound asleep and all patched up. Loki hadn’t left your side the whole time,” Nat added, her brow raised.

A yawn escaped from my mouth without warning and I nodded through it, pulling my hand away from her to at least cover my gaping maw. “Loki saved me?” I asked on the tail-end of the huge yawn.

“If it weren’t for Loki, you would be through the gates of Valhalla by now, Milady,” Thor whispered, his eyes grave as they met mine.

Tony let go of me and walked to my side, nudging Nat out of the way so he could rest the back of his hand on my forehead. “You feeling okay?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly.

The change of subject was not unwelcome. The pain meds seemed to spread like molasses throughout my brain, muddling my already scattered and confused thoughts. There were magical stones that some dude named Thanos wanted to use to destroy half of everything? And the Avengers had been going after them all of this time without my knowledge? How long had these missions been going on where I thought one thing was happening and it was something entirely different? And there was no way in Hell would Loki ever save my life. I was a thorn in his side that made his time stuck in this compound a thousand times worse. No one would’ve blamed him if he’d ‘forgotten’ in the heat of battle to push me into cover, letting Hydra riddle me with bullets.

“Uh, yeah, totally. I could go dancing I feel so great,” I muttered sarcastically, pulling myself out of my thoughts and into the room filled with my friends who watched me with concern.

“It’s on, Jen,” Nat said, winking at me from the edge of my bed.

“Let’s give her some space to rest up, guys,” Tony said, flipping his hand around on my forehead and rubbing it lightly with his thumb before stepping away.

Natasha and Thor both nodded to me with a smile before they left the room, the door whirring shut behind them. Tony gave me a final once-over and then left, calling out before the door closed, “The team left some flowers for you on the bedside table. Don’t kill anyone with them!”

After smiling at the expensive-looking glass vase of roses, I snuggled further into the soft sheets and fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep.

~~~

A cool hand on the side of my head woke me suddenly. My eyes tore open and my left hand shot out, grabbing the attacker before they could do me any harm.

“Loki,” I whispered, startled to see the Asgardian Prince at my bedside. What was he doing here?

“If you’d release my hand, I can resume checking your head wound,” he said flatly.

It was hard to grasp, the annoyed god at my bedside in casual black slacks and a white button-down shirt, waiting for me to let him go when he could easily remove himself from my grip. “Oh.” I sheepishly let go of him, my hand falling to rest at my side.

He maintained eye contact with me for a moment, his brow furrowed as he searched my eyes before looking back at the back of my head. His long fingers moved to my jaw, tugging it away from him so he could get a better look at the injury. I felt them move to probe it gently, pausing whenever I let out a hiss of pain.

“I need to change the bandage again.” His voice was firm but gentle. His tone alone threw me for a loop. It was so odd to hear him speaking cordially to me when I was used to him hissing like a snake or shouting up a storm.

As I busied himself behind me, I searched for the remote that typically accompanies a hospital bed. Finally finding it tucked beneath my leg, I used it to slowly move the automatic bed so I was sitting up. By the time I was finished Loki had come to the other side of the bed with a syringe filled with clear liquid. His piercing green eyes met mine once again as he hesitated only briefly before injecting it into my IV. Had he been waiting for me to stop him? The familiar weight of pain medication flooded my body, revealing what he had done moments before without my prompting.

He put down the syringe onto the table beside my flowers. Only now, instead of the single vase waiting for me, there was another. A single sunflower sat in a tall elegant black and gold vase. I looked back to Loki with a furrowed brow, watching him place bandages, gauze, and alcohol next to the new gift.

Finally, unable to hold back my confusion any longer, I blurted out, “Why are you helping me, Loki?”

“Because you are injured. I’ve taken over this aspect of your care since you arrived.” He said it so matter of factly it was almost an insult. As if there was no question that he wouldn’t be doing such a selfless act and he was offended that I would think he’d act differently.

“One of the others could handle this. Why are you helping me,” I pressed.

He sighed heavily and refused to reply, instead reaching out and placing his fingertips on either side of my face to tilt my head forwards off of the pillow. He moved out of my line of sight for a brief moment and I heard water running before he returned to lean over me, his chest inches from my face. This close, I was able to smell the strong spicy and masculine scent that I was quickly beginning to recognize as distinctly him. A warm, damp compress was pressed to the back of my head.

“Some blood soaked through the bandage into your hair. I need to cleanse it before I can remove the bandage.” He smoothed the damp cloth over my head again and again, the pain meds he had given me doing their job to take away the pain and leave only pressure in its wake.

The bloody rag was tossed unceremoniously into a hamper across the room, and then he grabbed the alcohol and gauze next. Some part of my mind screamed that I shouldn’t be letting him do this, that he was going to turn around any second and wrap those long fingers around my throat to finish me off, but a more rational part of me shut that down. If he was going to kill me, there would be no sense in saving my life in the first place.

And there wasn’t any hatred or malice in his gaze as I strained my eyes to look up to him without moving my head. To be completely honest, I couldn’t glean any emotion from his impassive face as he worked over me. Whatever he had to be feeling was currently locked away behind stony eyes and a firmly-set mouth.

“I’ve been watching you, Jennifer. As you train with the Witch and the Widow. Both will throw you to the ground repeatedly, besting you, and you stand right up and try again. You never give up. You clean up after the others when they forget without expecting gratitude or repayment. You set out the protein powder for the Widow and Captain each night. You explain the flavors of the food you’re eating to Vision. When they left you behind three days ago, instead of pouting like a child, you took to bettering yourself.” As he spoke he tended to the large gash on the back of my head, his soothing cool touch at odds with the confusion that littered his own words. As if I were some puzzle that he couldn’t piece together with just my odd actions as a guide.

How long had he been watching me to notice these things? And when had he noticed them? I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him in weeks. He may as well have disappeared off the planet for all that I had encountered him. And had he taken the time to notice these behaviors, or had they simply been a byproduct of his observant nature? Was I a puzzle to him that he must observe to find out, or did he watch everybody that carefully? And how the hell had I not noticed him noticing this?

“And, I need to make amends,” he added, voice so low that I almost didn’t hear it through my scattered thoughts.

His deft fingers left my skin and he placed the remnants of the medical supplies on the table. I took it as a sign that I could move my head and search his face more comfortably, trying to figure out where all of this was coming from. This was not the Loki that I knew. The Loki that I knew would be mocking me for my injuries, possibly prodding my wound to watch me squirm, if he was even here at all. Was this him trying to make things right, to 'make amends' as he had called it? Surely I, the puny mortal, wasn't worth the effort. His actions said otherwise.

He clenched his jaw, meeting my curious gaze with his own. “You knew that you were no match for those men, but you fought them anyway. Why?” Another piece of the puzzle that he couldn’t find a place for.

I swallowed thickly, flashes of the encounters playing through my mind. I killed those men. My heart sped up and tears burned in my eyes despite my clenching them shut. My lungs were unable to hold onto the air from my quick, shallow breaths as their deaths flashed through my mind. Sending an improvised spear through a man’s neck. Crushing a man to death with tree roots. Doing the same to two more with the decorative boulder. Hitting the one who shot me with a rock at the base of his skull. I hadn’t seen him die, but it had hit too hard for him to survive that.

I killed them. I killed them. I’m a murderer.

“Breathe, little one. Breathe, " Loki soothed, his voice velvet as it washed over me.

The bed pitched as he perched himself on it by my hip, and I heard his fingers snapping to get my attention. But it wasn’t loud enough, wasn’t enough to get me to open my eyes and stop the flood of images that refused to leave my mind’s eye.

“If you hadn’t have done what you were forced to do, you would be dead,” he assured me, his voice steady and sure as he tried to pull me out of my ever-increasing panic attack.

I would’ve died either way, so was killing them something I should’ve done? I lowered my chin to my chest, feeling lightheaded as I struggled to take in enough air. My whole body trembled and I pulled my knees to my chest beneath the blankets, wrapping my good arm around them to hold them to me. The onslaught of death paraded through my mind unbidden and unrelenting.

“Look at me,” he commanded. His cool hand cupped my chin, lifting my face so that he could see me more clearly. His thumb brushed against my cheek, wiping away the tears that I hadn't even realized had escaped. But it was as if I lost the ability to open my eyes, his attempts be damned. I couldn’t do it even though I so desperately wanted to.

His other hand reached out and settled onto my knee, and it was so startling that I ripped open my eyes and looked at him. Concern softened his features, at odds the harshness of his tone. “They forced your hand. You are not a murderer."

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so I chose silence as I focused on him. He was breathing more forcefully than normal, in through his nose and out through his mouth, and I copied him. We stayed that way for several moments, him showing me how to breathe through my panic and me following his lead. Slowly, the lightheadedness lessened enough so that I could focus. The terrible visions in my head were replaced with the piercing green eyes that held me captive.

Satisfied that I was calming down, he asked again, “Now, answer me this: Why did you fight those men when you knew you were going to lose?”

I looked away to his hand on my knee, the long fingers completely covering it even beneath the thickness of several blankets. It was easier to gather my thoughts without having to watch his reaction to them.

What had I been thinking?

“I… I knew I was the last line of defense. F.R.I.D.A.Y. said I was on my own. Was I supposed to just let them do whatever shitty thing they came to do? Guys busting through Tony’s forcefield in battle gear and assault rifles aren’t showing up to ask for a cup of sugar. If I hadn’t have done anything, they would have found me and killed me anyway. I was dead either way, but maybe I could stop enough of them that you could take the rest out if you came to help.” I ran my hand over my face, dislodging his grip from my chin in the process. “I-I didn’t mean to kill them, but I did mean to stop them. And then after that asshole shot me, I was one hundred percent dead anyway. I was bleeding out. So I might as well take as many out as I could before I go,” I shrugged, wincing at the discomfort the movement brought to my shoulder, even with the haze of medication.

“That reeks of the same self-sacrificing hero act that my brother and his troupe of morons put on. That was foolish and unnecessary,” he scolded.

I offered him nothing more than another shrug, but only of my uninjured shoulder, for his reprimand. It probably was, in his mind, but that didn't mean that I agreed.

“Did you not think I would come to your aid?” Loki asked, the smallest expression of hurt registering on his face as he brought attention to its cause.

“The last time we talked you held a knife to my throat, and then I did the same to you. Kinda. It was a tree branch, but it still counts. Why would you help me? If they had finished the job then you’d have a much easier life here. You wouldn’t have to avoid me and constantly worry about Thor breaking your face whenever I throw a fit. You could skulk around at night or on the roof without running into me. I’m just in your way.”

A muscle in Loki’s jaw ticked at my words, but he didn’t say anything he as considered them. The silence was almost more painful than the hole in my shoulder. I idly reached up to scratch at the bandage and his hand reached up and slapped it away.

He frowned at me. “I need to redress that as well. Leave it be.”

The silence stretched on as he organized the supplies he’d need in front of him and then tugged the hem of my large hospital gown down my arm to expose my shoulder and better access the bullet wound. His spindly fingers were quick and efficient in their work of removing the bandage, cleansing the wound, and then replacing the dressings with clean ones. His steady touch coming and going from my bare skin sent my heart skittering in my chest. I didn’t allow myself to wonder why it was invoking that reaction in me, but I did allow for the luxury of watching him unnoticed.

I'd never taken the time to actually see the man tending to my wounds. Taking the time to really inspect him, I was surprised to find that he was very easy to look at. His skin was unblemished and smooth, no hint of age showing on it except for the wrinkles that appeared as he furrowed his brow or squinted his eyes to get a better look at his task. His jawline was sharp enough to cut glass, and I trailed my eyes downward to the small amount of pale chest that his unbuttoned collar revealed, not a single hair to be seen. His shirt didn't hide the lean muscles that rippled beneath his skin as he worked, and some strange part of me wondered what they would feel like if I reached out and closed the distance between us. For lack of a better, more eloquent word, he was beautiful. As if sculpted by the very gods that he proclaimed himself to be. His beauty was more delicate compared to the rugged masculinity of the men of the Avengers that I was used to associating with, but that didn't make it any less lovely to behold. Just different.

I pulled my wandering eyes back up to his, a blush betraying me and heating up my skin when I found that he had been watching me look at him. The intensity of his gaze knocked me back to my senses, and I quickly looked down at my hands as they twisted around themselves. He didn't say anything, however, keeping up the silence until he was finished and throwing away the soiled bandages in the trash across the room. With his overwhelming presence gone and his large hands off my skin, I felt the tension I had unknowingly been holding in my clenched muscles ease away and my mind clear a little more. Loki paused in front of the door with his back to me, one hand resting on the windowsill beside the door.

“One thing I’ve only recently learned from my brother is to never leave a warrior behind. Especially not one of such caliber.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving with the movement. “And I’m not willing to lose anyone else.”

And then he was gone, leaving behind my favorite blood-stained rock on the windowsill.

#to keep you safe #loki #loki odinson #loki laufeyson #loki friggason #loki fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel #loki/ofc #blood tw #violence tw #language tw

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emotionalsupportaudino · 5 years

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literally me just complaining

I am very genuinely hurt by the treatment my school gave me in the three years I was there. This is my gentle full on vent. This is me getting out my incredible pain in a timeline.

When I went to NCC, my mental health was literally improving in strides. Two years and I walked out confident, happy, assured of my own worth. It was such a great school. I had such great friends! I was losing weight, I was running 5ks every day in the summertime, I was learning to love myself.

And then I started at Moore. My first year, my first day, my first class, I walk in at 8:30AM ready to fucking learn. I have my notebook, my flash drive, and my confident spirit. Here I was. I was at this fantastic school. All my professors at NCC were so proud of me for getting there. I was in a class studying my absolute favorite topic of my major: Character Design.

My professor walks in, six months younger than me and with a chip on her shoulder. She tells us that if we’re not pulling all nighters every project, we’re failures. She tells us we have an assignment worth 20% of our grade due the next Friday. A 4-person set of silhouettes from a fairy tale that make each character clearly defined as their characters. She gives us a rubric and only explains 80% of it. I ask about the other 20% and she responds “Oh I’m not grading on that, don’t worry.”

Anxious about this huge chunk of my grade, I skip out on a free music festival with my NCC friends and spend every night until midnight working on this project. I go through dozens of iterations of silhouettes for my characters. And then, I turn it in, and I barely pass. Because she gave me a 1/5 in the section of the rubric I asked her about. I ask her why? “These are too identifiable. They’re too obviously what they are.”

She continues this to the point where the rest of my semester is a fucking blur. I was miserable, having mental breakdowns once a week, and this lasted for about two months before I dropped the class because I was literally on the verge of killing myself.

She puts down every aspect of my personality, my very being. I worked in cut paper when I was at NCC and I did really well at it. I tell her I like working with shapes and it was my specialty at my previous school, she tells me “It doesn’t look like it.” I tell her my favorite games are Persona 3 (this is before 5 comes out) and We Know the Devil. She says the artist behind WKTD is a bad person and no one should play it, and that Persona is bad because why would any adult want to play as a teenager. She catches me listening to Love Live music and makes fun of my taste. When I had thought too hard about my project (a chimera where she literally threw an entire in-depth illustration at us the night before it was due and required us to pay fare to the zoo or she’d take 50% off our grade, WHEN I HAD LITERALLY JUST RECEIVED MY FIRST PAYCHECK and had almost nothing), and had everything about this animal planned, she asks me: “What’s the Latin name?” It was not mentioned anywhere on the sheet, it wasn’t involved at all. She docked me 5% for not knowing Latin

I seek out help, first, from my head faculty. I tell him the things she tells us. He says “oh I’ll talk to her, but that’s just how she teaches.” She comes in the next class talking about how much he praised her and how great she’s doing. She’s even worse to me. I cry in the bathroom for half the class and the head of first year classes catches me and literally lets me cry on her despite the fact I am not in any of her classes and tells me to drop. So I do.

My classmates for the rest of the semester are miserable. Everyone except for me and 3 others in my program are literally miserable for the rest of the semester. She cost kids their scholarships. One of my friends is so bad that literally the mention of this professor’s name causes her to have a panic attack. I accidentally caused one and felt awful.

This professor is the start of my Xanax dependence. And she’s never disciplined.

In the same semester they start teaching 2D animation. Except by start I mean start and finish. We are expected to know everything about 2D animation in one semester. We are never offered another class.

My second semester, two of my classes are taught by a man who DOESN’T KNOW THE PROGRAM and is teaching it to himself as we go along. He smells of alcohol, and at the end of the semester he disappears during critiques. We have to teach ourselves everything, except, SURPRISE. One of the classes is 3D modeling, teaching us the foundations of Maya.

We never learn the foundations of Maya.

Third semester, first of junior year, we find out the school has lied to us from the getgo. After saying every student got 1k for their internships, we find out students get $500. And the other $500 goes right to the school if you paid by month like I did.

We also find out that everything we didn’t learn in our modeling class was super important. Our professor--THE HEAD OF OUR PROGRAM--gives up teaching us and kinda says to do whatever for our 3D Animation class. I ask him how to do several things specifically (2D animation on a 3D model being one of them). He does not know how. He does not bother to learn.

During that semester, my grandfather dies. I am told by my Admissions department job that if I miss more than one day of work for the funeral, I will be fired. I never got time to mourn. I still miss my grandfather. I cried about his death literally every day from October to May.

Second semester of Junior year is a blur because I am having so many panic attacks. I find an internship, but it’s outside of my typical field. That internship saves my life. And that’s barely exaggerating. I hadn’t felt happiness in a year when I started it and suddenly every day was... exciting again. I made friends, I had fun, I felt human.

First semester of Senior year is... rough. But not overly rough, mostly because I’m only taking two classes. And one of them is with one of the three (3) competent teachers I had teach me my studio classes. It’s great. I genuinely enjoy working despite thesis.

I had won a grant in the spring of my Junior year to travel abroad for two weeks at the beginning of September. My head of program swears he will present my game and get feedback. I return and he says there was no feedback. I ask my classmates--he never presented. I never got critique on my concept until three months into it because I thought everyone knew what I was doing.

Second semester of senior year was the worst four months of my life. I had never been so hurt, so ignored, and so honestly lost.

-My senior thesis class is taught by a woman who has no experience in any of the programs we are using. She has never animated in 2D or 3D. She has never programmed or designed a game before. She keeps asking for more work because she doesn’t understand that the 12 hours a week I’m putting in in coding is seriously beginning to harm my health.

-The same professor teaches the modern culture of Animation/Game Arts class. She refuses to touch on queer subjects. Repeatedly. She drops the hbomberguy stream but knows nothing about it. I wind up being the one who had to explain what it was about.

-She requires us to take a trip to New York and doesn’t get funding for us. This includes transportation there and back, subway fare, tickets to events, and meals. Had she mentioned it to ANYONE in administration, we would’ve gotten free meals. She did not. She left most of my class alone in New York City with literally no idea where to go and no instructions on how to get back. That trip cost me nearly $100 in the end. (I did get to see the original Taminella puppet at the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of Moving Image, and the costumes from Labyrinth, which was totally worth it and I broke down crying at it because like, Jim Henson means the world to me? I want to be like him. I just want to make the world a little brighter.)

-Oh did I mention we were never fully taught C#, and yet I was expected to code an entire game in it because for my thesis I wanted to combine 2D art and gameplay? Yup. She didn’t know that either.

-They refused to let us know anything about setup for Senior show until less than 2 weeks before hand. We had to pay for anything installed for the show and any decor. Every other major knew at least a month in advance. We had less than 14 days.

-I walked in on my one friend about to harm themself more than once. I found others saying they were on the verge of suicide. I comforted more people than I think I ever should have had to in those last 4 months. Whenever I asked for help, I was met with a door in my face.

DESPITE ALL OF THAT I have a deep love for my underclassmen. I genuinely want the fucking best for them. They’re in that hellhole and they deserve better, and I want to be as much help to them as possible. Our major has no connections in the paid art world.

Last March, due to my work in the library (AGAIN THAT INTERNSHIP SAVED MY LIFE ), I was offered a job teaching game design to kids in an underserved area. It’s good pay and great work and great people. So when they said “We need more people,” I immediately said “Let me get in contact with my school.”

The head of the program and his full time faculty both REFUSED to either answer emails or meet with me and my job leads. It’s good fucking work. I love every second of it. I’m happy doing it. And I know I have classmates who would be happy too.

And they’re refusing to meet with me.

Everyone else I came in contact with at the school was happy to see me again. The deans were happy, my old bosses were happy, my career center was happy, my old classmates were happy!

But it stings to be rejected like that after busting my ass for three years to do my best.

I just... I feel like I’m never enough for anybody. And the damage they did to my mental (and physical) health is irreversible. I got addicted to anxiety medications, I’m struggling to be confident in myself, I literally get told almost daily at work to not do the things the program drove into me.

I’m getting better and learning to be okay again, but... I’m really fucked up by this school. And I don’t know what to do.

(Oh and the school counselor apparently didn’t actually have a license to practice and often told me my anxiety was in my own head and that it was my own fault bad things were happening to me. Like deaths in the family. And the way my teachers treated me.)

#cw: Suicidal ideation #i am okay #this is talking about years ago #if you're a student at my old school currently #heed my warning

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cyanpeacock · 5 years

Text

Realtalk(tm): The Continued Brainprocessing of Fucky Shit

it’s a long one boys but they all are atm

like jinkies scoob i have been Avoiding So Much with les drogues. avoiding so much like, wow, shit, I Feel So Empty Around People Who Were In My Life. but yes, very necessary to dissociate from this shit for a period while i adjusted to the possibility of, oh, wait, this really is My Apartment? this... i can Live Here without being Disturbed or Attacked? still adjusting. but without les drogues this time.

im continually coming to terms with like... ok, so, i have been and sometimes still like... engage in emotionally and physically abusive behaviour towards my own body, and to other bodies around me?

and also, i am coming to terms with, this does not strictly mean i am An Abuser Forever full stop (i.e. Bad Person, Irredeemable, Disgusting, Abhorrent, Should Be Euthanised, etc).

this is reflective of, emotional and physical abuse has been so normalised to me as a young individual, that i have been repeating patterns of behaviour i saw routinely growing up, not even understanding why that kind of behaviour is hurtful or how i could do stuff differently. and that kind of makes me go, oh shit. dude, what the hell? that’s... that’s actually, yeah, that’s one fucked up upbringing. it really Was that bad.

even regarding like The Voices In My Head(tm), my reaction historically was just like, scream at them? yell at them? injure the body somehow until they shut up or it passes out?

which, uh, oh. that’s totally what my mother did when i was displaying “unreasonable” or “irrational” emotions as a small thing. rejecting then snapping then shouting then smacking until i either ran away to cry alone and injure myself more (emotional abandonment; reenacting and normalizing physical punishment) or went very numb and quiet and compliant like a Good Child (dissociative reaction/freezing; fawning).

now like i am aware of these structures and this history Right Now. but still frequently i do get into the old frame of mind where it’s like, “you’re being stupid. you’re overreacting. you’re being melodramatic. Other People Have It Worse. Just Don’t Think About It” which, yeah, that’s introjected from a number of adult figures in my life. very very unhelpful, but when you’re a kid, you’re looking to adults for structures to implement to help you navigate your own life. when those adults are emotionally unhealthy... Yeah. this happens.

and right now, i’m like, uh, what the hell? it’s not a dick measuring contest, you’re telling a kid in pain that they’re not allowed to express their pain?

like i’ve talked abt this before probably but it’s an incident that reminds me how fucked up the whole situation was and is. when my school found out i was self harming in like y7 (so like, 11-12yo), because i’d cut so far down my PE shorts didn’t cover the marks, my PE teacher legally had to get the school to call home. and like, i fucking Begged her, please don’t, a call home is gonna make things SO much worse for me. but ofc the law is the law especially when it comes to teaching, and the call home got made. and later that evening my mother bust into my room with NO warning and fucking screamed at me, “You Selfish Little Cow.”

like i went numb as hell. i don’t really remember clearly what she said after that but it was a whole tirade. stuff about how i was a brat and going to get her in trouble with social services and how i was ruining the family (implicitly, her life) and causing trouble, and how i ought to Think About What I’d Done. i was thinking/feeling, oh my god, she’s beating me again. i’ve ruined everything for everyone again. this is all my fault. i’m responsible, i’m the one to blame, i should have hidden it better. i’m not allowed to talk. i’m not allowed to feel. i’m supposed to be Quiet and Good and Do School and Not Annoy Anyone and Behave. i’ve failed. i am a failure. I Am A Selfish Little Cow.

i think i tried to commit after she left? but like, in that way where you’re so numb and out of it you can’t actually physically pull together the methods, despite the mind wanting No More.

and like i’ve been going to visit the woman that DID THAT TO ME. smiling and telling her about my life while Really Fucking Avoiding Telling Her Any Details About My Life. hesitating in pain and then adding “xx” to the end of the text messages i felt like i was obliged to send her. trying to convince myself “she’s my mum, i’m not gonna get another one, i should call her, it’s not so bad, we can talk about... uh, talk about politics, or religion, or, uh, her dog, or my siblings...” COMPLETELY fucking avoiding the fact that, like. this is the Same Person who caused me all that pain, and i don’t feel safe or secure talking to her about important details of my life, or my emotions, or, well, me. i hide and go Nothing Is Wrong! :) I’m Doing Fine! :)

and! it really does seem like she’s not, you know, as cruel as she was with me, with her other children, at least since after i ran away. but no amount of that can actually change MY memories of growing up with her? my more-or-less programmed Make Her Happy reaction to her physical body? i can’t just, you know, conveniently forget those Things that Hurt Me to engage with her for her happiness. because, well, Her Happiness is not My Happiness, although i was lead to believe that was so. and, when i’m Conveniently Forgetting those things (i.e. my emotions at the hands of an abusive relative), i’m not behaving with the proper regard for myself as a person, and by extension i’m missing pieces of how to properly engage with other people.

i don’t wanna like, mask the in between spaces of utter dread and anxiety and total blankness with Everything Is Totally Fine. I Am Functioning. Yes I Did Well In School This Year. That’s All That Matters. What Have I Been Doing? Oh You Know. The Usual. (without ever saying what The Usual is, because, yeah, when i’m in that Mode, i don’t fucking know what i do at home! idk how i spend my time! My Function Is To Avoid Conflict).

because, uh, yeah, academically, sure! i am functioning, sort of! bodily? uh, well, i’m SLOWLY learning how to properly feed myself, and sleep without chemicals, and stay clean, stuff like that. socially? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. okay, fuck. that’s the one i can’t... figure out, like, at all, on my own. how do i... where the fuck do I even start? i’m not even okay enough with Myself to navigate the social world without passing inappropriate judgement on potential peers. i see people who might, Might, be friends, and my brain goes POTENTIAL THREAT REGISTERED. SELF: SIGHTED. ACTION: HIDE. DO NOT APPROACH. FLEE IF CONTACT INITIATED.

SO LIKE. my issue now is, i totally know that like... these patterns of behaviour are not My Fault, don’t make me Useless, Bad, Bratty etc, if i sit down and write about it, frowning on-and-off for hours. but, i can’t actually implement these regulatory thought processes in realtime quickly enough to... meet new people and enjoy it? on like, a social level? even on a professional level i have to wait for a good day, and switch off like, chunks of me to get the Task Completed. and uh, talking to friends isn’t a Task process, it’s supposed to be a Leisure process?

i’m quite capable of filling my time and navigating the world quietly, alone! there is a surprising amount i can find to do. but hypothetically i’d really like to, like, meet people, and not talk about “haha dude I’m so sick right now. let’s smoke another blunt,” because while it was... uh, reassuring? and i suppose fun? for a while? to meet other people dealing with life pain like that, that sort of thing gets really mutually toxic.

like, i’m in the process of quitting drugs altogether, and drugs tend to go hand in hand with that social space. daily use, even second-hand smoke, is not something i can be around any more. weed was great for ages, but now like, the drug basically told me “nah g i’m not for u any more”? - as in, it was not helping me any further, i could feel this, and i just... smashed the pipe i’d smoked out of since living in the YMCA, deleted my dealers’ numbers, and withdrew. goodbye ganja! I Keap The B o m g In My Mind Now

i was offered like, support from a local drug addiction charity? people fucking pushing me and pushing me to go there, actually. but like... i step outside the place and the ground is carpeted in fag ends. there are cheap booze shops like 5 minutes walk away. it felt like the kind of place where something heavy would come up in group, and i’d be with the people who peel away afterwards to chainsmoke, get a couple litres of cheap voddy, then somebody pulls out their second phone to get a baggie of the good shit once the booze hits? like it could easily just drag me back down. this is a thing i gotta discuss later, and more privately. that kind of group Not For Me.

i’d also like... started Really noticing the whole undercurrent of like, anger and judgement and denial and impermanence in the we’re-all-mentally-ill-here social spaces i used to hang out in? and i’m aware that i was participating in that too, and that while it was good to begin with and for a long time, it really isn’t good for me any more. actually tbh i go Completely Wack upon returning to those people and places now. which, fuck, like, if the person in question happens to be reading this, i’m very sorry. and yeah, sorry doesn’t cut it, because that must have been Fucking Alarming from your perspective, and i wouldn’t have done it if i’d been in my right mind, and i wasn’t in my right mind, and currently can’t be around so many triggers, and yeah your lifestyle being triggering to me is NOT your fault at all, which is why all i can really do is a disappearing act. cuz there’s no conversation that can even make a goodbye feel right, fucker that this situation is. rip.

so yeah uh. my issue now, is Establishing Trust and Healthy Social Connections. that is, trust that someone is gonna like me for, the collection of things i like and do and say and am? uh, or even several people?

this... is one i can’t figure out Alone, because, well, it concerns social relations. and i have very little confidence in social relations, because, well, they’ve either been painful, or centered around painful experiences. and i’ve been told that when i’m really truly enthusiastic and happy about something, i’m overwhelming and annoying to others? so i put the brakes on like crazy if i start feeling “too” happy and end up going Appeasement Mode to get out of the social situation as quickly and smoothly as possible.

and uh, what, i don’t even know the collection of things i like and do and say and am. i don’t... Know all of those things at any one time. how, uh, what? what am I. you know. the usual ??????????? flippy haze.

i mean! i’m getting better at talking Within myself. i REALLY try to talk slowly with kindness and understanding of context to myself and the voices in my head now, and figure out solutions to pain and problems that don’t involve different kinds of pain or avoidance? but i still lapse into like, you know, Augh Jesus Christ I’ve Heard This One Before Why Do I Need To Have This Discussion Again, and frequently i can’t find a viable alternative for avoidance, because i get overwhelmed easily and that makes EVERYTHING worse. and i haven’t figured out how to take my foot off the brake pedal, either, even though i’m not always pressing it. I Need It There For Now Or Else The Car Might Crash u kno.

so, like, what? i guess i just keep, talking kindly to the voices, and also to myself? practice until it becomes the default state of being when a trigger pops in? this requires patience, and also booting away people who refuse to have patience with me. unfortunate, necessary.

the thing about IRL conversations, is they happen so QUICKLY, and like, i don’t have enough time to calm the brain down from every trigger that pops up! because like, it can be a facial expression, a movement, a word or phrase, a tone, something in the periphery, something behind me, an internal sensation. it’s SO much information my brain is scanning urgently for threats, and my brain scans harder the more a person knows me, because a person who knows you can deal WAY more damage than a stranger.

so... yes. this is the part i require assistance with. Hrrrrrrmmnhghdfgjnh.

I SUPPOSE. perhaps now the university have stepped in to arrange a case review with the NHS, they can really push for the kind of support i need. which, yeah, it’s long-term one-on-one trauma-focused counselling or therapy, and also some help with social interaction???? not repeated crisis team referrals, not some 12-week DBT course, i’ve literally been off finding DBT skills and employing them on my own because the waiting lists are so fucking long, and not a 12-week psychodynamic course, because i’ve been seeing a psychodynamic counsellor on and off for four years privately, and the work is nowhere near a conclusion. shit, i’d be satisfied if they could just somehow secure funding for me to keep seeing that guy specifically? he’s REALLY helpful to me, literally like my fucking role model for non-toxic masculinity. and i’m not ready for like, group social skills work, Yet. but soon, you know? only when i’m like “okay, yeah, i really do think I can handle this without my health going backwards again” - which, i need more within-myself security for that.

also better mood monitoring would be nice, i.e. seeing the same damn person, who actually knows my case, instead of a different person every time saying “I’ve just quickly had a look at your case notes”. because if i go low again this winter, then my “depressive disorder NOS” is bipolar, and i’ve been mismedicated from the beginning. and yeah honestly like? as soon as it starts getting dark and cold, I get inexplicably sad, even with plenty of indoor light and warm clothes and whatnot. but yeah we’ll see about that.

anyway This Shit Wack. Im Done.

#fliptext #trauma #abuse #drugs #self harm #emotional abuse #verbal abuse #physical abuse #fuck uhhh ask to tag #ask to tag #isolation #(boosh voice) i-so-la-tion i-so-la-tion

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mbaljeetsingh · 4 years

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Lessons Learned from My Journey as a Self-Taught Developer

The path of the self-taught developer is tough and filled with uncertainty. There is no straight line from newbie to career programmer. Because of this, I believe all self-taught developers have a unique story to tell.

In this article, I’ve shared a few stories and lessons I've learned from my time teaching myself programming. Hopefully reading about my experiences will help you reflect on your past and motivate you moving forward.

Focus on the process

When I first started learning to program, I never had the intention of making a career out of it. I just wanted to make a specific app.

My journey started when I was a senior in college. I just finished Richard Branson’s biography and I was probably reading too much TechCrunch. I was pumped full of entrepreneurial energy.

I was constantly reading about how college kids were receiving massive amounts of investment for their mobile app ideas. I thought I could be one of those college kids.

One day, while walking in-between classes, an app idea hit me. I quickly became convinced that I’d found the next big thing.

I was consumed by the idea and stopped paying attention to lectures. My excitement for the app idea quickly grew to the point where I felt I needed to take action.

There was one big problem. My idea was a mobile app and I didn’t know anyone who could build mobile apps.

So I thought, "what the hell, how hard could programming be?" I was losing interest in my major and I was spending a lot of time playing Xbox. I could put some of my free time towards building out my mobile app idea.

Sometimes being naive helps you take action when you normally wouldn’t.

I was a college student with no programming, business, or design experience trying to learn Android so I could build a complex mobile app. I guess that’s what you get when you mix a big idea with the Silicon Valley hype machine.

I wish I could tell you things went well from here.

I bought a few books on Android development and spent countless hours in my room trying to duct-tape my app together. I didn’t care how the app worked, I just wanted a finished product.

Time went on and the app turned into a Frankenstein of copy and pasted code. The app didn’t have many features and it barely ran without crashing.

It wasn’t until I accidentally got into a Computer Science class that I realized that I should focus more on actually trying to learn software development.

My inability to program lead me to abandon my initial app idea. I'd come to the realization that I wasn’t going to make the next big thing, at least not yet.

Over time I corrected my behavior and took learning more seriously. I started to enjoy programming and eventually started a career as a software developer.

Take Away

My big app idea consumed me for a long time. It put my focus on the end result rather than the process of getting there.

When you get too focused on the end result, you start taking shortcuts. Shortcuts might lead some short-term progress but in the long run, your lack of knowledge will always catch up to you.

It’s important to remember that learning anything big, like programming, requires many small steps. Each step will need to be treated with care.

Learning new things is like building a house. You start with the foundation and build up. If the foundation is faulty the whole thing will crumble down sooner or later.

Sometimes building a strong foundation requires you to slow down. There’s no shame in going slow. The people who understand the basics the first time will end up getting ahead of the people who have to go back and relearn them.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that goes:

It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.

It's not how fast you can do something, it's how slowly you can do it correctly.

I was a perfect example. From the outside, it might’ve looked like I was a programming whiz kid. In reality, I couldn’t build an app to save my life.

Focus on the process and you will surprise yourself with how much progress you make each day.

Stack Overflow is awesome (and dangerous)

As I was building my killer app, Stack Overflow became my best friend.

Anytime I got stuck I would try to craft together a perfect question to ask the Stack Overflow community. I averaged a few questions a day.

Not only would I post questions, but I would also treat the answers on Stack Overflow as Gospel. I would spend a crazy amount of time scouring the site to try to find an exact chunk of code that would fix my problem.

When I found a suitable answer, I would copy and paste it right into my codebase and try to make it work with my existing code. I spent little time trying to understand the code I was adding.

I made brute-force trial and error a new art form.

This process went on for a while until eventually, I wised up and realized the flaws of my approach.

Take Away

Stack Overflow is a blessing and a curse. It’s great at helping you solve problems; however, if you aren’t careful, you can quickly become dependent on the website.

Sometimes the website is too good at solving problems. It creates a false sense of confidence that can lead to more headaches down the road.

Stack Overflow shows you how to get something to work but it doesn't usually explicitly tell you why it works.

Understanding the how is important. Bugs need to be fixed and code needs to run.

However, understanding why something works is what's going to help you apply the knowledge again in the future.

It's like the quote...

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

Copy and pasting code from Stack Overflow is like giving a man a fish. Understanding why a snippet of code works is like teaching a man to fish.

There's nothing wrong with copying and pasting code. We all do it. It's only a problem when it becomes a crutch and stunts our growth as a developer.

The thing I had to learn the hard way was that it's impossible to learn anything if the answers are constantly given to you. There are no short-cuts in the learning process.

When you're stuck, attempt to solve your coding problem at least a few times before going to Google.

When you find yourself copying and pasting code, spend a little time trying to understand the code snippet before moving on.

Find experienced help

The first thing I did after I decided I wanted to learn programming was buy two Android development books.

At the start, I followed the exercises in the books closely and worked through the example projects. However, I quickly got frustrated with the progress I was making following the book and decided to go off and figure out how to program on my own.

As you’ve read above, that slowly resulted in disaster.

I spent countless hours isolated in my room trying to figure out simple programming problems. I was getting stuck on every new line of code and it didn't feel like I was making much progress.

I was helplessly stuck and my life was a cocktail of doubt, frustration, and an overwhelming feeling of being lost.

To make matters worse, I had the bright idea to start using a massive C library called FFMPEG. My app needed to edit videos, so I thought it was a good idea to utilize the library’s robust functionality.

It wasn’t my smartest move, considering at the time, I could barely get my Android app working.

I wasted a lot of time trying to read the C code and figuring out how I could use it in my app. I struggled to even get the library imported into my Android project. The Android code and C code didn't want to play nice.

After many hours of getting nowhere, I eventually became frustrated and abandoned the library.

Around the same time as the FFMPEG debacle, I signed up for an Object Oriented Programming class. I'm honestly not sure how I got in. I later found out that I was the only non-Computer Science major in the class. I think there was a bug in the enrollment software.

The first assignment was to build a Blackjack program. I’d been teaching myself programming for 5-6 months at this point, and I felt somewhat confident with my skills.

I finished the assignment and felt good about my work.

It didn't take long for that feeling to fade.

My whole program was written in one huge method. Just about everyone else in the class was able to pick up on the fact that the program needed to be separated into classes.

Not good.

Take Away

Luckily, the classwork and guidance from the teacher allowed me to take a step back from my Android app and reflect on my programming abilities. I started to value learning and reigned back my desires to make a completed app.

I've now come to realize that if I would've spoken to just one experienced developer in those early days, they would’ve seen what I was doing, set my priorities straight, and talked some sense into me. They would’ve helped me correct my path when I was going down useless dead ends (like trying to work with FFMPEG).

Instead, I isolated myself from the world partially because I felt like there wasn’t anyone who could help me.

Isolation is a double-edged sword. On one side, it helps you focus on the task at hand. On the flip side, it removes you from the world starving you of crucial feedback.

There were a lot of ways I could’ve found help. I could’ve tried to find a professor/student at the university with Android experience or looked to the local community for help. I also could’ve tried finding an online Android community.

Experienced developers are like a compass. They won’t get you to your destination but they will make sure you are pointed in the right direction. Their help can often be the difference between success and failure.

Make sure you seek out guidance wherever you can find it. It will save you time and frustration down the road.

Craft your environment

This might be the only thing I felt like I did right when I was teaching myself programming.

Throughout my life, I’ve been really bad at studying for tests or doing my homework at home. There are just too many distractions at any given moment. I would often try to find refuge in libraries or coffee shops.

Luckily I applied this rule when I was teaching myself programming.

I ended up becoming a regular at a few local coffee shops. I preferred coffee shops over other study locations because they provided some variety and it’s easy to hide (easy access to caffeine doesn’t hurt either).

If I was studying at home, I made sure my door was shut and my roommates knew not to disturb me for a certain period of time.

Regardless of where I was, I would make sure my music was loud enough so I couldn’t hear what was going on around me.

I can’t say I was perfect at finding a distraction-free work environment but I was able to succeed a majority of the time.

Take Away

Having the right work environment is often an overlooked part of learning.

Focus is a foundational component of memory and skill acquisition. When you try to learn something new, the strength of the learning is directly linked to the intensity of your focus. When your focus is weak, new information will be less sticky which will result in slower learning and more time studying.

Your work environment should be distraction-free and should allow for long uninterrupted stretches of focus. Even with COVID-19 making it difficult to work remotely, there are still actions you can take to design your learning environment.

Here are a few things you can do:

Find a location where people won’t interrupt you

Put your phone in airplane mode

Use some sort of timed website blocker for social media and news sites

Wear headphones and listen to non-distracting music (preferably a long playlist so you don’t have to constantly switch songs)

Avoid TV or other highly stimulating surroundings

Have a notebook nearby to write down any tasks or ideas that pop into your head

Make it known to the people around you that you don't want to be disturbed

Only you can decide where and how to craft your environment. But make sure you do, because it’s worth it.

Get out into the world and meet people

Landing my first programming job was sort of a random occurrence.

I just moved to Omaha, Nebraska and I had around a year of self-taught development under my belt.

I knew very few people in Omaha, so I searched Meetup.com to try and find other people interested in Android development. I found a Meetup focused on mobile development which covered both iOS and Android development and I decided to go.

Going to that first meeting was nerve-racking. I spent around 10 minutes in my car at the venue deciding if I should go in or drive off.

I was intimidated. I wasn’t confident of my programming skills and I knew everyone at the Meetup had much more experience than I did.

I finally said, screw it and went inside.

I’m glad I did.

I started to attend regularly and during one Meetup, not too long after I moved to Omaha, I met a recruiter who was looking for an Android contractor. We talked for a while and I got an interview for the job later that week.

Before the interview, I felt confident. During the interview, I was a deer in the headlights.

The interviewer was talking about the project I’d be working on and it all went right over my head. I tried to stay engaged but they could tell it was out of my range.

After the interview, they asked me to hang-out for an hour so I could talk to someone else. Knowing I blew it, I walked around downtown trying to clear my head.

I ended up interviewing with someone else at the company, and shortly after, they offered me an internship.

I was so shocked that after I signed all the paperwork and got my work laptop running, I went over to the CEO and asked if it was a paid internship or not.

The internship turned into a full-time job and I started my career as a software developer.

Take Away

When you are self-taught, people are not going to come and seek you out. You will need to find opportunities for yourself.

Graduates of four-year universities and code schools have the advantage of leveraging their school's network when finding a job. Self-taught developers don’t have this luxury.

Self-taught developers will need to go out into the world and build their networks themselves.

Cold calling employers and sending out resumes can work. However, I've found people like hiring people who are close to them in their social network.

Websites like Meetup.com are great for finding monthly programming specific groups. Even in a pandemic, there are still many virtual Meetups that are very informative and beneficial.

There are also other Slack channels or Discord communities that you can leverage to make meaningful relationships. You can also try reaching out to various people in your area and ask to have a quick 15-minute virtual coffee with them.

Do what you can to build up the nerve to reach out and talk with people. Be friendly and talk to them about your experiences. Make sure people know of your long-term goal of finding a job.

Put yourself in situations where something positive might happen. You can’t win a raffle if you never buy a ticket.

Consider any opportunity that comes your way, because even if it looks like a dead-end, it has the potential to lead to something bigger.

My internship was a huge pay-cut to the other offers I had at the time. However, I knew if I worked hard it would be an opportunity for me to break into the tech industry.

The key is to think of job opportunities in the long-term. Internships or part-time jobs might not give you your desired salary upfront but they might open up doors in the future.

Conclusion

As you can see, I made a lot of mistakes in my journey of becoming a self-taught developer.

Teaching yourself to code is never a straight road. All our stories are unique.

The key is to keep going and to avoid getting discouraged when things aren't going your way.

I encourage other self-taught developers to share their stories. Not only will they provide valuable insights, but they will also help shine a light on the unique paths we’ve taken.

Hopefully, my story and the lessons I learned will help you moving forward.

If you want to hear about other insights I've learned along the way, follow my account Zero to Programmer on Twitter. The goal of the account is to help you learn programming more efficiently.

via freeCodeCamp.org https://ift.tt/2X8itPB

#IFTTT #Feedly

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childpsychnurse-blog · 6 years

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The Bad Kid

Disclaimer: all names and identifying information about patients have been modified. Please see “About and Disclaimer” for more information.

I don’t know what my first post should be about.

Sometimes my work is sad. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s hopeful. Sometimes it’s disheartening. Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it sucks. A lot of the time it’s downright weird.

I love it and would not trade it for anywhere else, at least not right now.

I think the first story I’ll share is one from when I first started, back when I was still learning how to coach and advocate and manage behaviors and be a part of this wild and crazy thing. It may not be the most interesting story I have but it was pretty instrumental in my own development. There were two defining moments in this day: one that taught me about myself and about the vulnerability that still touches us as staff, and one that greatly deepened my understanding of my patients and their humanity.

A little background: on my unit everyone starts as “coaches,” including the nurses. The coaches are a little like the CNA’s of the psych world. You could also call them mental health techs. They’re the ones who are the most “on the floor.” They wake kids up, take them to breakfast, teach them skills’ groups, run their schedules, chart on them, call nurses with concerns, monitor conversations, and basically do a good chunk of the ground work. They’re amazing, and the thought process is that anyone who will be managing the coaches (such as the nurses) should have a solid handle on the job first. The work they do and skills they learn are also pretty foundational to all the behavioral management the nurses do, hence all the nurses spend a few months working in the coaching role. The reason I’m sharing all this detail, although perhaps it is a little excessive, is that this story is from when I was working as a coach in my first month or two as a new hire.

My assignment on this particular day was to work with our younger teenager group. Working with this group can have pros and cons from a staff’s perspective. They can be a lot of fun, have a great sense of humor, and tend to be more engaged than the older teens who can check out and be “too cool” for peer groups. They can also be super sassy and overly fueled by peer pressure and insecurity. Some of our kids are very sweet and they come to our unit for a variety of reasons, so groups (and individuals) can change a lot. This particular hodgepodge of kiddos I was to work with was a bit notorious for being difficult to manage.

I was having a terrible day with them.

They were arguing with me about any sort of limit or task demand I tried to impose, they were whispering to each other and sharing personal information (a big no-no for lots of safety reasons), and we were making very little progress on much of anything. I found myself swept up into a series of power-struggles and on the verge of tears but trying to put on a tough front.

One kid was particularly challenging. He was in for aggression or something like that, I don’t really know and it doesn't really matter. He kept calling me bad words and pulling the rest of the group even more off-track. He was in and out of group, and emotionally I was done with him pretty early on in the shift. He’ll come up again later in this post.

Eventually another patient went into a crisis that necessitated the rest of us leaving and transitioning to a different area of the unit. We sat in the living area, arguing, and me wondering how the hell I thought I could do this job.

The first defining experience that came out of the day for me happened in that living area. Another staff was over there with a kid who was assigned to have an individual staff rather than being in a peer group. This kid was asleep, and the staff came over to check in with me.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

I look at her. “It’s okay. Well, I don’t know. I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do with this group.”

She nods at looks at the kids, drawing penises and writing down phone numbers and cuss words, then looks back at me. “You need a break.”

“Nah, the shift’s almost over. I’ll be fine.”

My coworker shakes her head. “No, you NEED a break. Trade with me. [My patient] is sleeping anyway; you just have to be here so he has access to a staff. Get some charting done, I’ll finish out with your group.”

Almost reluctantly but with a great deal of unacknowledged relief, I agree. She takes my group and I go sit in the nursing station and chart while checking on the sleeping patient.

There were a lot of things going through my head. First of all, I’m supposed to me a nurse. I went through an incredibly intense program and I did it. I got here. I’m supposed to be a leader. I’m supposed to be strong. Did I just fail? I think I might have. I shouldn’t have been power-struggling that much with the kids, that wasn’t helping anyone and was making it worse. I was letting them control me. None of my interventions worked, I can’t be a leader here, who am I kidding?

Then, in the middle of the nursing station, another thought. What does it mean to experience weakness as strength? We’re only human, after all. If I’m around people in crisis, I’m going to be in crisis too. What I can control is how I chose to respond to it, how I chose to take care of myself, how I chose to cope. And it’s okay for the kids to see that, maybe even healthy for them to see someone model functional ways to deal with that kind of emotion, and also to see the impacts they can have on other people.

It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to ask for a change. It’s okay to have an emotional reaction, even if you’re the staff. This job is hard. These kids are sick. You didn’t make them sick, but you can help keep them safe. You do need to take care of yourself if you want to last here, and taking a break is sometimes part of that self-care.

I was fortunate enough to have some follow-up at the end of that shift that would become the second defining moment for me in my job of that day.

We moved our sleeping friend and I was back to helping with evening routine and getting kids into bed. The patient I mentioned earlier was sitting in the hall, refusing to brush his teeth, go into his room, or complete pretty much anything that had been set out as an expectation. He was chatting with a peer.

“This unit used to be one floor, you know, then they added upstairs,” he told the peer. He glances briefly at me, then away. “I’ve been here a lot. I’m a bad kid.”

This kid has, quite frankly, been pissing me off and hurting my feelings all day. His words in that moment, however, grab at my heartstrings and completely catch me off-guard.

“Dude,” I tell him, “you’re not a bad kid. You’ve made some bad choices but they don’t define who you are. You can still make good choices.”

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Y'all only ever say something when we’re being bad, nobody says anything when we’re being good.”

He’s right and I know it. Not about the entire unit: lots of staff members are good at positive reinforcement. But I haven’t been doing that today and chances are that a lot of coaches haven’t been recently, especially with this guy. I own it.

“You’re right. I haven’t said anything when you’re doing a good job, and I’m sorry. I should have. That’s on me, and I’ll work on it.”

He shrugs and doesn’t say much else. Shortly thereafter though he does go back into his bedroom and go to sleep.

I’m a bad kid.

Is that a story I tell myself when I’m frustrated with the kids? That they’re just bad kids? Does that thought, lurking in my subconscious, influence and drive the way I interact with them and the interventions I choose?

Some of these kids have been through hell. Some of them have lived on the streets, been abused, grown up in the foster system, and/or never had any sort of positive role model. And that’s not even factoring in the pressure of whatever is going on in their heads: anxiety, depression, shame, or voices outside of their cognitive control. They do make choices and they need to take ownership of their actions, but sometimes those choices are infinitely harder for them because of factors way outside of their control.

And they’re just KIDS.

They’re not bad kids. They’re just kids. They want the same things any kid wants: love. Acceptance. Security. Food. Water. Safety. Rest. Look at Maslow’s hierarchy. We see that all the time.

As it happens, I worked with that particular group again a few days later. The personality of the group had evolved slightly due to discharges and admits but was more or less the same, and my friend from the previous shift was still there. I focused really hard on praising that patient when he was making good choices, however small they were. I worked on not power struggling with the group and talking to them like adults. I let them know I expected them to be respectful and take ownership of their own learning and skill building because it would help them, but I wasn’t going to patronize them and was willing to be flexible on how we ran the day as long as they were respectful and somewhat engaged.

They had a great day.

And I had a great day with them, working with the group of great kids that just needed a little extra help and compassion.

#mental health #psych nursing #child psych #psychology

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talinthas · 7 years

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On Reza Aslan’s new show Believer, and the “Hindu” episode that wasn’t

This is a rather long post about the new CNN show Believer, and the first episode, which covered the incredibly disturbing Aghori sect of hindus, and their traditions. TL;DR, it was really gross, and did an incredible disservice to the Hindu community at a time when we’re getting shot and killed by trumpists for being different. They basically filmed Indy Jones and the Temple of Doom and called it a documentary. Read on.

So last night I sat down and watched Reza Aslan's new show Believer, where he goes around the world exploring faith traditions and stuff. I'm a huge fan of Aslan, both as a person doing good work for minorities in the era of trump, and as a scholar and author. I have a lot of his books on religious traditions, and love them. He's been really even handed in his looks and has always treated the faiths with respect, while still delving into interesting and subtle issues.

Needless to say, I was eager to see where he went with my religion, especially given the great things he's said about Hinduism in the past, and about the Sufi traditions he belongs to. Imagine my surprise and dismay, and frankly, utter horror, when I saw that the episode was about the Aghoris, a tiny splinter group of depraved weirdos who practice deviant and taboo breaking behaviors in the name of equality and end of caste traditions.

Now, I'm all for ending caste and breaking down the barriers between people in the name of equality, but the Aghoris aren't social justice types. They're naked sadhus who coat themselves in the ashes of cremation grounds, drink urine, and perform acts of cannibalism. In the show, one of the aghoris makes Aslan drink alcohol out of a skull and then eat a chunk of brain tissue. It's completely disgusting and disturbed, and not remotely reflective of Hindu culture. There's a reason why most Hindus look at the aghoris as not hindus at all, because their practices are just so beyond the pale.

It was incredibly irresponsible for CNN and Aslan to use this splinter group to explore Hinduism and caste discrimination, when there are so many other ways they could have done so with taste and respect. Instead, we got my nightmare, a retelling of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. All of those horrific stereotypes desi kids had to deal with growing up, eyeball soup and monkey brains and kali maaaa and all that shit- here it was, only non fictional, on cnn primetime in HD with a highly respected scholar leading the way. I was super disappointed.

The thing is, the final segment of the show explored Aghoris who left all that sensationalism and showmanship behind in order to actually practice what their faith teaches- running orphanages for people of all castes and creeds, and raising and educating them without any fear or concern for taboos or hindu notions of purity and pollution. It was beautiful, and inspirational, especially seeing how the modern aghoris ran a leper clinic and treated those most damaged by society as if they were equal to anyone else.

But spending 10 minutes on that, and 40 minutes on skull cracking drunks rolling around in filthy, polluted water and then eating human flesh..come on. We're living in a world where hindus are getting shot and killed in america weekly because of misunderstanding and distrust, and putting a show on CNN that just hammers home how gross Hindus are is really poor judgement.

At first, i was really dismayed by all of the Hindu reaction to the show, especially before it aired, and i normally don't find myself agreeing with the Hindu American Foundation a ton, but after i saw this show i couldn't help but be disturbed and pissed off.

Aslan is a really good dude, and he's definitely reacted in the right ways to the criticism, but he *still aired the damn show in the first place*. Part of the fault is definitely with his producers and the network, who most certainly had a hand in editing the program and balancing it so the gory nonsense took most of the time, but as a scholar who has seen religious persecution first hand, both as a refugee from iran and as an american, he really should have known better.

I'm really disappointed and disgusted with how this turned out. It could have been awesome. Instead, it was just insulting.

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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

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NYFF 2018: La Flor

I stopped playing sports of any kind at about age eight. I had asthma, I hated running, I didn't like being in extreme heat or rain for a goal I didn't understand, and most of all, I hated competition. Film always made more sense to me. You only had to watch what you wanted and there were a million ways to view any given work. Right around the end of high school something funny happened. I started making a list of all the films I thought I should see, the ones regarded as classics, or that kept cropping up in the magazines and books I was reading. The one constant were the films of almost inconceivable length. “Shoah,” “Heimat,” “Sátántangó,” “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” “Empire,” “Out 1,” and more exceeded five hours of viewing. What could possibly happen in such a runtime? Were these films simply elaborate dares? It seemed to me like they were competing with each other, and by extension with the viewers foolhardy enough to watch. Suddenly I found the kind of competition I liked.

In college I first dipped my toes in the absurd challenge of watching the longest movies ever when I found myself between a Kentucky Derby party happening in the house in which I lived, no car to drive anywhere, and the director's cut of "1900." I opted for the movie, the way I always do. The film nearly defeated me as it refused to end well past the point of having anything new to say about fascism or the direction of Italy's intellectual radicals. Struck me that Pasolini, his teacher and friend, was dead and Bertolucci wanted us to know what Italy, and the world lost, every time someone like the great poet died. And maybe if the film never ended Bertolucci never had to return to a reality without him.

“La Luna,” his next film was two and a half hours and begins with the death of a father, which bore out my hypothesis. There was something about the length that felt like a plea. I watched the 13-hour “Berlin Alexanderplatz” a few weeks later, split over two days, and loved it. The length made sense. The novel Rainer Werner Fassbinder was adapting was baroque and intricate, and he had to convey with completeness the mindset of a German before Nazism crawled into his and every other German's consciousness. There was also that it was nearly the last thing the enigmatic wreck directed before his death in 1982.

I've since watched too many films to count with epic lengths, several of them by Lav Diaz, and it's rare that they earn their length. Diaz's work is about wearing you down because he has chosen to make movies about the perpetually worn down. He gets us, or tries to, to see life as a pregnant Filipino woman would, screaming for better fortune and empathy from a cruel and empty world. When the six-hour “A Century of Birthing” ended I don't know that I felt anything except the peculiar sensation that if I went outside I might find myself in the Philippines. A herculean duration is not to be abused, because at its best, a long movie, or even just a very long shot, can teach us to form a relationship with an image. Chantal Akerman's three-hour “Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” teaches us to question the purpose of a camera, its placement in a room, its function as a capturing mechanism, and what it can teach us about ourselves. Jeanne Dielman, like nearly every Akerman film, tells an audience what the life of its female protagonist feels like. The monotony, the repetition, the silence, it's still unlike any film about domestic femininity and objectification ever made, and part of that is its fearless patience.

I don't usually have cause to sit and think about the relative productivity of runtime but for a fellow named Mariano Llinás. I haven't seen his breakthrough, "Extraordinary Stories," which runs a cool four hours, so had never thought about him or his work, until suddenly they were all I could think about. His new movie “La Flor” was playing New York Film Festival, and it was 14 hours long. Calum Marsh said it might be his new favorite film. I was intrigued. The competition returned. I had to sit through it all in one go, there was nothing else for it. But what kind of long movie was this to be? Llinás himself appears in the beginning to explain: six parts, four without endings, one without a beginning and one with everything. Each would star the actresses Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa and Laura Paredes, and each would be in a different genre. Alright, pal, game on.

The first part of six was no help in divining the film's purpose or meaning. It's a (perhaps purposely) shoddy b-movie, a story about a mummy's vengeful spirit possessing an archeologist after she steals the old fossil's eyes. The film is (perhaps purposely) a collection of hysterical actions, from the long and busy conversations caught in minutes-long steadicam shots, the frequently howled dialogue, the preponderance of murderous cats and the red glowing eyes of the mummy. I thought it wouldn't have been such a bad VOD horror movie if it'd cut about thirty minutes off the hour and forty minute runtime. It felt self-indulgent for such a (perhaps purposely) slight genre movie. Part 2 muddied things even further. A couple going through a terrible break-up have to reunite to write and record a new album. Their early recordings, when they were together, were massive hits, and now their songs are loaded with bitter, barbed portent. A mutual friend of theirs hears both sides of their story, but she's not without ulterior motives. She's in deep with a strange scorpion-worshipping cult with nefarious designs on the songwriting duo. Just what they plan is never divined because the film ends right when everyone's about to confront each other.

Part three is many hours itself and concerns rival spies and their shared mission to kidnap a rocket scientist. It's a parody of spy movies but finds time for grace in its empathetic look into each member of the team's outlook on life and the violence that brought them together. This film ending before it's reached its conclusion is less a problem as it's quite plainly just about the puppet strings pulled by fate and the little left to us to contemplate. The fourth part is perhaps the most successful, following the crew of the movie we're watching as they try to create the segment we're watching. It goes haywire as Llinás get obsessed by filming Trumpet Trees and then he and his crew are in some kind of accident that drives them all mad. A paranormal investigator is dispatched to deal with the aftermath of their calamity. The fifth part is a silent remake of Jean Renoir's "A Day In the Country." The sixth part is shot like a series of tintypes, a telling of the struggle of four indigenous women. Then there are 40 minutes of end credits over an upside shot of the crew cleaning up after the last shot.

There are long movies and there are long movies. Llinás it seems, is just as competitive as I am because there is, quite frankly, no reason this film had to be 808 minutes long. He did it because he could, because how many 13-and-a-half-hour movies are there in a calendar year? Very few, and this film reminds us, there's good reason. He shows up in the middle of the third episode to tell us there are three and a half hours left in the chapter. To put it bluntly, he's fucking with us. When it was revealed in hour ... ten? Maybe? that I would be watching a pointlessly silent remake of one of the most perfect films ever made, I almost threw my shoe at the television. Part of the problem is that Llinás, in his hubris, imagined that he could dictate how the film would be consumed. He put in a dozen intermissions and requested it be broken up at such and such a place. That's all well and good but when a movie is done it's out of your hands. It's not a symphony that has to be conducted at a certain speed, it's a movie that will some day wind up on streaming services, likely watched in half-hour chunks like it's "Fuller House." I watched it all in one day and this movie is not designed to be watched in one day. If anyone involved in programming or making it had done what I did they would never have made this film this long because it has no rhythmic coherence. And if a film cannot be watched whole it cannot be watched at all.

The various extravagances of “La Flor” could be pardoned or loved in smaller doses, but recommending a day of one's life for an hour of reward seems like just as much a trolling as popping up to tell your audience how much longer they have before they then have five more hours left of a movie. Which is not to say I only enjoyed an hour of the movie, but I'd say in the context of each passage, there were sections that made each chapter worth watching (except perhaps in the unconscionably dull second part). "The Day In the Country" remake is basically numbing and pointless, especially since I'd been on a couch for an entire day before it began, except that near the end a section of audio from the original film appears on the soundtrack and Llinás starts filming single propeller planes in flight, dancing with each other in the sky like synchronized swimmers and I'm struck dumb. In that moment it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, I want to cry. Has the whole enterprise been worthwhile? A director with some idea of the shape of his opus would stop now but on we go to a superficially beautiful but deathly boring text-driven final act. Llinás does not know what he's done, does not know what the competitive cinephile will have done when he's heard there's a 14-hour movie calling to him from the annals of history ... or at the very least the wikipedia entry on the longest films ever made.

The thing that galls me still, weeks after I've seen it, when I've successfully reduced it in my memory to the best parts--the side-splitting Monty Python-esque digression about trees, the planes cutting across the grey sky--is that it's patently selfish to ask anybody to spend more than a day watching a movie. I was not transported, I was not let in on the secrets of its creator, I was not told about the mindset of the average anybody. I did learn a few important things: “La Flor,” I truly believe, cannot be called a film. It is six films and a middle finger of a credits sequence, stitched together like the "Bride of Re-Animator" for the purpose of making a raving fool out of me, the viewer who took his intentions at face value. Some of these movies are better than others, but none of them justifies the other, and no single element justified my spending 13 and a half hours watching this. I look back on those moments of transcendence, where Llinás gets out of his own way, stops taunting me, and lets the movie be a movie, and wonder if they'd have been as remarkable in a standalone 90-minute work.

I watched “La Flor” because “La Flor” dared me to watch it, and I have never shrunk from such a thing yet. This is what competition brings out in me and now I'm stuck with the secrets only a full day of movie can hold. A lifetime has passed since I scowled my way through soccer matches, praying to be taken off the field, and I haven't learned a thing. If nothing else, “La Flor” taught me that. A terrible price for a terrible truth, but the planes were lovely.

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chrismurman · 6 years

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How Do You Know When To Step Away?

There aren’t many people from college I keep up with anymore. Just a few close buddies that I spent almost every day of life with for a few years. After graduation, we would call often, even do group calls to laugh at each other. Then when one of us would get engaged or have a kid, we’d trek to their hood for some fellowship.

Now, there’s a group text where we share what’s going on when something needs to be shared, coordinate a rare meetup, or make fun of each other’s teams during the NFL season.

When we were in each other’s lives in our 20s, we spent a ton of energy around hanging out. There was a huge return on the investment because I have lifelong friends that would come bail me out at the drop of a hat if I asked.

I think.

To spend that much time on them now would be much more work for very little return. We have significant others, kids, pets, jobs, and lives to lead in other cities. If we finally did a weekend trip somewhere it would be much more expensive than drinking cheap beer at the lake in college. And the morning after now would be much more painful.

What I’m describing is an aspect of the law of diminishing returns. [1] It’s a fairly simple concept and refers to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. At some point in time of my relationship with these gents, we all realized it wasn’t going to be like it was.

The same could be said for the time we spend coaching our teams, programs, and leaders today.

It’s a harsh thing to communicate. The minute I meet a new group of people to partner with on the road to agility I’m trying to put myself out of a job. That means I have to immediately prepare them for the day I won’t be around. I rarely have the exact date in mind when I say this, but we all know it’s true.

My time with teams will at some point need to come to an end.

In the beginning, everyone has hope (or less skepticism than usual) for a better way of working. They haven’t gotten tired of the sound of my voice. My analogies and cliches are new. I might even bring treats to the initial kick off. That never lasts though, and they will eventually have their fill.

Which led me to explore the concept of understanding when you’ve reached that tipping point and how to best handle that transition.

Just as a caveat, this may not apply to all of you. You may be a full-time employee assigned to a team or group of teams. You may have contract lengths to adhere to as a consultant. Or you just may like the area you are working in. I’ll add something at the end for those of you as well.

Avoid the awkward with better up front expectations.

One of the most important parts of my job is sitting down with leadership early on to establish our working agreement. This includes several items, depending on the engagement. Most importantly, I want to know what they think I should accomplish and how to handle it if I disagree with some their assessment after onboarding.

Often, the objective includes phrases like, “teach us this framework, then step us through a few iterations.” It could be to assist them with a re-org as they build agile teams from scratch. I might even be fortunate enough to teach leadership some things about viewing our work differently before moving to teams.

The struggle is by the time I show up most clients are chomping at the bit for me to get started and want to breeze past the initial working agreement. There are several reasons for this, which probably merit a post on just this topic. Just know you can’t push past this.

Defining the endpoint may be difficult, but establishing the end point is key. I’ve often been sitting in leadership meetings with this awkward feeling. Everybody is asking me how things are going. Discussion centers around the topic of how do we know if we are accomplishing our goals. If I had done a better job of establishing expectations earlier in the process, I would be better equipped to handle this discussion.

You won’t know if it’s time to push the baby birds out of the nest on unless you know where you want them to go. If you want to read more on this, Jason Little’s book is a great place to start.

They need me to step back from them, but they may need to step away from you too.

Let’s say you’ve established a great working agreement with leadership, including healthy outcomes for the team or program. Then comes the actual execution. Even the most experienced coach can struggle to accomplish tasks with some groups. The more entrenched the culture and frozen middle, the harder the transformation can be.

Often, the task is too much for a single person.

What I often hear from colleagues (and myself) will be to blame the other side for the challenges. “They’re just not ready for transformation,” is the common refrain. All of that might be true, but what I’ve had to learn the hard way is the team’s problem might be staring me back in the mirror.

As a guide through the buzzword of transformation, all I have is tools and a few quirky stories to tell teams. I do not have a magic wand.

When I notice that teams aren’t responding to me like they used to, I try not to lie to myself. There could be a personality conflict with me, a difference in approach. Maybe I made a scrum master feel disregarded, or a project manager marginalized. It could be the just won’t want to play along. Regardless, the best thing I can do in this situation is own my part in things.

If it comes to a point where they would respond to someone else, made its best to be honest with leadership. Its hard doing that, but if we really care about their journey then we should create the best environment. One that doesn’t include me for the moment.

Involve them with identifying the tipping point.

Change plans are a necessary evil with my work, one that I’m not very good at. It could be my lack of training in the area of Organizational Change Management practices. Or I’m stubborn and just want to tell funny stories in workshops instead. Either way, plans help everyone feel better about the work we do.

What I find disconcerting is the propensity to hide them subconsciously instead of just make them as visible as our product backlogs. Just like a well written epic, I find writing the objectives with leadership on cards and decomposing them in front of the team a healthy practice.

If everyone is walking the wall of transformation just like our other boards, everyone comes to the realization at the same time that we are reaching our tipping point of diminishing returns.

Another awesome tool I’ve had the chance to participate in is transformation demos. Just like the working software version, we want to iterate our way through the process of change and show our work along the way. I’ve seen leadership benefit from breaking up the work into smaller chunks and having a conversation about how the work is going.

By seeing transformation in smaller chunks, it’s easier to see when we are getting close to our definition of done.

What if you want or need to keep going?

For all the reasons I described earlier, and many more, you might not have an opportunity to fire yourself. You would like to find a way to stick around, but you can see all the tell tale signs mentioned above. What should you do?

First off, have an open and honest with leadership and acknowledge where you are. If you’ve been stepping everyone through the process, it will seem more natural to want to help evolve your role or swap things up.

You can also stay put but shift into more of a mentor with your area of work. Find ways to elevate others into your position. The learning you gain as a mentor far will pair with your first hand experience.

Also, explore more areas of transformation in your program or team. While it may seem like you’re trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip at first, people are usually up for coming up with more ways they want to change things up. Add to your transformation backlog just like you would a product backlog.

Regardless of how close you are to the tipping point, just know that it’s coming. And it’s okay to reach the point of diminishing returns of your coaching. The more proactive you can be as you near it, the more prepared you will be for the next stage of change.

And yours.

Yes, I did a lot of research into the law. It is commonly used by economists to describe that if I increase the amount of energy I spend on something I will get less in return. That would apply somewhat differently to this article, but it can apply loosely. Dont come at me with your pitchforks, Internet.

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azntoastyz · 6 years

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Please, ignore me ramble if you want.

This is an article that lists the general differences between computer science and software engineering. Although my chemistry degree is not related to any of these fields (except software that run with instruments utilized, but let’s be honest. I don’t use any except the IR/moisture analyzer or ERP system), but I have taken a class here an there (who hasn’t? according to my brother’s best friend). I mean. . . he isn’t wrong. Because I’ve indulged myself in one C++ course (knowing the basic functions in every language), a week SQL course provided by oracle, and completing a little HTML/CSS thing on codecademy. Yeah, I can make relations between the applications that I use and generalize what software developers or engineers used to like create this application so I could do what I do.

I don’t completely know the details yanno? I am curious though. Whomever created tumblr? How tf did they come up with these ideas? What I’m afraid of is the industry being over populated with people who have knowledge of tech. People say that there will always be tech jobs available, but I learned that the demand and supply of people with specific abilities for a job will determine how much that position will offer.

I am a chemist. Specifically a quality control chemist, even though my title is quality control lab technician. The bottom of the bottom. Working in the manufacturing industry, I know that I have a lot of knowledge to gain, but it is mostly knowledge of business, how this business works, what we sell, how to handle different situations with unhappy customers. Being a qc chemist is not what I thought it would be. When I presented at STEM week at a middle school, I remember listening to an electrical engineer that works in manufacturing (i am assuming she works with the machinery). Obviously, manufacturing has machines, and they need someone with special abilities/mindset to operate, maintain and fix them if needed. She says that’s the jack pot, but the thing is “is it satisfactory or enjoyable?” I kind of feel like a robot, but everyone has a task that they can do with experience right? I feel like if someone really wanted to, they could learn what I do within a month, and do my job. Maybe that’s why I’m lowballed, but idk.

Why am I looking towards careers in technology/pursuing a career in tech? It’s not the first time, I’ve decided this. I know that I should’ve done it in the first place in college, but I felt like I was too far into my chemistry program that I should finish. Besides, I was getting pretty good at chemistry, and everything I’ve learned as an underclassman, I got to see how they intertwine with the upperclassman classes and labs. I thought it was where I needed to be. When I took that C++ class in college, it came so natural for me like I absorbed that damn info. I did very well on the exams, and when it came to the weekly homeworks, they were hard to debug after creating what I needed to, but when I finally did, it was hella rewarding. Especially, teaching it to my classmate/when she didn’t understand I was like hell ya i’ll explain it! (except matlab omfg that taught like at < month left before finals so I had to focus on my other courses as well). I decided to take an SQL course at oracle after I graduated, and I saw myself actually being in the tech business. I have traits in me where my father said “you’d be a great engineer” as he is one himself. I have a tendency to organize things and make sure everything is in check as a hobby. I don’t mind sitting in front of a computer as a job, working from home or talking to people about projects (I would like to have an environment like that. Right now it’s very casual. I’m not complaining, but it’s so casual to explain). There are so many reasons that I could blab on. Wait why not? this is for me. I would like to have projects instead of a stream of things coming in doing the same stuff. I, honestly, feel like a machine at a factory. thinking about the future, I want to have a family. I want to spend time with them. At this career, I am exposed to toxic chemicals. I will become pregnant, and I will still be dealing with these chemicals. It’s scary.

I’ve been looking for inspiration, and I found videos on youtube by this channel called “the school of life.” One of my fears is that I’m too late to switch careers. He made a point though: how tf will most people know what they want to do in adolescence? I’ve been an adult from 18-24. That is 6 years. out of those 6 years, I’ve spent all of them really thinking about what I want to do. 2 of those years, I’ve been working as a qc lab tech, gaining experience in this field. He made a point that this point in our life seems like a huge chunk of our existence as its like a fourth of my life. He said to think in the long run. We generally retire at the age of 65. I’m 24. That’s approximately 41 years of working. Do I see myself working in the job for 41 years? What is 41 years compared to 2 years of schooling and another 2 years of gaining experience again? I’m deciding to be at this job for 2 years minimum. I have 8 months to really think about it. I will make a deadline for myself. Either I decide to dive in, or decide to find a new job and work my way up to technology (tech in the field of chemistry maybe pharmaceuticals). It’s quite scare as I will be 25 at the time, thinking about moving onto the next stage of my life (not career wise).

“I’m looking at the curriculum too much rather than specific job.” My task at this moment is to learn about jobs in tech and see if there are any jobs that are related to my field. If not, and I find something in just tech. I should go for it.

#ramble #tech #career #change #chemistry #personal #future

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sublimedeal · 6 years

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Julie Stoian – Create Your Laptop Lifestyle

Get Julie Stoian – Create Your Laptop Lifestyle right now!

There’s really only two reasons you’re here:

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No Need – You don’t really need to become a Digital Marketer because a) you have a great job already, or b) you would rather pay someone to do your business’s digital marketing than learn it yourself. But guess what, many of you might *think* you don’t need it, when you most certainly do. No Hurry – Procrastination Station is your country of residence and you prefer dreaming about doing things than actually doing them. Since I am an action taker of EPIC proportions, I get really annoyed by procrastinators and would rather not work with them. To that end, I will purposely create urgency to weed out those who like to sit on the sidelines. No Desire – You landed here by accident (or because my targeting sucks) and therefore, you really could care less about Digital Marketing and you’re annoyed at my sarcastic obnoxious language. You might even be writing an email to me in your head right now about what an arrogant pain in the ass I am. No Trust – Ahhh the biggie. You don’t really know who I am or if I can deliver on my promises. This is legit. I wouldn’t trust me without knowing me either. So we’ll get a little intimate here in a few. No Money – Ahhh the second biggie. You’re broke as joke. By the way, most people aren’t as broke as they say. What they mean is that the price I’m asking is not equal (in your head) to the value I provide. After I show you that a Digital Marketing career OR bad-ass Digital Marketing skills in your business are the difference between in debt, or making multiple six figures a year, the price won’t seem so bad. TRUTH BOMB #1

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If my funnels blow up tomorrow, if my brand crashes into the ocean, if my client thinks I’m a dink…it’s okay. Because I know how to find and make more brands, clients, and funnels. The skills in my tool belt are the money finding and making skills that can be leveraged on the most powerful tool on Planet Earth…the Internet.

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I know, rocket science.

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That means if you have a business, you better learn Digital Marketing FAST, or find someone who does. And if you want to be a Digital Marketer, the news is very good. The GOOD ones will ALWAYS be busy because every business in the world…needs YOU.

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I would have been nervous if you DIDN’T ask me this question.

There are a lot of people out there SMARTER than me. WEALTHIER than me. More EXPERIENCED than me. But I would argue that you can pit me up against some of the best guru’s out there and I would still win when it comes to…

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Here come the credentials that set me up to be the BEST choice to learn Digital Marketing from in 2017.

And I’m not blowing smoke up your ass either.

I know more tech than

__: Insert favorite guru. The point is, many gurus don’t actually DO the work. I DO. I know the nitty gritty of web design, funnel design, tech, servers, copywriting, ads, and more. There is NOTHING I don’t do except write code or edit videos (I can do video editing, but I hate it…so I don’t). When I’m musing about some strategy related to a funnel, I know how to go in and get it setup, weird extra code needed and everything. I graduated the #1 student in my class with a degree in Clinical/Community Psychology. Human behavior is my jam. Personality tests, psychological strategy, hell – trying to manipulate four kids to do what I want…it’s more than any Marketing Degree could ever teach me. You’re still reading this page, word for word…aren’t you? CASE IN POINT. I’ve spent my entire adult life teaching. Teaching piano, teaching VA’s, teaching up and coming Digital Marketers, teaching kids, teaching adults. Knowing how to break a complicated and overwhelming concept into manageable chunks is a gift, and I have it. Many gurus do not. I’ve helped business make money. LOTS of money. And they are businesses NOT in the Digital Marketing industry. Health niche, home organization niche, writing niche, therapy niche, etc. My last client grossed over a million dollars on her proofreading funnel (yes, it’s true). I made nearly $200,000 on Digital Marketing services with clients in 2016. And then I made an additional $150,000 on my own branding and course. I’ve grossed over $45,000 in revenue per month since November 2016 and have the unique perspective of being a SERVICE provider as well as an entrepreneur running an online business. And in March 2017, I grossed over $100,000 in one month…and no, there was no huge launch. I’ve steadily earned over six figures each month (going as high as $125,000 in ONE month). Social proof galore. Hundreds (not exaggerating) of women + businesses who’ve worked with me and have said that I’ve been a transformational GAME CHANGER…(I would say gangsta) in the success and growth of their online business. I didn’t take any shortcuts. Here, let me take a course and then turn around and teach it. Just allll the no. I’ve worked as an online service provider while being a mom for the last five years and have earned the right to call myself an EXPERT. From my award-winning writing and blogs, to the hundreds of websites and customers, I dare you to find someone with the breadth of skills I have. I’m the best woman for the job. Period.

If you want to be a digital marketer, hang out with someone who’s doing what you want to be doing. #raiseshand

You NEED Digital Marketing Skills and I Should Be the One to Teach You.

And that’s why I’m very excited to introduce you to….

How to Become a Bad Ass Digital Marketer That Finds + Makes Money

for yourself and others.

A Comprehensive 8+ Module Training Program that Covers How to Bring a Business to Life Online Through Digital Marketing Skills + Strategies.

The first how-to and strategy program of its kind that takes you through the REAL LIFE steps I do everyday with my top clients to find and make money. The focus is on real life strategies…as in, “Okay this works in the book but how do you really do it in the real world with budget, time, and talent constraints?”

Here’s how it’s gonna go….

I’m going to teach you tech + strategy, and give you as comprehensive and clear of an education as I can on how I do what I do everyday, and how you can do it for yourself and others as well.

Don’t be fooled by the name. This course is as serious as a heart attack. This career and skill set saved my life and my family, but I had to work hard. So will you.

Theory and practice, plus real life lessons and examples to give you a broad education on the foundations of Digital Marketing. The focus is on systematic strategy and real life practice.

Downloadable Lessons

Summary Worksheets

Real Life Examples

Checklists + Swipe Files

Module 1 Planning + Market Research for a New Digital Product or Service

How do you test the waters of an idea/service/offer before you dump THOUSANDS down the drain? We’ll go over the FIRST things you need to do with a business before you do anything else.

Overall Business Assessment: Is the business non-existent yet, or is it online but a disaster and disorganized? Competition Assessment: Where are the business’s competitors and what are they doing that works? Business Owner Assessment: Including evaluating the lifestyle, personality, time and skill set of the business owner. Past Success/Failure Assessment: Why things work and why they don’t. How to learn from mistakes so they aren’t repeated. Ideal Client Avatar: Who is the customer, who is the lead, and how do the ideas and/or existing offers reach the avatar? Budgeting + Timelines: The best plans in the world mean nothing if there’s no money or no time to work with. Research Phase Setup: What you need and what you don’t in the development of an online business. Blog Post Optimization through Content Upgrades: Using blog signature content with upgrades to test the market for advertising. Module 2 Brand Development

Learn how to create a brand through colors, fonts, and messaging. Understand the bare minimum to get started vs. the whole SHEBANG, and how to know what to spend money on and where. Creating a brand that’s flexible enough to pivot in the fast-moving digital space is KEY.

A Logo that can Grow: Logos on a budget when the business is just getting started. How to create one that can pivot and grow. Brand Boards: How to create them in Photoshop for consistency across all materials. Business Name vs. Product Names: Brainstorming names that are memorable. Tag lines, Titles, Domain Names: For funnels, web, and other platforms Templates, Cover Photos, and Consistency: Planning for what you need to create a consistent theme. Professional Photos: Branding photo shoots on a budget. Module 3 Creation of Programs + Offers

Problem solving and agitation. The master plan built and then broken down into chunks. What is the BIG plan and vision, and how to create smaller affordable step-by-step plans for build out of an online business? And mostly, how can you make a plan that’s FLEXIBLE enough to pivot as needed?

Development of Core Offers: How to pick and frame your core offers, including what is easiest to start with. Development of Entry Offers: Creation of entry level offers that take into consideration, wow factor, value, price, and cost to make. Development of Free Offers: Discovery and development of PDF’s, Checklists, e-Guides, Quizzes, Masterclasses, e-Courses + more. Pairing Up Your Offers: Even if you can’t execute the master vision right from the start, pair up your offers for maximum profits. Outline of Content/Preparation for Launch: How to break up the plan into manageable phases with outlines and calendar dates for launch. Module 4 Lead Generation to 1k Subscribers Prior to a Launch

Using Lead Magnets, Content Upgrades, Challenges, and Facebook Ads for a pre-sell and BETA launch. How to get to a list of 1000 subscribers with classic list building strategies, why you use them, and preparation for release of product.

List Building Foundations: What email service provider to use, best practices, and setup. Giveaways: Running a giveaway that generates quality leads for the launch of your product. Free Challenges: How to create and style a challenge that excites your prospects. Quizzes: How to create a quiz to generate leads Live Webinars: All the steps to creating a live webinar for list building Messenger Bots: How to use FB live and messenger bots to grow your list Running Ads: How to use Facebook Ads to build your list Facebook Group: Using Facebook groups to keep your list warm. Module 5 The Art + Science of Copy and Storytelling

Why writing and storytelling are at the root of every successful online business. How to hack copy, and when not to. Learn how to write direct response sales pages, launch emails, plus resources for emails and ads.

Weekly Broadcasts Before You Have Anything to Sell: As the list grows, you’ll need to make sure you’re keeping your subscribers warm. Welcome Sequences: The introduction to the business that every lead must progress through. Storytelling Through Social Media: How to stay engaged with your followers through stories on social media. Direct Response Copy Foundations: What is direct-response copy and why is it necessary in online business? Sales Page Copy: How to write a sales page when you haven’t done it before. Resources and strategies for getting it right the first time. Writing Webinars + Scripts: Preparing for a live webinar with tips on webinar scripts and selling. Launch Emails: What kinds of emails to send during the BETA launch, and how to sell without being salesy. Keeping On Top of ALL the Copy: There is SO MUCH copywriting in business online. Strategies for staying ahead of the curve. Module 6 The Pre-Sale + Launch Process

Sales Page Design, Emails, and Live Webinars are used to sell to a small list for those first pre-sales. The first time that product goes to market, how are you going to sell it and validate it? This module will explore the launch process for the release of a product or service.

Sales Page Setup & Design: Strategies, tools, and tips for beautiful sales pages that convert. Partners and/or JV Affiliates: Research and pitching to partner affiliates for launch. Creation of affiliate programs and tools to use. Beta Pricing: Final pricing and tiers for your BETA launch. Pre-launch Plan and Calendar: Calendar and planning for a seamless release. The Launch of the Product with a Live Webinar: Using the 5-day challenge to build buzz and warm the list. Open the Cart: The launch sequence and your first sales. Module 7 Product Development After Launch

Once the sales are in, how to develop the course as you go, onboard new clients, and get vital feedback for social proof. Tools, systems, and staying on track now that you have buying customers ready to consume your content.

Course Development Strategies: Building a course/product as you go doesn’t have to be scary. Tools, systems, and planning to stay on track. Onboarding: Seamless on boarding experience to wow customers/clients, including emails, checkins, and customer communication. Feedback: With the first release of anything, feedback is critical to longterm success. How to get feedback and results. Refunds and Issues: Dealing with unhappy clients/customers and policies to put in place. Module 8 Turning The Product Launch Into an Evergreen Funnel

Learn how to tell if a product should be in launch mode always, or turned into a funnel. Learn how to create up sells, down sells, and choosing the right funnel. Build a step-by-step plan for implementation.

Market Research to Tighten the Entry Offers: How to revisit the initial plan and create a tighter offer now that you have customers to ask! Funnel Plans: The most common types of funnels and how to pick the right one for the products you’re offering. Real Life Business Sessions: Recordings of funnel planning sessions for real life businesses Clickfunnels Support: Access to the Clickfunnels tutorials needed to get you up and running! Funnel Bridges: Connecting complimentary offers to generate more revenue out of each customer/client. Bonus Module Growth + Development to Support Your Funnels

Social Media, Content Management, SEO, and PR. An overview of additional ways to build the online empire once it’s on good footing.

Ongoing Content Strategy + Editorial Planning: How to plan out a year’s worth of blog posts and maximize efficiency with templates. SEO Overview: What does good SEO look like in 2017? Summits, Podcasts, Publicity: Where to go to get noticed as an expert and authority. The Amazon Connection: How to use Amazon’s marketplace and self-publishing to increase your brand. Social Media – Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube: Meaningful Social Media that matters Interviews and Guest Posts: Increasing visibility through interviews and guest posts. LinkedIn – How to find clients on LinkedIn if you’re a Digital Marketer. Get Julie Stoian – Create Your Laptop Lifestyle right now! Julie Stoian – Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Free Download, Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Download, Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Groupbuy, Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Free, Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Torrent, Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Course Free, Create Your Laptop Lifestyle Course Download

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