#even if i become a teacher like ill still not be paid a ton | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

basshouse · 5 years

Text

Of Politics and Road Trips

Welp, it seems like the time has come to address one of the gnarliest and most frequently asked questions of all time. To be clear, that's gnarly for me and to me, respectively. I’d also like to memorialize a recent road trip. Before I start, though, let’s get grounded in the current context: it’s late summer IN MARCH; We are headed intro autumn, and there has been enough early snow that Mount Hutt was open for skiing (what?!?!). I started my new job at Jade Software; the kids started a new school year in January, with Anily headed off to her first year of high school (5 years of high school here); both kids have changed to a new soccer club, which is much closer to the house (thank god); Anily made the A team; James is playing soccer and basketball and ridiculous amounts of Fortnite. It’ll soon be a year that we’ve been here. We are right in the middle of a full 12 weeks of visitors and trips from/to the US. And in case you were wondering, the cat has managed to escape through open windows and doors a few times, but he’s always come back so I guess he’s ours for real :-)

I still haven't submitted my dreadfully complicated tax return. I am seriously procrastinating, and having visitors and reasons to road trip is helping/hurting.

So! BFGFAQ (big fat gnarly...you get it): It’s the political one. From the Kiwis this usually comes in the form of “are you a Trump refugee?” or “what do you make of what’s going on over there?” And even if it’s not an explicit question, how can I possibly answer the most frequent Q of all time -- “why did you move to New Zealand?” without considering how the political landscape of the US factored in? I mean, you don't just up and move across the globe and leave a great place and a fabulous life without at least a mental checklist of pros and cons. At least, most of us wouldn't. And if you’re a grown-up (which we sadly have established that I am) and a contributing, aware, member of society (which I would argue that I am), your list must include considerations of the way your taxes are spent and people are treated in the place you live and how the outcomes of those things impact your lifestyle, your life, and the lives of other human beings. Right? Right!

MAJOR UPDATE: A handful of days after I posted this, someone (likely an asshole white supremacist) shot and killed people in a CHCH mosque. The city is still in lock down as I write this. It is terrible and sad that things like this happen anywhere, ever. And I just want to say that as you read the ideas below, I’ll be watching closely the response of the NZ government.

If there’s one thing that moving around the world to a place you’ve never been before, with a small family and no friends, and taking up a real life with a paycheck and a rent and a job does really well, it’s create an opportunity to reflect on the differences between where you were and where you are. It also is extremely useful for considering, in a very real way, how the values you hold are (or are not) reflected in both a political system and a local way of living. You really notice how political decisions, socioeconomic forces and cultural norms trickle into investments, infrastructure, bureaucracy, language, aesthetics, and interactions that impact you as you move through your day-to-day and learn how to get things done. And because you’re an observer who is trying to become an insider, you may operate with less bias and pre- disposition to judge, more of a natural curiosity and interest in gathering information and then assimilating it and deciding over time. Chalk one up for perspective! Happy to say this was the kind of experience and growth I hoped we’d all get through this adventure.

Now, from the Americans this question usually comes in the form of something like “OMG, are you so glad you’re not here for this?” or “are public healthcare and lack of gun violence really as amazing as they seem from here?”. Because, like me, most people I talk with on a regular basis feel something like this:

t least you do now, thanks to Willie Wonka’s and friend above, and this:

So while I am not here in NZ without political bias or personal ideas of what’s right, wrong and important, I am more open minded to considering what’s good for this country and this context, and I have a stronger appreciation for the complexities of things all across the board since I’ve now gathered more data and had more experience.

So, my American friends, in the interest of helping you draw some of your own conclusions, here is a segment I like to call Fact, Figures and Feelings:

America is amazing. You have SO much of everything. Including great food, tons of money, vast political power, and a really noticeable amount of homeless people. I mean! When I was in San Jose I felt so conflicted by both where to go for every meal and the fact that to get where I wanted to go I was uncomfortable with my own feelings and anxiety about possible conflict with the homeless and mentally ill folks I passed constantly. And it was often while I was walking into a convention center full of people trying to give away millions of dollars, listening to speakers who had made millions through technology. And while the dog adoption station on site and the furry friends in it made me feel a little better in the moment, could there be anything more cliche? Embarrassing. And yet is it fundamentally bad to have cute dogs making rich people feel good and maybe getting adopted? No. But it maybe uniquely American.

Know what else you have a lot of, USA? DRAMA. Seriously. The NZ morning news is usually about 25-50% reporting on the shitshow that is US and Brexit, and it turns out that when people say “if you get homesick, just listen to the news” they are correct.

So what about NZ? Well, when you live in a country with SO MANY FEWER (like so many!) people and a much smaller GDP, your reality is very different. Not so loud. Not so busy. Not so many options. Much much simpler and frankly, it feels more sane. But we know the Mexican food sucks. So... six of one/half dozen of the other? This is what I am saying: I cannot tell you if Enchiladas and Aveda products make up for dealing with the opioid crisis if you’re seeing it every day, or if leaving Tito’s vodka and a much higher salary on the table is balanced out by the fact that police here in CHCH carried guns last week and this is how people think about it:

FUN FACT: During the “summer holidays” (December-Jan), the morning news show on public radio literally went off air. They replaced it with special summer programming, mostly dedicated to personal profiles and reviews of music and activities. The only headlines they read each day were almost entirely about the US (shut downs) and UK (Brexit). Apparently it’s possible for time off to extend to politics and news. WOW. Just notice how you feel about that.

Now, NZ is certainly not the rainbows and unicorns utopia we liberals like to think a place with a public healthcare system and affordable education and far fewer guns will be -- there’s a growing imbalance in the distribution of wealth, the abortion laws are archaic, affordable housing is a big issue, nurses and teachers strike because they don’t get paid enough.

Politics was not the only motivator for our move, but we considered it -- sure seemed like a nice time to be out of the US, and it is. It’s certainly not a clear #NZFTW-100% -they -nailed-it situation, though. Every place and every system has its bad sides, and I have a lot to learn to really decide how the pros and cons balance out. All I know is that it’s really, really nice to be in a place where the political conversation is much simpler and more focused on politics and their outcomes on people than on hateful rhetoric. I am disappointed when I think of the lost opportunity due to the amount of resources you are wasting on unproductive, unkind conversations in the USA, when you have so much. I feel bad for not being there to help stand up for the rights of people I believe in, but when you don't wake up angry every day at the headlines and the people you share space with, when the dialog is a little more open and productive, when the headlines are not so likely to be violent and sad, you start with a much better mental health baseline. You just can’t eat a great caesar salad whenever you feel like it, and it’s expensive as hell to leave the island and you don’t get paid enough to be able to do it often, which may really stress you out. For now, I’m really ok with it. But over time will the flaws in the NZ system (every system has them) outweigh the positive? Do the opportunities in the US outweigh the negative?

In the interest of letting you form some your own opinions: Take a look at the the top headlines of 2018 in New Zealand. They include a pregnant PM; visits from Ed Sheeran, the Royals, and Obama; a handful of natural disasters; a bunch of news about other countries and sports; and the BIG BIG Drama which “unfolded over several deeply uncomfortable days” and ended in a minister being briefly admitted to a mental health facility and broad discussions about mental health. Consider if the US was as concerned about its politicians’ mental health when they did crazy shit :-).

Oh also, this is my CEO at work on Friday (hee hee):

So far this year Lime Scooters (people get hurt on them, and people break the rules and double ride with no helmets -- gasp!) and the potential of a capital gains tax have been in the news pretty much daily. And that’s about it. Boring? Yes! Nice? Also yes! Did you know NZ is the only country in the OECD to not have a CGT? Are you impressed with my knowledge of initialisms? Worldly is the word you’re looking for to describe me.

I know, it looks like I am pooping on a trail, but I am actually doing squats mid-hike IN A SKIRT. Probably gives me enough credibility to become a world leader, or at least present these numbers for your consideration:

Now that you have something to think about -- because you weren't already thinking about politics enough (sorry!) -- let’s turn to a less political, but more important spiritual and philosophical topic: The Art of the Road Trip.

Pro tip: It’s easier to be a Road Trip Rembrandt with the right tools -- like these:

Mountains + Vans = Roadtrip Masterpiece

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the things we’ve been doing a lot of is road tripping. Not so different from Seattle, eh? True. But since we can surf so close to the house and we have such a beautiful country to explore and a slightly less active social life, the road trips are more frequent and more varied. As we are all happiest when we’re in the flow and hitting the right balance between challenge and success, I guess it makes sense. Because if I do say so myself, we are damn good at the road trip, but there’s no way to have 2 to 6 people in a small space with a lot of stuff and a windy road ahead and podcasts and music to choose without challenge.

#vanlifeisthebestlife.

Here’s a map of where we’ve been on our travels thorough the country so far:

So what’s the art of the road trip? Composition:

And the science? One part great music, one part planning, and at least two parts having a sense of humor and joy about all the chaos.

Like when there’s no where for you to sit:

My most recent road trips were extra awesome due to the fact that Leslie Lapham (AKA Alex, AKA LL) was here and we took off on a few fun adventures. Now, Leslie is great for a lot of reasons and it was super fun to have her here for 5 weeks...and one of her best qualities, she takes great pictures!

Here’s what I like to say about our first trip: it started with a bang and ended with a bee sting.

Here’s the bang -- this is what happens when some dickhead decides to pass you on the right at high speed on a highway while you are TURNING RIGHT into a campground:

So, that sucked. Especially because aforementioned dickhead did not stop to see if we were ok, just left us there in the dark on our own. Luckily the Taupe Donkey was still drivable and packing enough duct tape to make it work. So, off we headed from Kaikoura to make ourselves feel better in the vineyards and wineries of Marlborough.

The Cloudy Bay Winery was not a bad place to spend an afternoon!

Watson’s Way (not pictured) was a really weird place to spend a night though -- we were basically parked in a gravel parking lot in someone’s yard. But man, did we have some good food!

Although oops, I accidentally tried to take a grapevine as a souvenir. And I swear this was before I even did a tasting!

After wine tasting and an amazing dinner at Arbor, we headed to the Marlborough Sounds, starting at Havelock, the mussel capital of the world!

We did a cool tour on the mailboat, which literally delivers mail, packages, animals, groceries, and god knows what else (possibly the odd tourist by accident?) to the residents of the remote 300 or so bays in the region, which can only be reached by boat.

We ate a lot, of course. But we ordered more than we could eat.

After that we headed south on the inland route and camped overnight at the Tasman Lakes National Park.

There were eels, pretty views, and random dock yoga.

And last but definitely not least, we topped off the trip by meeting Jason at the always fabulous Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools. What a drive to get there, too! I did get stung by a bee while I was soaking, which was a total and pretty painful shock, despite the signs warning people to watch out for bees. Little fuckers!

After that, back to co-working and a couple weekends in CHCH:

Then...Lois!!!

Now this blog is not about all the visitors and it’s already so long I dare not start going on about having Leslie and Lois here together. Suffice it to say we had some fun times, some great food, and after 8 hours in the emergency room we did a quick road trip to Oamaru. There were PENGUINS!!!!

There were penguins!!! We saw them waddle onto the beach at dusk after swimming 50K through the ocean all day. Alas, you cannot take pictures of them, so you’ll have to settle for 3 Generations of Wachsmuth Women in the Wild until next time. XO.

2 notes · View notes

cruelonlytobekindarchived · 6 years

Note

Hey Kat. We’ve been mutuals for a few years and I'd like to consider you a friend, but honestly I never know where I stand with you. You seem to have a habit of fixating on one or two rpers at a time for a few months, then almost never interacting with them again later. I have to count on two hands the number of rpers I’ve seen this happen to over the years. I don’t know if there was a falling out each time, but on the outside it seems that you take up rpers and discard them once you get bored?-

[I was never one you fixated on, but I still feel like one of those you’ve discarded, since for many months the majority of my asks and starters for you have gone unanswered. I’ve expressed these feelings to a few other people who are mutuals with you, and some feel the same way. I don’t say this to make you feel bad, I do care about you, but I don’t think you know the effect you have on people, particularly the negative. And you deserve to know, just as our feelings deserve to be known.]Okay so first off: it’s 7:11 am, I spent all of yesterday having a miniature mental breakdown because my life is particularly hectic right now and you know what’s the only relief I actually get, like seriously? It’s this. This is it. Right here. So thanks for ruining my morning before I spend all day at the job that agonizes me that’s not a job since I don’t get paid. You know, the one that causes me stress from the first moment of the day. So to begin with: fuck you. I’m just gonna go off the bat here, because I’m upset and I’m angry. You’ve ‘known me for years’, ‘been mutuals with me for years’, and you’ve gone out of your way to TALK TO MY OTHER PARTNERS TO SEE IF MY OTHER PARTNERS FEEL THE SAME WAY? Even though apparently we were never super close? So you just set out on this to go ‘wow you can be really insensitive because you can’t juggle literally a solid 3000+ people and by the way, you’re an asshole’. If you actually gave a shit, you would’ve come to me off anon. BUT HERE YOU ARE. So you know what this does for me? This makes me spend the rest of my day FUCKING PARANOID about who I’ve upset, even if I know validly I don’t owe anyone anything. As if I owe you any explanation, which I don’t, no, I’ve seldom had a falling out with any of the writers I’ve written with profusely. Things happen. People get busy. People change. People move on. All of these things happen. As for me? I’ve been having a solidly horrible time in my life for awhile now, and this is my HOBBY. It makes me feel better because I don’t have a ton of outlets. It’s a place I get to talk to people who have likeminded interests with me. While I literally prepare a 60+ page binder of a fucking case study in an attempt to get certified TO DO MY JOB AND GET PAID FOR IT, this is the place that lets me decompress. And you know how I do that? By writing ongoing plots with the people I click super well with/who have become my good friends. Because I love development, I love being able to just shoot back and forth, and it makes me feel better. Not that that matters, apparently, because this ask is all about how I cannot be a role play pez dispenser for you. ‘You deserve to know’. Get the fuck out of here with this shit. This isn’t concern. I deserve to know what? That I’m shitty and I can’t go out of my way to please everybody? That I can’t do everything at once? That I can’t fulfill your need— oh wait, I’m sorry, not even specifically YOURS— to be a writing machine? You’re not concerned. God only knows why you decided to drop this excuse to make me feel terrible, but you didn’t even have the nerve to be blunt about who you were. So NOW I get to worry about WHO this is. Let’s check something here: I DON’T OWE ANYBODY ANYTHING. I’m a graduate student getting my certification, working a crushing unpaid internship wherein I am a literal teacher with no income, living with the person who has gaslit and abused me my whole life, attempting to get my own mental illness in check on top of the fact that i have no time to do ANYTHING and if you know me AT ALL you know I largely rp in mobile BECAUSE I HAVE NO GODDAMN TIME. I haven’t answered your asks or your starters? Well the odds are, your starter is in my drafts somewhere that I have 55 of and will eventually touch when I stop feeling like shit. But there’s the key in there: i rp opportunistically with what comes easy in that second. Because this is A HOBBY. It’s FOR FUN. You know when it’s not fun? When you think I OWE you something. No, I don’t always answer all my asks. Again, I’m largely mobile. And beyond that I’m largely doing 3 or 4 other things while I’m writing if I’m not mobile. And sometimes? I just can’t find the muse for some people’s asks. Gasp. God forbid, I admit that I’m SELECTIVE. Which, by the way, we all are. And if you say you aren’t, you’re a liar. Everyone has preferred partners or characters because WE’RE PEOPLE. WITH PREFERENCES. IT’S PRETTY NORMAL.I don’t owe you shit. I don’t owe anyone shit. I run this blog how I run this blog. If you’re my mutual, unfollow me. Seriously. Please just unfollow me. Because if you don’t have the nerve to come to me off anon, you’re not the type of person I want to hang around. And if you can’t understand that I’m a fucking person behind a computer who has had this blog for about FIVE YEARS, I have A LOT of people I know, and I do this for RELIEF, you can just miss me altogether. But thanks. I appreciate this. Just so you know, you’re a jerk. Happy fucking Friday.

24 notes · View notes

chrismaverickdotcom · 6 years

Text

I'm a not so good guy...

I’m a teacher… and I think I’m pretty damn good at it. I know for a fact that at least a few of my former students read my blog, and I bet they’d say I’m pretty damn good too. But I wasn’t always a teacher. I’ve had a lot of other jobs. I’ve designed computer software. I’ve been a photographer. I’ve written comic books. I’ve worked in retail. I’ve worked in a restaurant. I worked at a TV station. I was a paperboy. Hell, I was even a professional wrestler for a little bit there. That’s a lot of jobs, and I’m not even Jamaican.

One job I’ve never had was being in the military. And it’s not that I couldn’t have been. I totally could have. I was a poor black kid in high school in the 90s. Military recruiters love poor black kids. So I was totally offered a chance to be all I could be and see the world or whatever the fuck the slogan was back then. I turned it down. I was offered a ROTC scholarship. Turned that down too. A recruiter from the Air Force Academy came to my school to try and get me to come there too. Once again, I said no. See, I just wasn’t interested in being a soldier. It didn’t excite me then. It doesn’t excite me now. And in all the years since, I have never regretted that decision. See, when I think of the idea of “risking your life to fight for the rights and safety of others.” My next thought is something along the lines of “well, that doesn’t sound like something I’d want to do.”

I have no particular ill-will against the military. I had a lot of friends who did enlist. Good for them. Good for cops too. These people provide a very important role to society. I am thankful that there are people out there willing to fulfill it.

I’m not that guy. Honestly…. I’m just not that good a person.

And see, this is important. In fact it’s very important. This is something that everyone who is ever one of my students, and ESPECIALLY everyone who is ever the parent of any one of my students needs to understand.

See, every time there’s a school shooting, the national conversation predictably turns to the question of gun control and school safety… and this becomes predictably political. You have a lot of politicians on the left saying “this is why we need gun control” and then the right retorts with “have some respect. This is not the time, these families are going through tragedy. Now is not the time for your political agenda.” (As a side note, whatever it is that ultimately kills me, I want the record to show that anyone who loves my has my permission… and in fact my INSISTENCE… that you immediately start petitioning Congress to ban whatever killed me. If I am crushed to death in a freak accident by two tons of cotton balls, I want a fucking bill trying to take down the cotton ball cartel on the floor of the House by the end of the week).

Anyway, nothing ever comes of these talks because it’s apparently never the time to talk about gun control, So regular everyday people start passing around memes. Some of them are really stupid. I had the pleasure refuting the ridiculousness of one that my wife’s cousin, William, posted earlier today, which pointed out that there were only 374 “rifle deaths” in 2016 and there were 478,000 cigarette deaths. Actually the meme cited a bunch of stuff that was “more deadly than rifles.” Including “fists.” Of course, it was bullshit… which was pretty easy to prove if you spent like 5 minutes reading the sources that the meme claimed to be citing… or if you gave it 10 seconds worth of intelligent thought on your own. But whatever… as I’ve said many times before all facts are alternative, some are more alternative than others. But whatever… the nice thing about dumb memes is that they’re pretty easy to refute and I can go make fun of people by being smart and this amuses me… because I’m just not that good a person. I’m a petty little man and I kind of delight at being smarter than other people and sometimes take pleasure in their misfortune.

Every time one of these big mass shootings comes around and kills white people (killing brown people is much smaller news) we get a different take on it. In the past we’ve blamed video games. We’ve blamed movies. We’ve blamed mental health. We’ve blamed bump stocks. But this particular go round, led by the “genius intellect” of the B-movie super villain that we’ve elected President we’re actually trying to have a serious discussion about whether or not the problem would be better if we armed teachers. Arming teachers… you know… like me.

Now, I want to point out that this isn’t the first time this has come up from this administration. During her actual senate confirmation hearing the current Secretary of Education actually floated the need for armed teachers in order to defend students from possible bear attacks. She wasn’t joking. This was a serious concern of hers. Of course, then on her first day at work she also tweeted she couldn’t do anything because she was unable to find the pencils. So that’s the bar of intelligence we’re working with here. But now, the US President has piled on… and because he’s said it a couple times (and then in a brilliant tweet storm today, denied that he said it and then went on to reiterate it over the course of half a dozen tweets) it’s become news. And something that people are having to have a serious conversation about.

So let me make this clear. This is a dumb idea.

Earlier today, the Broward County sheriff’s department released a statement that apparently there was an armed deputy on duty at Stoneman Douglas high school during the shooting. He was a trained law enforcement official. He knew that there was a shooting going on. And he opted to do… nothing. He made a decision that there was gunfire happening in a building and even though he had a gun, the smartest thing for him to do… was not enter that building. Basically he was faced with the option of protecting his own life or the lives of others… a position that no one forced him into… he volunteered for that career. He swore and oath to serve and protect. But in the heat of the moment, when faced with the reality of the situation… he chose himself over others.

I get it…

My wife, Stephanie, linked to this story earlier. And of course, a right wing friend of hers, Jeffrey, immediately tried to refute it by saying “a single person lacking the courage to act does not mean that others in that situation may have saved lives.” I laughed at this. Jeff then tried to counter me by pointing out “Somebody took out the Texas church shooter with a gun. It happened to late to prevent the initial killings but someone did step up and we don’t know if that shooter would have attacked others. Its no guarantee but to say it won’t ever happen just doesn’t make sense.” And my friend Adam pointed out that just because it worked out once doesn’t mean it’s a particularly good idea.

I’m actually going to split the difference. It’s happened more than once. In fact, because I happened to do some research earlier to refute William’s ridiculous rifle’s are safer than fists or cigarettes meme (I bet you didn’t expect that to come back around), I just happen to know that in 2016, there were exactly 276 justifiable homicides using some type of firearm by a private citizen. Of course, from the same research I also happen to know that contrary to the meme there were 58,853 reported criminal shootings that year. So, that means 0.4% of shootings result in a justifiable defensive kill.

And sure… oh right wing reader… I know what you’re thinking: “But if more people had guns, there’d be more saves.” Well, it turns out at that from the same research, I also just happen to know that the 276 justifiable homicides were out of 1,980 attempts to defend oneself with a firearm. So it works about 14% of the time. Usually against someone with a similar class of weapon. And sure… better than nothing. Except… I also happen to know that there were 2,203 accidental shootings reported by registered gun owners that year. So while you are 14% likely to be able to kill an armed assailant if you have a gun… it turns out you’re 8x more likely to end up shooting some random other person during an attack or otherwise as you are to shoot a bad guy. So… to any parent who thinks this is a good idea… understand that the likelihood that I can defend your kid from an active shooter if one can happen is about 14%. And I’m 8x more likely to end up actually shooting them than I am defending them. Do you still want it? Math is fun!

And if your answer is yes… well, ok fine… I’ll take it.

See, because El Presidente also floated the great idea that hey, why don’t we give a bonus to the teachers willing to go through the training and carry a gun in the classroom. And… well, I like money.

But really.. understand who you’re asking and what you’re asking of me. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a hero. I don’t want to be. As I said at the beginning, I had that opportunity and I passed it up because I don’t want it. What I am, is a guy who reads funny books for a living. I’m the guy who gets paid to teach your kids to write. I’m the guy who gets paid to teach your kids about literature and it’s connection with feminism and sexuality and gender and race and marxism. Have you been reading this post? I’m an ultra-liberal, socialist, agnostic, feminist, pro-LGBTQ, pro-BLM, pro-union, pro-drug, pro-sex, pro-polyamory, pro-pornography, anti-religion, anti-establishment, damn-near anarchist SJW asshole. And you know… if you really want to pay ME to carry a gun around your kids… ok fine, I guess.

But understand something… I’m not going out of my way to take a bullet for your kid. I’m not going out of my way to shoot someone to protect your kid. I’m just not. Much like the deputy from Stoneman Douglas, if I see a gun, I’m probably running in the opposite direction. I’m just not that good a person. The only difference is, I’m telling you this right now upfront.

And I don’t think any of my students would expect any differently. As I said, I know for a fact that some of them read these. And they all know me very well. So, Ayana, Brooklin, Elysse and any of the other couple hundred students I’ve had the pleasure of teaching these last few years and might be reading this, I say to you… you are all wonderful, lovely, bright and intelligent people. I love and care for you all. And just to be clear, should you ever find yourself in a classroom with me again, and someone comes in with an automatic weapon, then RUN! FUCKING RUN!!! RUN AND HIDE!!! DO NOT WAIT FOR ME TO SHOOT THAT PERSON!!!

And see… because all of my students have been bright and intelligent. I’m pretty sure they know that. To their parents… I mean, don’t get me wrong… if I have a gun and I’m cornered, I’ll probably take the shot. But given the choice between trying to hunt down a guy with an assault rifle and well…. not doing that… I’m going to choose not… EVERY SINGLE TIME. Because that’s who I am. I’m a guy who’s pretty damn good at my job — reading funny books and talking about how they reflect culture — and I chose that job because I didn’t want to deal with bullets! I’m just not that good a person.

And the thing is, a lot of my friends are also teachers. I’m sure a lot of them are reading this and laughing… And honestly, most of them are far nicer and better people than I am. But I’m pretty sure you’re going to have a hard time finding a single one of us who is looking to take a bullet for your kid. Sorry.

SaveSave

Wayne Wise, Jenn Bakal, Ashlyn Spach, Nathaniel Lanza, Stephanie Homer, Barb Brakowski Tofte, Stephanie Siler, Tammi Stuebe, Stephen Poff, Nicole Aceto, Justus Humphrey, Emily A. Rodriguez, Adam Rixey, Kevin Davies, Amy Cassella Hummel, Connie Deighan Eaton, Christopher Lukose, Sonya Dembowski, Ashley Bobak, Maria Bajzek, Josh M. Slifkin, Mark Holiday, Nicole Freim, Cori Bulger, Dominic Widdows, Tracy Di Marco White, Helena Nichols, Lacy Chenault, Katherine Prevost, Reuven Goren, Cohen Reba, Mike Wood liked this post

(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=1449198322001470"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, "script", "facebook-jssdk"));

I’m a not so good guy… was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

#arming teachers #Donald Trump #dumb ideas #Florida #gun control #Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School #NRA #School shooting #school shootings #Trump

2 notes · View notes

arrowsbane · 7 years

Text

Okay, so there is something to be said for not eating cheese before falling asleep in the mid-afternoon sun, because as fun as it sounds, it can mean for some seriously weird dreams. I am 1000% blaming @shanastoryteller for this, because right before I dozed off, I read this post here that she wrote and it hit a wall, turned 90 degrees east and ran off into the sunset of hell half-frozen over.

So. First let me tell you this, I am not writing this as a fic. Just no. It’s bad enough as it is. Also, while I’m somewhat known for genderbending, I am not really a fan of Fem!Ed. Kind like how I can’t handle Fem!Yuuri from YOI. It’s just… these precious babies are perfect just the way they are and I cannot bear to change them. But, I am down with reading Fem!Ed if there is a reason – like… gender reassignment. (See the aforementioned post). Or maybe Truth just likes to fuck with Ed. Idek.

So. On with the insanity:

So. For some reason, poor Edward Elric is a girl born in a boy’s body. Or maybe he’s just a boy who is more at home in the female shape. I don’t know okay. I’ve always been comfortable exactly as I am, and I’m not going to insult anybody by pretending that I know everything. The point is - Edward is not comfortable in his own skin. Edward knows that his body is somehow wrong. And he’s smart, and brilliant, and a goddamn whiz with Alchemy. And so is Al, who just wants Ed to be happy, no matter what.

So, crazy brilliant brightsparks that they are – with a supernova burning in place of a soul, and the universe in their eyes – they draw up a circle, and Ed goes before Truth.

Truth, of course, isn’t too happy at being faced with a tiny scowling boy who insists that he is a girl; but Truth does understand that sometimes bodies can be uncomfortable at best, and soul-destroying at the worst of times, and this insanely brilliant child is going to be the source of a shit-ton of entertainment for years to come.

So Truth helps.

For shits and giggles, because why not.

...

Trisha is… understandably puzzled. She went to bed the night before, a mother of two sons, and then woke up with a son and a daughter.

Um, what?

They are grounded. Of course they are. Origami cranes are one thing, but this? What were you thinking? You could have been rendered braindead, you could have blown up the house. Or the universe. You could have died!

It should be noted that Trisha ranks her kids’ lives above that of the universe continuing to turn, and reality not peeling apart at the seams.

As any mother rightly should.

...

Time passes, as it is wont to do, and Edward grows into a lovely young woman with a talent for mass destruction and reconstruction.

(although, it must be said that when puberty came rolling around, there were more than a few curses, and Ed had to be physically stopped from reopening the Gate in order to yell at Truth. Because Fuck you asshole!)

Officially, her name is Elizabeth on all the paperwork, but here’s the thing: Ed might be a girl now, but she never stopped being Ed. You can change your shape, but you can’t change who you are. And hell, Ed loves confusing the fuck out of people when she introduces herself as Edward.

[Teacher didn’t discourage this. If anything, she encouraged it.]

It becomes a joke – wherever she goes (and Al is with her, because in what universe would he not be? Don’t answer that. Because that probably means Al is dead in that universe and you can all go to hell before you hurt my little cinnamon roll), leaving chaos and destruction and generally uprooting tyrants for fun; leaving only the whispers of a red coat, long blonde hair and the names Edward and Alphonse Elric: Alchemist Extraordinaires’.

...

[Somewhere in the East, Roy Mustang is tearing his hair out trying to track down a pair of genius brothers. Here’s a hint: It’s not going so well.]

...

Now this? This is not love story for Roy and Ed, oh no. My weird ass dream is twisted, and somehow, I love it. Even though I don’t ship this…

So. It’s summer, and it’s bright, and Edward is now… what? Seventeen? Eighteen? Who cares? The point is, there’s a massive inter-village party going on, and alcohol is involved. She dances the night away, laughing madly the whole time and winds up going for a roll in the hay with a charming chap from two villages over who’s on leave from the military. Not her usual choice, but hey – he’s funny and he pulled out her chair for her, and calls her “ma’am”, and he made her laugh. He also turns out to be brilliant in the sack, so hey – Ed reckons she made a good choice of partner for the night.

She wakes up to a lazy grin, and work-roughened fingers gently teasing straw and dried grass out of her tangled mess of hair – because I’m not joking about the phrase ‘roll in a hay’. It’s round about then that she realizes she forgot to introduce herself, and so she holds out her hand, “Elizabeth,” She tells him. Because hey, he did good last night. He did more than good. She can play nice.

“Havoc,” He replies, shaking her hand, “Jean Havoc.”

Ed fucking laughs at him.

“What?” She asks, “You gonna tell me that you’ve got three brothers called Mischief, Chaos and Trouble?”

He laughs as well, and they’re both still laughing when they tumble over each other and go straight for round two.

...

On and off, the whole summer, these two wind up together. In bed, at dinner, just generally wandering about causing trouble. And then Havoc has to go back to work.

And dammit, Ed finds that she’s missing him. What the hell? Ed doesn’t do pining. She does quick flings, and moves the fuck on. But apparently not anymore.

Al figures it out before she does.

And then when she does, he sits her down and listens while she rants and raves, and curses Havoc out because she did not plan on falling in love. I mean, yeah, she’s got plans to be a Housewife someday, because Teacher was ah-mazing and all that – but no. She had not planned on marrying a military guy. Why would she? The military is E-vil. (And wow, Ed has no idea just how right she is there).

So Ed hmms over it for weeks and then she gets that stubborn look in her eyes, packs her bags, and scoots off down to East City because dammit, she’s getting married. Whether he likes it or not.

Al and Winry are cheering her on, and Trisha isn’t really sure what’s going on anymore.

(Yes, Trisha got ill and shit, but Ed got even more stubborn and kinda maybe might have been more interested in Alchemy and it’s healing properties in this ‘verse, and yeah, she paid a bit more attention when she met Truth. She doesn’t know it yet, but she gave something in trade to the Gate. There’s a reason she doesn’t have Daddy Issues here – she doesn’t even remember him. There’s nothing left to hate.)

...

Ed shows up in a hurricane of energy and barges her way back into Havoc’s life without so much as a by-your-leave. He’s not really complaining. Not even when she storms up to him in a bar when he’s out for a night with the boys, yanks him down by his collar, and tells him that they’re getting married.

“Um… Don’t I get a say in this?” He asks, blinking down at her. Her hair is a mess, and she’s breathing heavily from beating the tar out of a guy outside because he tried to put his hands where they weren’t welcome – but goddamn, she’s still the most beautiful thing Havoc’s ever seen, and in all honesty, his question isn’t so much a “no,” as a bemused “oh really now?”.

Ed straight up growls at him, and he laughs, scooping her up and tossing her over his shoulder.

“Oi! Breda!” He shouts down the bar, “Get your coat, I’m getting married.”

Breda chokes on his drink, and then he starts to laugh. “This I gotta see.”

...

So they get married in an office, with a half-sober Breda and some random person they grabbed off the street as witnesses.

Havoc’s collar is unbuttoned, he smells of beer and cigarette smoke. Ed is wearing jeans and a tank top, her hair is a tangled mess of gold and there’s dirt smeared on her left shoulder.

They don’t have any family members there, and Ed makes their rings out of her earrings and Havoc’s watch. But that’s okay. Trisha and Elaine can yell at their kids for eloping at a later date. And then ask about grandchildren in the next breath. Al will laugh himself sick, and Winry will demand to be Godmother when they get around to it.

Not that they plan to – I mean, practicing making the future babies is fun and all, but neither of them want kids just yet.

...

More time passes, and you know what? It works for them.

Ed is a freaking genius who sometimes gets so into her work that she forgets to eat or do the dishes, but that’s just fine because Havoc grew up on a farm where folk did whatever needed doing. So he cooks, and coaxes food into her. He washes dishes, and folds laundry, and he’s even brave enough to pull her away from her books for long enough to get her to sleep.

And then once she’s done with her bender, Ed spends days making it up to him. Because she’s a hundred percent the kind of person who gives stuff her all.

Havoc doesn’t understand one whit of what she’s doing, but hey, it makes her happy. He doesn’t need to know anything more than that.

…

The first time he accidentally catches sight of her notes over her shoulder, he thinks she’s going to kill him, because Alchemists are nothing if insanely secretive of their work.

But hey, no, not Ed. Not with her husband.

She smiles at him, and then yanks him down onto the floor next to her.

And then she starts explaining the basics to him.

…

Because here’s the truth. Ed’s been worrying over Havoc’s complete obliviousness to alchemic circles for a while now, especially seeing as he’s almost always on the team chasing the crazy (in a bad way) alchemists – and dammit, she wants him in one piece. So come hell or high water, she’s going to make sure he knows what is safe and what means he should be hightailing it out of there.

…

The next time he’s closing up a case with the team – a crazy wannabe alchemist had been messing with the structural integrity of a building, and was also apparently a complete and utter moron, because even he knows better than to use those two particular equations in conjunction together.

He says as much, and is treated to looks of utter amazement and disbelief from his teammates.

“What?” He asks, “I know stuff.”

Breda is sniggering behind his back, because unlike the others, he was there when Havoc married the crazy alchemist lady. Come to think of it… Breda might be the only one on the team who even knows that he’s married. Oops.

He really hopes that Hawkeye doesn’t shoot him for this.

…

So yeah, things go fine. Mostly.

Havoc learns when to run away from the crazies, and Ed wanders off with Al to save the world, or sometimes just turns entire cities on their heads by sticking her nose where she shouldn’t – see Youswell, Liore, ect…

And all the while, Mustang rages over the antics of the famous Elric Brothers.

…

It’s actually rather pathetic, and it takes Havoc a long time to put the pieces together.

He’s more than a little bit embarrassed to be honest.

Mustang is halfway through a rant on how Liore has descended into chaos – two raging factions; and Havoc’s eyeing the pin-board, feeling strung out and an odd sense of de ja vu.

Penny in the air?

Huh. Wasn’t Ed in Liore the week before last?

Penny drops.

Oh. Havoc thinks. Oh, shit.

He’s so used to her going by her legal name in public – because while Edward Elric writes alchemical papers and rescues kittens from trees, it’s Elizabeth Havoc who fails epically at knitting, burns scones and actually has a bank account – that he forgot (and wow, is she going to laugh herself sick tonight) that when she’s off gallivanting across the country with Al, she uses her birth name.

Son of a –

He’s been trying to track down his wife and brother-in-law the whole time.

The wife who sleeps in his bed, and the brother-in-law who camps out on their couch.

How is this even his life?

…

Ed does indeed laugh herself sick that night.

Mean.

…

He reckons that he should probably tell Mustang, if only to save Eastern Command from being set on fire the next time the Colonel loses his temper, but hey – Havoc likes living.

So he sleeps on it.

And he sleeps on it.

Eventually, Friday rolls around, and Ed is giving him that look – the kind that says ‘man up, or I’m buggering off to cause mass chaos and destruction without you,’ and so Havoc swallows his pride.

That day at work, he waits until Mustang is once again ranting on about the Elric Brothers, and then, carefully, warily, pipes up with: “So, um, Chief? I might have a lead.”

Mustang freezes, and then pivots.

Ack. He looks like he might breathe fire at any moment.

“What?”

Havoc gulps. And then he starts to fidget.

“Well, actually,” he admits, “it’s my wife that you’d be wanting to talk to, sir.”

Mustang looks at him like’s gone mental.

“You’re… married?”

“Yes?”

“She’s way too good for him,” Breda snickers, leaning back in his chair.

Mustang blinks, frowns, blinks some more, and then moves his mouth soundlessly for a few moments, clearly furious.

Then, finally, he grinds out a short command of “Call her.”

“Yes sir!” Havoc yelps, diving for the phone line and praying that Ed is at home.

She is.

And she’s more than happy to come down to Command and set the record straight.

She’ll even bring Al with her.

Havoc sort of wants to curl up into a ball and cry.

...

Ed glides into the office, all grace and charm, looking exactly as people would expect an innocent modern-day country housewife to appear. Her blonde hair is carefully braided up into a milkmaid’s style, and there’s a touch of flour dusting the hem of her peasant’s blouse.

Havoc feels like he’s in the twilight zone, because she’s even wearing makeup. Since when does his wild dustdevil of a wife wear makeup?

Al catches his eye and winks – he himself is dressed in neatly pressed clothes and sporting a pair of glasses (why? He doesn’t even need them for fucks sake?) and looks the textbook image of a wet-behind-the-ears scholar who probably couldn’t even find his way out of a paper bag.

“Mrs. Havoc,” Mustang smiles, offering her a seat, with his charm turned up to eleven.

“Hello,” Ed smiles, and there’s a devilsh look in her deceptively innocent topaz eyes, “Edward Elric, at your service.”

She sweeps into a genteel bow, and then gestures to Al.

“Alphonse Elric,” Al grins. “Nice to meet you.”

Havoc sorely wishes he’d called in sick that morning.

…

So… Okay. He’s probably going to die.

Mustang practically has a fit, and Hawkeye’s hand is on her gun, which means Havoc has to try really hard not to flinch.

Once he’s done making a series of choking noises that sound like a dying weasel, Mustang straightens his back, puts on his ‘the military wants you!’ face, and says: “Enlist.”

To her credit, Ed only blinks twice, before her mouth curls into a mischievous grin to anybody who knows her, and a dangerous snarl to the uninformed.

Al grins.

Havoc cringes.

“I,” Havoc’s wonderful Valkyrie of a wife thunders in a flawless imitation of her Teacher, “am a Housewife!”

Oh god. The look on Mustang’s face is priceless. He can’t help it.

Havoc starts to laugh.

BONUS:

Wondering why Father never managed to take over the world?

Funny story actually, Ed kinda might have just happened to be wandering by Briggs when Kimblee (the fucker) conned the Drachmans into attacking the fort, and hey, she kinda likes Amestris you know, being Amestris and not Drachma 2.0

So she drops a mountains worth of snow on them.

Funnily enough – carving a blood crest does not fucking work if all your victims die of air deprivation, or being crushed under several tons of ice and snow. Because, y’know, not enough blood being spilled and all.

Basically? The bad guys ran out of time – and it was all Ed’s fault, because no matter what they tried, she kept fucking up their plans by accident.

And then Honoheim owned their asses.

The End.

425 notes · View notes

crystalelemental · 7 years

Text

Atelier Totori Plus Opinions

Those who paid attention to my rankings are already aware that, at the end of the day, this is my least-favorite Atelier game in the series. Which is something that really bothers me, because there are a lot of great elements to this game. The game has a strong alchemy and combat system, and introduces a serious storyline that spans the whole game (sort of). Totori herself also winds up being my favorite of the Arland alchemists, and characters as a whole are fairly strong, barring a few exceptions. There are just a lot of things that, I feel, hold it back. The game is still fantastic, and even the lowest-ranked Atelier game is more enjoyable to me than most other games out there, but, well, someone had to be at the bottom of a list. And unfortunately, that's Totori.

CHARACTERS As a whole, characters are fairly solid, with a few that stand out as among my least-favorites in the entire series. Those who are good are fantastic, and those who are bad are intolerable. Thankfully, the good outweighs the bad.

Totori - Totori is adorable. She's the most serious of the Arland alchemists, and shows a level of competence that we didn't get too often with Rorona, who was portrayed in a more joking fashion despite her talents. Yes, a lot of characters talk down to her about her abilities, but I think what she accomplishes ultimately shines past Gino being an insufferable little shit all the time. Totori is incredibly precious and enjoyable, and is a great mix of serious and studious with goofy and somewhat awkward. I love her to pieces.

Gino - We begin with the bad. Gino is insufferable. He's just obnoxious. He is hyper to a fault, and is direct to a very dire fault. Instead of a fairly endearing portrayal, they went for the option where he has zero social skills, is constantly a rude little shit, and does nothing of value but be a putz and whine about when Totori starts out-performing him. His entire character story is him being a butthurt baby over Totori being stronger than him now. Gino is awful.

Melvia - but he was not the worst. Melvia gets that spot. She would be generally fine. She's portrayed as the strongest of the group, and is very direct in her interactions with others. However, she loses massive points for the same reason that, say, Nozomi from Love Live loses points: the groping other people gag. I think it only happens with Rorona when you have them explore together, but trust me, once is enough. In fact, most of her initial interactions with characters when you go exploring are unpleasant. Melvia is basically just a sexual deviant, and quite frankly, that's an automatic failure in my book.

Mimi - The best girl of this game. Mimi is basically Cordelia 2.0, but with a bit more of a history. Mimi's mother died of illness, and she's very focused on making her family name famous. She's abrasive toward Totori, while at the same time being very clearly attached to her. It's really cute, to the point it’s honestly one of the few ships I have attachment to at all. Mimi tries her best, but has the same issues as Cordelia of being unable to honestly express her feelings toward others. Unless that feeling is anger. Then she's fine. Like I said with Cordelia, struggling with their own emotions is a character trait I adore in all its facets, so surprise that I like Mimi best.

Marc - Marc is hysterical. He's all about robotics, and is a man of science. Of course, that comes with not always understanding the intricacies of social etiquette (”What, you didn’t know I was joking about using a live cat’s skin to cover the cat robot?”). He just winds up being funny and engaging, and I generally appreciate his presence.

Rorona - Rorona returns, and she's fantastic. Seeing Rorona in a teaching role really is something else. She's still her air-headed self. Very competent and skilled, but cannot teach for the life of her. But, she's trying her best, and really wants to be a good teacher. It's sweet to see her interactions with Totori, literally the only one who understands her inane directions.

Cordelia - YEAH, CORDELIA! Cordelia returns, as head of the adventurer's guild. She's just as forceful as always, but has calmed down a bit since Rorona. She's more in control of her anger, and seems a bit more honest with herself, which is great. I love to see that kind of development.

Iksel - Iksel came back! I'm sure all five of his fans are very happy.

Sterk - The final returning character, and possibly the most involved? Arland is a republic now, and thus Sterk has lost his standing as a knight. Sterk is less than thrilled about it, and continues to insist he is a knight and acts accordingly, while hunting down Gio to establish the old monarchy once again. Sterk's character is one burdened by regrets and the loss of his only perceived calling in life, and this really shines with his interactions with Gino. While Gino winds up being obnoxious because he's just sad Totori beat him, Sterk presents as someone who is understanding of his position, having lost to Rorona and felt the blow to his pride as a knight who is weaker than the one he's protecting, but also forceful in how to overcome it. It's a good balance, I feel.

Ceci - Totori's sister can be precious, though she doesn't have a lot of presence, I feel, until you start getting into her own history as an adventurer and why she stepped down. She's good, just not super interesting to me.

Guid - Can I just remark how much his recurring gag of being invisible irks me? Because it does. Still, he's alright. Like Ceci, nothing interesting about him until he starts building the ship and re-kindles that passion he once had.

Gerhard - or whatever his name was. Bartender man. He’s okay.

Pamela - the ghost girl returns, but alive this time? Or something? We’re not too sure. She sure continues to be a great source of entertainment though.

Peter - So my housemate Pat has this really hilarious nerd voice he does for characters like Peter, and I wish I could project it through text, but instead, here’s a link to Peter’s actual english voice. They’re almost the same tone anyway. Peter’s a nerd loser, and thankfully the game treats him as such.

Tiffani - She’s back. Same issue as before. I really don’t care for the drunk Tiffani trophies...

Hagel - Hagel has been promoted to the best shopkeeper of all time for commenting that if Totori is feeling embarrassed about the clothes she wears that she should maybe put on a pair of tights. While part of me is definitely just happy that someone suggested a more conservative look (which I always appreciate), the specific suggestion for tights is an immediate bonus. Hagel knows what’s good.

Filly - Esty’s younger sister. She’s an oddball. Nothing against her at all, but she doesn’t really stand out beyond the super relatable characteristic of hating her job.

STORY Totori has a real story! Totori's mother was an adventurer who once went exploring across the ocean, and never returned. Totori is sure that her mother is alive out there somewhere, and is determined to become an adventurer to search for her mother. The people in her home village of Alanya are worried, but ultimately Totori persists and becomes an adventurer and begins her search. It's easy to get sidetracked from this, but after three years and renewing your license, the search begins in earnest as you construct a ship and start to re-trace your mother's footsteps, straight into a village designed to be sacrificed to a demon within the tower nearby. Your goal then is to fulfill the mission your mother could not and defeat the demon within. Your path winds up encompassing both your quest to become a proper adventurer, but also to succeed your mother. It's honestly a really strong element to the game. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: you don’t need a super complex plot to be a successful one, and Totori is a good example of that.

SETTING It's still Arland, only expanded to include Alanya as well. Both locations do feel highly distinct, with Arland being a clear city compared to the small town of Alanya. What really makes this world feel open is that you stop at several points along the way, and it has a much more significant feel of adventure. When the ocean opens up, it really feels like there's a ton of extra metaphorical ground to cover, and seeing only a piece of the other continent opens up the potential for the Totori and Mimi Adventures ending, where they seek to travel beyond the areas already known. The only drawback is that there still isn't much that's been dug into. Arland is a republic now. Nothing has changed. Gio commented that it wouldn't, but it's still obnoxious to see how literally nothing about this dramatic shift in government structure had an impact on the region. It's just those kinds of things that could be explored to some degree that would make for interesting story points that just...are never addressed.

SYNTHESIS SYSTEM Unlike Rorona Plus, Totori Plus has a very simple synthesis system, in that there's no combining of traits. This allows for the perfect traits to show up way earlier than usual, and require little to no chaining of items to obtain what is needed. In a way, this is kinda nice. It simplifies the system considerably, and removes unneeded anxiety around getting just the right skills. On the other, it takes away some of the engagement of trying to find the optimal assortment, and chaining items to achieve a goal. The Cost system returns, but with no traits to increase cost, so it's all just a matter of having the better ingredients, which is how they get you to chain traits to other items. It's not bad, necessarily, but it does feel much more simplified and bare-bones than the other games.

BATTLE SYSTEM Totori is like an inverse Rorona. Equipment matters, but nowhere near as much as items. In early-game, you are going to use items constantly, because they are hyper-vital. In late-game, equipment and skills can account for a lot, but ultimately your items are going to determine what's best. A good N/A and Himmelstern combined with a good Dimension Egg is how you beat virtually every major boss, with everything outside of Orthogalaxen going down to this combo without even getting a turn. When you use Rorona to double up on the fun, basically nothing in the game stands a chance. This is an element I adore. I really feel like it's appropriate for the items you craft to be the thing that leads to victory. It just feels right, you know?

OTHER MECHANICS Unfortunately, wholesale will not retain the best traits, which means you cannot register your ultimate bombs and buy them back infinitely. Instead, you need the Chims! Rorona creates her own versions of Hom called Chims, and you can get up to five if you find the Water of Lifes. Waters of Life? The Chim-Maker items. Each Chim can then duplicate ingredients or items you have in your inventory. Unlike Hom, Chims are best used to duplicate synthesized items, as they make exact copies without having to use ingredients. As a result, you can make a few good N/A, and have Chims copy them to maintain your stock. The only downside is that they're fairly slow. It can take a tremendous amount of time to copy the good bombs and Elixers, which means your stock is never too high. So resources need to be used conservatively and only as needed. Which isn't too tough, considering how quickly you run train on the post-game superbosses with the right trait setup.

There's also the license points. License points are used...primarily just to increase rank. Rank increases will open up new areas and new explicit tasks to complete. Sometimes, this involves making stronger boss enemies appear in previous locations, and other times it's opening up new large areas. It's basically how you determine where you can and cannot go, one step at a time, without opening up the entire map at once. I really don't know how I feel about it. It's a little...arbitrary? But I can't complain. I do think Meruru had the more interesting way to open up a world map, though.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS I mentioned in Rorona that the Arland trilogy is the trilogy with a few more uncomfortable fan-service moments than I would like. None are as bad as Totori. Comments on "sex appeal" are more frequent than I'd like (read: above 0), Melvia is the way she is in most interactions with new female characters, the swimsuit contest is a thing that happens, and oh god the Guardian hunt... The raw number of times this game made me wish it would stop is unfortunate.

There's also a bigger issue in the events. Like Rorona, character events occur when they reach certain friendship levels. Unlike Rorona, Totori has two central areas, and events are exclusive to each location. Often without any indication that they're happening, and frequently with time-specific activation periods. So you can miss entire events just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The conditions are also super obtuse. At one point in my playthrough, I tried setting up for the Spring Cup trick, only to realize I didn't have the recipe for the Spring Cup. Rorona was supposed to give it to me, but hadn't. Why? Because I had to synthesize a specific item in the OTHER atelier, to activate a scene with Ceci, before Rorona's scenes would miraculously start occurring. Then there's the time I completely lost access to Pamela's shop for the rest of the game because I went to one place first before going to her shop, and the scenes played out of order and locked me out of her return. It's that level of obtuse nonsense that drove me up a wall while playing, and it's honestly this piece that causes it to rank at the bottom. I can tolerate a lot. But I cannot tolerate being constantly frustrated by not knowing where or when things will happen. Just a simple indication through an exclamation point over the town things are happening in would ease problems a lot.

There's also no development items, which I guess is fine, but I love those things and think it's nonsense that they didn't add them in the Plus version. At least let me travel faster on the map, you butts!

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Atelier Totori Plus is still a fun game, but it is, bar none, the most obtuse and frustrating of the games. There are pieces that I enjoy tremendously, but there are also pieces that are just incredibly irritating to experience. I still love the game, and I'm at a point where I think I've figured out the obtuse portions of the game and how to get events to activate. But wow, it's such a frustrating learning curve at times. Definitely worth playing, but also definitely worthy of the least-favorite spot in the series.

If you enjoyed this (for some reason), consider checking out the write-ups for the other games in the series as well!

Atelier Rorona Plus Atelier Totori Plus Atelier Meruru Plus Atelier Ayesha Plus Atelier Escha and Logy Plus Atelier Shallie Plus Atelier Sophie Atelier Firis

#atelier totori plus #atelier series #atelier totori #atelier opinions

0 notes

brianobrienny · 4 years

Text

The Ultimate Guide To A Content Marketing Strategy That Delivers ROI

Content marketing, when you peel away all the layers of techniques, trends, and possibilities, is a business opportunity. At its core, it’s a tool businesses can use for growth.

Content marketing is the kind of marketing that delivers ROI you can measure. And that’s important – now more than ever.

Unlike other methods of marketing, content marketing stands out because it is completely sustainable. It funds itself. And then some. It delivers revenue to the bottom line. It delivers a return on investment to the business.

This is not true for most marketing programs. But it is what marketing was always meant to be: a conversation between your company and your target audience that attracts new customers.

Effective content marketing strategy offers the benefit of exponential growth, higher brand awareness and trust, winning over prospects and convincing leads, and endearing your customers, helping to build a loyal base of brand advocates.

It also provides your company with a platform to activate employees, to publish thought leadership, and to tell more human brand stories that also attract better talent and keeps your employees motivated.

Once you get your content marketing strategy going, it’s that positive snowball effect in action. Your brand presence gets bigger and more impactful. It becomes easier to achieve your marketing goals with future content because you already have a foundation in place – a vast content library of written, visual, and experiential content, all designed to resonate with your target buyers.

This is in contrast to traditional marketing. Advertising, even with today’s sophisticated digital ads, can create overexposure. Audiences become saturated with brand promotion that offers no genuine value to the people you’re trying to build customer relationships with.

As I said a few years ago, content marketing is, “the vehicle that can deliver us from the throes of the ‘death by SPAM’ illness that still persists in many marketing organizations.”

It’s the solution to the dwindling impact of traditional marketing techniques. Take advantage of this business opportunity and you have a lot to gain.

The Business Advantage of Good Content Marketing

So, what exactly does a business have to gain from throwing their weight behind content marketing?

Increase in website traffic. Content marketing leaders see 8 times higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic.

More leads. Content marketing garners 3 times as many leads as paid search for every dollar spent.

Thought leadership. Brands who offer relevant, useful content are viewed as thought leaders in their industry, which helps to build brand trust and authority.

Higher conversion rates. Organizations who use content marketing see 6 times higher conversion rates.

Leaner budget. According to DemandMetric, it costs 62% less to launch and maintain a content marketing campaign than any other type of campaign.

More attention on your brand. People use the internet to consume content.

image source

All of these advantages lead up to more sales, an increase in revenue, and more sustainable business growth. But, in order to get a competitive advantage from content marketing, you need to have a strategy. It’s not just about pouring buckets of content out, on and offline. It’s about using a holistic approach, using different content channels to support one another and maintaining a meaningful brand story throughout.

Take Demandbase for example. They managed $1 million in new business, not from tons and tons of content, but from a logical content bundle that included a white paper, infographic, webinar, live presentation and Slideshare. The bottom line is that most people think marketing is just about doing stuff (ads, campaigns, social shares, content.) But content marketing delivers business results. Here some more visual proof:

Image Source

What Content Marketing Isn’t

It’s important when using content marketing to understand what content marketing is, versus what it isn’t.

What it is.

It’s an opportunity for growth through offering quality content that offers value to target buyers. It requires a clearly defined audience and an ongoing analysis of how effective content is at reaching this audience.

It isn’t is more ‘stuff.’

Where a lot of brands go wrong with content is they fail to get the strategy part, unleashing content campaigns without the direction of where it should take the business to and an understanding for who the content is for.

Without strategy, you may end up with a promotional video, for example, that looks a lot more like a promo ad for your business than content. A promo video, as high-quality as the video production may be, isn’t a piece of useful video content designed to resonate with a target group at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, and that is connected to the other content within your strategy.

Content marketing isn’t just a business blog.

Content goes far beyond blog posts. It also goes far beyond the digital world. Content is information, but it can be delivered through myriad channels (video, graphics, live events, apps, social media posts, emails). What differentiates this information as content is that it is designed for a specific audience, for a specific purpose.

It’s not meaningless.

Think about it. What problem does your Facebook ad solve? How has your company’s last AdWords campaign made a positive difference for your customers? Content is supposed to solve a problem. It’s this genuine intent to help your customers that offers the authenticity that consumers are so attracted to. Take this one step further, from providing value to your buyer to providing value to society, and you’ve landed on the future of content marketing – purpose driven brands.

It’s not rented space.

Where content stands out is that a brand owns the distribution channels – the website, the in-person events, the social media profiles, the eBook series. Advertising, on the other hand, is rented space – you have to constantly purchase a media channel in order to market.

How the Experts Define Content Marketing

Joe Pulizzi’s Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Neil Patel takes this definition a little deeper:

“[It’s] a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.”

Here is Rebecca Lieb:

“It isn’t advertising. It isn’t push marketing, in which messages are sprayed out at groups of consumers. Rather, it’s a pull strategy – it’s the marketing of attraction. It’s being there when consumers need you and seek you out with relevant, educational, helpful, compelling, engaging, and sometimes entertaining information.”

I define content marketing this way:

“Customer-focused content, consistently delivered, on a platform you own, in order to reach, engage and gain new customers.”

So, if you can weave together the endless list of possible content choices and channels, with the strategy that speaks to your audience in the voice of your brand, you know exactly what content marketing is and how to make it grow your business.

1. Why Content Marketing Is Important

Content marketing is important, not just because it works for building trust, generating leads, and cultivating customer loyalty, but because it has become the new normal from the consumer side. It is, in itself, helping to evolve what customers expect from the brands they interact with.

Neglecting it is way more risky than investing in it.

What travel, food, or fashion brand can exist today without a vibrant Instagram page, videos, and a few influencer campaigns? Software companies have become tech teachers with how-to videos and eBooks. Even the financial industry has come up with apps, online knowledge centers, and other tools to help both individuals and business customers better meet their financial goals and to do it with a level of transparency and convenience that was unheard of 15 years ago.

Great content, especially the dynamic, well thought out strategies, are showing consumers they deserve more.

Content Marketing Is Too Valuable for Both Consumers and Brands to Ever Go Away

The number one reason that content marketing is important is that your customers appreciate it. Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as outbound marketing, drives six times higher conversion rates, and has the potential for a 7.8-fold boost in web traffic.

The reality is, content marketing has fostered the customer-centric reality we’re now operating in. From well-researched white papers to podcast series listeners can’t live without, content is changing the relationship between the brand and consumer.

Take, for example, Cisco’s content hub, The Network. It has everything anyone interested in or who works in the tech industry could be interested in:

A monthly online magazine, FOCUS

Live@Cisco Facebook videos

Blog posts on tech news

Biographies of Cisco’s leadership team

They even have an innovative portal for marketing the company’s best asset, its employees. Meet Our Millennials serves the triple purpose of empowering employees, attracting new talent, and humanizing the brand for consumers.

image source

Cisco has been pushing content for years. Under the leadership of CMO Karen Walker, Cisco brought on 200 content marketers back in 2015 and they haven’t looked back.

In the B2C sector, content marketing is just as important. Look at brands like Nike, which has become way more than a company. Nike has become a way of life that has inspired generations.

Or Sephora, who have mastered brand community with their content, inviting their audience into an engaging, educational, empowering environment.

image source

Through offering value and meaning, and through giving people an entire ecosystem to tap into for information, guidance, and human connection, content marketing has formed a bridge that consumers want to walk across in order to connect with the brands they like.

There’s no going back.

Content marketing started as the alternative to the ad age. Something of a much-needed respite from the over saturation of magazine ads, promo posters, television commercials, and digital advertising – by 2014, the average person saw 5,000 ads in one day!

But today, almost all marketers use content marketing – 91 percent of B2B marketers and 86 percent of B2C.

And (no surprises here), consumers like it.

Brands who neglect the importance of content marketing today will have to play catch up tomorrow. On the other hand, those who have a content marketing strategy in place are already on the next level – honing their content with better customer data, better technology, and a better developed network, either in-house or outsourced, of content producers.

Content Marketing Teaches Us Lessons On Who We Are Marketing To

Another reason content marketing is so important is, it is the secret to understanding our customers. The data we’re seeing as people move along the customer journey – engagement rates on social media posts, which videos people watch, which eBooks people download, the blog posts they read all the way through and then share with their networks – this is incredibly powerful information for marketers.

By tracking which content is the most successful, we’re learning more about our consumers. This gives brands who are heavily invested in content marketing – and who are adept at making sense out of their marketing automation tools and CRM – a huge advantage. With the insights gained, it’s possible to:

Create better buyer personas

Develop more accurate buyer segments

Improve personalization – which I truly believe is the foundation of a better customer experience

Hawkeye, a platform that focuses on analyzing content data, calls it content intelligence.

image source

It’s taking all the data you get from your content analysis to make a better strategy, and then rinse, cycle, and repeat so you are always improving what you offer, and boosting the impact of your content marketing.

Without the constant influx of data that is specifically related to your brand and your buyers (because it comes from your content marketing strategy), you’re missing the philosopher’s stone of modern marketing – the knowledge of what resonates with your buyers, right now – the how, who, why, where, and when.

Your Competitors Are Already Using It

And the final reason content marketing is ridiculously important for marketers today – chances are, your competitors are already using it.

If your target audience is already enjoying personalized email messaging and already know they can go to your competitor’s site to look up the information they need when they have a question – you’re in trouble.

Here’s the thing. One of the reasons content marketing is so powerful is that it can be used to establish your brand as a trusted authority in your industry. Which means, it takes time to get your content marketing strategy to make an impact because it takes time to establish a trusted presence.

If your competitors are already sitting on huge online blog libraries, vibrant social media profiles, and are known for their knockout video tutorials and annual marketing events, you’ve got some catching up to do.

Content marketing is essential to everyone from global organizations with dozens (or hundreds) of content marketers, producers, and analysts on their team, to small companies focusing on their local business. It’s not just important. It’s critical.

Where should you start?

Here’s a look at the types of content experienced marketers focus on:

image source

Start with the resources you have. Create a strategy and commit to a high level of quality and a focused brand message. And then, keep growing your content strategy as you learn more about your customers, engage with them, and build the bridge between your brand and the people your business exists for.

2. How to Gain Buy-In for Content Marketing

You know how powerful content marketing is for brand awareness, lead nurturing, and building lasting relationships with your customers. So do the 91% of B2B marketers who are using content marketing today.

But, chances are, your organization’s executive team isn’t as excited about your content marketing efforts as you are. While content marketing budgets have been blossoming in recent years – the industry reached $300 billion in 2019 – in-house marketing professionals still struggle to get the support they need.

image source

It’s not just about securing the budget and resources you need. Just as important are factors like:

Internal cooperation across departments

Room to experiment and make mistakes without fear of your content marketing budget getting slashed

The engagement of the company’s internal experts – bringing employees into your content marketing strategy is a rising trend in content you don’t want to get left behind on

So, how do we gain the buy-in for content marketing that we need with all of our internal stakeholders?

Start with a Strategy

To convince your customers they will benefit from your product or service, what’s always your first step?

You have to educate your buyers about the value of what you are selling with a smart content strategy. Take this same approach when selling content marketing to your organization’s decision and budget makers.

Educate them on the importance of content marketing – with content.

So, get in the shoes of your audience just like you would when you create your buyer personas.

What are the pain points, hesitations, and goals of your organization’s executive team?

What information – relevant statistics, industry examples, in-house content analytics – do they need to see to understand the value of your content marketing?

What channels will resonate the most, for example, what presentation format will work? How can you quickly update upper management on the worth of your content with ROI analytics on an ongoing basis to keep them motivated?

When are they going to be the most open to paying attention?

The secret to gaining buy-in for content marketing is to demonstrate its worth with a solid strategy rather than a pile of stats and examples that aren’t really connected. Think through how all the information you present builds your case and works together to make your point.

Here’s what you may want to include in your strategy.

Show the Potential of Content Marketing with Examples

Don’t expect every member of your organization’s leadership team to fully understand just how intense and dynamic content marketing can be, or even how it works.

There are still people who assume content marketing starts and ends with blog articles and social media, which makes it difficult to be inspired by your content marketing efforts or to be motivated enough to up your budget or encourage employee engagement company-wide.

So, take them on the content journey:

Demonstrate the different types of content.

When C-suite sees the full range, from thought-provoking blog posts that establish your brand as an industry thought leader to experiential campaigns that can change the perception of the brand in the minds’ of consumers, they’re more likely to be interested in offering support.

You can use industry examples of some of the best interactive videos, brand communities, user-generated social media campaigns, white papers, live events, and other types of content you already use or plan on using. To be more illustrative, have plans ready to show what you already do with various types of content as well.

Put it all together.

The best content marketing threads together all the moving parts with cohesive messaging, consistency, and a holistic strategy. Each piece builds up, supports, or furthers the rest, creating in sum, a content marketing machine.

When convincing C-suite, explain how all your content works together as part of an overall strategy. Give them an example of a brilliant strategy in your industry. Also, map out the one you have ready so they walk away with a clear idea of how sophisticated and effective your content marketing can be.

Then, Give Them the Data to Back-up Your Examples

When you are vying for at least 40 percent of the overall marketing budget – which the Content Marketing Institute’s research reveals is the baseline for successful B2B marketing – you’ll need to offer some solid numbers to verify all the potential you just demonstrated.

image source

This means sharing key industry statistics to show how effective content marketing is at achieving marketing goals at each stage of the buyer’s journey:

Increasing website traffic and generating leads – companies that blog at least 15 times per month get 5 times more website traffic than companies that don’t. Companies with an active blog generate 97% more leads on their site than businesses who don’t have a blog.

Boosting conversions and sales – Conversion rates are 105 percent higher for consumers who interact with ratings and product reviews. Leads who receive email marketing messages spend 83 percent more when making purchases.

Building customer relationships – 70 percent of consumers prefer getting to know a company with articles instead of ads. 78 percent of consumers believe brands with custom content are interested in building relationships with them.

You also want to clearly demonstrate the historical ROI of your own content marketing. What are your organization’s marketing priorities this year? Focus on these goals when using your metrics to show how effective your content marketing has been.

Make Technology a Part of the Conversation

Tools that make once budget-prohibitive tasks like video production and personalization possible have really evolved the scope of what content marketers can do today. It’s definitely worth including the power of technology in the content you present to upper management.

Marketing automation. Interactive user interfaces. Cost-effective tools to help with content creation, from high-quality live video streaming to eBook creation and infographics. Defining a martech stack that works for your company can make things much more efficient.

What content marketing tools are you using now? How have they allowed you to reduce costs and do way, way more? How can investing in new technology empower your content marketing strategy even more?

Blow Them Away

Let’s be honest. Content marketing is pretty magnificent. When you look at how much this field of marketing has evolved and how much it has changed relationships between brands and buyers, and now, between employee, company, and customers with the thrust towards employee activation, the argument for content marketing goes much deeper than how effective it is, or how much it’s worth to a company.

It’s the way your brand comes alive to customers. Your organization’s content marketing strategy defines your brand to your audience.

So, to get C-suite to support your strategy and goals, make sure they know that by supporting content marketing, they’re deciding the role your brand plays in the future of your niche. Hero, teacher, helper, guide – or generic business. It’s content that makes the difference.

3. How to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Build a plan. Create your content. Publish, measure, refine, repeat.

Seems straightforward enough. But this is the bare bones of content marketing. It’s creating a plan, not a strategy and it’s missing out on the impact potential of a goal-focused, personalized, purposeful approach to your brand’s content.

It’s one thing to have an appealing, educational lineup of blog posts, video content, infographics, white papers, and social media content. It’s a whole other science to make all these pieces come together and take on a life of their own, manifesting a walking, breathing force that is able to impact your marketing goals and drive business growth in the long term.

Once you get going with content marketing and finding your stride, you’ll want to up the sophistication level of your strategy to get more of an impact. Use these principles, the 3 P’s of effective content marketing, to evolve your strategy from ‘well, it exists but why haven’t we boosted our revenue yet?’ to ‘wow, what’s next?’

Priorities

In order to reach the right target at the right time with the right content, you need to identify what’s driving your content marketing strategy by identifying the why behind your strategy.

Define your strategy’s driving force, focusing on one or two priorities. Sure, every business wants their content marketing to increase website traffic, generate quality leads, boost brand awareness, improve customer loyalty, and every other marketing goal in the book. The inevitable mindset with this ‘all of the above’ approach is to create great content and then achieve a little bit of everything as a result. You may get some of your KPIs to hit their targets, but the real and sustainable impact isn’t there.

With effective content marketing, it’s the priority goals that drive the strategy. The “plan first, results later” approach gets turned inside out. You need the desired results – the most important why or why’s of your content marketing strategy – for fuel, inspiration, and direction. They drive the strategy.

This is how you get that magnificent self-perpetuating achievement you see with brands like Dropbox, Blue Apron, and Zendesk.

So, what should you focus on?

Don’t look for the priorities that will yield the most impressive content marketing ROI numbers, but rather the ones that are aligned with business goals. Of course, all points along the buyer’s journey matter all the time, but you need to hone in on which one is the most critical right now based on business needs. Where is your organization struggling? For example:

New service or other change you want customers to know about? Generate web traffic and fire up your social media platforms.

A growth plateau? Then focus on getting better quality leads.

Limited market reach? Then look to brand awareness and thought leadership.

Plagued by low engagement numbers? How is your content working to improve the customer experience?

Not getting repeat business or is your brand advocacy limited to an army of one? Your strategy should focus on customer loyalty and retention.

Here’s the thing. When you laser focus on one part of the buyer’s journey, you aren’t neglecting the rest. What you’re doing is laying the groundwork for the other priorities.

image source

Then, when you come around to the beginning of the funnel again or when you tailor your strategy to focus on one stage to the next, you’re already set up to create an even more effective strategy because your organization has more content marketing experience and (hopefully) resources.

Better quality content production

More sophisticated use of technology

Better informed metrics

And, more confidence – and organizational support – to push boundaries and be a content marketing innovator in your industry

Personalization

In 2015, Gartner predicted that companies heavily invested in personalization would outsell their competitors who lack personalization by 20 percent. Today’s content marketers need to be thinking personalization when developing their strategy. Personalized email offers, content sequencing, product suggestions, landing pages, and other types of personalized content are what customers expect today.

With the help of the right marketing automation platforms, marketers are using machine learning and predictive analytics to tailor content for both individuals and buyer segments, which creates a better experience.

Let’s face it, customers are more likely to walk away and write your brand off in their minds if they are exposed to one or two pieces of content that aren’t relevant to them. With so much content out there today, only what really matters to them will get any attention. In one Marketing Insider Group and OneSpot survey, 45 percent of consumers said they won’t spend time with a brand that’s not relevant to their interests. 42 percent are less interested in a brand’s products or services if the brand’s content isn’t personally relevant.

Write personalization into your content marketing strategy. This means looking at your marketing technology to make sure you are capable of offering better personalized content. It also means getting personal and taking the time to understand customer needs through both customer data and old school feedback.

My friend Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs shares a great example of a small business that’s mastered content simply by asking their customers questions and creating content specifically for his audience.

She says, “Yale Appliance redeployed almost all of its marketing budget away from advertising. His [Steve Sheinkopf] content strategy has been extremely effective, and he’s done it by simply answering his audience’s questions … The reason why he’s killing it is he looks at his data, he figures out what his audience needs, and he creates content that meets his audience’s needs.”

Purpose

And the final P for effective content marketing – purpose. Why does your brand exist?

I talked about this concept years ago, sharing Simon Sinek’s amazing Ted Talk on how important the purpose is of your business to your customers, something a lot of brands overlook.

You need to get this higher purpose across in your content.

What purpose does your business have – how is it impacting society?

What are the values of your brand?

How can your products and services make your customers’ lives better?

How does your vision differentiate your business from your competitors?

And – where is it headed? What role will your business play in the future of society?

Here’s an excellent video of Steve Jobs talking about brand purpose for Apple.

youtube

He says, “But even a great brand needs investments in caring if it’s going to retain its relevance and vitality.” He goes on to explain how the way to do that isn’t to tell people your mission statement or your brand vision, but rather to evoke awareness of who you are through your content. Like Nike, “They honor great athletes and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are.”

What is the core, the archetypical belief that drives your brand? It’s there if you don’t know it already. You may have to dig deep for it, do a little organizational soul-searching. But, that’s what your customers will not just be motivated to connect with, but will desire to be a part of. And that’s really effective content marketing.

4. How to Build a Killer Content Marketing Team

Those spellbinding content marketing strategies – the ones that have catapulted startups into industry dominance and made decades-old brands more relevant than ever – they are not the product of a single creative genius.

Nope. It’s not a brilliant content creator or a flash of wisdom few of us can ever hope to attain.

It’s a hard-working, experienced content marketing team. A group of experts, each who excel in their area of content marketing and, at the same time, who understand how the whole puzzle comes together.

That’s how you get what Jolie Miller, content strategy and acquisitions leader at LinkedIn, calls great content. The stuff that “has the power to change people’s lives for a second or for days or forever.”

So, who should be in the starting lineup for your killer content marketing team? Here’s what you should look for when putting together your brand’s dream team and some content marketing job descriptions.

The Content Marketing Editor (Storyteller + Strategist)

When it comes to pulling off a revenue-boosting content marketing strategy, you’ll need an editor with experience and acumen in both refining content and in content creation. They have to be better at content creation than your copywriters, illustrators, and video producers in order to know how to improve what your creators are making.

Ideally, they’ll have copywriting experience and will have at least worked with other types of professional content creators. This will have helped them develop an eye and understanding for what premium content entails.

A content editor is also tasked with making sure content is high-quality and strategic. So, they’ll need to balance an eye for detail and an ability to see the overall picture, ensuring each piece of content is playing its part correctly within the whole.

Think of your content editor as a conductor in an orchestra. You may have a stage filled with skilled musicians. But the conductor is the one who brings out the magic in each of them. Good editors know how to do this with all of your content, ensuring each piece fits within the orchestra with the right tone of voice and staying true to the brand story. While also conveying the right message.

With a strong content marketing editor, your organization’s content will be:

Consistent – in style and tone

Top quality – this includes in the eyes of customers and search engines

Strategic – your editor will work with the rest of your content marketing team to make sure each piece supports and is supported by the rest to create a seamless experience for customers

Content Marketing Manager (Business Strategist + Visionary)

Your content marketing manager is the one who brings your content strategy down to earth, from brilliant creation to relevant, effective revenue driver. They know how to translate content into growth.

This is the person who’s in charge of aligning the strategy with business goals and keeping everyone on task with reaching your designated key performance indicators. And, they know how to do it within a budget.

Here’s the thing. There are as many content opportunities as there are stars in the sky. Influencer campaigns on LinkedIn or Instagram. Live events that invite customers into your brand’s community. Customer profile videos. Educational blog series.

image source

Deciding which content is the most appropriate for the brand, based on business objectives and budget, falls on the shoulders of the content marketing manager. They can look ahead and see how plugging all the different types of content, style choices, campaigns, and other factors into the equation will yield a solid ROI.

This individual knows the strengths and weaknesses of each channel and works closely with your content analytics head to ensure your strategy is pulling its weight and is knocking your content marketing goals out of the park.

Use this detailed look at the job description and job requirements for your content marketing manager hire to help you find someone with the right background.

Content Distribution Manager (Channel Master + Workflow Organizer)

Today, the way to effectively resonate with your target buyers is to get the right content to the right target, through the right channel, at the right time. Which is a nice way of saying a lot of thought, research, data, and calculation goes into every single distribution maneuver.

Easier said than done.

Don’t panic. This is your content distribution manager’s bread and butter. They are the ones who will:

Manage the content calendar

Have the content ideas set up or create them themselves

Ensure the content creators are getting everything done on schedule

Your distribution manager will also be manning the controls – your marketing automation software, content management software, and any internal workflow tools your organization uses.

Content Analytics and Optimization (Data Scientist and SEO Wizard)

Here’s your content marketing team’s data guru. The greater the background they have in data science, not just SEO, the better.

Your analytics expert will keep track of what content is performing well and what’s falling short. This is the individual that makes sure all the other people in your team aren’t working in the dark because they have accurate, in-depth data analysis to offer-up those must-have ROI and content performance insights.

Ideally, they’ll also be able to help your team get more out of your marketing software. Your brand will benefit from someone who knows how to use AI to get your team to the level where you are using predictive and prescriptive analytics to inform your marketing decisions.

They’ll also be in charge of staying up-to-date with SEO trends and making sure your content is as search-engine friendly as possible. Technical SEO is still the backbone of your content marketing – unless you don’t want anyone to see it.

Tap into an Endless Sea of Content Contributors

And, the final essential for your content marketing team – your advocate army. Your target buyers are some of your most powerful content creators. As are your own internal experts. These people have their own social media networks. But, more importantly, they aren’t your brand.

Only about 22% of brands are trusted by consumers. But 83% of consumers trust their peers over a brand’s messaging.

Your customers and your engaged employees offer something your branded content can’t ever pull-off, no matter how well-intentioned. Authenticity.

You can bring on the most experienced and skilled team of content managers, editors, analysts, SEO experts, and creators. But your content marketing strategy won’t have much mojo if you don’t have a plan for motivating and inviting your brand advocates to be a part of your team as well.

Pull all these elements together – your internal content marketing management team, content creators, and brand advocates – and your organization is on its way to the type of content marketing that has made this industry the $300 billion dollar industry that it is today.

5. How to Define and Measure the ROI of Content Marketing?

There are two huge pitfalls when it comes to establishing how your organization will define and measure the ROI of your content marketing.

One, getting lost in the numbers, focusing on too many key performance indicators and making it hard to get a clear picture of the impact your content is making.

Or, two, focusing on the wrong indicators to measure ROI for your business.

A lot of marketers struggle with ROI tracking. According to a B2B Content Marketing Report published by the Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn, 38 percent of marketers cite measuring content effectiveness as one of their greatest challenges. Only 8 percent consider themselves very or extremely successful at tracking ROI.

However, being in that 8 percent offers a powerful advantage. When you can successfully define and measure content marketing ROI you are armed with the information you need to keep improving your content marketing strategy so it’s always working.

Here’s the tricky part – there are a lot of moving pieces involved in a great strategy. A lot of these factors change over time, putting your content marketing in a constant state of evolution. Customer preferences. SEO best practice. New technology. Video trends.

In order to optimize your content marketing strategy and maintain enviable performance levels, you’ll need continual feedback and analysis of your content. But more than that, you’ll need clarity from your numbers.

Define the Purpose of Your ROI

Before identifying your top priorities and defining your metrics, you need to look at the purpose behind the work.

Why are you measuring content marketing ROI?

The answer to this question is often the root of a misguided tracking strategy. If you are defining your ROI metrics solely to demonstrate results and to justify your organization’s content marketing budget, you may get a confusing picture when you try to look at your analysis to determine what’s working, what’s not, and how you can make your content marketing strategy better.

When there is a lot of pressure on content marketing managers to demonstrate value, there’s the risk of honing in on vanity metrics. Take web traffic as an example. In the same survey mentioned earlier, of 600 B2B respondents, 63 percent measure web traffic to gauge content marketing success. Only 26% look at subscriber growth and 21 percent look at revenue. Web traffic is a useful number to look at if you are trying to build your audience. It can also be an impressive figure to show off to budget decision makers.

But if you aren’t looking at how many of those website visitors are converting into leads or customers, your web traffic numbers create a very blurry picture. You know people are visiting but you don’t know if your content is compelling enough to motivate action so you don’t know if or how it needs to change.

Yes, there’s pressure on content marketers to prove the resources invested in case studies, videos, blog posts, infographics, social posts and other pieces of your content puzzle are well spent. But you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to uncover those hidden gems that will paint a crystal clear picture of what your content marketing is doing.

When you are using your metrics to inform your strategy more than your budget, you’re going to get the insights you need to keep making it better.

Simplify the Value of Content Marketing for ‘Outsiders’

Instead of measuring content just to justify it, you can use cost tracking to make the value of your content marketing black and white to C-suite with one simple analysis. Then, you can spend more of your ROI bandwidth on metrics that matter.

Keep track of how much each piece of content you product costs. If you’re outsourcing, you may have straightforward expenses for some of your content. Don’t forget to also include the time spent by your team editing, managing, and promoting the content.

If you don’t have the resources for this type of heavy cost analysis, you can audit some of your content. For example, what are your total content costs in a month or what’s the average for three months? Then, you can look at your costs and revenue to determine your content marketing ROI.

Once you have this baseline, compare it to your organization’s marketing ROI for targeted advertising. This can be a helpful comparison to gain support from executive management so you can go back and focus on measuring content performance.

Be Strategic about Defining Your Metrics

There are dozens of performance indicators you can look at to track your content ROI.

Performance metrics will reveal what you need to know, as long as you tie them to your business goals. Which means you aren’t going to focus on the same metrics all the time. As your business goals and, therefore, your content marketing priorities change, so will the numbers you use to gauge performance. The trick is to make sure your defined metrics are always telling your content’s story.

For example, if you are trying to build your audience, sure, look at web traffic. You also want to know your brand’s share of the conversation and social media sharing, bounce rate and time on site. This will give you a better idea of engagement and how much your content is king in your industry.

If your business needs better-qualified leads and conversions, your content strategy will probably focus on creating case studies, white papers, eBooks, and other content that motivates people to subscribe to your newsletter. This is where you’ll look at both your conversion numbers for your content as well as customer retention numbers. How long are the leads you work so hard to nurture with your content staying as customers?

For customer loyalty, the focus will be on retention as well as monitoring customer feedback. How much of a response are you getting and what is the qualitative response to your content? What percentage of people respond favorably to your social posts, blog posts, white papers, videos, events or other types of content?

Set Your Benchmarks

Once you have your current priorities set and you know what metric data to focus on, you can create your performance benchmarks. What does content marketing success look like for your organization? Being able to measure against your benchmarks makes it easier to see if your content is helping to reach goals or if it needs work.

Then, when you calculate the ROI of your content by looking at your costs vs. revenue (or a given value for an action if you can’t tie a metric directly to revenue), you can see where things are working and where you need to make changes to either the content or a part of your strategy.

This is why tracking your ROI with the intent of informing your content is so important. When you can see where one content channel is experiencing higher than normal conversion numbers, where another seems to lead to an apparent dead end landing page, what types of your content are making up the bulk of your industry presence, and every other pearl of wisdom you dictate your data to tell you – you have a wealth of information to constantly refine your strategy.

And, never-ending refinement is what brilliant, business-boosting content strategies are made from.

6. Where to Build Your Content Hub

One way to make your content marketing more effective and to make your best content more accessible is to build a content hub. Your hub acts as your content’s online repository. It’s a sort of branded resource center or command central for your thought leadership.

With a hub, not only can your audience delve deeper into your online content library because your top blogs, videos, case studies and more are clearly organized on one page or microsite, but you also have more control over how you want to guide your brand’s voice in the industry conversation.

For example, you can create a broader context for each piece of content, which gives all your content more meaning. That thought-provoking blog post on the latest industry research offers a whole other level of value when placed next to a how-to video that shows your customers how to apply these new research insights.

It’s the central location where your whole content marketing strategy comes together in one neat, attractive, thoughtfully put together place, which exists….well that’s the challenge. The where of your content hub is a big deal.

Should it be part of your website? Or should it be a standalone entity?

Getting the ‘where’ part right will dictate how easily your audience can find your content hub. It also dictates the impression your hub makes.

The Pros of Building Your Content On Your Website

There are major advantages to creating a content hub on your website. It’s like doing a home extension project versus building a separate ADU on your property. It’s easier, more streamlined and it’s connected to your products or services.

SEO

This advantage works both ways. The dynamic appeal of your hub’s media mix will boost your website’s SEO. At the same time, you won’t have to start from the ground up to generate traffic and optimize a separate site for your content hub because your website’s users can stay on your site to explore the hub.

Lower resource commitment

With limited resources, it’s a lot easier to build upon the website you already have than to create a standalone hub, promote it, optimize it, and make it into its own worthwhile online hot spot for your audience. This makes building onsite appealing to smaller businesses who don’t have the resources to create and cultivate a separate online entity.

Streamlined analytics

Your content hub will give you a lot of analytics as it tracks the way users interact with your hub’s content. When it’s an extension of your corporate website, this data can be streamlined with your other website data, giving you a clearer picture of your audience instead of having to differentiate between the two different sources of content data – and possibly, different buyer segments (unless that’s exactly what you are going for).

On-site hubs elevate the overall website, making it a greater source of value for your buyers and a more attractive destination. With smaller companies or if your hub is clearly aligned with the ideas, value propositions, and has the same SEO and target market you’re appealing to (and learning about through analytics), building your hub as just one more destination on your website makes a lot of sense.

REI’s content hub is an excellent example of a successful onsite hub.

When visitors click on the tab for REI’s CO-OP Journal, they stumble into a sea of well-organized content. The hub is user-friendly as it’s divided into multiple topics and subtopics – activities, gear, how-to’s, and local content. REI clearly positions themselves with their hub as an ultimate source of outdoor enthusiasts and adventurers. But it also uses the space to connect visitors with branded content that really drives home the REI story, which they may not have originally sought out, like their content surrounding sustainability and social responsibility and REI’s unique series – Take It From Me and Wild Ideas Worth Living.

REI’s content hub has enough complexity to deserve a microsite. But why take your audience to a different site when your products are a click away from inspiring content?

The Pros of Building a Standalone Content Hub

As practical as building your content hub on your site is, there are situations where it makes more sense to create a standalone content hub.

When your big company is also slow to adapt

Depending on your organizational structure, keeping your hub separate may be a smarter strategy. For example, in larger companies where there is a lot of red tape to make anything happen to the website, it may be wiser to let the content marketing team work at its pace to build an unfettered content hub.

When your hub itself is too big

One of the reasons to build a hub for your content in the first place is it improve the customer experience. Hub visitors can quickly access the information they want and can see, at a glance, related content they may be interested in. If your hub is loaded with different types of content, combined with different landing pages to pick up subscribers, event registrants, webinar sign-ups, podcast followers, and more, then your hub may need a home of its own. This allows you to create a better user experience and to better control the way visitors interact with your content.

To differentiate sales and content

When your content hub is all about establishing industry authority, it can be smart to make a standalone hub. This allows you to keep the sales pitch a mile away from the thought leadership articles, content created by your employees, curated content, and other content that is focused more on the message than the actual company.

To reach a new or specific audience

A separate microsite gives your content marketing the ability to take off in a new and exciting direction because it’s somewhat removed from the brand’s online corporate base. This also makes it a smart move if you want your hub to cater to a specific buyer segment.

The Hartford Financial Services has a dedicated content hub for targeting small business owners. SmallBiz is packed with helpful articles on topics small business owners and entrepreneurs would be interested in, as well as a SmallBiz podcast.

This how having a separate content resource center makes more sense. It appeals directly to a certain segment, creating a better experience for these viewers. This also makes it easier to generate leads as the entire hub directs viewers to one primary action – to sign up as a subscriber.

The Content Hub Location Checklist

When deciding where to build your content hub, you can use this checklist summarizing TriComB2B’s Chris Eifert’s advice to help narrow down what online space makes more sense for your brand and your content marketing strategy.

If your goal is…

SEO, then using your corporate website is better

Objectivity and authenticity, then a stand-alone hub is better

To quickly create a site and you don’t have time for website bureaucracy, go for standalone

The best user experience, then standalone is usually better, although a great user experience can work on the corporate website

Lead generation, then standalone is usually more effective

Add to this list, these factors:

Limited resources or small market presence, business website wins

Planning on creating one or more hubs for different segments, opt for standalone.

Make Your Content Hub Strategic

When you have a solid content marketing strategy, your content hub is what can bring it all together for your audience. It also creates a central platform for sharing the strategy – inviting hub visitors to more than a blog post or a video but the whole pie, all in one, convenient location. It gives you more space to get your brand story clearly across than a single piece of content, and more opportunity to show your buyers just how useful your content – and by extension, your brand – can be in their lives.

8. How Much Budget Do You Need for Content Marketing?

You know your content marketing strategy will positively impact your marketing goals and business bottom line. But, how much budget do you need to make sure your content marketing is effective enough?

There are two perspectives when it comes to the content marketing budget:

Invest more and gain more – The more layered, the better supported by technology, and the more skill you have going into your content creation, the greater potential impact.

Content marketing can be extremely cost-effective so harness that advantage – Part of the power of content marketing is its ability to deliver cost-effective results. Remember, Content marketing costs 62% less than outbound yet generates three times as many leads. It also drives conversion rates that are six times higher than other marketing methods.

Both of these budget perspectives are true. With a large budget, you can invest in better technology to make your strategy more effective. You can keep up with (and reap the rewards of) the big-hitting content marketing tactics like influencer marketing and experiential marketing. But, there’s also a lot you can do with a small budget, even as a tiny startup.

When you have the budget to move beyond blogs, social media and explainer videos, you can start moving into creating a multi-dimensional brand ‘world’ that your audience can not just buy from, but also become a part of. This is where you’ll find not just your traffic and lead generation numbers rising but also your loyalty metrics.

Here’s the thing. If you start with a large budget but haven’t yet mastered the efficient use of your content marketing dollars, you could be losing a chunk of your budget. For B2B marketers, on average, 70 percent of content created never gets used. That’s mindblowing!

image source

So, to figure out how much is enough, look at the content marketing budget as an evolving number. Even if you end up with a small budget this year, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to increase it by 10 percent, 20 percent, or more in the following year. This gives you the flexibility to have what you need but also to avoid wasting your budget simply because your organization doesn’t yet have enough experience with content marketing, what it can do, and what channels and tactics make the most sense for your brand.

How Much Does Content Marketing Cost?

More companies are using content marketing (86% of B2C organizations and 91% of B2B marketers). And, most of those who are using it are increasing their budgets each year.

What’s the average spend on content marketing? Overall, 26% of the total marketing budget is dedicated to content marketing for the B2B sector. For B2C, it’s 22 percent.

But, here’s where it gets interesting. The most successful organizations spend closer to 40%of their total marketing budget on content strategy. Those with a relatively mature hold on content marketing spend about one-third of their budget on content.

image source Setting your content marketing budget has a lot more to do with how much your organization has already done with content marketing rather than just throwing a quarter or a third of the budget towards content. A lot of this comes down to the nature of a good strategy – you have to get to know what works for your brand and what resonates well with your buyer segments to create a more sophisticated strategy.

You also need to understand the cost of content marketing and create a strategy that delivers more high quality content, as often as possible

The only way to learn this is to start using content marketing, tracking the ROI of your content, and analyzing what works and what doesn’t. Then, you can go back and improve upon your strategy even further, ideally boosting web traffic, lead generation, and revenue growth, and being worthy of a bigger chunk of the marketing budget.

Who’s Increasing Their Content Marketing Budget?

Just under half of B2B marketers plan on using the same budget from 2018 to 2019. About 38% plan on increasing what they spend, with only three percent expecting to use a smaller budget in the future. This is a trend that has been going on for years, with 2015 being the sixth consecutive year for double-digit growth of the content marketing industry.

Part of this is driven by the ROI – organizations experience a greater return as their strategy gets more effective. So, they invest more. It’s also driven by competition. With only a small fraction of companies not using content marketing, how can you expect to keep up with advertising and other outbound methods? Customers’ expectations for high-quality, relevant content are increasing, which means the more developed your strategy is and your use of technology, the easier it will be to ensure your content becomes the cream of the crop, rising to the top of search engines, social feeds, and email inboxes.

How to Build a Content Budget that Makes Sense

What do you need to factor into your content budget?

Who’s on your content team?

If you don’t already have a content marketing manager, you may want to put this position on your list of budget priorities. 43 percent of organizations have a dedicated manager. You also want to look at what content creators and analysts you’ll need and which ones will be outsourced. Strategists, social media managers, copywriters, content editors, video production. The list can get pretty long.

What content marketing tools do you need?

What tools does your organization already have, need to upgrade, or need to start using? From your automation software to content management, collaborative platforms and SEO tools, most content marketing teams use an array of tools. A lot of your technology is priced based on a monthly subscription or user-based fee. Your technology expense will make up a lot of your fixed costs.

What content is in your strategy?

Being able to create a workable budget is one of the reasons for having a solid content marketing strategy is so important. Only when you have a detailed strategy, including what content is going to be published and where, how it’s going to be promoted, and your timeline for how your content strategy will unfold over the next three months, six months, and current year, will you have any idea of how much it is going to cost.

You can estimate the cost of each piece of content, looking at either your outsourcing fees or the cost per hour of your content creators. Detailing the costs of each piece of content, as well as different components (How much does your blog cost a month? Infographics, videos, event marketing?), won’t just make budgeting easier. Calculating your ROI will be a lot easier too.

There’s No Such Thing as a Static Budget

Even with a detailed analysis of your expected costs and factoring in what percentage of your marketing budget make sense based on your organization’s level of content marketing sophistication, you shouldn’t expect to stick to your budget. Here’s why. To really be successful at content marketing, you have to keep refining your strategy. As you gather more customer data and feedback and identify what resonates, you can continually improve upon what you have – which means there will be changes.

To make room for your content strategy to evolve, plan for some flexibility in your budget. This way you’ll have enough in your budget for brilliance.

Conclusion to The Ultimate Guide To Content Marketing Strategy ROI

I realize the title of this post is a bold claim. I’ve poured at least 40 hours into it so I hope the time was worth it for you. But if you are still wondering how to get ROI from your Content Marketing, just click on the contact link up above. I promise to get back to you within a day!

The post The Ultimate Guide To A Content Marketing Strategy That Delivers ROI appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

The Ultimate Guide To A Content Marketing Strategy That Delivers ROI published first on http://rssmix.com/u/11592782/rss.xml

#Internet Marketing #Social Media Marketing #Email Marketing #Business

0 notes

absolutelyalyssa · 6 years

Text

I haven’t logged into this account in a while. I think it’s been over a year at least, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s not such a long time.

That being said, a lot of things have changed in that span of time. The first thing is that I finally graduated from college. Not without a ton of student debt, but I’m planning on consolidating most of my loans together so I don’t have to worry too much about it. At least for the time being, I have the money to pay for it.

I have a job. It’s not much--just a receptionist position at a small insurance firm based out of Boston--but I don’t mind it and I get paid well for what I do (literally just answering phones and sorting/distributing mail). Most of the time I have nothing to do and I just surf the web. I felt bad about it at first but then I saw my boss on Facebook in his office the other day and I realized it’s pretty normal. I actually recently learned that flash games (those crappy online games) were literally made for people like me who are bored all the time. I digress.

Being bored all the time prompts me to think a lot. I’ve been trying to engage more with the world and learn new things when I can. Often times I lack the motivation and I end up on Reddit, but sometimes I learn things there, too. For example, why is nobody talking about the fact that Russia is literally trying to create cyber warfare in Ukraine?

I’m still with Patrick. We’re pretty good. Things have changed a lot and our relationship is significantly healthier than it was. We aren’t perfect but no couple is, and that’s something I’ve come to accept. I have to admit lately I’ve been getting jealous of him because he’s currently in grad school on the track towards becoming a tenured professor, and I’m over here with a dead-end job that earns me less than 40k a year. I’m only 23 though, so I’m trying not to beat myself up over it. I am still considering going back to grad school next fall. If I can figure out how to realistically pay for it without either overworking myself or taking out more loans, I would already have applied, honestly.

Patrick wants to be a professor, like I said, and personally I’ve been warming up to the same idea. Having just graduated from college less than a year ago (December 2017), I know that sometimes people aren’t necessarily made to be teachers, but they teach anyway and they get away with it. I think that could be a very real possibility for me, mainly because although I’m socially awkward and not so confident, these are adults I’ll be teaching, and for the most part they’ll be engaged in the subject. It’s not like I’ll have to discipline too much, and I’ll be making 6 digits from the get-go. That would be ideal. Not saying it’ll be easy, though--supposedly these jobs are VERY tricky to get. You have to know the right people. Still, I’ll get there when I get there. There’s such an emphasis on getting life moving as soon as possible here in the U.S., but to be honest I prefer the lifestyle in Europe where everyone takes their time. I hear that people usually even take a year off from high school before going to college. If things were different, maybe I would have done that.

I don’t know why I’m updating my blog when there’s nobody here to read it. I don’t think any of my followers are active/real at this point. That makes me feel better, though--talking to the void is sometimes nice because there’s less judgment. Only myself to judge, that is.

So I think that summarizes the way things are going now. Same, but different. I’m much more mentally stable but it really depends on the day. I just think depression is a chronic sickness that you have to keep fighting, a cancer that keeps coming back. Hopefully these Vitamin D supplements will help me fight it as the winter draws closer. The winter is always a bad time of year for me.

Right now I’m just trying to get more motivated. I have so much free time now that I don’t have homework and my work day is super boring. I should start writing again, but I am at a loss as to WHAT to write about. Everything requires extensive research, which is so damn tiring. It’s ironic because if I want to be a professor, I need to learn how to get back into research. I have so much time to get into good habits but I’ve felt so lazy. I’ve had this job since April but I’ve never felt less motivated and I’ve never felt more tired. I don’t know how to get that motivation back. Besides, I have had writer’s block for...7 years now? Almost a third of my whole damn life, I haven’t REALLY written, unless you count poetry. If I ever hope to become a professor (they apparently need to publish several works, research-related, throughout their career) I need to get on that and pad my portfolio with actual content. Not to get ahead of myself, but I could even consider submitting my work somewhere, provided it actually gets written to begin with. But first, I need an idea.

Not much else to say, I guess. I’m done being an edgelord about Tumblr--I’ve accepted that I’ll always be a slave to this fucking website. I mean, I first got on about 8 or 9 years ago, and I’ve taken hiatuses, but I’ve always returned. I don’t know why. It seems like the general population has changed--there are a lot more LGBTQ mentally ill 16-year-olds than I remember (not even trying to be hateful, it’s true)--but maybe it was always that way and I was just part of it at the time. But I am back now, and I don’t care too much about what people have to say to me. Mainly because I don’t think they’ll take too much notice or say anything, anyways. It’s not like I’ve these crazy world views...I’m just calling things as I see them. I’m just here to reflect and recall my former life and try to be a better person.

I’m voting today. I don’t even know many of the representatives and I am planning to mostly vote for incumbents because they’re all democrats and I’m left-leaning. I’m just glad I’m doing my part and voting...it also feels good that I’ll have some input on our 3 questions this year, which are actually pretty important (Q3 in Massachusetts concerns the status of transgender individuals which is totally bizarre to me--I cannot believe we’re still arguing about human rights in 2018 in a liberal state). Anyway, so tonight I’m going to burn my entire evening waiting in line at the town hall but that’s okay with me. At least I’m participating.

Life keeps chugging onward--I’m just trying to stay on the train.

#the fabled return is finally upon us #you're all welcome #i'm trying to be more positive #personal #update

0 notes

shamelessmilkshakepanda-blog · 6 years

Text

What medical tests should a 53-year-old man have?

"What medical tests should a 53-year-old man have?

I know there's tests that men should have when they're around the age of 50. My dad hasn't been to the doctor for years because he doesn't have health insurance or a job(he's living with my grandma who's 76). He's resisted going to the doctor and says I'll go once I get a job but he's not really been trying. My brothers and I are worried and some have even offered to pay for a doctor's visit but he's just said no and that he can wait. I'd like to know what tests he should have and how much they cost on average. He's been a generally healthy man, but skin cancer runs in our family and when he was around 40 he had a thing growing on his neck that was some sort of cancer. He had it removed and it hasn't come back but it there some sort of test for things like that? All three of my brothers and I are either English or History teachers and if what my dad needs is affordable we'd all like to pitch in. I know this is sort of scatterbrained- I'm in a rush, so thank you if you can answer this in advance.

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://saleinsurancequotes.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr