#just growing up different and knowing theres something just fundamentally wrong with you but being unable to change that

[plantwriting]

Sometimes you just gotta come up with the weirdest fucking AUs for your own mental health so here it fucking goes:

Galloway with some kind of link to the feyrealm. Galloway where children go missing and get replaced by creatures that look like people but aren’t. Galloway where the swamps surrounding the town are filled with gnomes and trolls, witches and fairies, magical creatures that are as terrifying as they are interesting.

Galloway, where the child of the Deep’s was stolen as a baby and replaced with a copy. Rolan, who was never normal, who didn’t fit in, who couldn’t make friends. Rolan, whose parents punished him whenever he acted too weird, who refused to believe their son wasn’t really theirs, who tried to teach the forest and deals and mischievous spirit out of their child through any means necessary. Rolan, who never understood why he couldn’t just be normal.

Donna Rand, who watched the small child in the crib she’d put him in last evening, and knew it wasn’t her own child. Donna, who picked up the small boy into her arms anyway, fed and clothed him, loved him no matter where he came from. ‘Timothy’ who grew up and knew that wasn’t really who he was. ‘Tim’ who spent his days gardening and exploring the woods, knowing he’d be safe there. Rand, who knew his father hated him for not being the original, for not being human, but who learnt to live with it. Rand, who just hoped Timothy was loved as well, where ever he was.

Kian, who didn’t grow up in Galloway. A nameless child that was taken and replaced, and whose parents never even noticed the difference. A child that was weird and uncanny, with a singsongy voice and who seemed to dance with each step he took. A child who spent more time with wildlife than people because animals and flowers didn’t find him unnatural. A child who craved a family and a world he couldnt remember, always so alone, who eventually chose a name for himself because maybe that would make him into a person finally.

Three changeling children, who eventually met each other. Rolan, who met two boys so unapologetically everything his parents hated, who didn’t shy away from the swamps surrounding their homes, who pranked their neighbors for fun, who let him finally be himself. He wasnt a human, and with them he didnt need to pretend.

Rand, who met two boys that never looked at him and wished he was someone else. Who had nothing to compare him to, who would never see him as ‘Tim’. They’d only see him as Rand, as one of them, as someone to be loved because of, not despite.

Kian, who found two boys that treated him like a person. Who listened to his music without discomfort or hatred, who were like him but were still loved anyways, who let him finally be someone. Kian, who finally saw that he could be loved and wanted despite everything that he was.

Three changeling children, who had each other. Until the swamps took a second child from the Rands. Until Rolan found the original child he’d been replaced with. Until Kian had the people he loved destroyed by people like him. Until suddenly, one early summer day, they didn’t have each other anymore.

[melonsharks]

Tell us everything about the parent trap au immediately please please please

to give u an insanely quick rundown with a wip art i have:

aziraphale as elizabeth. wedding dress designer under his pen name A.Z. Fell. (hes an artist as confirmed in s2 and the whole "drawing on napkins" thing elizabeth would do appeals to me immensely)

crowley as nick. owns a vineyard. I NEED HIM TO OWN A VINEYARD SO BAD. shoutout to Old Vines on ao3 for changing me in a fundamental way. he makes wines and he tends to the vines and he is so passionate about it to an abusurdist degree. he yells at his vines when they arent growing right. you already knowwww.

when they meet for the first time, they don’t meet on a boat like in the movie, they actually meet at a wedding party :J crowley was a wine collector, just starting out. he loved offering aziraphale samplings of his most vintage collection out of impulse. (he likes seeing the way aziraphale savors them) (he’s besotted) Wants to own his own vineyard one day. aziraphale, on the other hand, has dreams of becoming a fashion designer of sorts, always drawing ideas on any scraps of paper he can find. his designs are very old fashioned, but thats like… part of the appeal. his work very much reflects who he is, and the people who flock to it understand that.

they enter this kind of… whirlwind relationship, they get married, and then eventually adopt two golden haired blue eyed baby boys. twins. :J warlock and adam.

they break things off because aziraphale leaves... alluding to their recent breakup in season two, the reason he left was because "we both clearly had very different ideas on where our lives were going. so. i packed up and left." (parallel s2 divorce 😋 they don’t know how to talk to each other) (aziraphale throws a book at his head after this argument, like the hairdryer in the movie LOL. it was pride and prejudice. crowley still has it.)

aziraphale leaves with adam. warlock is left with crowley. crowley eventually leaves London because he finds he cant stand being anywhere near Aziraphale (hes just irresistible in that way), and he goes to California where he finally fulfills his dream of owning a vineyard. a nice one on Napa, Northern California.

Aziraphale’s wedding dresses become more and more well known, Adam grows well-adjusted. Same kid you know from the show and book, natural born leader, a good head on his shoulders. (Aziraphale has no idea why Adam is like that, but he is so proud)

Crowley’s vineyard (The Garden Of Eden) grows and grows… Warlock is spoiled rotten, but he does love actually working at the vineyard with Crowley to and he and Crowley have a really good relationship…

Eventually the kids go to a summer camp together in London (i dont know if they . do this in the UK, but suspend your disbelief if you will) Adam meets The Them there, then meets Warlock after a nutty fencing thing, they kind of hate each other at first and the rest is history :J

side characters UM. LOL. idk……. i mean i kind of know but not really? theres just so many possibilities that make the rounds in my head. chessy could be anathema OR nina (ive had people suggest eric too?) and martin could be newt OR maggie (ive also had people suggest muriel????) gestures vaguely.

as for meredith…….erm…………🤷‍♂️ ive had everything under the sun suggested to me and i still……have no idea. LOL. gabriel, lucifer, shaX, FURFUR, THE WIFE FROM THE NON-SPOILER SPOILERS. I DONT KNOW. IT ALL FEELS WRONG. its hard to come up with this role in particular when these gay bitches literally only have eyes for each other. always. forever. u know. i think lucy is like. the classic answer. but idfk.

ask me about . more things if u want. this is consuming my every thought.

anyways the cover im working on for. for something:

[maaaxx]

Heartstopper Season 2 Spoilers

Heartstopper season 2 was perfect, and Alice Oseman is a cinematic and literature genius but I would like to take a few moments to draw some attention to.....

This boy right here.

(look how sweet he is omg)

I can't get over Isaacs arch in heartstopper, especially in season 2.

Ace representation is so few and far between as it is, and good representation is even more scarce, but having that sort of representation at the forefront of a show? And having it accurately depicted, and not infantilized? Showing the complexities of it? Basically unheard of. But Holy Fuck did Alice Oseman deliver.

At the end of season 2 he is just finding out what aro/asexuality is and reading up on it. He knows it exists and he knows that it applies to him. And he faced some of the difficulties of being aro/ace with James and with the isolation and feeling like he's not interesting unless he has a romantic interest, these are all very real and not commonly talked about things that people have experienced.

And oh my god was it euphoric to see on screen.

Growing up and watching all your friends have crushes and get into relationships and fawn over people and never experiencing that same thing is so isolating. Even in accepting environments and in good friend groups (as seen on the show) it always feels like your an odd one out, and outsider, etc.

So the scene where Isaac goes "I think their might be something wrong with me.", that hits home to so many people who grew up not understanding why they were different.

I've talked about on here before why labels are so important to people, and this is a perfect example of it. You can learn to accept yourself and love yourself and be completely self confident but if there's something fundamentally different about you, there's always going to be a voice in the back of your head reminding you of that. Learning a label, or a word, that represents something that you might have already accepted as something that's a character flaw, there's no word to describe it, it's so relieving. It means there are people like you who have lived to create that label, it means your not alone with it, it means you have a community.

And having this shown on tv, especially at a time like now where people are trying to cover up anything that reminds people that LGBT people exist, is going to tell so many kids that there is nothing wrong with them, and they're not defected, and they're not broken.

And Isaacs whole arch (even thought it's not completed) handled this perfectly. Because there were moments that shows that Isaac is in some ways separate from the group. They love him, but he's different, they care about him, but he doesn't have a romantic interest, so his presence isn't as acknowledged.

And I think that in Season 3 (assuming theres going to be a season 3) we're going to get to see this expanded on. We might get to see Isaac coming out to the rest of the group, and learning how to cope with not having access to something that a lot of people say is what makes people human.

Heartstopper is such an amazing show and Alice Oseman is incredible. The cast is incredible. Everything about everything about that production is incredible.

(now for another picture of my son)

[raevenlywrites]

I am having a thought that I'm sure others have had before and have articulated more clearly but it's my blog and I think with my fingers so here we go.

Even if all* varieties of sexualities (*with informed consent by adults OBVIOUSLY) were blanketly and genuinely accepted into the mainstream, I would still feel queer.

Even if all configurations of bodies and gender identities were just another part of the norm, I would still feel queer.

Even if the world somehow became magically tolerant of anyone not like them, I would still feel queer.

So much of who I am came from growing up looking through a window rather than into a mirror. My "peers" were never peers, they were background at best and a confounding mystery and a source of pain and rejection at worst. But they were never "like me". A social yardstick when my sense of self was measured in pascals. My entire sense of identity came from asking the question "What's wrong with me?" and learning that the answer was "Nothing." And learning to believe that the answer was "Nothing." And learning to love that the answer was "Nothing."

I Don't Fit, and I love that. I'm on the Outside, where theres room to spread my arms wide and spin in dizzy circles til I feel sick if I want to. Or sit quietly and smell the flowers if I want to. Or just lay back and watch the sky. Literally whatever I want, because I made room for myself. Because I put in the work to take my sense of self and twist.

I queered all the outside voices that I'd taken inside me when my skin was still soft. I queered the expectations that I inherited into something I actually desired. I queered the idea of who I thought I should see in the mirror until it fit the reflection there (and queered the body that makes that reflection until it felt like home). The person I am is just as much defined by what I Am Not as by what I am.

And I think thats the fundamental difference between queers and gays.

There is this weird subset of folks, who have probably been here the whole time tbh, I dont know my queer history like I should (largely because it's written by the victors and so many of my elders are dead who should not be, but anyways), theres this subset of folks who, despite belonging to the alphabet soup, somehow are still Normal. Or are striving for it, or whatever. And like, its not a judgement it's an observation, and a bafflement. I cannot fathom the kind of life that leads to being gay but not Other. How. How does that happen? What other places are you Not Other, and how did it fortify you against this queering that I found so absolutely vital to my survival.

How did you get through it unqueered?

And why (and you know why)

Does my queerness threaten you so much?

Literally, I just want room to exist. I dont want to fuck your wife. I dont want to fuck mine in front of your kids. I dont want you thinking about my sex life at all, hypothetically stranger, or even about me at all, save for our common interests in things like not starving and not wrecking this planet past livability. Like, you see how much BIGGER things are at stake? Why--

I dont actually spend that much time thinking about why, tbh. I dont honestly spend that much time thinking about other people in anything but the abstract at all. And that how I'd like it to be for me.

And, as always, I've wandered so far off my original point, and so cannot offer a closing statement. But queer is a verb before it is an adjective. And with enough queering it becomes a noun, and then it becomes a verb again as you reach your umbrella out for someone else who's just found their way outside.

[asophisticatedspace]

I've been reflecting on how long it too me to realize that im trans and how tough of a process that was, and one thing I keep asking is, "Why didn't anyone tell me?" If you've seen Sarah Zedig's video on transitioning, there is a similar moment. She talks about how there was something "obviously" wrong and she wonders why nobody pulled her asside and talked to her about it. I've been looking back at old photos of me and in hindsight it look so obvious that I'm trans. That like theres been a spark of at least gender nonconformity this whole time. Maybe it hasn't always been huge, but when I've been looking at old photos I see a kid who I kind of want to shout to, "Hey! You're trans and how don't you get that!"

I look back at photos of me and the way I would always choose "feminine" poses, and as I got older I did it to be "funny." Looking back though I see a kid who is uncomfortable in their gender who also sees that being funny is one of the few ways to be masculine. I see that I was using humor as the only way they knew how and could safely navigate MINIMAL gender exploration.

I don't know how I feel about that, because on one hand it was the only too I had at the time. On the other hand was the cost of my gender exploration misogyny and toxic masculinity? Or were those holding me back? Were they both? I don't know.

In looking at other transfeminine people that I have been listening to and watching on the internet, I notice a lot of over lap in senses of humor. It seems a lot of them have very absuridst senses of humor and so do I. I wonder if that overlap is related to the absurdity of transitioning, or at least wanting to transition.

I should clarify. When I say transitioning is absurd, I don't mean that it is illogical to do. I actually believe that transition is or at least has the potential to be a very logical response to one's inner life. If someone is looking to transition there is either something they are trying to improve in their life that is related to gender, or it is possible they are just curious about the experience. While I believe both are acceptable, the second one is more unlikely in our culture and also could be its own post. My point in saying this is that the absurdity of transitioning isn't in the choice to transition but the context in which anyone must do so.

Transitioning is absurd because it is such a personal thing, and its regulated by society. Something as personal and fundamental to societal life as: knowing one's relation to it, understanding one's personal boundaries, knowing how one enjoys expressing themselves, knowing how they relate to other people, figuring out what a life well lived means, finding ways to sustain oneself, and even fucking puberty are all transitioning.

I think transitioning is a flawed word, or at least we use it wrong in day to day life. It is used to put trans people in a box of "not growing as person in the socislly acceptable way." We all transition from being one thing to another as we grow up. Cis people go from a boy or girl to a man or a woman, that is the transition so "normal" we don't even question it. Us on the other hand, we get to recieve a label for it but why?

Is our transition that much different? Is it because some of us take hormones and go through... Well puberty we go through Puberty 2: Electric Boogaloo if we go on hormones. Everyone goes through puberty, so what's so bad about it? Is it because I chose to go through puberty this time? Is that too much ownership of one's body?

How about surgery? Some people get surgery, and how is that wrong? "Its because it is cosmetic!" Some may ignorantly shout, but if that is the problem then how come I don't hear about hate groups dedicated against Berry Manalo and people in Hollywood? What excuse do you have?

Besides medical side is any of the rest of it a personal transition or is it just a transition in the way society sees me? I don't know and I haven't gone fully public so I can't know yet, but at this point it seems that its more about how people react than about changing myself. Rather, it seems that is more about doing the same things that cis people do.

At this point, I don't believe I should ask, "Why didn't anyone tell me?" But rather, "Why couldn't anyone tell me?" I believe no one told me because no one could. Most people don't have the language to and as such we have to create our own language to talk about our experiences. Even if they had the language though, what would they do? They know the stigma that is against up, and is it right to label someone with something so stigmatized? I just wish it wasn't this way.

[ewinglogan93]

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[holytheoristtastemaker]

One of the common mindsets of people who want to become freelance web developers is they just have to be so good at coding and the rest will follow.

WRONG.

If you’re serious about being successful, this is not the right mindset to start with.

Freelancing is a business, and it takes more than coding to make it grow.

In this article, I’m going to share the different hats a freelance web developer has to wear to grow and sustain his or her business.

What do freelance developers do?

In its simplest sense, freelance developers write code for clients on a project basis. This means that they are self-employed, they get to set their own rates and decide who to work with, and they control their time.

Freelance developers are first and foremost problem-solvers. Companies are now realizing that going digital is a necessity and not an option, and they are looking for people to give them the right solutions to digitalize their businesses in the most effective way possible.

Websites and apps are tools designed to bring clients sales – so, in this sense, developers directly contribute to clients’ bottom line by building technologies that will give them the edge over their competitors.

These are a few skills required for freelance developers (other than coding):

Understanding your client’s business nature and goals.

Understanding the nature of your client’s business will help you better prepare for the project and anticipate your client’s needs. This is true for both employed and freelance developers.

Ecommerce businesses have different needs from SaaS companies. A startup will also have a smaller budget, shorter timeframe, and different priorities than an enterprise company that has been around for years.

Understanding the nature and goals of your client’s business will enable you to give more valuable contributions and solutions. It will also inform your decision about which features should be included and given more technical depth.

You can understand your client’s business goals by:

Browsing their website and social media accounts. Find out their history, how long they’ve been around, products and services, their plans, etc.

Ask them yourself. This is a good way to show that you are committed to giving them the best solution possible.

Communication

Effectively communicating with a client is key to working efficiently and giving timely, effective results. A lack of clear and timely communication can give rise to a series of problems like bad coding, bad design, lost time, and wasted money.

As a web developer, it’s your job to ask questions to help you understand what your client specifically needs.

Client communication involves:

Explaining complicated technological concepts in a way that your client will easily understand.

Explaining your ideas and suggestions to the client.

Asking questions and encouraging clarifications to make sure you’re on the same page about the website’s design, features, and functionality.

Working with their in-house marketing team or hired marketing agency.

Negotiating prices and deadlines.

It also includes deciding which concerns can be emailed and which ones need to be explained face-to-face or through video calls.

Decision-Making

From choosing the framework to deciding whether a certain feature is really needed, you’re going to make pretty important decisions that will impact the project’s success.

If you are the lead developer of the project, you’ll often get asked these questions:

How long will you take to complete the project?

How much time and money should we invest in building feature X?

What is the most cost-effective way to achieve Goal A?

Your experience, technological expertise, and understanding of your client’s business, goals, and specific needs will all come into play when you’re making important decisions.

The best example I can think of to illustrate this point is the never-ending debate about CMS platforms. Which I think is quite pathetic but let’s get to the point :)

Let’s say a business coach wants a simple website that brings in a consistent flow of leads every month.

This website will need nothing more than a single high-converting landing page to do the job.

Decide on if a CMS is best or if you need to code it.

Don't waste your time unnecessarily by coding something if you can just use a plugin or existing theme to do the job for you.

I’ll say it again: As a developer, coding is not your job – finding solutions is. The best solution is the one that achieves business goals sooner.

Marketing

Before you get to start coding, you need clients, and to get clients, you need to start marketing.

The word “marketing” can be intimidating to those who have no prior experience to it because there are so many technical buzz words that sound so complicated.

In the simplest sense, marketing is putting your products and services in front of people who might need it.

Marketing is so important for freelancing that you should aim to most of your time to it and less time to actually writing the code.

To market effectively, you need to answer a few questions:

Who are your target clients? What kinds of businesses do they have?

What are their problems that your services can help solve?

Where can you find them? Are they on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit?

How do you tell your message in a way that will resonate with them?

Marketing is such a big industry in itself, but if you know the fundamentals, you’re set and can learn along the way.

If you want to know more actionable tips to market your services to clients, this guide on how to get clients may help: How to Get Clients as a Freelance Developer

Time Management

Managing your time is huge if you want to stay productive and sane.

As you get more clients and projects steadily come in, it’s easy to lose track and fall into a state of confusion and having a sink filled with unwashed dishes.

Here are some tips to help you manage your time and stay productive:

Multitasking is a myth. Only 2.5% of people in the world can actually process tasks simultaneously.

Here are some more statistics to officially end the myth of multitasking:

According to a study of Microsoft employees, employees took an average of 15 minutes to get back to intense mental tasks (e.g. writing code or reports) after responding to instant messages or emails.

People who are interrupted take 50% longer to finish a task.

Multitaskers make up to 50% more errors.

Instead of multitasking, have short bursts of hyper-focused working mode. Work distraction-free for 2 hours (or how long you prefer), take a short break to clear your mind, and repeat. You can also try the Pomodoro technique.

Collect design assets and resources. Find a set of go-to websites for your photo, vectors, icons, and other design needs. I personally like to use Deposit Photos because it’s easy to use and they have a huge library of assets. There are also free options like Pixeden, Free Design Resources, and 365PSD.

Use productivity tools. You need tools to help you organize your projects like Trello. Make collaboration easier, integrate apps, and maintain your schedule. Learn more productivity tools and other tips in this blog post: Practical Productivity Tips for Web Developers.

Cash Flow Management

No matter how many clients you get and how well you do your job, you won’t stay afloat if you mismanage your cash flow.

Some things you can do to manage your cash flow:

Closely track your income and expenses

Cut costs. Spend only on things you really need. If you’re struggling, that cup of Starbucks coffee can wait.

Stay on top of invoices.

Have a cash reserve with 3x your monthly expenses. If you spend $5,000 a month, you should have a savings account with $15,000. This cash reserve should NEVER be touched unless absolutely necessary.

As your business grows, you need to outsource taxes and bookkeeping to a trusted accountant.

I recommend reading this blog post for more money management tips: How To Spend Your Money As A Freelancer.

How do I become a freelance programmer?

Now that we’ve painted a clearer picture of what freelance web development really looks like, you can set a realistic expectation and even reassess if it’s really for you.

If you’re still set on becoming a successful freelance developer, check out the Complete Freelancing Bundle for everything you need to get started.

I hope this article helped give you an idea of what it’s like to run a freelance web development business.

[residualsociety-blog-blog]

Therapy 3 (Removing Bandages)

1. Knowing that I have been insulated with a privileged life, has this led me into an existence of melancholy that has no foundation?

I have always been drawn to the melancholy. Blame it on my upbringing of suppressive emotion from the hardened baby boomer Irishmen around me or on the self-detrimental music I listened to (probably symptomatic of reason #1). In my more religious days, the idea of being sick without a cure always brought an egocentric tear to my eye. I’ve always resonated with the idea of being deprived and stuck on a hopeless ship with no ending destination. Does this fantasy have any merit?

Relatively speaking, probably not. Yes, this life is built on the foundations of pain that we build houses on; creating illusions of safety and decorating them in distracting ways. I grew up in a part of the world though that was well nourished, both literally and figuratively speaking. My parents had flaws, of course, but relatively speaking these flaws were incredibly minor in nature. In fact, the loving/sheltering nature of my upbringing is probably my biggest flaw, since I lack the understanding of how dark the darkness can get. I misperceive my shadow as epitome of darkness, when there are far darker dungeons of pain that exist. I try to understand the hierarchy of pains, sometimes successfully, but even then I still lack the feeling that reinforces the idea and brings it to life.

So why not use the positive force in my life to become a beacon of hope to others, or at the very least not pretend that my life is any harder than anyone else’s? Well, thats where it gets complicated. 

Maybe I’m trying harder with all of the self improvement actions I’m taking. I rarely speak of my demons and are way more present for others (for the most part, I think I’m trying). Maybe just slowing down and stepping into the shoes of others and being more realistic about the depth of my own problems is the keys. Being conscious with the realities around me.

2. In what circumstances have I ended relationships with friends and girlfriends? Were they worthy of these measures?

This is going to be hard.

Rachel: Lack of trust. I always assumed she was up to no good. This was textbook overthinking mixed with a large heaping dose of insecurity. The first time I broke up with her was because I thought I could do better. The second time was the opposite.

Amy: We were not compatible, though I wanted us to be. She had a kind heart, was very caring, and on paper was an ideal companion. However, everything personality and value related just did not compute. I always went into a meeting with her with a “lets make this a good night” attitude and left emotionally exhausted from a night of personality dissonance.

Relationships:

Lex: This one is two sided. I did not trust Lex, similar to Rachel, but there were things to not trust. I always had the sense that Lex was up to no good, and I don’t think that was a misguided notion. Lex loved conflict and drama, and spent most of her time digging into the shit of others. I can’t imagine this did not spill into our relationship as well, although it’s hard to tell where.

I also was not very fair to her. I, again, was very insecure, and would constantly be checking her location (one of my more alarming qualities). She was obsessed “fitting in”, and would put scandalous pictures on her social media for attention. It was fair for me to have issue with this, but I would present it in ways that were not fair to her. I should have communicated it in a simple and non-judging way, which I don’t think I did.

It’s weird, I loved spending time with her but I don’t think I actually loved her. She was something fun to experience but was not good for me, like the Rick and Morty episode where Rick sidetracks Unity from her purpose to have a good time. 

I also just run away from conflict whenever possible, which I did in that relationship. Most issues we had were only addressed when they boiled over.

It was a game to keep Lex. I had to be somebody I wasn’t (or someone I was not yet).

Friendships:

James: It was a wise decision to let go of this relationship. James was self destructive, and worse, destructive to those he was around.

Jon: I don’t blame Jon for removing me from his band. I was not a man of solutions, just problems based on my unpolished philosophies of what music should be. We innately did not see eye to eye of what art should be and it let me effect how I saw him as a person. He also was not communicative towards the end, which I can’t blame him for. Many of his faults were ones I dealt with too, which is probably why we were so close in the beginning before we blew up in spectacular fashion. My youthful whimsical idealism and his old hardened traditionalism would never see eye to eye.

Colin: Colin was caring and a lot of fun to be around. We fundamentally were very different people, however. Emotionality and Self-Made Self Acceptance were important to him, whereas I believed more in a more reserved self growth that came from disciplinary action to day to day life. We would have conversations that would really open my eyes to places that were blind to me, which I appreciated with his view of. He just was not a very disciplined person to be around, and I felt that create a rift towards him. I was also just way too close to him all the time, and felt myself needing space even when he was intruding. 

He also made several questionable decisions against me; which I both understand. I forgive him, but I cannot trust him the way I could before.

Teague: This one is complicated. I think he had a lot of expectations of me that I did not live up to. He wanted me to be forgiving to issues I did not understand. I also did things that questioned my character to him, which I think I understand. I probably looked pathetic in many of my decisions, which is probably why I hid so much information from him. There were things he did that were questionable, but maybe they weren’t the same in degree. Does dating a 18 year old just as questionable as being abusive to your dog, doing a lot of drugs, or attacking the ones closest to you? There was a degree of growth though that he was experiencing, and maybe he clumped me into the parts of himself that he needed to let go in order to grow. I can get that. Still, I can’t help but feel there is an essence of blind destruction that came from him letting me go from his life.

I think I get too close to people. Maybe I just get too close to the wrong people. I think most of my best friends have had fundamentally different approaches to life. They’ve also taken to vices that are in some ways self destructive, such as drinking or drugs. Because I don’t have the inclination to go there, thats why I push away. Theres probably a much more caring way, but its much easier to leave something than to fight for it.

One last question that I (personally) feel needs to considered as well:

3. What does my current/past company say about me as a person? What does my attraction to the history of people with mental illness say about me?

4. What if I am, in fact, a leech of “the light of others”?

Listen, feel what they’re feeling, don’t offer solutions.

Lack of exerted boundaries

Deject people using cold fish tactics

Maturity issues.

Certain issues should be valued in certain degrees.

[ameenaeliz]

I feel like so many white people (not all) always say things like “why do you have to bring up race” or “everything is about race now” when confronted with what has been going on recently because this is the first time ever they have had to be cognizant of what it means to be “white” and the stereotypes that come with it. 

It’s my understanding that a lot of poc grow up with the underlying quote unquote “understanding”, that they are considered as the other, even if its subconscious. As a young person of color at some point you become aware that you are not white, and you don’t necessarily know what it means, but you’re aware that it means something important

Amazingly, this is now the first time that this interpretation of existence is being closely examined under a microscope. Understanding race and learning how to navigate the world at the same time is key for poc to be able to flourish. To me it seems as if some (many) white people are unsettled by this and so their response is “why is race so important” because it has never been important to them before. 

Thats definitely a fundamental problem when it comes to race relations. You have one group of people that have been aware of race and even in its most basic form understand the obscure muddy racial hierarchy, which admittedly should not exist. Then on the other side of the spectrum you have people who have never been aware of it and now its being shoved into their faces and they clam up and react violently because its new and different. If theres one thing that has been consistent throughout history is that humans always resist change. 

Just something to think about and I honestly shouldnt even have to specify this, but this isnt an attack on white people in any way. Rather its an attempt to open up a dialogue and an observation ive made that could be right or wrong. 

[landofwordsandfrogs]

FUCK IT ITS ALMOST ELEVEN PM AND IM GOING TO ASNWER THIS SHIT

i love oc stuff and have no idea how to change this bold back to normal. anyway

LETS ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT AGNES CARDOSO, FROM AUDAZ !

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

naw, but she is v close w her cousing armando. she basically raised him. <3

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like? What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

her mom and dad died when she was seven. her father was a v bland, calm person, and mostly she slept on him and watched silly tv together. her mother was louder, more excited and demanding. agnes had a lot of live up to, was demanded a lot from her mom, but overall felt like she could do it and wanted to do it and shed make her proud!

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

when she was seven, agnes was Hanging Out with aunt gabi when they got a call and aunt gabi, who never knew how to act with children, just took agnes with her. when they arrived at the place and agnes got out of the car, she saw both her parents dead and bloody in the street, along with another woman and two boys, while a crying vampire sat in the middle of all this. he begged her aunt to kill him, and she did.

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

hmmmm. her cellphone would be in her pocket, cept its perpetually GLUED to her hand instead. pack of cigarettes and lighter. wallet, keys to her bike.

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams? Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

agnes has like crazy insomnia, doesnt rly remember dreams and stuff. mostly about vampires, and blood, and killing vampires, and not being able to wash the blood off her hands.

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

oh boy. yes agnes has about a million guns and shoots them a lot, bc shes a vampire hunter. first target was a feral vampire.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

naw. being part of an olden Hunting Family that basically runs an entire town gives a person TREMENDUOUS financial security.

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

more clothing. agnes’ jacket is her armor.

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

well, when she was seven, and she saw her parents dead on the hot alphalt. nothing would ever get to her while mommy and daddy were with her, except something did.

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

well. agnes state of being is Stress, so. when she was < 7 yo ?? rofl

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

not rly. its just that she cant get it out of her hands. its everywhere. she tries to wash it away, she does.

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

both? neither? agnes is perpetually surrounded by a bunch of people from the family and the city and her subordinates and the visiting Families and the neighboring Nest of vampires, so sheS GOTTA remember people.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

naw, see financial security above. mostly agnes has her jacket and her boots and her bike. shes got an entire wing inside the House but its very spartan. mostly empty. she doesnt have time to go out and buy things, much less decoration, doesnt have time for hobbies. in the beginning and middle of the story anyway

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

iddealize? happiness. success is her middle name; shes the second of the cardoso hunting family and extremely competent; if the position werent by blood, she’d become head in the future anyway. but happiness?

agnes is unhappy. its something that she knows she wont achieve.

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

aw man idk. doesnt strike me as much of a “carries plushie around” child or anything

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

hm. wisdom? ambition is cool, but mostly she feels like people can do what they want if they put enough effort in it. but shes extremely aggravated by slow or non-practical people, so i guess. wisdom ? so

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

ah. ags is like. Extremely Practical. will argue incessantly forever when she thinks shes right, of course this is the right thing to do. also, she tends to take responsability for everything. everything. if the sun explodes agnes will be out in the backyard watching the explosion thikning, but i could have done something i should have noticed the sun was shining differently i should have tried to evacuate people etc etc etc

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

compare? agnes doesnt compare herself to much, cept maybe her aunt, who she thinks is too dramatic and should be more practical like her so things would run more smoothly

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

takes responsabilty for everything even things that were literally impossibe for her to be at fault or know about at all.

What does your character like in other people?

she lieks people who understand her quielty and dont crowd her. she likes people who dont dance around stuff. she likes people who make things seem a little simpler, life a little less heavy.

What does your character dislike in other people?

being too dramatic. being prejudiced pricks. being too violent.

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

shell trust people with what theyve proven to her they can be trusted, no less no more.

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

everyone is kinda sketchy until they prove themselves somehow. id say shes loyal to people who prove themselves to her, but honestly people are more loyal to her than she to them.

How does your character behave around children?

is never really around them? is friendly, tries to be nice? ultimately doesnt much know what to do. 

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

shes the boss and youll do what shes fucking telling you to do.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

they get a warning that a punch is coming, and then a punch will come.

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

nothing, really. agnes grew knowig that she’d be head after her mother, and then after her mom died she knew shed be the head after her aunt.

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

huh. ok, one thing i dont know.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

its evening and shes in beatrices house. theres sunlight, and a breeze, and bia is planting flowers or collecting her berries or pulling out weeds. agnes is sitting by the big tree. their dogs are around them. theres nothing too pressing demanding that they go out and do things for a moment.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

uncomfortable? hm. having to pretend to be Hetero

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

defensive and willing to improve. she did the right thing and youre wrong and now shes going to do an even better thing and youll be even wronger.

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

you move on. you move on and on and on until something works, because something will have to work, and we’ll have to deal until we get there.

How does your character behave around people they like?

nicknames. dry humor. smokes in their faces. being quiet in the same room.

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

depends. if its some subordinate or something like that, she wont hide. be better. she wants more from you, and youre an asshole. if it someone more “Important”, shell be polite, but mostly monosyllabic.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

uh, neither? as i said, status is kinda garanteed. kinda. and honor? she knows shes a black sheep. shes got too different beliefs from everyone around her. all she can do is what she can do, and it will have to be enough.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

The problem will leave because she has no time for this shit.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

do feral vampires count. shes been bitten by them several times. many scars

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

politely. theyre doing their jobs, which is something she respects. everyones got a job to do.

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

you must earn it, and even then you might not get it, and you have to live with this.

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

well, theres her uncle-by-marriage uncle al? so i gues him. he and her aunt took care of her after her parents died.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

SPOILER ALERT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yep in epilogue she kinda adopts two teens, a 15 yo and a 16 yo. kinda. mostly they live w her and bia and theyre more or less reponsible fo them.

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

she doest say it without meaning it bc whats the point? doesnt feel the need to say it all that much, isnt a very touchy or romantic person. shell say if the person asks, or is the person says that they’d like to hear it more or smth.

What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

life starts and ends and that is that, and we have to do what we can while we are here.

[datingadviceonreddit]

Accept them, and then realize that they are not you. Don't identify with them. How do you do that?We all evolve throughout life. Phases we are skinny, phases we are fat.Hobbies that we once were thrilled with are now boring.Skills we once cultivated became dull and unused.Even our PERSPECTIVES on the reality of the world, and life are constantly changing.For instance, when you're a kid, you idolize your parents and think they have little flaws. As you grow up, you start to see more and more that nobody is perfect, and nobody deserves to be put on a pedestal. We are all dealing with the same intense bullshit.Think about everything about you: everything is changing. Realize this, remember this. It is an ancient fundamental teaching from elders.Why is that important? What does that mean?You have no identity. No part of you is static. You're wrong (as am I) about 99% of the things you think about."This is bad. This is good. I like that. I dislike that."All of these thoughts have led you to the situation you're in now. If you keep all of those thoughts, you will stay in your situation.A millionare's thoughts got him/her to that situation, and he will stay there until he changes them. He won't become a billionaire unless he changes his perspectives.We are always evolving. We are always changing. And because we are mostly wrong about everything, we can learn and change if we keep an open mind.Realizing that we are wrong about everything is liberating.Take a minute, and list 5 things that you know for ABSOLUTE SURE 100% and you can prove beyond all doubt. You probably can't list more than 2-3 things.As Descarte (a foundational leader of western philosophy) said, the one and only thing he knows is that he knows. The rest of his knowledge is subjective perception. Nothing is real, nothing is happening, except for the fact he is experiencing something, he is conscious.Now that we have established that YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOU, they are just a momentary thing you are experiencing (that can be easily changed, as we know everything is changing), you can accept them without identifying with them.You aren't a fat slob, you're just experiencing the body of having extra weight. That is not you, it can easily change. So theres no problem with it. It's not you.You aren't bad with girls/guys. You're just experiencing anxiety. You can overcome it. Its not you.Imagine this: There are two people crossing a river. They are two versions of yourself. One that has the utmost confidence, a clear mind, and he believes he can do anything.The other is the same you, except he is in deep fear of being swept away by the river.Both enhabit the same physical body, both have the same traits. The only difference is one is paralyzed with anxiety, while the other believes in himself.The clearheaded man jumps across the river and makes it to the other side. He sees the other man that is scared, trembling, not wanting to cross the river. What does he say?"I believe in you! You can do it! You're much more capable than you think you are! Look, I just crossed the river! I am you! The fear is just clouding your judgement! Fuck the fear, you're better than that, genuinely! I promise you, its all going to be okay, make the jump!"How does he have that assurity? Because he's already crossed the river. And because he doesn't identify with his fear: he doesn't listen to the thoughts that are generated from it.The man crossed the river... thats genuinely the actual reality of your world. You've already pushed through a ton of negative emotions. You've already accomplished much more you give yourself credit for. And I'm sure, in a good headspace, you could remember those events and give yourself the props. You'll realize that you're much more capable than what you think you are.The only thing stopping you is your emotion and it's false lies. But deep down, you know you are not what your emotion is telling you. You know the fear is not telling you the truth. You know that even in a couple minutes the fear will fade, because everything is changing, and no emotion is permanent.So, what does that mean? You can accept the fact that you are in fear. It means literally nothing. It doesn't impact your physical ability or self worth, all it does is whisper lies. But thats all good, you don't need to fight the fear. You don't have to believe what it tells you. It will go.Trust in yourself, despite the fear. Know it's not you. That will give you the power to jump across the river. That will give you the power to change.When you feel anxiety, know that you are no different than when you don't. The anxiety doesn't change how others see you. You are the same person when you're confident and when you're anxious. The only thing that makes you act differently is when you give your anxiety validation, and react to it. You believe its lies, try to fight it, it gets more intense, and in the end, you succumb to it.Let it go. Accept yourself in all states. Fighting, repressing, and resisting your emotions will only make them stronger. Notice the emotion, and then don't react to it. Don't change your actions, thoughts, or intentions due to your emotion. They aren't you.Love yourself in your lowest state as you do in your highest. Be proud of yourself in fear as you are in courage. Know that you can overcome them. You're the same person.Lastly, understand that your current mindsets and beliefs are keeping you where you are. They're wrong. That is incredibly liberating, because if you're wrong, it means you can be a detective and figure out whats right. That leaves room for progression. That leaves room for hopeLove you guys, wish for the best. via /r/dating_advice

[airoasis]

5 Best Short-Term Investments 2019 [Up $20K in 2 Months]

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5 Best Short-Term Investments 2019 [Up $20K in 2 Months]

Im revealing my favorite short-term investing strategies, ideas you can use to make a living or just make extra cash. In fact, I used one of these strategies to make over twenty grand in two months. Were talking the best investments for fast money today on Lets Talk Money. Beat debt. Make money. Make your money work for you. Creating the financial future you deserve.Let’s Talk Money. Joseph Hogue with the Lets Talk Money channel here on YouTube. I want to send a special shout out to everyone in the community, thank you for taking a little of your time to be here today. If youre not part of the community yet, just click that little red subscribe button. Its free and youll never miss an episode. We usually talk about long-term investments on the channel, those investments you can buy and hold forever with the confidence theyre going to help you create that financial future. But theres also something to be said for those short-term investments with the potential to make you a lot of money in a matter of months or even weeks. I made over twenty grand on futures contracts for oil prices in two months to May 2016 and regularly use these kinds of investments for big gains. So I want to walk you through the five best short-term investments I use, how to get started and how much you can expect to make. Understand though that there are some big differences between short-term investments and the long-term investing we usually talk about.Short-term investments are more of a bet on investor sentiment or a certain catalyst for an investment rather than investing in the fundamentals. This makes short-term investments much more risky because its an either-or kind of idea. Your bet on the price either works out or it doesnt in that time period. With long-term investing, you can be right even if it takes a while to work out. Many of these short-term investments are also riskier because of leverage or being able to bet thousands while only putting down hundreds. You can get 20-times your money or more on futures contracts. That means even a five percent return doubles your money but it also means a five percent decline can wipe you out. Short-term investing is also going to mean a lot more work. Dont expect to just flip over to CNBC and get everything you need in five minutes.To make this work, you have to be ready to put in the time to really analyze an investment, understand why the price is where its at and why it should be somewhere else in the next month. With all this, these kind of investments arent going to be for everyone. Theres nothing wrong with putting your money in a solid portfolio and just enjoying those long-term returns. No stress, very little effort and you can still reach your goals. But if youre ready for it, these short-term investing strategies can make you a ridiculous amount of money. Besides that twenty grand I made on oil futures, Ive made over $37,000 over the last three years on foreign exchange futures and regularly make double-digit returns on options strategies. This is going to be an epic video on five short-term strategies including penny stocks, leveraged ETFs, Futures, Forex Trading and Options so you might want to bookmark it as a reference.Ill show you how to get started, some of the risks in each and some of the strategies I use. Our first short-term strategy here is probably the most popular and thats penny stocks. Penny stocks dont have a formal definition but generally its any stock that trades for under $5 a share and has a total value of less than $50 million for all its shares . Basically, were talking about nano-cap stocks which are as small as it gets with publicly-traded shares. Now penny stocks can also be good long-term investments but because theyre so small, they tend to be extremely volatile. Just one headline good or bad can send these stocks surging or crashing and it can take years for that longer-term trend to make it a good investment. Because of that, most investors trading in penny stocks do it for a fast return catching one of those good headlines. Penny stocks are easy to trade because theyre traded on exchanges and available on most online investing platforms.There are a few risks in penny stocks that you need to understand. First is that theres usually very little public information or history to go off of. Most big bank analysts arent going to be looking at these because theres just not much demand for the shares so even if the analyst can convince investors to buy, the commissions arent going to be very big. Another risk is that because there arent many investors interested in these shares, there arent usually many shares traded on a daily basis. Thats a problem for two reasons. First because if you want to sell quickly, you might have to take a few cents hit but also because these stocks are susceptible to pump-and-dump scams where someone will drive the share price up with marketing, sell their shares at a profit then of course the shares crash when theres no one marketing them. There are a few places penny stocks trade including the Nasdaq, OTC bulletin board and the pink sheets.Now the Nasdaq and OTC have a little stricter listing requirements like financial reporting and regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The pink sheets are a fraudsters dream. Theres almost no regulation and very little in terms of oversight so Id seriously steer clear of these stocks. Stick with those listed on Nasdaq or the OTC. You also want to just ignore any penny stock you hear about in an email or a newsletter. There are some great short-term investments out there but remember these are prime targets for scammers. An example of a good penny stock here is Medical Transcription Billing, ticker MTBC on the Nasdaq. Now this medical tech company is almost at $5 a share now but was just $0.75 in December 2016 when I bought shares. I worked as a labor economist for five years and can tell you that medical transcription and that larger healthcare tech space is hot so I started looking at this one earlier in the year.Turns out they had some patented voice-interactive software that was hugely innovative and I thought the stock was a no-brainer takeover target. The shares jumped pretty quickly as the rest of the market watched it but it took a little longer to really take off. I ended up cashing out at just over $2.80 a share about 11 months into the trade for a 273% return. Now something that is going to apply to most of these short-term investments is the difference between technical analysis and fundamental analysis. So theres a whole group of investors that only trade on the movement in the price of an investment. They measure how far the price has gone over a period or how fast and compare that to history for that investment. This is called technical analysis. Im not going to say much about this type of investing because, one, Ive never used it much.Ive followed some basic charting but stick mostly to fundamental analysis which is looking at those external and internal factors that drive an investment. Another reason we wont talk about technical analysis here is, its debatable whether it really works unless youre ready to make it a 9-to-5 job at your computer every day following these patterns. Now I know Im going to get flamed in the comments by a thousand wannabe day traders with a fool-proof system but whatever. Im working off nearly two decades of experience in equity analysis and investment management and Ive never seen a technical strategy outside of algorithmic trading that made any money. Instead, when youre looking at penny stocks, there are some fundamental factors you can watch to make smart bets in the share price. For penny stocks, you really have to get familiar with the statement of cash flows. Thats going to show you the cash generating power of the business and its a purer way of looking at the companys financial position.Management can manipulate profits and earnings per share pretty easily but its much harder to fudge the numbers in actual cash flow. Now most penny stocks arent going to have much cash flow but there are a few things to look for to make sure the company has the cash necessary to survive until your catalyst for growth comes out. Well use Insignia Systems as an example here.Shares trade for about $1.80 each for this developer and marketer of in-store advertising and its a stock Ive been watching. First you want to look here at the cash flows from operations, this is something I look to for any company but especially very small companies. Ideally you want to see growth but that the company is generating positive cash flow is a must. Here we see that Insignia Systems has booked positive cash flow for the last three quarters which is a good sign considering the companys history. Then youre going to look to the other sections to see where the company is spending its cash and then the change in cash at the bottom. Its OK to have a negative change in cash if the company is spending heavily on investments but it needs to have the reserve cash to fund it. Insignia doesnt have much to show in these other two sections but we see its built up $8 million in balance sheet cash which is nearly half its market cap.Looking deeper into the financials, Insignia has no debt so that $8 million in cash and positive cash flow makes it an attractive target for an acquisition or just gives it a lot of flexibility to grow. Our second short-term investing strategy is in leveraged ETFs. Now most investors are familiar with regular exchange traded funds. These are funds managed to hold an index or investing theme by actually holding the investments in a certain proportion. So you might have the Technology Sector SPDR, the XLK which holds shares of 67 tech companies. For the ability to buy and hold all 67 companies with one trade, you pay just 0.13% a year as a management expense fee. Now leveraged ETFs are special funds created to multiply the returns on a sector or theme. Instead of holding the shares, they create the 3-times or double-returns with a combination of swaps and derivatives.Lets look at a table of the most actively traded leveraged ETFs as an example. You have the name and fund symbol. Leverage means how many times the fund should move versus the sector so if tech stocks increased by two percent you would expect this first fund to jump by six percent. The focus column is the theme or sector in which the fund invests and the position is whether the fund benefits when the sector rises or falls. So if you are in a short fund, a negative position, the price of the shares would go up if the sector fell.There are leveraged funds for all kinds of themes including sectors like technology, energy and healthcare to emerging market country stocks like China and Brazil. These leveraged ETFs are traded just like stocks so you can buy and sell on any online investing platform. Now there are some important things to know about these, some that mean these should only be used for short-term trading. First is that the expense ratio on these funds tends to be about twice what you pay on other ETFs so its definitely not something you want to hold long-term. If you want to leverage a long-term bet on a sector, its a better idea to go with options which well talk about later. Leveraged ETFs are rebalanced daily, which means the portfolio manager has to buy and sell the financial products to maintain that three-to-one ratio. This creates a drag on the fund so the actual return isnt usually exactly that three-times the return on the sector.What leveraged ETFs are good for is that very short-term bet or protection on a trading idea. For example, if you were heavily invested in tech stocks but afraid that the sector would drop hard in the coming month, you could invest in this ultra short SQQQ to actually make money and not have to sell out of your shares. Our next short-term investment is futures contracts on things like metals, currencies and agricultural goods. Futures are financial contracts to buy or sell something at a set date and price, usually in the next month or few months. Most futures contracts are bought or sold as a way to reduce risk. For example, a farmer might sell October contracts for wheat. The contract sets a price theyll get months in advance so they dont have to worry about prices in the meantime . On the other side of that, a food processor like General Mills might buy those contracts so it locks in its price for that wheat it needs to make your breakfast of champions. Futures can also be used for investment. You can buy those contracts for wheat if you expect the price to go up then sell them before the delivery date .But heres the beauty of futures contracts, you can buy contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for just a few grand. For example, each single contract for West Texas Intermediate or U.S. crude oil, is for one thousand barrels. Now at the current price around $70 a barrel, that would mean seventy grand per contract to buy or sell depending on what the futures price was. But youre only required to deposit about $3,500 for each contract. So you can bet on the price of 3,000 barrels of oil for about ten thousand dollars.Thats about 20-to-1 times your money. So lets do the math here and this is an actual trade I made in 2016 after the price of crude had bottomed in February at around $26 a barrel. By March it was clear that prices had gone too far and were on the rebound so I bought two contracts for $38 a barrel for May delivery. The current or spot price at this point was just under $36 so the market was expecting price to go a little higher but not much. I put down $7,000 for the three contracts worth $114,000 but this was actually more than I needed to deposit. I could have put down as little as $5,700 for the investment. Crude prices kept climbing and by May had reached $45 a barrel when I sold my contracts.Remember that each contract is worth 1,000 barrels so the three contracts were now worth $135,000 or a gain of $21,000 from the original price and I had made three-times my investment in two months. Thats potentially a 4,000% annualized return or 40-times your money but like all the jackpot investments well talk about theres a huge risk here. If the price had gone the other way, I could have lost my entire investment in a heartbeat. In fact, I remember one trade in 2012. I was trading gasoline futures and there was an explosion at a Canadian refinery overnight . The price of gasoline spiked like four percent overnight. Since I had shorted the contract, betting the price would go down, then I lost over ten grand on the investment.There are five types of assets that trade with futures contracts. You can buy or sell energies like oil, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and ethanol. There are contracts for currencies with the dollar, euro, British pound, Yen and Mexican peso all heavily traded. You can buy or sell contracts on the direction of the stock market. There are contracts on the metals including gold, silver, aluminum and copper. And finally almost any agriculture commodity will have a contract so corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, coffee, cattle, hogs, you name it . Most online investing platforms will allow you to open a futures account with a broker.There is a lot more than goes into futures trading, determining where you think the price will go and setting up your investments. Ill do a video exclusively on futures because it can be a really amazing investment. A few tips here though. First, always understand the downside and catalysts for the trade to go the wrong way. You also need to set stop orders so if the price goes against you, you dont lose too much money. Its also a good idea to trade in a few different types of assets so that if one trade is losing money then maybe the others will support your profits. One thing thats going to be important for futures and for forex trading which well talk about next is to focus on a specific asset in the market. You cant expect to be successful if youre trying to trade every contract available, if youve got bets on metals and currencies and ag products.To really make money in these investments and see the turning points in the price, you have to become an expert in the asset. That means understanding the current political environment in key supplier countries for the metals, understanding how potential interest rate changes are going to affect the asset. For each asset, there are a list of factors to watch for and understand so you can make a smart bet on the price. This next investment, currency trading, is part of that futures idea but I really like this one so wanted to give it its own section. Most investors dont know it but the foreign exchange or forex market is actually the largest in the world with over $5 trillion traded every day versus less than a fifth that for stocks.Forex offers some of the highest leverage with 50-to-1 bets and even higher for day trading. Currencies are always traded in pairs, usually the value of a currency versus the dollar. There are dozens of currency pairs available but like all the short-term strategies, it helps to focus on a few to limit the amount of research you need to keep up with. Through buying or selling these pairs, youre betting that the value of one currency is going to be higher or lower versus another. What I like about forex is that the biggest factors that affect currencies are big economic forces like growth, interest rates and capital flows.Since these are all regularly reported, you can trade forex exclusively around the releases of these reports. Thats something you cant necessarily do with a lot of the other futures. When I was trading energy futures, I was constantly trying to keep up with all kinds of supply and demand headlines. Futures trade 23 hours a day so you can be waking up at 2am worried about your trades and its constant stress. So being able to just put on a futures position ahead of an economic release and then take your profits afterward is a good way to limit that round-the-clock stress and the amount of research you need to do. Our next short-term investment is through options trading. Options are contracts to buy or sell stocks but with a very important difference from Futures. Buying an option gives you the right to buy or sell a stock but not the obligation.So there are two types of options. A call option gives you the right to buy shares while a put option gives you the right to sell shares. When you buy or sell an option, youll see an expiration date which will always be the third Friday of the month, youll see a strike price which is the price of the shares for that option and youll see the price of the option. Lets look at an example to make it easier. We see here that shares of Apple are currently trading just under $204 per share, this is mid-November. Now Im looking at the January 2019 options so this investment will expire on January 18th in a couple of months. I can buy call options at $200 per share which means I can get the right to buy Apple for $200 a share in January, thats the strike price. Now for the right to do this, I have to pay about $12 a share, thats called the premium for the option.So if I pay $12 for the right to buy Apple at $200 in January and the price of the shares goes to $240 by that time what does that mean for me? That option would now worth at least $40 right, because if it was less than $40 someone could just buy the option and then sell the shares immediately for a riskless profit. So instead of buying the shares, I could just sell the call option for $40 and a return of 233% on my money. Each option contract is for 100 shares so one contract would have cost me $1,200 and I could sell it for $4,000 or a profit of $2,800 for each contract that I bought.Remember, options come in two types, call and put. So if I thought Apple shares might fall then I could buy a put option which would give me the right to sell shares at a certain price. Going back to the example, I could get the right to sell shares at $200 for $7.59 per share. If the price goes down to under $192.41 by January, thats $200 minus that price I paid for the right to sell the shares, then Ill make money. Options can also be used for protection and this is primarily how I use them. So if I own shares of a company and Im worried about the price going down over the next few months, I can buy a put option for the right to sell my shares at a certain price.Ive effectively locked in that price as the lowest Ill get on the stock even if the market price falls further. The important thing to remember here is that buying an option gives you the right but not the obligation to buy or sell a stock. So if I buy those call options on Apple and the share price isnt above $200 in January, I sure as hell am not going to buy them for $200 each. I would just let that option contract expire but I would lose the $12 per share I invested. Similarly, if I bought put options against a stock I own and the price of the shares didnt fall then Id just hold on to the stock. The price I paid for the put options would be gone but they did their job, protecting me from any short-term weakness.Now the payoff for the Apple options wasnt huge because that strike price was very close to the actual price, so we werent betting on a big move in the shares. Lets look at another example to see how options can make you rich. Here we have January options for shares of McDonalds. Ive picked McDonalds because its a stock that doesnt normally see big changes in the share price. Thats important for options trading because it will be built into the price you pay for each contract. If the shares jump around a lot, it will cost more for the right to buy or sell the shares because theres a higher chance the shares will be much higher or lower by expiration. Say were expecting shares of McDonalds to absolutely tank by January from trading at about $182 per share right now.Maybe we have a lawyer connection that says Ronald McDonald is being sued for alimony or John Amos has just opened up a McDowells down the street from every restaurant. Either way, the happy meal aint so happy. So we can buy a put option to sell the shares for $145 each and pay just $0.36 or $36 for each contract since an option contract is for 100 shares. Now if shares of McDonalds plunge 35% by January to $118 then our put option is worth at least $27 each because we have the right to sell shares for $145. That $36 we put down for each option contract is now worth $2,700 or a 7,400% return. To trade options, you only have to be approved on your online investing account. That usually requires a minimum of a few thousand in the account but thats about it. Like I said, I generally just use options to protect my investments or to make a little more money from them but you can make a lot of money very fast.There are some different options strategies you can use but the idea is you need a strong reason to believe the price is going to rise or fall quickly. You have millions of other investors looking at each stock and all their expectations for the stock price are built into the options prices so that average market expectation has to be wrong for some reason. Now in my example above, finding out from your lawyer friend about Ronalds legal troubles would be insider trading and youd go to jail but there are a lot of other ways to find why you think a stock should be much higher or lower. Again, I would suggest having options bets in several stocks to diversify your risks. Stop loss orders can also work here to limit your losses and dont feel like you have to make an option bet on every stock you think should be higher or lower. Be selective where you place your money. Each of these short-term investments could be an entire series of videos. Ill be putting together videos for options trading and futures soon so watch for those.Id love to hear from you in the community, what are your favorite quick investments and how do you trade them so scroll down and tell us in the comments below. Were here Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with the best videos on beating debt, making more money and making your money work for you. If youve got a question about money, just scroll down and ask it in the comments and well answer it in a video. .

[thebrightestringaroundthemoon]

anyway time to use this blog for what i created it for i guess and type out a big long thing about how im a worthless piece of shit and should pour myself a nice big glass of creamer, sugar, and clorox. i literally serve like? no purpose? in life? at all? im a completely directionless failure that operates with about the complexity of a fucking roomba, running into the same goddamn couch over and over again and slightly redirecting. if i get lucky, i run into a different couch, but nothing fucking changes. i do the exact same thing over and over again: surround myself with wonderful, fantastic people, fuck it up and make them hate me, and then spiral into a pit of my own pointless fucking despair until i realize im such a fucking failure of a person i cant even muster the energy it takes to fucking die so i just get up again in the morning and go again. rinse and fucking repeat. and its not like i have some horrible life or anything, im just profoundly unfit to exist on this planet. i have wonderful friends who actually, honest to god care about me and its evidently not good enough for me?? so i just respond to everything by assuming the worst, spiralling, and being too much of a dumb bitch to fucking talk to A N Y B O D Y about A N Y T H I N G cuz i guess i’d rather make a dumb edgy tumblr blog named after the lyrics to a fucking asia song than actually solve any of my problems. i guess its too much to solve a problem when the fundamental core of who you are as a person is the fucking problem. i mean, there is a solution, but ive already covered why nobody needs to be worried about me doing that! bnobody needs to be worried about me doing anytuhing! accomplishing anything! ever becoming anything! ever managing to do much more than drag myself out of bed in the morning and inspire a profoundly sad mixture of pity and annoyance in everyone iv’e ever come into fucking contact with! im sitting here debating fixing the fucking apostrophe in the last sentence and its driving me fucking mad while real people have real fucking problems and my cardboard cutout ass bad edgy teen novel stupid bitch excuse for a person ass is sitting here doing THIS with my fucking time. I have things i shuold be doing, could be doing, but this is legitimately all i can bring myself to fucking contribute to society at this point. the surest sign that the people around me are fucking saints is that theyve stuck around this fucking long but honestly i dont fucking undeerstand. i guess thats the whole point of shit like saints, you arent supposed to be able to understand, its superhuman compassion, even for those who dont fucking deserve it. or maybe its just because i fundamentally dont work. i dont have any sort of actual power when it comes to my life. these are the idle musings of a bewildered spectator, the one person who comes to the party, stays sober, and sits on the sidelines and watches the fucking idiocy unfold. except instead of drunkenly stumbling around and telling my friends how much i love them, im stone cold sober and sitting on the sidelines watching myself fail to take even the most basic fucking steps towards fixing literally any problem that im dealing with. broken. non functional. i dunno if i was born a failure, though. i think that might be giving myself a little too much credit. other people were dealt infinitely worse hands than i was and they turned out fucking wonderful. i know a couple of them. no, i think im the way i am because of me. i probably had all the chances i needed to become something resembling a human being, and instead im whatever i am now. how can i be excited about some sort of future for myself when i can barely manage a relatively privliged day to day existance? i have friends, im not starving, im in college, i have an apartment. im far from rich but im able to afford to go to college. that should be enough. why the fuck isnt that enmough. why cant i just be fucking satisfied why cant i muster some sort of positive fucking emotions why does joy last a few moments why can i do this so much easier than writing anything positive about my life why does this flow like it does like a fucking river why cant i stop my hands why why what the fuck why why am i like this why was i born why am i who i am it flows so easily it just comes out but i cant tell anyone and i cant rely on anyone because im not anyone in noone im the fucking nobody that people keep around them to make themselves feel better and the only reason i have the slightest bit of doubt about that is that i love my friends too much to ever accuse them of something like that but then again does it fucking count when its someone like me do i qualify as a fucking person does it count as hurting someone’s feelings or using them when that someone isn’t a someone is just an empty fucking shell that was only gifted with the capacity to retain HURT thats all i can fucking remember thats all that sticks with me HURT i cant fucking be rid of it and its not some sort of innate inherent biological failing its who i am as a person i did this to myself i do this to myself i dont know that i will ever stop doing this to myself. all i can hope for is that one day i gain the strrength the fucking self esteem and self respect to kill myself. maybe it isnt self respect i need for that but respect for my friends. its selfish to put them through me. the pain they’d feel from my death would last a short time if at all. it would be so much better than forcing them to know me for however long this failing fucking body will carry my empty shell of a spirit onwards thjrough a world that i dont deserve to fucking inhabit. my inner monologyue put on paper sounds like a fucking evanescence song and i hate myself for it so much jesus fucking christ. i fundamentally do not like myself. as a person. on any level. i do not like myself. i wouldnt be friends with me, and ironically i hate myself for that too. but who would? who the fuck would? why does anyone? do they? maybe thats my one fucking talent. convincing people im likable. worming my way into their fucking lives until they trust me only to realize that i am not a human being. im an empty shell, a fucking roomba of a person. i can tell when ive run into something and back up so i can run into it again. i cannot solve my own problems. i cannot even conceptualize them. im something below a human cursed with the fucking ability to think at the level of one. my ocd is really really desperately trying to get me to scroll up and fix all the spelling and grammar errors but i dont know if itll hurt more to ignore them or to have to read the dumb ashit i just wrote. earlier i said that i wanted this to flow less easily and here we are i guess. though earlier i meant it in the context of only being able to properly conceptualize negative feelings and never being abkle to hold onto anything piositive i feel, and that hasn’t been magically fixed or anything, im just having trouble feeling anything at all now. im a completely blank slate. i havent even cried once troday. i cant. i cant care about my own fucking inadequacy and failure as a very basic human being enough to even fucking cry. i cried about an anime a couple nuights ago. i can muster emotion for that. but as soon as i look inwards i dont see ahyuthing thEres NOTHING FUICKING THERE THERE IS NOTHING FUCKING THERE THERE IS NOTHING FUCKING THERE I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING I AM BROKEN I AM EMPTY I AM A {PLAGUE ON WHOEVER HAS THE PURE FUCKING MISFORTUNE TO BE A GOOD ENOUGH PERSON TO TAKE PITY ON ME i dont want to die, even. too many steps, too much feeling, too much. i just want to stop. to end. i want to no longer be. ill lock tghat away with all the other things id love to happen but know never will. that ones at the forefront though. it always will be. until i grow the fucking compassion to put others out of my misery. my roomate just texted me an innocuous questiona nd i texte d bacjk normally emojis and all im normal dont you see everyone im normal nothings wrong with me. oh sure sometimes i have a bad day but im fine everybody IM FINE you aren’t you have to put up with me ill fucking worm my way into your life and convince you im a real human being you can hold a congersation with only to snatch the fucking rug out from under you as soon as you actually attempt to engage with me on any level and i just end up eiother hurting you or revealing accidently that there is no such thing as luna thats not a fucking person its a name assigned to a loose collections of disorders, bad habits, and a gaping emotional black hoile from which nothing can fucking escape, jammed into an ugly broken body thats going to kill me early and doesnt even compensate by making me hot. wHEE. and of course, unable to be happy with anything, i will simultaneously complain about my own impending death due to horrific nutrition, subastance abuse (just the fun kinds so people dont realize anything is wrong WHEEEE) and some fucky illness that ive now gone and stopped medicating because im a stupid worthless bitch, AND I WILL COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS WHILE SIMULATENOUSLY WANTING TO DIE what do i want? who the fuck knows! not me! that’s a redundant statement, of course “me” doing know bercause thats not a thing im not a person! id love to blame it on my complete and total internal faliure as a person that i always end up hurting people, but honestly its probably because i dont put enough fucking effort in. even right now,. literally hours after a good friend of mine ostaroted feeling like shit in a way that is almost for sure my fucking fault, im doing THIS instead of trying to right the situation (to b fair she made a point of not inviting me but inviting the rest of the group?) or did she am i just reading into this? who knows! who the fuck knows! everyone but “me”! ejveryone else knows! becayuse its probably REALALLY FUCKING SIMPLE BUT NOOOOO I CANT EVEN MANAGE THAT CAN I I CANNNOT EVEN FUCKING MANMAGE TO MANAGE THAT CAN I thats too much for lil ol me! i am aggressively pointless! i am the single least important collection of fucking atoms on this planet! every last fucking rock i stepped on walking to and from the class that i skipped half of today is more important and has contribtued more to the grand scheme of things than i ever have or ever will, and thats jkust the inanimate fucking objects on the ground. lets not even get started on all the actual people whose time my existance waste, who i am a fucking affront to  by sheer virtue of being in any way associated with them at any point in time ever. i guess this is it, this is what i get when my entire personlaity is a loosely cobbled together collection of self deprecating jokes and a fake ego, desperately attempting to patch over an interior that has holes in it less than it just is one giant fucking hole. i was, am, and will be nothing, not even enough to earn the use of “I” at the beginning of the sentence. dinner is in 15 minutes. my friends will be there. im paralyzed. i belive every word i wrote above so why

would i inflict myself upon them but i 

i cant not

i so deeply want to

to go sit in uncharacteristic silence and hope somebnody notices and asks me whats up so i can give them a dumb, abridged, mostly fake version and get the sad pity looks and then feel bad about exploiting them and then

rinse

repeat

because i am not a person

[apsbicepstraining]

3 practices you’re working out wrong | Fox News

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There were two lat-pulldown stations situated next to each other in this gym I belonged to many years ago. On one of them was an older dame who was lifting, if recall serves, 10 pounds. I can only assume that she misconstrued the name of the utilization and thought it was a lap pulldown, because thats where the bar intention up when she wheeled it down the figurehead of her torso.

On the contiguous machine was a guy who was lifting, if remember provides, the entire heavines stack, or most of it. He rose off the seat at the beginning of each rep to assistant him get the load moving, and then leaned back at a 45 -degree angle to get the bar to his chest. The deeper he got into his set, the more force and figure English he employed.

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Two people, two completely different ideas about how to do one of the most basic efforts in the gym. And both of them completely wrong.

If you walked into that same gym today, chances are youd watch multiple versions of exerts hardly anyone did a decade ago, like planks and kettlebell changes. Those are in addition to the classic exerts, the simple ones that every lifter has done as long as hes been filching, but may not be doing in a way that helps him reach his goals.

Theres more free info than ever, and yet form hasnt improved, mentioned Nick Tumminello, columnist of the upcoming Building Muscle and Performance: A Program for Size, Strength, and Speed, and a coach based in Fort Lauderdale. Husband are stubborn, and they always think they know better.

Flawed exercise form certainly comes down to three fundamental problems TAGEND

Lack of control

Poor stability

Misreading the item of the exercise

Lets tackle them in that order.

Control issues

Most beings are in the gym to do bodybuilding, Tumminello enunciated. That is, to build muscle. But most people in the gym instruct like weightlifters, where the goals and targets is to removing the heavines . Theres a big difference. Bodybuilding is about checking the weight through the entire series of motion.

Take the lateral invoke, for example. The space most guys do it, Tumminello mentioned, is to shaking the heavines up, and let it disintegrate down.

But the entire level of the rehearsal is to target the middle-of-the-road part of the deltoid muscles. To establish them proliferate, you need to made them under strain. Theyre under the most tension at the top of the stray of the motionthe segment everyone cheats through, he says.

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You see this over and over in activities designed to target specific muscles, includes the lat pulldowns I described at the beginning. Tumminello also mentioned the bent-over barbell sequence: Theyll pluck it halfway with good form, then jolt it the rest of the way.

He furnishes a simple fix TAGEND

Select a weight you can hold at the point of maximum friction, with good form.

If you cant accommodated it four to five seconds, then the loads too damned heavy, he answered. You dont necessary to brace it when you civilize, but thats how you should research it.

For most bodybuilding exerciseslateral conjures, lat pulldowns, bent-over or accommodated rowsyou can experiment your weight at the end of the scope of gesture. For biceps bends, its the midpoint, when your forearms are parallel to the floor.

Or you are able to make it simpler, and exactly remember which part of the raising you typically have to cheater to get through. If you cant hamper it there for a few seconds, try using a lighter weight.

Bad posture

Picture these four rehearsals TAGEND

Plank

Pushup

Loaded carry

Bear crawl

What do they have in common? If you answered, Theyre all the same exercise, youre a lot smarter than me. It never resulted to me until Alwyn Cosgrove, my coauthor on the New Rules of Lifting books, excused it.

Of course they dont looking alike. But the key to good form is exactly the same: Whatever your posture is standing up straight-from-the-shoulder, thats what it should be when youre doing a timber, or a moving plank( aka pushup ), or a walk-to plank( aka loaded carry ), or a scooting plank( aka bear creeping ).

On the plank, pushup, and carry you should be able to draw a straight line from your ears through your shoulders, hips, and ends. On the bring crawling, the line should connect your ears, shoulders, and hips, with your torso parallel to the floor.

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The most common mistakes are postural. With the plank, pushup, and bear crawling, you verify these almost every day TAGEND

persisting your butt in the air

letting your stomach sag toward the floor

promoting your foreman to check out the form of the person in front of you

On a pushup, you can tell if youre elevating your as when your nose reaches the storey ahead of your chest. If your stomach is sagging on a board or pushup, youll possibly feel it as an unpleasant strain in your lower back. And if you find yourself mesmerized by the person in front of you on any of these employs, youre perhaps face-lift your head.

The biggest problems on loaded carries entered when the heavines is held to one side, as in a suitcase carry. Mistakes might include TAGEND

Bending to the side comprising the weight

Overcompensating for the heavines by stooping to the opposite side

Leaning back and flaring your rib cage out

You can self-correct the first two issues by attaches great importance. If youre dispassionate, you should be able to tell if youre standing up straight-from-the-shoulder. If its a battle, lowering the weight.

A good self-check for the latter question is to target your non-weight-bearing hand on your sternum. If you feel your underside ribs start to move forward, settle your posture.

Cognitive disappointment

Return for a moment to the confused dame at the lat-pulldown station, the one pluck the bar down to her hips. Clearly, she didnt understand that the aims of the activity is to engage muscles in her midriff and upper back, and to do that she needed to select a reasonably challenging weight and attract the bar to her chest.

I recollected it because its not something you picture every day.

But there are a few usually misunderstood exercisings youll appreciate on a regular basis. Tumminello mentioned the hang knee parent. As ab usages move, its about as hard-core as the majority of members of us will ever get. But thats their own problems: Most of us cant actually do the activity correctly.

To do it right, Tumminello told, you need to tilt your pelvis upward, something thats hellaciously difficult from a dead hang. Instead, most guys will merely lift their knees, a crusade that works the hip-flexor muscles on the figurehead of the pelvis but doesnt project the rectus abdominis, the six-pack muscle, through the intended scope of motion.

RELATED : 38 Dumbbell Exercises Youve Probably Never Seen

If you cant do that pelvic tiltand as I enunciated, few of us canthen youre much better served by doing the reverse crunch from the storey or an incline bench.

Another common mistake involves usages for the opposite side of the torso. When you do a kettlebell swing, the goals and targets is to move the load by straightening your hips. That commits the potent glute and hamstring muscles. Your limbs and shoulder are precisely along for the ride.

But before you can arrange your hips, you have to load them by pushing them downwards. If you dont do that, you cant generate the force are required to swing the load out in front of you. Thats whether you are look so many parties return the swing into a front invoke: theyll various kinds of squat down, and then gather the weight up overhead utilizing their shoulder muscles.

A good shake, by compare, should end up somewhere between waist and chest stature. One route to tell if youre going it right: the bell exits precisely a bit higher than your hands at the opening of the move. If youre hoisting it with your forearms and shoulders, itll do the opposite, and end up below your hands.( For a full seminar on how to do the usage, check out The Right Way to Do a Kettlebell Swing .)

How to do any employ better

The lessons of these nine exerciseslateral promote, bent-over sequence, plank, pushup, bear crawling, loaded carry, lat pulldown, hanging knee grow, kettlebell swingcan be applied to any utilization you try. You just need to ask yourself three queries TAGEND 1. What is the point of the rehearsal ?

If the goal is to build muscle, then focus on developing strain in specific targeted muscles, and dont employ momentum to blow through that the members of the exercise.

2. What should my form look like while doing the workout ?

This is trickier, because on numerous rehearsals its hard to check your figure without divulging figure to look at yourself. And thats only if you have a mirror nearby. Without one, you have to pay attention to your form signals. If you feel a strain in your lower back on a board or pushup, thats your clue to work on your alignment.

3. What activities should and shouldnt be involved ?

This is even trickier, and may require coaching, or at least some reading outside the gym. Most parties looking at a kettlebell swaying would think the goals and targets is to lift the load up in front of you, so it reaches sense that youd use your limbs and shoulders. If nothing tells you its all in the hips, how would you know?

Which makes me to perhaps the most reliable clue: When other lifters stop, gaze, and then shake their tops as they walk away, you can be pretty sure youre doing something wrong.

Lou Schuler is an award-winning journalist and contributing editor to Mens Health. Check out his new book Strong: Nine Workout Programs For Women to Burn Fat, Boost Metabolism, and Build Strength For Life, with coauthor Alwyn Cosgrove .

This article initially appeared on MensHealth.com .

The post 3 practices you’re working out wrong | Fox News appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[strengthpushingthrough]

The fundamentals of my being

Most days my brain feels like a labyrinth of endless thoughts swirling around and for most of my life it has felt that way. I am a thinker, I think all day every day and even in my sleep. I have lived with Anxiety and Bouts of Depression since I can remember and ill live with it until i die. That being said I have let it control every emotion and outcome of every situation, confrontation and even just simple conversations. Until now.

I think it always starts at the beginning i mean thats what a beginning is for right? what i mean is i think the way we think, feel, communicate, love and express ourselves and our personality and temperament are all decided before we even leave the womb and from there its dependant on our environment and  parents providing a nurturing and stable upbringing in order for us to develop in a way that is healthy. I alike many others was not given that and as much as i enjoyed my childhood breaking it down little by little i can see exactly where things when wrong and why i keep running into the walls i the built against this world. Its time to tear them down and dissect myself piece by piece.

Perfection and what it means to me

I have always been kind of a loner and have always found myself searching for that person thats going to stay. I think Perfection has been built up as this thing that will provide happiness for me sort of like a life goal. “If I'm not perfect people are always going to leave or i wasn't good enough, i wasn't perfect.” instead of having a healthy goal and striving for it i developed my own self destruction. I think it started out as “If someone didn't want to be friends with me” i wouldn't think well maybe theres something wrong with them or thats their issue. i developed the habit of blaming myself of looking inwards and looking for the imperfections that caused that person to not like me. I developed a little voice telling me i was the reason, that came from the constant bullying about my appearance of looking like a “boy” dressing in what i was comfortable with rather than what little girls were supposed to look like and it wasn't easy. I developed this from the comments from the kids at school and it seemed everywhere else too. At home it was “put something nice on and look like a girl for a change” like being comfortable in my own skin wasn't the most important thing, it was “ if you don't want to be teased dress like a girl” so i did i conformed and i learnt to be what society wanted me to be so i would be liked. but even that had its limits, that only gets you so far. it also destroys your self worth and tells you that people don't want the real you. I learnt to strive for perfection because to me if i could be perfect people would like me and i would find the person that would stay. growing up with this mindset saw me develop unhealthy attachments to clothes, shoes and material things because in school all the cool kids had all the cool stuff so surely thats what made them cool. Perfect skin is another one of these things, its like where taught from a young ago from the magazines and tv shows and movies that we must strive for that perfect skin and hairless body that anything else is disgusting. High school made me feel like my life was a joke. I had braces and pimples and i was not one of those tall girls with boys falling all over them and I'm ashamed of the way i talked to myself day in day out. I would get asked out by boys only to be dumped a minute later because who would want to go out with me. People didnt care about me I was someone to be laughed at. I was a joke. by now i had developed a sense that i was only beautiful if a boy said so and even then he could change his mind. I had a sense that i had to find validation from others, that i was more or less obsessed with trying to be perfect. How could anybody love me if i was broken, i got to the end of that with they won't and i lost interest in everything i became depressed, i wanted to die, i just wanted this pain to end. I would self destruct so much nobody even needed to say anything horrible to me i was saying it to myself from the moment i woke up and i didnt sleep i just thought about ways to end it over and over, i struggled to get out of bed in the morning so much so i wouldn't have time to do anything but get dressed and brush my teeth and be out the door. Weekends became endless days of sleeping to escape my mind and the vicious circle kept on loop. Leaving school and getting a job made this a lot better although and people weren't as horrible as they were in school and i learnt to find happiness in small things, but my strive for perfection was still there and was until about a week ago until i realised i was only enabling my self destructive side by doing that and things have changed. I feel like i opened the flood gates to the good in life. Perfection has been a rope around my neck for years and it is nothing but the most destructive word in the world. Today I am Learning to accept my imperfections because they are what make me fundamentally unique they are apart of me and i am taking control of my rebuild. I am Enough, i am more than enough for me.

My Fears

My Biggest fears are Rejection and Failure.

Rejection for me this is simply a crippling fear, it keeps my words hidden. I have in some ways found that i can put myself in positions where i could be rejected and faced this many times, because for me the risk of not living and experiencing is far worse than being rejected. So i will make the first move, i will  initiate intimate situations, i will say hello first i try to push past this fear so much but it still holds me back in so many areas.. its linked to not being good enough and perfection because if i do get rejected i will look inwards and i will self destruct. Failure is a similar fear and i think its all linked back to those feelings of hurt kept the deepest.

What I’m learning

For me i am learning that the only way to get out of my depressed mindset is to figure out what the deepest issue is thats causing it. Writing is helping so much and its a release I've never had before i feel like i am empty when I'm done and my brain can finally relax the anxious buzzing goes away and i can breathe again. I read a book Called The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown a couple weeks ago and this one tip she gave me has changed my life. she talks about how she gets anxious and how to only way to stop the horrible crippling control of anxiety for her was to bring light to the Gremlins. ‘Side note here The movie the Gremlins who would come out in the darkness and could only be destroyed by the light’ its the same concept when you have the anxious feelings taking over your body step back and say okay right now right in this moment whats the issue  this is bringing light to the darkness controlling you. Usually its something small and easily fixable when you take away everything but the current moment and it really made me think.

Anxiety- This is the fear and worry about the future.

Depression- This is the inability to let go of the anger and guilt associated with the past.

For me Depression is very much the Anger and Guilt of the past, Its also environmental.

Bryan he was a source of depression for me but it was actually the feelings that were associated with it and once i was able to bring light to what was making me feel it, it went away. I have been very angry at him for a very long time and working towards forgiveness has helped manage it.

I know when I'm depressed and i now know how to manage it. it may never go away but knowing how to keep it from controlling me makes a world of difference. its the same with my anxiety.

I have also learnt to Meditate i have a mantra in which i say over and over in my head every morning for 20 mins and before bed for 20 mins this really has helped me to relax and gain control over my thoughts. sometimes my mind wanders throughout the meditation and as it does i bring my attention back to this mantra, it has helped me in situations where i feel those anxious and depressed feelings taking over and without thinking about it i stop and bring myself back to the current moment and i am able to figure out what really is bothering me.

This is my mantra

I am my skin in which i fit

I am this seat in which i sit

I am the sun warm on my face

I am the stones that pave this place

I am all trees that gives me shade

I am all grasses each single blade

I am the fresh milk in my glass

I am the cloud that make to pass

i am fur, feather, nail, beak and claw

i am heart and soul and so much more

I am earth, air, water, wind and fire

I am the sum of sexual desire

I am the eternal galactic tune

i am the planets , stars and moon

I am everything, yet nothing at all

i am a dancer at the universal ball

i am here, gone, yet here again

I am wild and free, all-knowing and tame

I am at peace in a state of elation

I am at one with the act of creation

I also have list of Affirmations on my mirror and i read them aloud to myself in the mirror before i leave for the day. Reality for me is that i am in control of my life, love and the pain i suffer. I choose to see the good and life is what i make it.

I believe in how powerful our minds are and if i can make myself feel the horrible pain because of habit and words then it is proven i can rewire my brain to find the positive as habit. This is a long journey we call life and i believe in the power of myself. if you think about it i think we all give the power of validation to others and when someone says something it can either make us feel good or bad and that can change our entire day so if i am kind to myself i will intern feel good.

The last month has been some intense soul searching, looking to the depths of my being in order to understand myself in any way I can. I think the way its going i can say that 2017 is the year i find myself in the darkest corners of my brain and breakdown the giant wall i have built to protect me.. it hasn't protected me from anything but the acceptance and love that i deserve to give myself. So heres to the start, to taking the steps in the right direction, to growing expenentially through experiencing life as myself and validating that i am whole and i have a light bright enough to light fires in the darkest of places, to endless possibilities, and to wake up everyday with the mindset that I have the power to do anything i can think of.

Peace out

[apsbicepstraining]

3 practices you’re working out wrong | Fox News

()

There were two lat-pulldown stations situated next to each other in this gym I belonged to many years ago. On one of them was an older dame who was lifting, if recall serves, 10 pounds. I can only assume that she misconstrued the name of the utilization and thought it was a lap pulldown, because thats where the bar intention up when she wheeled it down the figurehead of her torso.

On the contiguous machine was a guy who was lifting, if remember provides, the entire heavines stack, or most of it. He rose off the seat at the beginning of each rep to assistant him get the load moving, and then leaned back at a 45 -degree angle to get the bar to his chest. The deeper he got into his set, the more force and figure English he employed.

Related : THE 21 -DAY METASHREDan At-Home Body-Shredding Program That Will Ignite Your Metabolism, Torch Fat, and Build the Body Youve Always Wanted( One Guy Lost 25 Pounds In Just 6 Weeks !)

Two people, two completely different ideas about how to do one of the most basic efforts in the gym. And both of them completely wrong.

If you walked into that same gym today, chances are youd watch multiple versions of exerts hardly anyone did a decade ago, like planks and kettlebell changes. Those are in addition to the classic exerts, the simple ones that every lifter has done as long as hes been filching, but may not be doing in a way that helps him reach his goals.

Theres more free info than ever, and yet form hasnt improved, mentioned Nick Tumminello, columnist of the upcoming Building Muscle and Performance: A Program for Size, Strength, and Speed, and a coach based in Fort Lauderdale. Husband are stubborn, and they always think they know better.

Flawed exercise form certainly comes down to three fundamental problems TAGEND

Lack of control

Poor stability

Misreading the item of the exercise

Lets tackle them in that order.

Control issues

Most beings are in the gym to do bodybuilding, Tumminello enunciated. That is, to build muscle. But most people in the gym instruct like weightlifters, where the goals and targets is to removing the heavines . Theres a big difference. Bodybuilding is about checking the weight through the entire series of motion.

Take the lateral invoke, for example. The space most guys do it, Tumminello mentioned, is to shaking the heavines up, and let it disintegrate down.

But the entire level of the rehearsal is to target the middle-of-the-road part of the deltoid muscles. To establish them proliferate, you need to made them under strain. Theyre under the most tension at the top of the stray of the motionthe segment everyone cheats through, he says.

RELATED: 10 Cardio Practises That Burn More Calories Than Operating

You see this over and over in activities designed to target specific muscles, includes the lat pulldowns I described at the beginning. Tumminello also mentioned the bent-over barbell sequence: Theyll pluck it halfway with good form, then jolt it the rest of the way.

He furnishes a simple fix TAGEND

Select a weight you can hold at the point of maximum friction, with good form.

If you cant accommodated it four to five seconds, then the loads too damned heavy, he answered. You dont necessary to brace it when you civilize, but thats how you should research it.

For most bodybuilding exerciseslateral conjures, lat pulldowns, bent-over or accommodated rowsyou can experiment your weight at the end of the scope of gesture. For biceps bends, its the midpoint, when your forearms are parallel to the floor.

Or you are able to make it simpler, and exactly remember which part of the raising you typically have to cheater to get through. If you cant hamper it there for a few seconds, try using a lighter weight.

Bad posture

Picture these four rehearsals TAGEND

Plank

Pushup

Loaded carry

Bear crawl

What do they have in common? If you answered, Theyre all the same exercise, youre a lot smarter than me. It never resulted to me until Alwyn Cosgrove, my coauthor on the New Rules of Lifting books, excused it.

Of course they dont looking alike. But the key to good form is exactly the same: Whatever your posture is standing up straight-from-the-shoulder, thats what it should be when youre doing a timber, or a moving plank( aka pushup ), or a walk-to plank( aka loaded carry ), or a scooting plank( aka bear creeping ).

On the plank, pushup, and carry you should be able to draw a straight line from your ears through your shoulders, hips, and ends. On the bring crawling, the line should connect your ears, shoulders, and hips, with your torso parallel to the floor.

RELATED: 5 Guys Who Wake Up at 4 A.M. to Labor Out Tell You How They Do It

The most common mistakes are postural. With the plank, pushup, and bear crawling, you verify these almost every day TAGEND

persisting your butt in the air

letting your stomach sag toward the floor

promoting your foreman to check out the form of the person in front of you

On a pushup, you can tell if youre elevating your as when your nose reaches the storey ahead of your chest. If your stomach is sagging on a board or pushup, youll possibly feel it as an unpleasant strain in your lower back. And if you find yourself mesmerized by the person in front of you on any of these employs, youre perhaps face-lift your head.

The biggest problems on loaded carries entered when the heavines is held to one side, as in a suitcase carry. Mistakes might include TAGEND

Bending to the side comprising the weight

Overcompensating for the heavines by stooping to the opposite side

Leaning back and flaring your rib cage out

You can self-correct the first two issues by attaches great importance. If youre dispassionate, you should be able to tell if youre standing up straight-from-the-shoulder. If its a battle, lowering the weight.

A good self-check for the latter question is to target your non-weight-bearing hand on your sternum. If you feel your underside ribs start to move forward, settle your posture.

Cognitive disappointment

Return for a moment to the confused dame at the lat-pulldown station, the one pluck the bar down to her hips. Clearly, she didnt understand that the aims of the activity is to engage muscles in her midriff and upper back, and to do that she needed to select a reasonably challenging weight and attract the bar to her chest.

I recollected it because its not something you picture every day.

But there are a few usually misunderstood exercisings youll appreciate on a regular basis. Tumminello mentioned the hang knee parent. As ab usages move, its about as hard-core as the majority of members of us will ever get. But thats their own problems: Most of us cant actually do the activity correctly.

To do it right, Tumminello told, you need to tilt your pelvis upward, something thats hellaciously difficult from a dead hang. Instead, most guys will merely lift their knees, a crusade that works the hip-flexor muscles on the figurehead of the pelvis but doesnt project the rectus abdominis, the six-pack muscle, through the intended scope of motion.

RELATED : 38 Dumbbell Exercises Youve Probably Never Seen

If you cant do that pelvic tiltand as I enunciated, few of us canthen youre much better served by doing the reverse crunch from the storey or an incline bench.

Another common mistake involves usages for the opposite side of the torso. When you do a kettlebell swing, the goals and targets is to move the load by straightening your hips. That commits the potent glute and hamstring muscles. Your limbs and shoulder are precisely along for the ride.

But before you can arrange your hips, you have to load them by pushing them downwards. If you dont do that, you cant generate the force are required to swing the load out in front of you. Thats whether you are look so many parties return the swing into a front invoke: theyll various kinds of squat down, and then gather the weight up overhead utilizing their shoulder muscles.

A good shake, by compare, should end up somewhere between waist and chest stature. One route to tell if youre going it right: the bell exits precisely a bit higher than your hands at the opening of the move. If youre hoisting it with your forearms and shoulders, itll do the opposite, and end up below your hands.( For a full seminar on how to do the usage, check out The Right Way to Do a Kettlebell Swing .)

How to do any employ better

The lessons of these nine exerciseslateral promote, bent-over sequence, plank, pushup, bear crawling, loaded carry, lat pulldown, hanging knee grow, kettlebell swingcan be applied to any utilization you try. You just need to ask yourself three queries TAGEND 1. What is the point of the rehearsal ?

If the goal is to build muscle, then focus on developing strain in specific targeted muscles, and dont employ momentum to blow through that the members of the exercise.

2. What should my form look like while doing the workout ?

This is trickier, because on numerous rehearsals its hard to check your figure without divulging figure to look at yourself. And thats only if you have a mirror nearby. Without one, you have to pay attention to your form signals. If you feel a strain in your lower back on a board or pushup, thats your clue to work on your alignment.

3. What activities should and shouldnt be involved ?

This is even trickier, and may require coaching, or at least some reading outside the gym. Most parties looking at a kettlebell swaying would think the goals and targets is to lift the load up in front of you, so it reaches sense that youd use your limbs and shoulders. If nothing tells you its all in the hips, how would you know?

Which makes me to perhaps the most reliable clue: When other lifters stop, gaze, and then shake their tops as they walk away, you can be pretty sure youre doing something wrong.

Lou Schuler is an award-winning journalist and contributing editor to Mens Health. Check out his new book Strong: Nine Workout Programs For Women to Burn Fat, Boost Metabolism, and Build Strength For Life, with coauthor Alwyn Cosgrove .

This article initially appeared on MensHealth.com .

The post 3 practices you’re working out wrong | Fox News appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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