#honestly calculated mediocrity is goals

[linumlena]

[mbti-notes]

Hello mbti-notes. I'm a very, very unhealthy INTJ. I have come to the realisation that I constantly try to deny and repress my emotional needs whenever I face obstacles in the world. As in, for example, if people find me unattractive, I detach from that triggering context and try to hamper down my need to be loved. If my mother treats me in a nasty way, I detach from her and go on a corner and try to hamper my need to feel approved by her. (continues, this is part 1)

[con’t: If I see that my classmates are better or more competent than me, I avoid contact with them & avoid going to class, and I don’t try harder with the materials or try to be more competent, I repress the need for that as if “I didn’t want it anyway” and “it doesn’t matter”, “makes no difference”, “it’s not meaningful”, but actually, and I can see it now, these things mean the world to me. I notice myself constantly thinking about what people have that I won’t have, like a successful high paying career. I dropped out of law school (I got into a good university) and can’t deal with the fact that I chose to switch to a more low paying, less competitive career to pursue. I feel like this choice was also the same dynamic of me pushing down my need for high achievement in the face of insecurity and obstacles. People around me see me as a wimp, someone who doesn’t contribute, doesn’t take responsibility, doesn’t integrate to the group, honestly it feels like people see me as a child and completely incapable, despite the fact that they do sometimes say I’m very intelligent (they mean academic intelligence, but not “real” intelligence). I feel like people treat me condescendingly and don’t take me seriously. I also feel an utter lack of life direction, I have no goals and no plans, and I’m at a point where I don’t give a sh*t and I’ve been more socially impulsive (like jokester behavior, class clown) and reckless about my reputation, missing deadlines, appointments, loosing track of what’s going on around me and what I need to do. Is this congruent with Fi loop and Se grip? I still don’t see how I can use Ni+Te to grow out of it, I can see it in the abstract, but not concretely.]

No, it is not at all congruent with Fi loop and Se grip, which is why Te is not the solution, in fact, trying to develop Te is very likely to exacerbate the problem. Your thought patterns fit quite perfectly with: unhealthy Ni (faulty/perfectionistic beliefs), overindulgence of Fe (constant focus on impressing/approval, low self-worth, guilt, shame), Ti loop (harmful rejection of feelings, lack of self-awareness, destructive attitude), and Se grip (extreme loss of control, recklessness, superficiality). Why do you believe that you are intj? Did you undergo a proper type assessment? If not, you should. There is a clear warning in the Type Dev Guide that you should not take advice of the wrong type.

Every decision you have made is part of Ti loop in denying your true feelings, to the point that life becomes meaningless, i.e., you must come to reject everything in the world because everything eventually serves to remind you of your “worthlessness”. If you are F, constantly acting contrary to your feelings is the direct road to despair. You don’t understand the difference between feelings and emotions, so you end up ignoring important feelings that would guide you in the right direction and then indulging the resultant negative emotions in the wrong direction. Do you honestly believe that your decisions have been rational? If you are in Ti loop, you will believe it for quite some time, and it will require hitting rock bottom or a personal disaster for you to realize how irrational you’ve really been. You say that you have a need to achieve (Ni), why do you not respect that need and even fail on purpose? You say that you have a need to be loved and approved of (Fe), why do you purposely act in ways that destroy social connection or get disapproval? You keep trying to lay the blame “out there” in how people judge/perceive you when it was actually your own bad decision making all along that brought you here - this is the hallmark of deep-seated Ti loop.

The way to get out of Ti loop is to finally take responsibility for your life instead of blaming something/someone else for your feelings of guilt and failure. Oftentimes, unhealthy INFJs don’t want to try because they are afraid that they’ll fail to live up to their self-imposed “ideal” and then have no excuses left to ward off the shame/guilt that they’re running from. It’s very easy to think highly of yourself when your success/greatness exists only in your own mind and you’re able to fool yourself into believing that it’s the world holding you back (Ni-Ti loop), but it’s hard to keep up the arrogance when you’re constantly slapped with hard evidence of your social failures (Fe-Se reality checks). 

In many ways, you still have the mentality of a toddler. You expect that everything should be like your fantasy, i.e, the one place where you don’t have to feel bad about yourself. You haven’t yet realized that the reason you feel bad is precisely because you wrongly believe that being “special” is the answer to your low self-worth, so you fish for praise/approval by proving your “specialness” in childish ways, only to fail often because your motives are fake or superficial. A truly successful person is HUMBLE and works hard to build a good life for themselves. They don’t waste time thinking about being “special”, rather, they simply work hard to actualize their potential because they want to make the most out of their life. You are arrogant, not humble, because you fear being ordinary/nothing and thus mistake humility for mediocrity. You are obsessed with feeling “better than” because you judge yourself as “less than”. Successful people don’t waste time with these sorts of petty “status” calculations because they’re not chasing empty markers of success to cover up low self-worth.

To find purpose and meaning in life for infjs is a simple matter of nurturing loving relationships and making positive contributions to whatever environment they happen to be in. Perhaps you live in a socially/emotionally harsh environment, which is not your fault, but you can either choose to play the dog-eat-dog game, or you can choose to live a good life for the sake of your own well-being. So far, you seem to keep choosing the former, which means that you must try to be “top dog” in order to call yourself “worthy”. Do you not realize that “worthiness” isn’t about proving yourself better than people? Do you honestly think that something as pure as true happiness can come from something so impure as judging and categorizing people according to their lack of “worth”?

A truly worthy person is one who actually lives a morally good life. Living a morally good life is hard work and it isn’t likely to get you immense praise and recognition. If the only reason you want to be “good” is to alleviate the shame that you feel for low social status, then you’ve missed the point entirely. A mature person takes responsibility for their life by asking themselves what kind of person they want to be and then they work hard to become it. Their sense of good comes from the self and emanates positively out into the world through morally congruent action. An immature person asks what behaviors will get them praise/approval and then they try to be like that (i.e. level 1-2 ego development). Their sense of good is easily twisted and destroyed by social pressures. 

Looping infjs often look down on others for being superficial in craving social status, but it is they themselves who actually care about status the most due to low self-worth - that’s why they must work so hard to convince themselves that they don’t care, which only makes them care even more. Ti loop turns you into a barking hypocrite and that is where the self-loathing actually comes from. You harm yourself by denying yourself and your goodness to chase after feelings of superiority - very common problem among NFs. To chase after feelings of superiority necessitates that you constantly think of yourself as inferior, which makes it impossible to have healthy self-esteem. How can you be happy when you constantly treat yourself so badly? As long as you think in terms of oversimplistic dichotomies of superiority/inferiority or strong/weak, then you also cannot have healthy relationships. Healthy relationships are based on equality between people and mutual respect and appreciation. In short, you sabotage your own happiness with your obsession on being “special” (read: superior), because this makes it impossible for you to develop Fe properly. 

All of your functions need development. Healthy Ni means to always act with your mind attuned to visualizing future implications - yet you choose not to care about the consequences of your decisions nor fight for your future self’s well-being. Healthy Fe means to carve a space for yourself to belong and contribute everywhere you go - yet you choose not to because you can’t tell the difference between praise and love and then chase after the wrong feelings to cover up your insecurities. Healthy Ti means to make rational judgments and decisions according to the facts - yet you stubbornly hang on to faulty beliefs about “how the world works” and even take twisted pride in flouting the rules you don’t like, intent on believing that they don’t apply to you despite negative repercussions. Healthy Se means to adapt well to change by embracing it and making the most of what you have - yet you fear change and run from it with all your life. I’m not a magician, I can’t wave a wand and change you. You can’t depend on others to tell you what to do. You have to commit yourself to being a better person and make better decisions by making better use of your functions, starting from top to bottom, because you care about living life well for your own sake.

**If you suffer from serious depression and/or anxiety and it hampers your ability to live life normally, I strongly suggest that you get professional help.

[b-listbadboy]

Castlevania Season 3 was disappointing

(Spoilers for Castlevania Season 3, if you haven’t seen it yet it’s out now on Netflix. I suggest watching that first before reading this review)

I won’t say it was an awful season by any stretch of the imagination but man was it a drag to get through.

Almost nothing of significance happens for the majority of the season and the things that did happen felt extremely off and weird. 10 episodes, 25 to 30 minutes each, and every single one except for the fucking TWO LAST EPISODES were spent dicking around with a mystery that had little to do with anything from season 2 beyond a really out there twist that I’m sort of iffy on. Top that off with a lackluster arguably stupid ending to leave us off on a needless cliffhanger, and that’s the magic remedy that will leave me feeling pretty damn frustrated.

The best parts, in my opinion, were with Isaac’s massive undead crusade he was waging throughout his journey for revenge, and Trevor and Syph’s interactions with each other as well as with the little villagers. Isaac’s arc going from a servant of Dracula to slowing evolving into the master of the damned felt genuine, intriguing, and badass! I really wish he was the next main villain instead as it makes sense thematically. He carries out Dracula’s nihilistic views of humanity in a similar but now more direct way and that can lead into something really intriguing. However, for some reason, this season left him and his whole journey on a back burner, and virtually everything else that is implemented into main villain role fell flat on its face execution wise.

For example; The new vampires of this season are Camilla’s three other empress sisters, and while they do have a plethora of personality at the very least, that kind of comes at a cost of the main threat being extremely diluted. We go from this hurting sympathetic undead overlord with the power of an anchent GOD, to a couple of wicked sassy sisters who just wanna eat people forever? It’s a bit lame of a progression from what we once had, we know Vampires like to eat people that’s nothing new or exciting. There’s no real twist to it besides it being “led by women in the dark ages” and granted that makes sense here since it IS the dark ages, but come on we literally just had arguably the BEST adaptation of friggin’ Dracula! This shouldn’t be all they got moving forward from that.

Now, I have ZERO issue with the main antagonists being female or even two of the four sisters (not by blood don’t worry) being a lesbian couple. I hate that I have to emphasize this, hell I often defend Cinder Fall in RWBY more than anyone in the fandom at all despite her issues as a complex and sometimes flat out badly written character. However, The four of them in this season have the most basic of plans that it seems arbitrary status quote fluff at best. It felt like just because it’s Castlevania, we HAVE to have the vampires as the villains. Even though in the games the Belmont’s were literally fighting werewolves, dragons, skeletons, and the GRIMM REAPER??

Therefore, the sense of urgency and tense calculating plans of ‘survival vs extinction’ is completely gone. And yknow in a way, I can kinda initially SEE that working in a sort of “Empire Strikes Back” esque plot. Yknow, with Alucard and the gang go around cleaning up Dracula’s leftover horde only for Isaac or even Camilla to have this huge vengeful comeback of dominance? But there’s no one exactly “striking back” or even taking any kind of immediate initiative after Dracula’s death. It’s been MONTHS after the whole event and no one seems like they really care about that world changing event from the last two season’s. Everything is fine and dandy, no one has a single worry in the world! How enthralling...I miss Godbrand 😑

Besides the plan the four empresses have as well as Issac’s revenge, which I hope will both be more explored in season 4, no one really has any goal to warrant THAT kind of length of a season. This is more of a Netflix problem that I have with most of their shows and it’s one of the reasons why I don’t like watching them. Almost every singe show Netflix produces now, feels the need to overstuff itself with needless filler that gets us really nowhere until the very end where it SUDDENLY all comes together. But because of the nature of binge watching and considering how Netflix wants to desperately keep their subscriptions in fear of intimidating competition, they make these shows 12 episodes long with HALF HOUR OR MORE amount of filler content that’s supposed to satisfy us cause it’s “cute”?! No, stop this shit! Granted, Castlevania wasn’t nearly AS bad as the live action shows, but honestly, what exactly was shown to us that couldn’t have been reduced to like 5 solidly paced episodes focused on one or two plot lines ONLY like before? It worked perfectly back then, why change what ain’t broke?

As much as I don’t like the immediate rush of Trevor and Syph’s out of nowhere sexual relationship, I didn’t overall mind it too much since they still somewhat felt consistent. Their characteristics play off very nicely with one another and it’s pretty easy to see the chemistry between the two....HOWEVER I’M STILL GONNA COMPLAIN ABOUT IT SO HERE WE GO!

I get that they were setting them up as an endgame ship of the series, there’s no denying that, but they start fucking for what feels like (to the audience) two days after and I think that’s a bit ridiculous! Even if Alucard states that it’s been at the very least a month worth of time since the events of Season 2, there’s no real physical signs showing that statement to be true. Hell, Trevor’s beard and hair remains the same despite a HUGE passage of time where it would naturally grow out to indicate said time passing by. But both him, Syph, Alucard, and damn near everyone else looks the exact same as last season. So for all I know it could have been like a week since Season 2 and that to me doesn’t feel exactly earned. The Season 2 finale didn’t explicitly leave off Trevor and Syph officially a couple, they felt more like partners in crime more than anything else. Not to say that there wasn’t any chemistry there to develope INTO a relationship GRADUALLY, but going from a little spark of interest to the immediate jump of them sleeping together naked all comfortably as if they’re a goddamn married couple is a STRETCH! Even Trevor himself thinks so too so don’t jump down my throat about not being immediately swooned by the shipping fanservice given to us. I don’t dislike them as a couple at all, in fact I think their dynamic is cute! However, I would have also liked to have this couple feel natural and earned. They most certainly do not feel earned this way, at least to me.

Oh god, then there’s this out of nowhere sexual tension between Alucard and his new two recruits from another region hinted at in the previous season? Mind you, Alucard was doing literally NOTHING throughout the entirety of Season 3. Yep, literally the ONE DUDE WHO BASICALLY KILLED DRACULA gets about fuck all story progression afterwards out of the three. But what they DO give him are these two new vampire hunting student’s who look identical to one another (no racial they just literally look like fraternal twins) so I assumed they were either siblings or a couple, which makes it REALLY WEIRD WHEN THEY BOTH FUCK ALUCARD OUT OF NOWHERE?! I’m NOT making this shit up I promise! What makes even less sense is that it was really just a ploy for them to steal the Belmont knowledge of killing vampires to show to their people who have been enslaved. Which of course ends with them being killed so it really makes this entire conflict in his character damn near pointless besides “sad vibes check”, but here’s the thing...why didn’t they just keep doing training with Alucard?? There were virtually no downsides to having him teach you how to kill Vampires to save your village from being enslaved, he was teaching you both very well and gave you like the eternal knowledge of how to kill literally EVERY MONSTER and even let you live in the castle FOR FREE, food and wine included! What was the turning point for them to want to kill him all of the sudden? Cause he’s a vampire?? THEY FUCKING KNEW THAT ALREADY!!! Why was is suddenly not a problem at first but then coincidentally a problem now? If they wanted to use this to somehow depict this notion of “Oh my dad/Dracula was right humans are the worst” mindset, trust me, it was better conveyed with Isaac. These twins side plot not only made no sense, but also felt unjustified for Alucard to be an emo boi. I get that it’s supposed to be symbolic of him going through the same issues that both of his parents went through, but none of that really showed how bad human’s are. Just that those two twins didn’t think things through apparently. So the point of Alucard having this odd character convenience shift feels by the numbers cliché, and most importantly CHEAP.

It really makes no sense to me why they’re adding so much of this filler for such a long time, especially with some of this filler being oddly sexual. I don’t mind honest depiction of sex between consenting adults of course, but it just felt so misplaced and awkward at parts where it showed itself. I felt like I was reading a mediocre fanfic of Castlevania instead of the actual show itself! Granted, Season 2 had somewhat of a similar dilemma but the lull in between was still showing the character specifically doing things to further the story along. Towards the end, it gave us a way more satisfactory closure of that saga with Dracula that felt natural and well earned. This season however, felt like they were scrambling with different ideas here and there and didn’t know which to go with. Alucard training new recruits in his castle, Trevor and Syph figuring out an estranged (and BORING/GENERIC) cult of Dracula’s plan, Camilla setting up an army with her fellow sisterhood of evil vampires to gain ultimate power, Hector surviving captivity by using his wit and charm, Isaac raising up the dead for revenge on his deceased master, a new character introducing an all new world to the lore of Castlevania as we know it, all of these interesting concepts and ideas that could easily make up for a good season alone! And instead of focusing on one or two ideas to develope into something natural, they ended up saying “FUCK IT! Fucking I dunno what to- WE’RE DOING ALL OF IT I DUNNO!” and mixed the whole thing in a blender of different flavors that don’t necessarily blend together well enough for a tasty satisfactory meal. It just ends up being a mesh of okay at best, and gross at worst.

IN CONCLUSION, Castlevania Season 3 had a rocky start, an okay middle, and a kind of cool end. There was definitely some cool and exciting ideas implemented in here, but not enough to warrant that lengthy amount of time that Netflix seems to love to give to most of their TV shows. Sometimes less is more, and all that shiny cool glitter isn’t necessarily going to turn out to be gold. I’ll give this season a 5/10. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen but it certainly could’ve been a lot better.

P.S. “Who Do Ya Voodoo” from Dead Island is Isaac’s new theme song, you can’t convince me otherwise.

[squidpro-quo]

A/N: Based on @tchewessah‘s amazing Bungo Stray Dogs’ Soul Eater au! I couldn’t get the idea of Dazai and Chuuya being the best and worst partners :P 

couldn’t resist this inspiration

“How can you be this heavy despite being so short?” Dazai drawled as he weighed the knife in his hand with a frown. Its hilt was wrapped in filigreed leather covered in ornate swirls, the blade was smooth enough to stab through silk with the slightest stroke, and yet his wrist was already aching from just one round with a single witch. If this was the best he could do, then perhaps he should look into replacing it. There were more than a few alternatives, some even willing to help him with his most auspicious goal, and honestly, he wasn’t exactly a knife-wielding type of guy anway.

“Short!? This is a fourteen inch blade, that’s considered pretty long by anyone competent enough to use it right!” Chuuya’s voice rang inside his head, their souls brushing up against each other with a friction that made Dazai set his teeth. 

The witch’s patience had come to an end by then, her giant compact eyes flickering red as she dove out of the sky with the long, thin end of her lance scything through the air. High-pitched whining announced her arrival, grating on Dazai’s nerves even more than his own partner and it was more the instinctual annoyance at the noise than any greater motivation that drove him to dodge out of the way. 

“I suppose I shouldn’t expect much more. You were tiny then, so you’re tiny now.” He shrugged, dropped the knife on the ground and noted that it had landed with enough force to spear itself into the asphalt road. Why he’d been assigned someone so obviously difficult was beyond him, but to add on the attitude problems was too much. He’d been given a task, there was no point in wasting time on useless tools when he could find another way around it, just like always. 

Turning his back on the upright knife, he spotted the witch hovering above and sharpening her stinger for another fly-over, webbed wings blurring into a ceaseless motion behind her as she unrolled her long tongue and blew a raspberry. As much as he’d been evading her jabs, she’d been taunting his own attempts for just as long. Now that he didn’t have to deal with his own difficulties, he could focus on making some for her. 

A hand grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the window of a shopfront, glass cracking from where his head had impacted. A gaze so furious he might have qualed had he cared an ounce, fingers gripping his coat so tightly he was glad he hadn’t made use of the sleeves, and a corona of copper around his partner’s head that could have been the flames of his anger instead of simply his hair. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Chuuya hissed, eyes boring into Dazai’s uncovered one with an intensity reflected in his soul. “Get back here, you’re not done yet.” 

“By the time I manage to stab you anywhere inside her,” Dazai pointed up to the witch, following her movements in the glass, “She’ll have granted me a mediocre and unsatisfying release.”

Chuuya scowled, yanking Dazai away from the damaged storefront instead of answering, and shoving his hands into his pockets as he studied the litter by their feet. 

Straightening his jacket while he gingerly stretched his back in case any of his ribs were cracked, Dazai didn’t bother to smile over his small victory and simply looked up as the witch dove yet again in a swarm of black blocking out the gaps between the buildings. 

Plans circled in his head, alternates and backups and last ditch chances presenting themselves as Dazai spun on his heel and calculated the amount of force he’d need to shatter industrial glass, factoring in that it was already partially cracked and with enough speed he could clear the first wave of attacks until he could trigger the— 

A crushing hand found his for only a second before it morphed, souls shifting and skimming together in a sudden smashing reverberation. Even with his aura’s usual easy atunement, Dazai was surprised to find Chuuya’s soul had changed, resonating at a different frequency than he remembered from before. 

What he found himself holding was different as well, gone was the short, sleek, knife he’d laughed at on first glance and instead he found his arm wrapped in steel plating woven together to form a gauntlet stretching up to his elbow. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the weight. He could’ve been carting a bodybag around for how much strain this would put on his already sore shoulder. 

“You went from a mildly serviceable, if pitiful, reach to no reach at all.” Dazai shrugged, trying to lighten the load to no avail. “I guess your range as small as everything else about you.” 

“Just watch, you puffed up mummy,” Chuuya growled, tightening around Dazai’s wrist. 

Before he could retaliate, Chuuya’s soul began to morph yet again, from the usual bright aura into a seething static, a buzz sounding in the cross section of their souls that would have put the swarm above them to shame. 

Dazai didn’t fight the resistance he felt across their tenuous bond, he’d had weapons with a more strenuous connection or larger gap to bridge and adjusted just fine but this felt different. The static was spreading, swallowing Chuuya’s soul until it almost seemed to be fizzing apart. 

“Are you going to do anything or just stand there with two useless eyeballs!?” 

Spurred into motion by the angry rebuke, Dazai clenched his fist and looked up at the approaching swarm, searching for the figure of the lone witch. Far to the left, almost hidden by the corner of the apartment building, she buzzed in small figure-eights while patiently awaiting their destruction. 

“Why are you backing away? You’re supposed to be attacking!” 

Dazai didn’t bother to say anything in reply even as the gauntlet grew heavier. Just a little bit closer, and it would be the perfect spot. Standing with his back against the cracked glass, he waited for the swarm to close in. Once even the streetlights were obscured by the writhing darkness and the high whine was loud enough to shatter an eardrum, he braced his foot against the window and kicked off.

BOOM

No sooner had he leaped, than a wall of concussive force slammed into his back and sent him rocketing upward, through the first wave and countless small, scraping claws, leaving behind a roiling plume of smoke rising from the store and a shards of glass following in his wake. Letting the spent trigger fall from his fingers, Dazai lost his coat with the speed of their ascent, his tie whipped across his shoulder as the shocked face of the witch loomed within sight, and much more importantly, within reach. 

Perhaps it was the weightlessness that came with reaching the arc of their flight, or that the adrenalin rush from standing with his back to a ticking bomb wiped away any of his exhaustion but rearing back with Chuuya’s full weight was easier than he’d expected. The forceful static of Chuuya’s soul and his own smooth, malleable one found an instant of balance, raucous and harsh, but a balance nonetheless. His punch caught the witch in the chest, his fingers outlined in a raw red that flared in the wake of his motion, the power behind the blow enough to send her crashing to the roof in a crumpled and dissolving mess. 

Dazai landed in a skid, gauntleted hand scraping the top of the building as he slowed down, leaving a groove across the worn concrete like the tail of a comet. The witch’s soul rose from the heap of where she’d lain, glowing against the roiling black fumes emanating from below. Only the static licking at his soul ruined the odd flush of satisfaction that rose in Dazai, something he’d never considered before after a fight, and it’s distorted form finally settled until he felt the weight lifting from his hand. 

Chuuya stalked across the roof without a word of recognition and grabbing the hovering soul, swallowing it whole before leveling an angry glare back at Dazai. 

“Range enough for you?” he asked, hand holding his hat down as the wind picked up. 

Dazai shrugged, smiling at the look of outrage that flashed across Chuuya’s face. Why they’d been forced to pair up by Mori for a rather mundane job still irked him, but perhaps this partnership was slightly more serviceable than he’d first thought. 

“With this unfortunate success, the boss will certainly think this was a good idea of his.” Snapping his fingers, Dazai gestured to Chuuya. “Maybe you’ll finally help me with my ultimate goal!”

“Those bandages must be too tight because they’re squeezing your brains out of your ears. I can’t be a death scythe, if I’m not a fucking scythe.” Chuuya scoffed, leaning out over the edge of the roof to survey the damage done below, hand braced on his knee to keep his balance. 

“No, I don’t need a death scythe. Just death, period.” 

Chuuya glanced back at him in brief bemusement before rolling his eyes. Dazai picked at the cloth covering his own right eye, wondering if perhaps that fleeting moment of clarity, of vitality, at the apex of their climb would come again. With their next job. 

I’m open for requests!

[mintaero]

i bet on losing terms

snowbaz watching FIFA!

“You aren’t exempt from bets just because we’re boyfriends. In fact, you’re more susceptible to petty bargains just because we’re snogging.”

read on Ao3

SIMON

Baz has gone completely and utterly bat-shit crazy.

He always gets like this during the World Cup, all aggressive and hostile. He’s been shouting at the TV since half time, and I don’t think he’s realized that the people on the other side can’t hear him. Last FIFA, Baz nearly broke the television remote when Germany won because he was gripping it so deathly hard.

“Baz, settle down,” Penelope croons from the sofa, not looking up. She’s typing away furiously on her computer, her hair piled in a messy ball on the top of her head. She’s been working on her thesis statement for days, yet somehow, she can find time to watch the World Cup with us.

“Fuck off, Bunce. Brazil and Switzerland are going.” He’s sat back down on the couch—finally—but he still looks like he’s about to jump back up and pounce on the television at any given moment.

“Who do we want to win?” I ask, readjusting myself on the ground beside Baz’s feet.

The announcer on the TV mumbles something about a player being apparently injured, and Baz curses.

“What was that, Simon?” Baz arches his eyebrow but doesn’t look at me. I accidentally bump my wing on his back, and he scoots forward like he thinks I’ve just asked him to.

“Who—”

“YES, ALISSON!’ Baz shouts, springing up and rubbing his hands together. He’s glaring at the TV with a sort of manic energy. He’s a manic person.

I sigh and throw my head back. There’s no talking to him when he’s like this. “You’re going to break the sound barrier.”

Baz glances down at me. Only for a second. “Bunce, please explain to Snow that breaking the sound barrier only occurs when you go fast. Not when you’re loud.”

“Heed his words, Simon.” Penny stops typing and looks at me.

“Come on, Marcelo. Come on, come on, come on,” Baz chants. He gets so into FIFA, it’s not even funny. Living and breathing it until a winner is announced, and then suddenly he’s back to his usual self. He always seems so much healthier and alive when the World Cup is playing.

Baz is the only person I know who gets less stressed when FIFA’s on. Maybe not less stressed, but he forgets to focus on the usual things that stress him out. Like university or eating. Baz has been a prick about eating. Lately, it’s a win if I get him to snack on some crisps, let alone a full meal. Maybe I take back what I said about Baz being healthier.

Penelope slams her computer closed a little too harshly and stands up, stretching her arms over her head. I reach over and try to tug down her skirt that’s bunched up a bit too high on her thighs, but she swats my hand away and does it herself.

“I’m going to get out. My thesis statement isn’t going anywhere, and Baz is going mental and I can’t stand another minute of it. You want to come, Simon?” She unties her bun and shakes her hair out.

I consider getting up to sit on the couch, but I don’t want to feel the springs of the couch move every time Baz jumps up, so I stay sat on the space between the couch and the coffee table and pull my legs up to my chest. “Where’re you going?”

“Tesco’s, probably. Are you coming?”

“No, I don’t think so. Will you get me something there?”

Penny rests her hand on her hip and tilts her head to the side. “Like what, ‘mon?”

“I dunno. Roast beef sandwich? Scones? Do you think we’re getting low on butter?” My stomach rumbles at the thought of a warm cherry scone with butter spread over the top and slowly melting. Since Watford, my accessibility to really good sour cherry scones have gone down dramatically, so I get by with mediocre biscuits and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! butter. (Baz frequently tries to remind me that I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! isn’t butter.) (“It’s margarine, Snow. Margarine is different from butter.”)

“Simon, we’re never low on butter. I’ll get you a chocolate sweet, yeah? Baz, you want—”

“No, thank you, Bunce. I’d rather no—Oh, oh, OH! OH!” The red-jersey football player on the screen headbutts the ball and scores a goal. Two more instant replays of the goal are shown in slow motion, and Baz is practically screeching his head off. I get the feeling that no one quite expected the red-jerseys to get a goal. Baz surely didn’t, either, because he’s cursing like a drunken Scottish banshee. (Those things are little shits if you ever meet them. Especially the Scottish ones. Wit as sharp as a blade, but the darkest sense of humour.)

Penny tuts. “Honestly, Baz. If you’re going to curse like a basic American white girl turned into a banshee—” even she knows “—then do it privately. It’s unsettling.”

Baz makes concise eye contact. Precisely, he enunciates each word, “Fuck a nine-toed fucking troll, Penelope goddamn Bunce. Fucking Switzerland just scored a mother ass-fucking son-of-a-bitch goal with a shitting-on-your-nipples fucking headbutt. I am the fucking one who’s fucking unsettled.”

Penelope’s face twists like she just drank some rank Ribena. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Don’t forget—”

“Chocolate sweets, yeah, I know. See you.”

“See you.”

And then she’s out the door. She didn’t take her car keys, so I know that Micah’s probably out front right now, waiting for her at the bottom of our flat.

“Baz. Would you sit down?”

“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Bunce. Fuck. Off.”

“No, you.” I push myself off the ground. “I’m going to make a sandwich.”

“I don’t want one.”

“I know. I wasn’t going to ask you.”

He mutters something too low for me to hear, so I push myself off the floor and head towards the kitchen. I dig around the fridge for sandwich supplies, then to the pantry for bread and crisps. (Salt-and-Vinegar, the bastard.) (He knows I don’t like those.)

Laying everything out on the counter, I glance at Baz. He looks near to throttling someone. I’ve never known that he actually likes to watch football games rather than play in them; for him, I always thought playing football was more of a pastime. A diversion for everything that was at stake.

It fit that I’m wrong about him. I was wrong about everything before, so. Naturally.

He runs his hand through his hair, resting it on the crown of his head before pulling it through the rest of his locks. He’s switching his weight between both legs consistently, and it’s making me anxious.

“You’re making me anxious,” I say. “Stop pacing.”

“I’m not pacing.” He snarls, a bit brashly. “I think they’re going to tie.”

“Who?”

“Who?” Baz echoes, looking back at me and sneering. Crowley, I thought we were past the sneering by now. “What do you mean, who? Switzerland and Brazil. I think they’re going to tie.”

“Rubbish. Brazil is mighty fit, they’ll win for sure.”

He shakes his head and turns back to the screen, watching it intently. I go back to making my sandwich.

“I bet you £20 that Brazil’ll win,” I say, slicing a tomato cleanly down the middle. When he turns back around, an eyebrow is arched as high as his widow’s peak.

“Fifty.”

I groan. “C’mon Baz, it’s just a bet. Twenty’s fair.”

“It’s fair,” he grins wickedly, and I feel heat crawl up my neck. “But it isn’t fun.”

“Fine. Forty.” I mush the two halves of the sandwich into one and take a bite. “That’s the highest I’ll go.”

“Deal,” he flops back on the couch, kicking his feel up on the coffee table and stretching his arms on top of either side of the couch. “Also, you’re a terrible negotiator. I would’ve gone down to thirty if you’d asked.”

“Fuck you, Baz. Seriously.”

“Ah, no. That would be you that just got fucked and lost £40 to me.”

Forty fucking pounds. I can tell there are roses on my cheeks even before I brush my knuckles against them. The only reason I’m blushing is because he just implied that I was fucked by him. By Baz. He can’t just say that.

Crowley.

I set my sandwich back down on the counter and open the cupboard, reaching for a plate. (Penelope always scolds me when I get crumbs on the couch.)

“Sh-Fucking hell!” Baz yells from the living room. He startles me so badly that my wings fly open and my tail starts whipping around by my hips and I jerk my hand back down to my side.

He’s mental.

“Baz!” I gasp. “Don’t do that!”

He looks back at me, and I can tell from the way that his expression softens that he just realises he’s scared me. “Sorry, love. It was a really close goal.”

Absolutely mental, I tell you.

Baz looks back at the match, and I huff at the ground. My sandwich has dropped. Knocked off by my tail, more like, but still. There are bits of tomato and lettuce strewn about, and one half of the bread is sticking to the bottom cabinet. I squat down and start peeling the cheese and such off the tiles and wood, grimacing.

I shouldn’t have used the good cheese.

It takes me a second to get back from the squat, but I manage to make it up without all the blood flowing to my head. (Merlin, it’s not like I’m elderly.) The tomatoes are leaking in my hand, so I bumble to the bin and dump my hand.

Setting aside the deflating realisation that I don’t have enough mental compacity to make another sandwich, I shake some crisps into the nearest thing on the counter, which happens to be a (thankfully, clean) mug. I bring the mug back to the couch and flop down alongside of Baz, daring to rest my head on his shoulder. He made me drop my sandwich. He can live without moving for a few minutes as I grieve.

“I hope you’ve got your £40 on hand,” Baz says, his shoulders tensing when a player on screen kicks the ball and narrowly misses the goal. “Because you just lost the bet.”

I shake my head, popping a few crisps in my mouth. “There’s still stoppage time.”

“You’re placing your remaining hope on the very last 2-3 minutes of the game? How very calculating you are,” Baz pulls his head away and looks at me. “And you chew like a hyena.”

I shove him a bit, picking my head up off his shoulder and grabbing another handful of crisps. “Isn’t it laugh?”

He looks at me funny. “Beg your pardon?”

“I mean,” I kick my legs up on the coffee table. “Don’t hyenas have that bloody insane laugh?”

“Yes, they quite do. However, my laugh is going to be just as ridiculous when you hand over forty pounds.”

I groan. “So bloody cocky.”

“It’s not like I spelt the match in my favour, now is it?”

My eyes widen. “You didn’t.”

He laughs. High and quick. “No, I didn’t. It’s in Russia for Crowley’s sakes; my magic can’t stretch that far.”

I relax into the cushions and try to focus on the screen, silently urging any team to score again. I really could give less of a crap who scores, but someone needs to. I’ll be damned to Slough if I have to pay Baz half my daily paycheck.

There’re twenty more minutes until the 90-minute mark, so I munch anxiously on some more crisps and try to focus my nerves on the stoppage time. The minutes tick by slowly, slowly, slowly, until I feel myself fighting to keep my eyes open. It really isn’t an exciting game. I could always just…simply nod off. Even for a few minutes.

A few minutes won’t hurt anyone…

“Simon?” Baz pinches my arm, and I pull my elbow away. Somehow, I’ve managed to curl up on the opposite side of Baz, my face smushed into the sofa. “Snow, wake up. The match is over.”

I open my groggy eyes and groan. “Mmpgh. Is it?”

“Yeah, you fell asleep.” Baz pokes at my cheek. “Also, guess what.”

I roll over, my wing stretching out in the space beside me. Where Baz is. “What?”

I feel the heat of his breath as he leans down to whisper in my ear, the hairs on my arms standing up as he says, “You owe me forty pounds.”

Fuck.

The bet.

I sit up fully, matting the side of my hair back down with my hand. “I want to see the score.”

“Get up, then.”

“I am up.”

“No—Get your phone and check the score. It’s not going to change the fact that you, Snow, just lost £40 to me with a picayune and trifling bet.”

There’s a sort of silence in the air, and it’s because, I realise too late, that the TV is turned off. I shove Baz over to his own side and reach for the coffee table, where my phone is, and unlock it.

According to a Google search, Baz is right.

Christ and Crowley’s Christmas, that bloody wanker. He’s right. The match ended in a tie, and I’d missed it.

“Baz,” I throw my phone back on the couch and stand up. “Don’t I get a discount since we’re shagging?”

It takes Baz a full 30 seconds to recover from that. Stuttering slightly with a newfound pink tinge on his cheeks, he says, “You aren’t exempt from bets just because we’re boyfriends. In fact, you’re more susceptible to petty bargains just because we’re snogging.”

I groan again. My wallet’s in the armoire by the front door, so I drag my feet all the way there, giving Baz the middle finger the whole way.

“I can’t believe you’re making me pay you.” I open the drawer and chuck my wallet at Baz. It hits him in the chest. Good. “Take only forty.”

Baz grins at me. There’s still a hint of pink on his cheeks. “Calm down, Snow. I’m not going to embezzle money from you.”

“Like you are right now?”

“You lost a bet, fair and square. Stop whining about it.” Baz neatly removes two twenties out of my wallet, placing it in the back of his jeans and then tossing it back to me. I grab it just before it slips out of my hands and put it back on the drawer.

“Next game, you owe me forty.”

“That isn’t…That isn’t how it works, Simon.”

I scoff, raking my hand through my hair and walking back to the couch. “You’re buying dinner tonight.”

“Technically, you ar—”

“Fuck. Off.”

Baz smiles again, and I have to look away. He settles back into the sofa with a cheeky grin on his face (I can’t decide whether I want to kick or kiss it off) and turns back on the television. It’s paused on a match recap directly following the actual match, the two broadcasters have frozen mid-sentence, lips parted.

I make sure to keep my knees and wings far away from him as I sit on the couch. He’s still grinning. I’ve gotten more accustomed to his smile, it’s more of a lighthearted sneer than anything.

“Could you move ove—”

Baz swings his legs over mine and sits right in my leg. It’s a bit of an awkward angle, as the side of my leg is shoved up his crotch and he’s more or less standing over me than sitting on me.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Me, giving you your money’s worth.”

Before I can ask what in Crowley’s name that’s supposed to mean and how it relates to a bet, he’s holding my jaw and shutting me up with his lips.

Maybe this time won’t be an implied fucking.

[slavy77]

It’s My Fault

Raise your hand if your life hasn’t turned out quite like you thought it would.

I’m raising both my hands right now.

Honestly, when I was younger, I always thought I’d be successful and have a good life. I thought things would work out and I’d have most of what I wanted. I never really set goals or had a specific, detailed image of my life, but thought it would be really good. Family, multiple kids, lots of fun experiences.

My life hasn’t quite gotten there, at least not yet. I wanted four kids, but I’ve been blessed with one. I wanted a family at younger age, I’m starting at mid-life. I have a great wife, but it was my third try. I found my home, but years after I thought I would. Things just didn’t go the way I planned.

It’s my fault though. I had a dream, but never a strategy to get it. I knew what that dream looked like, but didn’t set a plan to get there. I made bad decisions despite knowing that they were not helping me. My lifestyle didn’t help and was really reckless to getting that dream. I was instinctual rather than calculated.

I think I could be in a much different place if I wasn’t foolish. And I was foolish. Looking back, I can see many times I should have made better choices. I could have taken steps forward instead of back or staying in place. The worst part - even at that time I knew or had a feeling it wasn’t the right path. But that’s on me.

We can pretend to be the victim of life, blaming everything that goes wrong and all our bad choices on God, society, our parents, our boss, our co-workers…whoever is in our sight at the time, but it comes down ourselves. We all the power to be great. We all can achieve greatness, even through adversity.

We can win at life even if we start at the back of the pack. There are people who have rose to greatness from the dark and dirty places in life. I had a good start, but my foolishness caused me stay still or even go backwards. We can sit around and blame everything else but ourselves, let it continue to chain us to mediocrity. Or we can break loose and fly higher than we want.

It took me a while to understand this…roughy 38 years, but I get it now. It’s on me for where my life goes. It’s on me to decide if something in my life is worth the struggle or will lead me to where I feel God wants me to go…where my purpose lies.

If you’re not where you think you should be in life, you need to look at you. All those hurdles you faced, bad decisions you made…that’s on you. Yes, you may not have been able to control how they stopped your progress, but you control your mindset. Life’s challenges come at all of us, it’s how we choose to handle them and position them in our mind. Are you going to whine about it and let it hold you back, or will you see the challenge, overcome it and learn something. Will you let those hurts prevent happiness or will look at it as way to grow and help others.

It’s your life…It’s your fault…you control what you let get to you.

[goldenscript]

badboy!yuto

adachi yuto, japanese exchange student and baseball player extraordinaire

his pitch is insane,,, latest record was 89.5 mph but he might’ve upped it (he did and he’s still aiming to surpass the best recorded speed of 105.1) since the school’s newspaper last interviewed him,,, nervously

he may be a well-known around school for being one of the top-ranking baseball players but he’s actually really intimidating 

equipped with a brooding look and an almost always resting bitch face a lot of people find him,,,, hard to approach and he likes that

being in a new country is tough - getting to know the language and the customs is like being a little kid in elementary school and it’s because of this very reason that he really hates people trying to belittle him or look down on him

it certainly doesn’t help that just by going there has made other people treat him like an actual child but if there’s yet another thing about yuto then it’s the fact that he has this need to prove others wrong about him

there was a kid in like fifth grade who totally ragged on him,, really made yuto feel like he wouldn’t amount to anything especially in baseball and ok sure he was a pretty scrawny kid at the time, a bit of a late bloomer in the puberty department but y’know everyone matures at their own pace physically and mentally

and anyway, it’s this very kid that has just driven yuto to do the very best that he can even if that means overworking himself and only really putting baseball first

because of that, his grades are pretty mediocre which is funny because he just about calculates and figure just how much he can get away with slacking over just to do the bare minimum

it works though,,, his teachers can’t complain since he is putting in effort and his coaches don’t mind so long as he’s getting the required gpa and coming to practice (which he does almost religiously)

and it’s just really remarkable that this sole drive just to prove someone wrong and get back at them for really doubting him drives him that much

his life has always been shrouded in doubt and insecurity and lots of belittlement and out of everything,,, baseball has always offered some kind of comfort to him

he’ll just stand on that field, whether it’s turf or actual grass, and finds peace in all the screaming because the moment he takes his pitcher’s stance it’s like there’s this silence and everything goes still even during his wind-up and suddenly all this power is thrown into a measly pitch and it has people roaring over him

they didn’t care if he was too foreign or too scrawny or too whatever, they were there and they appreciated his skill and i think that’s all he’s ever really wanted as he grew up into the man he is now

instead of sticking to japan, he decided to take up a full-ride scholarship to south korea and when they announced that at the sports banquet he couldn’t help but feel this swell of pride even if that one kid couldn’t see it happen

it’s a rare sight but it made him smile that day because for once he was acknowledged y’know?

anyway, coming to south korea was almost a culture shock (not by a grand scale but enough that it threw him off balance for a while)

it brought on a dry spell for him because he didn’t have friends or anyone to really be there for him to lean on because he was literally alone and not even with someone he could properly communicate with

it was frustrating on the largest scale and it made him feel even more hesitant and angry to deal with anyone other than his roommate, wooseok, who (bless his soul) is a sweetheart and always invites him to hang or play videogames,,,, sometimes he humors the giant

it took time for yuto to get acquainted with the other eight boys in wooseok’s friend circle but it worked out in weird ways

although yuto can’t exactly socialize in a huge gathering, he would spend one on one time with each of them and found comfortable niches with each so he does have a soft spot somewhere behind all his hostility

he won’t admit it a lot either but he’s more of a shower than a teller

but ok, anyway, even tho his first half of the year in south korea has been a huge struggle, he’s used it to push himself athletically and that’s why he’s getting noticed a lot more by others

they’re still intimidated as ever and rumors come flying in all directions about him killing someone with his pitch and none of the students in the journalism club want to interview him for the paper lmao

there was one brave soul but he’s still pretty,,, shaken from yuto’s rbf and you were actually out in this really cool study abroad in japan about tech culture and reported your findings and,,,,

basically you’re literally the only one who hasn’t heard of yuto aka the hardest person to interview on the baseball team so when you heard about a job that no one was willing to take because it was too scary you were just like “LMAO LEMME AT IT”

that and because he piqued your interest

to say the least, you’re pretty made to be in journalism because you refuse to half-ass anything you do and if they want to do a piece on understanding adachi yuto, literally the hottest rising star on the uni’s baseball team, then dammit you’re gonna do it

so, that’s exactly what you do

you go and hunt him down and approach his coach about interviewing him whenever there’s free time because you’re respectful like that y’know and when the older man grins at you and gives you the ok, you approach him on the bench and kindly talk to him about doing an interview

that alone throws him off because 1) you’re not scared of him??? usually just approaching him is nerve wracking for everyone and anyone but here you are just sauntering over like it’s nobody’s business

he just acts like it’s nothing though, coolly saying, “yeah sure whatever - we can do it right now”

“now?” you ask this with some confusion since you usually have some pretty long, extensive interviews just to get a good piece out because that’s how you are - you’re thorough

not many people in the club agree with you since it’s almost like a waste of time to them but neither you nor do the editor care very much because you put out really good stuff

even some of the stuff you wrote in high school are still circulating around as examples of what one should do and your methods too

 you’re not very black and white, you like grey areas and understanding concepts and people especially when they’re misunderstood and yuto is definitely no exception to that

so when he nods and simply says, “i know this won’t take long anyway, so why not right? we shouldn’t waste either of our time”

of course this throws you off,,, but you just nod and start off with some simple questions (to you) like what made him pursue baseball, how much he practices, what are some of his lucky items and pregame ritual habits, and like what are his goals as a player

like i said you’re thorough and even though you said these were simple, yuto was expecting things like “what’s your favorite part of playing baseball?” (pitching, duh) & “is mlb your goal for the future?” they’re pretty basic - during that first interview, he got even simpler things like what was his favorite color and what was his favorite base, and it made him hate that interview,,, significantly

the only redeeming factor of it was how cool they made him sound with his pitching speed record and that’s of course something he prides himself in but it felt so superficial and off,,, he didn’t like it

he didn’t quite feel belittled or anything but it made him disappointed that despite all his hard work,,, no one really cared enough to get to know him ya feel?

it’s silly but part of him working so hard is also for attention and that validation that he never vocally desires

so for you,,, to actually ask him things outside of his pitching speed record and what he plans outside of school and all that,,, is kinda nice

you can tell by the way he loosens up just a tad that he just has really high defenses and it makes you wonder why,, ,like by journalist instincts but genuine curiosity

and you get your answers (”this kid in school,” “four hours minimum a day,” “this keychain my mom gave me” (it’s this little pochacco bc she was like 99.9% certain that he would go into soccer LOL) and “chew hubba bubba gum - the kinda from the roll or it’s a no go, must wear something red SOMEWHERE, and the keychain has to be nearby”, and “surpass 105.1″) not that you’re in any rush because you really do like to get to know the people you’re interviewing

you’re the sort of person that believes in building connections with others - it’s really how one gets a good article and how to thrive in life like although you don’t talk to everyone you know / met on a daily basis you’d like to think that as long as those relationships weren’t superficial during that time you spent with them then it’s worthwhile

so you find all his answers really endearing and kind of cute even though it’s this stoic dude answering all your questions like he has other things to do and ofc you’re not even offended in the slightest because you understand that people get stiff over these things and it feels like people just haven’t been answering him the right questions anyway

but you being you, asks him the one questions he’s actually hoped to hear: “why 105.1?” 

he grins at you, like a genuine one that actually blows you away because his cheekbones are so gloriously prominent and light is just shining in his eyes and honestly if you were a photographer you would’ve really liked to capture this moment but before he can answer his coach is calling him onto the field and he turns to you almost apologetically

but you wave him off with a grin: “guess this means we gotta continue this interview right?” 

a flash of relief washes over his features before he gives you a brief nod, “guess so” 

you have your tape recorder still going, an heirloom of your mom’s because she loved journalism just as much as you do before she had you and in a way you’re fulfilling this dream for the both of you, and instruct him to recite his number for you

he looks a little exasperated but he does it and grumbles a farewell before jogging back onto the field and you go back to your dorm to listen through the interview, wanting to be thorough, and when you get to the part where he recites his number you jot that down with a wide grin

because deep down you really do think yuto is great - you don’t know it with complete certainty but that brief interview was more than enough so you shoot him a text about meeting up on thursday

to which he replies quite quickly in an affirmation

when the two of you meet, it’s at the park by the school’s garden and it’s absolutely beautiful - you know it’s completely unfamiliar to many people because you really have to look so you wind up finding yuto just take him there and he’s kinda flustered about it but it’s cute on him 

you take a moment to turn on your tape recorder and turn to him to ask the question you both left on 

his answer: “it’s the world record for the fastest pitch but i want to have the fastest pitch” 

there’s still a whole round of questions for him to answer and after a good hour of just bantering, you actually find him endearing and funny and really sweet beneath the brooding rbf

and the more he’s with you, the more he wants to open up even if it just for some interview because he feels acknowledged and appreciated 

with you, there’s something different that stirs in his chest - the ease that he felt after getting acquainted with wooseok comes with you but even more so

he really likes the way the gardenias and lilies complement your features, how the sun shines on you two and you bask in it

for reasons beyond him, he’s actually kinda sad that after this he won’t see much of you because there’s still a lot he’d like to know and ask you but between answering your questions and thinking ahead, it’s hard to interject his own considering it’s his interview

and tbh you’re pretty sad about it too but that sort of thing doesn’t hit you until it’s over and you’re playing the tape recording over and suddenly it’s like,,,, well, you want to know more about yuto

so you make a decision

after you’re done with the piece, you hit yuto up and let him read the manuscript and he’s in freakin’ awe because no one has ever really talked about him in the way that you did and he just turns to you and says “thank you” in the most sincerest voice and your heart truly feels like it might fall out of your chest 

you just tell him that “it was my pleasure” because it really was!!

a small moment passes between you two, but wooseok comes in and you two get embarrassed so you excuse yourself to go prepare for the final publishing 

wooseok totally teases yuto btw but one glare from the latter has the former cackling before he goes off into the shower

“you’re so whipped dude”

“shut. up.”

“it’s the truth~~~~~~”

“sleep with one eye open, woo”

when it gets published, everyone is freakin’ amazed ofc and those who read the piece actually get some proper insight on the misunderstood baseball player, and you hand deliver a copy to him because you’re so freakin’ ecstatic and proud because everyone loved it and it looks so great and 

well yuto is really happy and seeing happy is an absolute blessing 

as flustered as he is, he actually expresses a better expression of gratitude and tells you that “no one has ever done something like this for me and i really, truly appreciate it” 

you can feel your heart thudding and your throat closing up because he continues “and honestly, you’ve been on my mind like crazy y/n”

all you can manage is a “why?” but he’s relieved to see blush dusting on your cheeks

“because i want to get to know you and i want to understand you and i-” he whispers the last half: “thinkyou’rereallycute”

you’re almost in shock but you’re too elated tbh and you embarrassingly say, “i think you’re really cute too,,,,” 

so you both spend this impromptu first date wandering the park and going to the campus cafe and just talking but he lets you talk 

 in fact, he wants to know everything about you - why you started journalism and why you decided to take him on and what your favorite color is and what your favorite song is and all those little things that people tend to forget but him? 

he remembers them 

he remembers everything you tell him and he finds it so adorable how your nose scrunches and your features light up and how much you have to say even though you’re usually the one asking the questions

and it just feels so damn good to have someone show interest in you

like yeah sure you’ve made some strong connections and friendships but the way yuto asks you questions and absorbs your answers, even inputting his own feelings, you feel so happy because this isn’t some obligatory “tell me about yourself” it’s a genuine “please tell me more” 

each day you two learn new things about each other too which is really great if you didn’t realize just how mischievous he is 

LOL like it seems to be a hidden personality trait of his but you’ve come to find that being with yuto has become a series of getting soft pranked or just watching others get hardcore pranked and it’s kinda funny

you really wouldn’t expect it from him but the way he softly pranks you is just too adorable for you to get upset with

like well, the first time he ever told you he loved you, he steals your tape recorder from you - not really steal it but one minute it’s on your desk and another it’s in his hands and he’s fumbling with it but he manages to record over the blank tape and goes “y/n, did you know you’re an amazing person?” 

you can’t help but laugh because he has one of those sports newscaster voice and feigned serious face as he holds the tape recorder out to you in wait of an answer so you just shake your head “no sir, i did not” 

he grins, “well, did you know that i, adachi yuto, love you for being the amazing person you are?” 

and even though his cheeks are so blatantly red and yours are too, you’re stunned 

“i-i did not know that,,,,” and you lean in close and place your hand over his on the recorder and say, “but did you know that i, l/n y/n, love you too?” 

and he just pulls you into the sweetest kiss because he just feels so goddamn happy with you, so content, and most of all, so understood

the rest of the boys are really grateful for you because as comfortable as yuto has been with them, you’ve made it much easier for him and his transition because of the article

a lot of the time, people will come up to him and talk about his stats and baseball which he’s actually happy to converse about 

or even those people that kind of judged him at first, they’re not so,,,,, prejudiced y’know?

they have such a great insight on him as a player and it really is because of all the things you put into that article and you’re so damn proud of it

when you get thanked and welcomed into the group, they adore you man

they love how you aren’t afraid to tease yuto or go along with his playful antics and they love that you bring out this undeniably soft side to him that makes even wooseok go “awwww, my roomie has a heart~~” which is of course replied to with a glare that has even you giggling because that’s just how yuto is

like he’s still pretty intimidating looking but most of the school doesn’t think that as badly - it’s usually people on the street in the city

though there were a few people to stop you two because y’all just looked like The Aesthetic couple and it left you both really flustered 

even as you both continue on in your relationship, there are moments where you just fluster each other because y’all just so damn cute and neither of you two can take it

but it works - everything between you just works and it’s kinda perfect in an odd little way 

sometimes you bicker when he gets a little tsundere with you or if he pranks you a little too much (like hides your stuffed pochacco he won you at the fair very unfairly - poor milk bottle worker LOL) 

in the end, you’ll both apologize because you’re both that hyperaware of your actions and you’re both very accepting too 

you can pick up on things that he doesn’t realize and somehow he can do the same with you - with each other, it’s just.... right 

you understand him and he understands you, and honestly, neither of you could ask for anything better than that~~~~

(also lemme just say that on one of your gifts to him was a badtz maru charm for his bat or anything really because it reminded you of him and how pouty he got but literally everyone agreed)

(he hung it btw and it’s considered his lucky charm because he got his pitching speed up to 95.6 mph!!!!!!!!)

[axiomabstractions]

Balancing Patience and Urgency: Part 1 of 3

TLDR: If you feel my writing can be dense at times, I’ll be working on it 😊 SKIP TO THE ALL CAPS

I would like to preface this post by briefly outlining some changes I’ll be trying to make to my writing process over the coming months. Historically, I’ve always chosen for my writing to be the most refined form of communication I share with others. This tendency of mine has been the main reason I usually default to speaking rather than writing (I’ve done a lot more speaking than listening over the years as well). I’ve always thought myself a more capable writer than a speaker, but the time and energy required for writing has always far outweighed that of speaking for me. I want to try to change that. I want my writing to become more of a free-flowing, natural process for me, so that I can both provide more digestible content to my readers as well as participate in the writing process more casually. No more going over my piece 6 times trying to catch every grammar mistake and ensuring that every idea has been aptly put. I want this to be more like I’m sitting in the room talking to you and speaking in a language you can easily understand. Hopefully, my efforts to do as much will become apparent soon, but I just wanted to throw this little heads up out there.

WIITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY, LET’S GET INTO THE MEAT OF WHAT I FEEL INSPIRED TO WRITE ABOUT TODAY, WHICH COINCIDENTALLY FALLS RIGHT ON THE COAT TAILS OF THE LAST THING I WROTE!!!

I mentioned last time that I could write a bit about my struggle (ongoing) with balancing urgency and patience. I think the best starting point is explaining how I learned I was having trouble with this balance, and the development of my thoughts surrounding the issue since then. There were a few things that I needed to experience first before I was primed to paint the nice, pretty picture I’m about to try to paint. There was an empty dream board on my wall, a few separate phone calls with loved ones, a temporary ‘F you’ to females (sorry, no offense meant. You’re no worse off for it, I promise.), and a couple months of working myself a little too hard for my own good.

The dream board was something I put up, on my wall, around April-May 2020, with the intention of doing what you do with a dream board… filling it up with things I wanted to manifest in my life through one means or another. I didn’t put a single thing on it until February 2021. Clearly, I’m a slow starter. No, not really. I don’t believe that. Sometimes it just takes me a while to see what’s right in front of me.

Anyway, it was around the first week of August 2020 that a friend and I took a weekend trip to Utah. My dad called me in the late afternoon/evening, while I was taking my turn behind the wheel, on that 8-9 hour road trip. I forget the exact context of our conversation. It was probably about 1/3 what was going on with him at work, 1/3 him venting about his issues, and 1/3 me venting about my issues. Pretty typical stuff. However, there was a point he was trying to make that simply wasn’t coming across to me the way he wanted it to. I can’t remember the words he was using, but it just wasn’t hitting home in a meaningful way. It may have been a couple days, a week, or a month, I’m not sure how long it took, but what my dad had been trying to communicate to me on that phone call eventually stuck in the form of “start providing for yourself the things you want to experience/have in your life.” I know, seems pretty simple, like “Okay. Yeah, isn’t that what all adults do?” but what I was able to take away was much more powerful than just that for me.

It wasn’t until after I had understood this from what my dad told me that I realized, I mean really realized, that the dream board was still empty, after months. Like I already knew it was, subconsciously, but it had always just been something I knew I needed to work on. It wasn’t pressing until I looked a little deeper at what an empty dream board actually meant. Why would a space that I designated, on my own wall, to fill with my own dreams, goals, thoughts, desires, wants, needs, fantasies, etc. be empty? As I laid in bed, one autumn day in 2020, staring at the wall, the empty, drab, lifeless wall, this question, and more importantly the answer, fell into my lap all at once. I didn’t know what I wanted.

When it came to answering these sorts of questions:

“What does Mason want is his day-to-day life?”

“What would make Mason happy more often?”

“What does Mason want to spend his time doing?”

“What does Mason care about pursuing for Mason?”

I didn’t really have any answers that I could lean back on confidently. This was a truth about myself I had some trouble processing. It left me in a temporary state of shock and bewilderment. Surely this could not be right. I was almost 27 years old and didn’t know what I wanted for myself? Just total amazement at myself, right? Almost 27 years, and I still hadn’t found good answers for questions so close to home. For all the disappointment I felt at realizing this, as I’m sure anyone would, it fit almost perfectly into the story of myself that I began re-authoring in summer 2019, so I could hardly ignore it. The more closely I looked at it, the more certain I was that this was an essential piece of the story I’d been missing.

I believe it’s a weird thing that happened, during that time in my life when I so strongly identified with the idea of being smarter than most other people, that I gradually developed a disregard for others’ opinions on what would or might be good for me. Not to say you should listen to every Jack and Jill with an opinion. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink. However, I think I probably swayed so far in this direction that I crippled myself along the way. From probably about 19-24, I wasn’t earnestly asking myself questions, such as the ones above, which I think every young adult should be answering for themselves. I think I had such a strong subconscious self-assurance or arrogance that I wasn’t even equipped to honestly scrutinize myself. Stupid. I know. Luckily, getting honest with myself about not knowing what I wanted opened the gateway to practicing a different kind of patience, patience with myself and the process of growing.

Something that I’m seeing more and more, as I grow older and continue to evaluate my past, is that I’ve pretty much always been impatient with myself and with how quickly or easily I’m able to get what I want. There are a few exceptions, but you can take it as the general rule that I haven’t successfully committed myself to, and seen through to completion, anything in my life which has posed more than a mediocre challenge. I know that’s not something to brag about, but it makes this next piece significant; realizing I didn’t know what I want forced me into a position where I had to be okay with not having answers. These aren’t just answers to any questions, either. Only I can answer these questions for myself, and I need to be consciously committed to the process of finding those answers or it will never get done. I cannot forego patience, else I’ll only be committing myself to failure and disappointment.

Once I was okay with the not having answers part, I quickly realized it presented a plethora of possibility where none had existed before, at least none I was able to see. My perspective soon changed from “WOW it’s been months, and I haven’t put anything at all on this damn board!” to “Now I’ve got this mostly blank canvas of what’s important to me in my life that I have the opportunity and privilege to build for myself at my leisure.” While the latter is a much better state of mind to be in, it still didn’t answer, nor did it even bring into focus the question of how to balance patience and urgency. Notice I said “at my leisure.” #calculated. I still needed to find my sense of urgency, which was the only way to reveal to myself the patience I lacked…

More next time

[saleggdbsneakers-blog]

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[saleshoesggdb-blog]

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[shoppingforsale-blog]

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[joejstrickl]

12 Self-Evaluating Branding Tips to Try

Truthful self-evaluation can be difficult, but it’s an invaluable trait for a leader to have. How do you objectively examine your brand, messaging and public perception?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Calculate a Customer Satisfaction Score 

We keep track of our customer satisfaction score by sending our users a quick, simple survey asking them to rank their experience with our product. We ask them for their feedback after each support ticket and review the results with the company weekly to ensure we’re on track with our goals. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

2. Monitor Mentions

We are constantly tracking our mentions in the media as well as Twitter and Facebook to understand how the public is feeling about our brand. This is useful to figure out if you’re going in a direction that your customers love, hate or are indifferent about. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

3. Look at the Metrics

Look at metrics in terms of followers, leads, changes in influencer ranking, etc. Numbers tell me if what I’m doing is working or not. They typically do not lie or hide the truth, so I have to take them seriously. If changes show a loss of followers or fewer leads, I know I’m not doing it right and need to change. – Murray Newlands, ChattyPeople

4. Surround Yourself with People Who Will Call You Out

Authenticity becomes more difficult to maintain as you achieve more success and are increasingly surrounded by colleagues and friends who (perhaps subconsciously) view you as a resource to be exploited. Surround yourself with people who have known you long enough to call you out and ask them to do so. Check in monthly or quarterly with them to calibrate how truthful your self-evaluation is. – Erik Severinghaus, SpringCM

5. Have Someone Help You

Take all emotion and bias out of the equation and take a truly objective look at your brand, messaging and public perception. Another idea is to get a trusted associate or colleague to do this for you. Look at strengths and weaknesses. Give yourself a mental pat on the back for the good, then fix what’s needed as far as the weaknesses. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

6. Engage with Your Customers

Your customers are the most honest audience you’ll ever have. You can be sure they’ll tell you if they don’t like something. However, you have to ask them. Otherwise, they’ll just voice any disapproval silently by staying away. Ask questions on your blog and social media pages. Create polls and surveys. Pay close attention to online reviews. This all provides objective feedback about your brand. – Shawn Porat, Scorely

7. Watch the Money

Companies either grow or shrink and money is the barometer for measuring your company’s success. If your brand, messaging and public perception are strong, then money should be flowing in. If there are problems with any of those traits, chances are solid that the money is dwindling too. If the brand, messaging and public perception are strong but you are losing cash, then you have internal issues. – Thomas Minieri, Minieri & Company

8. Conduct Surveys

Creating an opportunity to survey both employees and your consumers is an invaluable way to gauge your strengths and weaknesses. Third-party companies provide software to anonymously survey employees about their employment experience. Following up with customers personally after orders and asking leading questions over social media and surveys is a great gauge of your honest performance. – Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs

9. Get Outside and Inside Perspectives 

Being objective while self-evaluating is a hard task. It takes practice to be able to admit when you could have done something better. The best way to objectively self-evaluate is to get an outside and inside perspective. For the outside perspective, the best way is to read your company’s reviews from clients; for an inside perspective ask your employees their opinion on improvements. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS

10. Leverage User Experience Testing

Our company utilizes user experience or UX testing on a consistent basis to gauge how our company and brand messaging is performing. The platform serves as a type of targeted focus group to find out what is working and what needs to be made more clear. We ask 10 questions that the user answers while using our site. – Brian Greenberg, Life Insurance Quotes

11. Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs are their own worst enemies by being their biggest critics. This trait almost forces the entrepreneur to outwork everyone, for the fear of failing is a great motivator. If you really are your biggest critic, honestly evaluating your decisions, the business strategy and the business results become pretty easy as nobody would be as harsh as you are. Accepting mediocrity just isn’t an option. – Shawn Schulze, HomeArea.com

12. Become the Customer

I become my own customer by making note of everything I would want to see in a service provider in terms of value, service, communication, problem handling and more. Then, I look at each of these and determine if I would actually enjoy what I’m providing or not. I can be truthful because I have to use the same criteria that I would put on another company and I want to find things wrong so I know where I can make things better. We have to be self-critical in order to see where improvements must be made. – Peter Daisyme, Hostt

The post 12 Self-Evaluating Branding Tips to Try appeared first on Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career.

[markjsousa]

12 Self-Evaluating Branding Tips to Try

Truthful self-evaluation can be difficult, but it’s an invaluable trait for a leader to have. How do you objectively examine your brand, messaging and public perception?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Calculate a Customer Satisfaction Score 

We keep track of our customer satisfaction score by sending our users a quick, simple survey asking them to rank their experience with our product. We ask them for their feedback after each support ticket and review the results with the company weekly to ensure we’re on track with our goals. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

2. Monitor Mentions

We are constantly tracking our mentions in the media as well as Twitter and Facebook to understand how the public is feeling about our brand. This is useful to figure out if you’re going in a direction that your customers love, hate or are indifferent about. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

3. Look at the Metrics

Look at metrics in terms of followers, leads, changes in influencer ranking, etc. Numbers tell me if what I’m doing is working or not. They typically do not lie or hide the truth, so I have to take them seriously. If changes show a loss of followers or fewer leads, I know I’m not doing it right and need to change. – Murray Newlands, ChattyPeople

4. Surround Yourself with People Who Will Call You Out

Authenticity becomes more difficult to maintain as you achieve more success and are increasingly surrounded by colleagues and friends who (perhaps subconsciously) view you as a resource to be exploited. Surround yourself with people who have known you long enough to call you out and ask them to do so. Check in monthly or quarterly with them to calibrate how truthful your self-evaluation is. – Erik Severinghaus, SpringCM

5. Have Someone Help You

Take all emotion and bias out of the equation and take a truly objective look at your brand, messaging and public perception. Another idea is to get a trusted associate or colleague to do this for you. Look at strengths and weaknesses. Give yourself a mental pat on the back for the good, then fix what’s needed as far as the weaknesses. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

6. Engage with Your Customers

Your customers are the most honest audience you’ll ever have. You can be sure they’ll tell you if they don’t like something. However, you have to ask them. Otherwise, they’ll just voice any disapproval silently by staying away. Ask questions on your blog and social media pages. Create polls and surveys. Pay close attention to online reviews. This all provides objective feedback about your brand. – Shawn Porat, Scorely

7. Watch the Money

Companies either grow or shrink and money is the barometer for measuring your company’s success. If your brand, messaging and public perception are strong, then money should be flowing in. If there are problems with any of those traits, chances are solid that the money is dwindling too. If the brand, messaging and public perception are strong but you are losing cash, then you have internal issues. – Thomas Minieri, Minieri & Company

8. Conduct Surveys

Creating an opportunity to survey both employees and your consumers is an invaluable way to gauge your strengths and weaknesses. Third-party companies provide software to anonymously survey employees about their employment experience. Following up with customers personally after orders and asking leading questions over social media and surveys is a great gauge of your honest performance. – Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs

9. Get Outside and Inside Perspectives 

Being objective while self-evaluating is a hard task. It takes practice to be able to admit when you could have done something better. The best way to objectively self-evaluate is to get an outside and inside perspective. For the outside perspective, the best way is to read your company’s reviews from clients; for an inside perspective ask your employees their opinion on improvements. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS

10. Leverage User Experience Testing

Our company utilizes user experience or UX testing on a consistent basis to gauge how our company and brand messaging is performing. The platform serves as a type of targeted focus group to find out what is working and what needs to be made more clear. We ask 10 questions that the user answers while using our site. – Brian Greenberg, Life Insurance Quotes

11. Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs are their own worst enemies by being their biggest critics. This trait almost forces the entrepreneur to outwork everyone, for the fear of failing is a great motivator. If you really are your biggest critic, honestly evaluating your decisions, the business strategy and the business results become pretty easy as nobody would be as harsh as you are. Accepting mediocrity just isn’t an option. – Shawn Schulze, HomeArea.com

12. Become the Customer

I become my own customer by making note of everything I would want to see in a service provider in terms of value, service, communication, problem handling and more. Then, I look at each of these and determine if I would actually enjoy what I’m providing or not. I can be truthful because I have to use the same criteria that I would put on another company and I want to find things wrong so I know where I can make things better. We have to be self-critical in order to see where improvements must be made. – Peter Daisyme, Hostt

The post 12 Self-Evaluating Branding Tips to Try appeared first on Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career.

[glenmenlow]

12 Self-Evaluating Branding Tips to Try

Truthful self-evaluation can be difficult, but it’s an invaluable trait for a leader to have. How do you objectively examine your brand, messaging and public perception?

These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC has also launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Calculate a Customer Satisfaction Score 

We keep track of our customer satisfaction score by sending our users a quick, simple survey asking them to rank their experience with our product. We ask them for their feedback after each support ticket and review the results with the company weekly to ensure we’re on track with our goals. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner

2. Monitor Mentions

We are constantly tracking our mentions in the media as well as Twitter and Facebook to understand how the public is feeling about our brand. This is useful to figure out if you’re going in a direction that your customers love, hate or are indifferent about. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights

3. Look at the Metrics

Look at metrics in terms of followers, leads, changes in influencer ranking, etc. Numbers tell me if what I’m doing is working or not. They typically do not lie or hide the truth, so I have to take them seriously. If changes show a loss of followers or fewer leads, I know I’m not doing it right and need to change. – Murray Newlands, ChattyPeople

4. Surround Yourself with People Who Will Call You Out

Authenticity becomes more difficult to maintain as you achieve more success and are increasingly surrounded by colleagues and friends who (perhaps subconsciously) view you as a resource to be exploited. Surround yourself with people who have known you long enough to call you out and ask them to do so. Check in monthly or quarterly with them to calibrate how truthful your self-evaluation is. – Erik Severinghaus, SpringCM

5. Have Someone Help You

Take all emotion and bias out of the equation and take a truly objective look at your brand, messaging and public perception. Another idea is to get a trusted associate or colleague to do this for you. Look at strengths and weaknesses. Give yourself a mental pat on the back for the good, then fix what’s needed as far as the weaknesses. – Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

6. Engage with Your Customers

Your customers are the most honest audience you’ll ever have. You can be sure they’ll tell you if they don’t like something. However, you have to ask them. Otherwise, they’ll just voice any disapproval silently by staying away. Ask questions on your blog and social media pages. Create polls and surveys. Pay close attention to online reviews. This all provides objective feedback about your brand. – Shawn Porat, Scorely

7. Watch the Money

Companies either grow or shrink and money is the barometer for measuring your company’s success. If your brand, messaging and public perception are strong, then money should be flowing in. If there are problems with any of those traits, chances are solid that the money is dwindling too. If the brand, messaging and public perception are strong but you are losing cash, then you have internal issues. – Thomas Minieri, Minieri & Company

8. Conduct Surveys

Creating an opportunity to survey both employees and your consumers is an invaluable way to gauge your strengths and weaknesses. Third-party companies provide software to anonymously survey employees about their employment experience. Following up with customers personally after orders and asking leading questions over social media and surveys is a great gauge of your honest performance. – Brandon Stapper, Nonstop Signs

9. Get Outside and Inside Perspectives 

Being objective while self-evaluating is a hard task. It takes practice to be able to admit when you could have done something better. The best way to objectively self-evaluate is to get an outside and inside perspective. For the outside perspective, the best way is to read your company’s reviews from clients; for an inside perspective ask your employees their opinion on improvements. – Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS

10. Leverage User Experience Testing

Our company utilizes user experience or UX testing on a consistent basis to gauge how our company and brand messaging is performing. The platform serves as a type of targeted focus group to find out what is working and what needs to be made more clear. We ask 10 questions that the user answers while using our site. – Brian Greenberg, Life Insurance Quotes

11. Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard

Many of the most successful entrepreneurs are their own worst enemies by being their biggest critics. This trait almost forces the entrepreneur to outwork everyone, for the fear of failing is a great motivator. If you really are your biggest critic, honestly evaluating your decisions, the business strategy and the business results become pretty easy as nobody would be as harsh as you are. Accepting mediocrity just isn’t an option. – Shawn Schulze, HomeArea.com

12. Become the Customer

I become my own customer by making note of everything I would want to see in a service provider in terms of value, service, communication, problem handling and more. Then, I look at each of these and determine if I would actually enjoy what I’m providing or not. I can be truthful because I have to use the same criteria that I would put on another company and I want to find things wrong so I know where I can make things better. We have to be self-critical in order to see where improvements must be made. – Peter Daisyme, Hostt

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5 Things to Stop Doing in Your 20s

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Your 20s are an amazing time of life. That’s why it pains me to see that many flounder in the deep end. Frankly, many of us are doing things they shouldn’t.

The truth is that the foundation you build in your 20s will shape the rest of your life. Studies back this up: 80 percent of life’s most defining moments happen before the age 35, researchers have found. Here are five things you should stop doing:

1.) STOP LOOKING FOR EVERYONE’S APPROVAL.

Some call you part of the “Me Me Me Generation.” Truthfully, many 20-somethings are plagued with the need for constant approval. Everyone around you doesn’t have to approve of you. Sure, validation makes you feel good. But when this becomes your end goal, you arbitrarily change yourself in order to please everyone. Some people will like you. Some will dislike you. Keep doing what you were called to do.

Your self-worth is not based on your social media “likes.”

Take a breather. It’s OK if you didn’t break 100 likes. Double or triple digit “likes” do not make you enough. You are more than a social media profile.

Don’t allow people to tell you that you’re not capable because you’re young.

1 Timothy 4:12 said it best: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” One classic example: William Wilberforce. At the age of 21 and while still a student, Wilberforce was elected a Member of Parliament.

Don’t allow others to determine your future.

Don’t let others tell you what you can or can’t do especially when it comes to accomplishing your biggest dreams. Shoot for the stars. Don’t sell yourself short. The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, usually end up changing it. Think Steve Jobs!

Don’t play the comparison game.

Oscar Wilde was right: “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Stop comparing your behind-the-scenes with someone else’s highlight reel. You are handcrafted and custom-made by a perfect Creator.

2.) STOP SETTLING FOR THE EASY WAY—IT WON’T TAKE YOU WHERE YOU WANT.

Don’t be lazy.

Everyone knows being lazy has negative consequences. But why you do you keep being lazy? No one has become successful by being lazy. Take ownership. Take initiative. Put in the hard work. Show up early.

Work in pursuit of your calling, not just money.

Don’t fall into the trap of the American Dream. Most people end up becoming a slave to money. Rather, embrace your vocational calling and become the best at what you are called to do. Money will likely follow.

Leave your comfort zone.

Show me someone who never leaves their comfort zone and I’ll show you someone immersed in mediocrity. Nothing great happens in the comfort zone. It’s where dreams go to die. Stretch yourself. Experiment and explore. The more you engage in calculated risks, the more you’ll learn about yourself and how to succeed.

Don’t play victim.

Have you ever said this to yourself? “I honestly am the victim in this situation!” Being a victim is the viewpoint that something is being done to you. Being responsible is not about whether or not you were victimized but your outlook on the situation. You can choose to take the responsible point of view. This will create the incredible liberty for you to move forward in your life and create boundless opportunities.

3.) STOP THINKING THE LIFE YOU WANT WILL COME WITHOUT INTENTIONALITY.

Don’t be passive.

Passivity won’t get you anywhere. Don’t let life just happen to you. Be intentional, not accidental. Go get it. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll eventually fall for anything.

Talk less about improving your life and actually do more.

Talk is cheap. A mentor told me, “What you do speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.” Your choices, not your talk, will determine your destination. Write a list. Prioritize everything you need to get done to reach your vision. Hold yourself accountable. Push yourself. Be a doer.

Procrastinate less.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice. Stop procrastinating.

Be less busy.

Yes, having too much to do can be a form of passivity. Being busy is easy. In the 21st century, it’s a badge of honor. But being busy doesn’t translate into high productivity. In a world that’s deluged with to-dos, focus on working smarter, not harder. Focus on your stop-doing list instead. This will help you focus on what matters most. Here are a few books that will help you.

4.) STOP EXPECTING HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS TO JUST HAPPEN.

Do away with casual dating.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against dating, but if you have zero intention of marrying the person you’re dating, you probably should stop dating. You may stay in a relationship because you’re scared to be alone and pray things will somehow get better as life goes on. Face it: Dating with no vision is a recipe of failure.

Leave toxic people alone.

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Cut the cord and let those toxic people go. It’s not easy to walk away from these relationships, but that is part of the process of adulting.

Don’t gossip about others.

This isn’t Mean Girls, we’re not in high school anymore. Look for the best in others and talk about that.

Allow yourself the potential to feel pain.

Suffering is part of life. Sure, no one wants to constantly be in a state of suffering. But if you’re not in pain, you’re probably not growing. A mentor once told me that growth equals change, change equals loss, loss equals pain, so therefore, growth equals pain. If you’re scared to take the risk, you’re most likely not going to grow. Embrace the pain.

5.) STOP EXPECTING YOUR IDEAL FUTURE TO HAPPEN WITHOUT WORK.

Accept that you don’t know everything.

You don’t. Just because you watched 17 YouTube clips on one topic doesn’t make you an expert. I know this is a harsh reality because I also experienced it. Instead, submit yourself under a leader worth following. Grind it out. This might take a year, five years or 10 years. Sooner or later, you’ll be an expert.

Dream bigger.

Mark Batterson said, “If your dream doesn’t scare you, it’s too small.” As you grow up, the realities of life will convince you otherwise. Safe will never get you to awesome. Your 20s are the time to explore and experiment. Go big or go home.

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