#good things to know

[patchwork-crow-writes]

Finally got round to looking into this, and uhhhhh

Feel severe anxiety or other negative emotions before an anticipated rejection - check.

Have trouble seeing nonpositive interactions (such as neutral or vague reactions) as anything but rejection and react accordingly - check.

Overreact to feelings of rejection, leading to behavior that reflects negative emotions like anger, rage, extreme sadness, severe anxiety, etc. - check (less so the anger and rage these days, though this was definitely something I experienced growing up)

Very prone to feeling embarrassed or self-conscious - check.

Show signs of low self-esteem and trouble believing in themselves - check.

Trouble regulating emotions when feeling rejected - turn feelings inward, which can look like a snap onset of severe depression - check.

Often people-pleasers and become intensely focused on avoiding the disapproval of others - check.

may avoid starting projects, tasks or goals where there’s a chance of failure - check.

compensate for their fear of failure or rejection by going all-out or striving for perfectionism. However, the downside of this is that they often experience intense anxiety and may not easily make self-care or downtime a priority - check.

(info pulled from this website here)

Hmm. I see a lot of myself in these descriptions, which is honestly a little relieving. Nice to know that I'm not the only one who experiences these sorts of things, you know. Even just knowing it's, like, an actual thing, is pretty helpful, because I can use it as a starting-point for dealing with these feelings when they arise due to some perceived slight or rejection. Well, that's the theory anyway :P

@stainedglassthreads thank you for the info, it was very enlightening :)

[cosmictulips]

Hi⭐️ so I have been thinking about trying a bit of witchcraft.. But I don’t know how, I hope you can help me a little! First of all, to me witchcraft feels like something that should be personal and unique to the individual/family, and I’m not religious (at most I would work together with/honor nature and cosmos) so while I wish to find my own way in witchcraft, I also know that much of the strength lies in knowledge. But where can I find knowledge/books of witchcraft that does not tell me what to do and who to worship, but simply inspire and teach me the different ways, beliefs and traditions to handle things at, so I may learn from those before and around me? Do you have any recommendations? Another thing I want to ask you: to me witchcraft’s power lies in the intentions and strong will of the one to practice it, so of course I won’t just practice witchcraft for nothing. But I also don’t want to be arrogant and try to use witchcraft for things that may not be for me to control and decide over. That leaves me with things like protection, small curses, knowledge/divination, dream work, and most of all self care and healing, but even these things I can doubt if I have a right to try to control. Is there a danger to trying to tamper with things like these, with the natural world? And for my curiosity, what kinds of witchcraft do you do and what does it mean to you?

Hello Star Cadet =)

I love that beginning point you made. witchcraft is highly personal and it is also rather introspective as well. you can join covens if you want to but for the most part, most active witches/pagans I know just do their thing individually. not because we don't like covens, but just because life is busy and it's literally just so personal to the person.

You actually are starting off like me. Wanting something private and wanting to worship the earth and cosmos. and for awhile that's exactly what I did.

I should have some stuff still in my tags or archive if you really want to dig through them about all of this.

But for awhile I just took in all this stuff about shamanism and wicca and very specfically Hedge and space witchcraft. after awhile I leaned away from shamanism and wicca. shamanism because it's mostly a thing that is not in my... heritage I suppose to keep things light. but it's very native american. to keep things light. and wicca because I didn't really... I don't like the trends of wicca. I don't like how it mostly takes from other things.

but because of those two things. I got the bases for most of my beliefs that I hold now. through shamanism I have learned to honor the earth in my own way. through wicca i know what biased sources are in witchcraft and whom to avoid. and most importantly I have learned through those two what I do and do not believe.

and that is the key to a solid working craft or belief system in literally anything.

I still consider myself to be a hedge witch and a cosmic witch. I just don't like to use the labels lmao. I just use pagan. I have been considering myself a polythiest for awhile. and I worship the norse and greek because I know their myths pretty well. not to mention that I've... met them in the astral plane before.

I think, in the beginning you must suspend belief. because it's our beliefs that we currently have that will make us stop. call them boundaries. Spirits are real. and you may not see them yet, but if you want to work with them, you will learn how to. the astral plane is real, but if you never have been then you don't know. you know what I'm saying?

also, I only leaned into polytheism because when working with planetary energies you do tend to associate them with the roman gods. and so it made sense to me to try to work with them even outside of their planetary counterparts. you don't have to.

Every piece of literature you read on witchcraft will have some sort of bias and control of what they think you should and should not do. there are some people who post book reviews so I'd look around. I started with scott cunningham and his wiccan stuff. and honestly, through interacting with witchblogs around here, I've found more sources that way.

-again, my tags and archive might be of use to you ;) - and through that you might actually find something to dive in deeper.

Unfortunately, for me, I have cultivated my own practice by my own will. like you said. I wasn't afraid of being controled or handling things out of my control. I just knew two things to be true :::

Culture appropriation is a thing. and if I wanted to know about that culture, I should ask people who are apart of that culture. they are more than willing to share what they know but take what you need. you don't need to be a native american shaman to work with animal spirits and to astral project. HOWEVER, you should NOT use sage when smudging. you know what I'm saying? take what other cultures have to say and see what you can do to implement something like it in your own craft. 2. I am solely doing my own craft because I want to connect to the heavens. point blank period. If priests at a church could talk to jesus and god then so can't I.

There is no danger in trying to control the natural world. simply because you are not controling it. You are building a relationship with it. the natural world bends to no human. we are on borrowed land and when we die, we pay our dues by returning to it.

If there's a branch of witchcraft you are interested in, start by looking into it. I got into the cosmic witchcraft via astrology and wanting to use the planets energy in my chart. I got into hedge witchcraft to try to astral project and get to work with spirits. I do earth magic to connect to my own roots and connect with nature. so on and so forth.

Witchcraft is a lot more simple than people seem to think it is. and i understand the reason why. I mean by trade I would like to be a Cultural Anthropologist. so I've always been interested in cultures and it's through getting to learn people and their history, and subsequently the shared human history of suffering, being born again and creating things to live and thrive, I have molded my beliefs in a more humanitarian way.

to me witchcraft is about giving more to the earth and to myself. if I can help in someway, I totally can. but the dynamics of the universe are far more than just giving life and help. there is death. there is war and faminine and pain. and where that sun sets, the moon illuminates the things we wish to hide.

and so when you go into your craft, do not fear the more harsher magics. obviously learn the basics like warding, shielding and spiritual protection. but do not let that stop you from learning how to cultivate fire to give you the voice of a warrior and don't let it stop you from understanding yours and others shadows.

we need the dark as much as we need the light.

honestly I can rattle on lmao. but I think this kind of... answers everything for you? maybe lol

[desperatepleasures]

one time I used the ben affleck smoking reaction image in the family group chat and my mom replied with the funniest possible response which was: "mommy doesn't know who the guy is???" and that phrase has not left my brain since. I'll see blorbos on my dash that I don't recognize and I'll be like well it seems mommy doesn't know who the guy is.

[straightlightyagami]

u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me

[keithbutgay]

hi!

um

yeah

notes goal post

because i really need motivation

(i stole some of these but shhhhh)

if this post gets 50 notes i'll drink water right now

100 i'll go to bed at midnight for the rest of the week

200 i'll actually do my laundry

500 i'll take a shower every day for the rest of the week

1,000 i'll brush my teeth every night for a full week

2,000 i'll stop binding for an unhealthy amount of time for a full week

3,000 i'll start actually wearing my ankle braces consistently

4,000 i'll eat breakfast every day for the rest of the week

5,000 i'll stop binding while sleeping

6,000 i'll stop wearing earrings i'm allergic to for a full week

7,000 i'll start doing makeup again

8,000 i'll stop eating chocolate for the rest of the week

9,000 i'll make my autodale masks

10,000 i'll touch grass every day for the rest of the month

11,000 i'll water my plants twice a week for the rest of the month

12,000 i'll put on my lotion when i need to for a full week

13,000 i'll eat at least two meals every day for the rest of the week

14,000 i'll finish my water bottle every day for a full week

15,000 i'll write more for forest files

18,000 i'll clean out my backpack

19,000 i'll take my vitamins every day for the rest of the week

20,000 i'll finish my stained glass project

21,000 i'll go to bed before midnight for the rest of the week

22,000 i'll do my summer reading

23,000 i'll move the knife out of my room

24,000 i'll eat three meals every day for three days

25,000 i'll stop purposefully triggering myself for a full week

50,000 i'll try my best to stay clean for two full weeks

i'll probably add more goals if this somehow get past 5k, but there it is for now :)

spam allowed

tagging allowed

ummm the deadline is halloween

*thumbs up*

go for it

[greykolla-art]

My blog has become infested with angst goblins, and they must be fed with some hypothetical scenarios!🙏💚

[s0up1ta]

"so grunkle ford how do you know bill?"

"... that's not important."

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[hansoeii]

crowley

[lizardsfromspace]

Love the random censorship in Victorian novels. Mr. ------- came down from -----shire in the summer of 18--. Who? Where? When? Wouldn't you like to know, book boy

[guardian-of-soho]

Still stuck on how Aziraphale ate that meat like he was starving. Like he’d been starved for millennia, and he hadn’t even known it, because he’d never once been fed. But we know they don’t have to eat (nor sleep, etc.), so what he’d been starved for is pleasure. Being present in his body, feeling the joys and longings it could feel. Understanding what taste buds were made for. He hadn’t known; he’d never learned to miss it.

Now imagine what a kiss has done to him.

[brucie-baby]

the fact that alfred was the one to put up jason's memorial is so important to me

[vmkhoneyy]

“People are inherently terrible” no!!! Have you ever seen a child wait for their friend while they tie their shoelaces? Have you ever known someone who would bring hurt squirrels and rabbits and mice to the nearest vet just so it doesn’t suffer? Have you seen someone grieve? Have you ever read something that hit your heart like a freight train? Have you looked at the stars and felt an unexplainable joy? Have you ever baked bread? Have you shared a meal with a friend? Have you not seen it? All the love? All the good? I know it’s hard to see sometimes, I know there’s pain everywhere. But look, there’s a child helping another up after a hard fall. Look, there’s someone giving their umbrella to a stranger. Look, there’s someone admiring the spring flowers. Look, there’s good, there’s good, there’s good. Look!!!!

[odetoscavengers]

Something that could have been

[some-kind-of-creature]

It wasn’t supposed to be a secret.

If you died while with the league, you will no longer be acknowledged to have existed, especially if you died during a mission. A disappointment will not be remembered.

The bats and birds don’t like speaking about the people they have lost, so they don’t. If someone ask about the dead, they will tell the person they don’t talk about that.

So how was Damian supposed to know that he should have told his father about his dead brother?

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.