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TIPS FOR MY BESTIES WITH POTS
These are from my doctor!
SALT SALT SALT SALT SALT!!!!!! YOU NEED SALT!!!!! goldfish, saltine crackers… great snacks. Just sprinkle salt on like everything man (unless that makes it taste like ASS then you can skip that). Also occasionally, once every day or two maybe, just dump a small pile of salt into your palm and lick it. Kinda nasty and you might wanna wash your hands before and after, but YOU NEED THE SALT !!!!!! It will help!!!!!!!!
WATERRRR drink way more water than you think you need! Electrolytes too!! Gatorade, Powerade… stuff like that just fill your day with water and electrolytes
My doctor suggested minor exercise daily, just something small to get your heart up a little, like talking a walk or doing some little cardio exercises. Don’t super duper strain yourself and take breaks, though! Super important! I personally play Just Dance (I play the videos on YT and follow along) for this if you need another idea
Sit and stand up slowly I know most ppl with POTS already do this but you WILL make yourself dizzy if you stand up too fast!!! That may lead to collapsing (it does for me at least) and that’s Not Good!! Don’t feel ashamed to stand up like a snail. Snails don’t get lightheaded :)
General physical disability thing but helps with my POTS too, shower sitting down, do it piece by piece. Just like sit on the side of your tub if you have one and wash your legs. Then like sit in the tub and wash your body and your hair or whatever. Make sure to have electrolytes and water on hand for after! Take your TIME getting dried and dressed. Like srsly do not rush yourself!!!
It’s also recc to not use hot water when washing yourself but frankly I will Die in the cold so if you are the same just know that does make symptoms worse and prepare accordingly to deal with that. No shame in that !!!
If you have more PLSPLSPLS leave them in replies or tags or reblogs!!! I’ll add stuff as well if I think of more! Stay safe and CONSUME YOUR SALTS!!!!!
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Greetings Author/Writer/Accomplished/Amazing/Phenomenal/[Creator of the Best Book]/Published Radley! Many, many apologies for not writing to you in so long. I was waiting to finish your book, but first I had to get your book and then I had to wait for a good time to read it. That took much, much, much longer than expected (personally, I blame The Horrors). However, I finally had a chance to read it today and it was amazing and superb and phenomenal and splendid and great and deserving of many more adjectives. I finished it in one sitting. I shall now attempt to summarize my thoughts: “Book! Book!! It’s a book! Best book!!! Woo! Amazing book! Wow!!! When next book?” Also, you look very dapper and also fancy in your author portrait. Also very amazing. Moving on, your book ensorcelled me. Moving on again, a while ago you reblogged a post that started with “masks and helmets that hides someone's face in such a way that they become the face themselves my beloved” and had 6 masks in them. The third mask is that of a medieval beekeeper and I dressed up as one for Halloween a couple of years ago. One of your tags was “I pray to thee.” Many thanks for praying to me. Also before that post you reblogged one about Nautilus expedition livestreams and you gave that post these three tags: ”I love this so much,” “<3,” and “ocean puppies my beloveds.” I thought you’d want to know that the YouTube channel “EVNautilus” has that stuff and a lot more. Also, you are oh so very short. Riley and I are both so much taller than you. Please have a better week. Your book should be taught. Have you seen really long posts? I’ll try to leave the questions for this ask to a minimum. What fonts did you use and why did you choose them. Did you know that you are very awesome and so is your book? Do you know how to make Captain pancakes? How and why are you so good at booking?
You are very correct about changing the post! I will endeavour to do that today - but let's see if I remember after replying to your wonderful messages~ Personal memory challenge time!
okay so FIRST
BOOK!!!!! BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU READ THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you times a gazillion. I am touched. I am honoured. I am a small, soft-boiled egg jiggling happily on my plate. Thank you so much - I am delighted that the story brought you so much joy! And that you finished it in one sitting! Your powers astound me <3
I absolutely did pray to you, and I now choose to believe that you are in fact an ancient beekeeper god come to bless my blog with my presence. I shall set up a shrine in your honour. Use this power unwisely, please x
And thank you times a quintaseptagigagillion for the Nautilus channel recc! Ocean puppies are so extremely important. I want to scritch them under their cute little prognathistic jaws, avoiding all the razor-sharp teeth~ I want to pat their gelatinous, translucent bellies and watch the organs quiver. I want to be eaten by them when I die. I shall sally forth to the video hellsite and enjoy.
Now for your questions!
I use a whole smorgasbords of fonts for writing - I find it aids concentration to change the font between every draft! I swap between sans serif and serif, using sans serif for writing and serif for editing.
I did have a vague inkling that I might be a little awesome, but I always appreciate being told again!
I can make something akin to Captain pancakes - and in fact, made them a few days ago using this recipe:
Most English pancakes are more like crepes, so these are a lovely change! However, Captain pancakes are Captain pancakes, and I could not ever hope to match his dad energy - which is an integral part of the recipe.
I am good at booking because my first drafts invariably suck ass, and I then furiously edit that well-sucked ass into something beautiful! I always describe the process of booking as 'polishing a turd until it becomes a coprolite'. You just gotta have a decent buffer, and a few hundred thousand years for the story to fossilize.
Thank you for filling my inbox and cheering up my morning, you starry night sky of a person. You contain multitudes and they all delight me.
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Since Grunge is trending for some reason, here’s some new/modern grunge bands I think you should check out!
1. Valentiine
Lead vocalist sounds like a mix between Taylor Momsen and Nina Gordon from Veruca Salt.
Definitely has an overall Veruca Salt and Hole kind of sound.
Nirvana and Soundgarden influences with a modern twist.
2. Senium
Heavier, more industrial sound.
Muddied riffs and drum beats in the best way.
Early Nirvana sound (think Bleach).
Reminiscent of Melvins, Mad Season.
Classic mid-90s grunge sound.
3. Skating Polly
Heavy on the L7, Hole, Veruca Salt vibes (they even have a song with Louise Post and Nina Gordon).
Faeriecore but make it grunge.
Has worked with producer Brad Wood who’s produced albums for Sunny Day Real Estate and queen Liz Phair during their hay day.
Early, grimier grunge sound (almost punk/punk in some aspects)
Raw and simple feminist noise (I say that as a compliment).
4. Pom Pom Squad
I feel like I’m gonna get some pushback on this but hear me out
A lot of these bands are reminiscent of the grunge sound of the 90s
While Pom Pom Squad definitely has some 90s influences, it’s sound is what I think grunge has kind of evolved into.
Now obviously, certain songs of theirs aren’t grunge at all and fall under a more “indie” kind of sound.
But I still think the band is worth checking out if you’re looking for newer, grunge-aligned music.
5. Noiseheads
Good choice if you’re looking for bands that aren’t heavily influenced solely by Nirvana.
Alice In Chains and Smashing Pumpkins kind of vibe.
Lead vocals and drums are a stand-out performance.
6. Superbloom
Classic grunge sound, very minimal modern influences while still utilizing modern technology and production techniques.
Gritty, picturesque, Pearl Jam style lyrics with a Smashing Pumpkins style production.
Sick album art.
Feverish, hypnotic sound.
7. Violet Soda
Courtney Love reminiscent vocals.
90s Fiona Apple with a grittier sound.
Bush and Garbage influences.
Has the same kind of vibe that Pom Pom Squad has, where it’s a more modern take on the genre instead of sounding like something pulled right out of the 90s.
8. Movements
Again, if you’re looking for a direct carbon-copy of that 90s sound, this might not be your favorite.
But I’m trying to encourage y’all to listen to bands that take the sound of 90s grunge and do something refreshing and new with it.
Imagine a cross between pop-punk and grunge.
Blind Melon meets Day To Remember meets liberal arts college student.
More straight-forward approach to lyrics and storytelling as opposed to the psychedelic, philosophical, dreamy lyrics of classic grunge bands while still remaining engaging.
#grunge#music reccs#music recommendation#grunge bands#modern grunge#grunge revival#pom pom squad#skating polly#movements band#@ all the 50 year old men that are bound to patronize me because they don’t agree#leave me alone you geriatric viagroid#if you’re cool and hot and intelligent you’ll be respectful when you disagree or start a dialogue#leave more reccs in the replies or tags when you reblog
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There was a recent discussion on tumblr, which I didn’t reblog for obvious reasons, about how people with a large readership cope with a heavy interaction load -- how the person would be anxious if they dealt with that volume of notes on each post, that amount of interaction and contact. I was tagged in it because of my habit of "lochnessing", where I cause an activity spike on posts I reblog that looks like the loch ness monster.
It never occurs to me, because I’ve dealt with high-volume social media for so long -- realistically about ten years, probably closer to fifteen -- that it’s difficult for people to handle that, because they don’t have the systems in place that I do. I mean it does occur to me in the sense that I have become more cautious about what I reblog and its impact on the OP; there are things I’d like to share with you but don’t because I recognize it would be harmful to the person who wrote them. But it doesn't occur to me that someone might struggle with a high volume of notes purely because it's a volume that they don't have a system in place to deal with the way I do.
So I said I'd do a writeup on the "entire ecosystems" I had in place for handling the high volume of interaction I receive online. I sit at a weird place where I'm not so well known that I can just ignore most of what comes at me with impunity because everyone acknowledges I can't answer it all, like say a youtube star. But at the same time I do get too much attention to return it at the same level I receive it. I am one and you are sixteen thousand. So I had to make systems to return as much as I could and feel okay about not returning the rest.
Reading through this, of course it sounds like a weird humblebrag: "Here's how I deal with my MASSIVE POPULARITY". There's no real way around that; I can't talk about how I deal with comments without talking about how I get a disproportionately high number of them. The fact that I do is what leads me to do things like the Zero Comment Challenge, or Radio Free Monday, to try and balance shit out. So, as I mention occasionally below, you can think I'm an asshole for talking about how I am popular, but I can't talk about how to deal with that popularity without acknowledging the reality of it, and someone somewhere's gonna think I'm an asshole anyway, so whatever.
These are the systems I use to manage my life -- work, play, the weird inbetween space that's kind of both. Many of these are akin to the systems that I use in managing my depression, in that they involve a lot of small steps building up to a big result, but each small step on its own is manageable.
Let's start with AO3, because it's actually probably the simplest.
I clean out my comments once a week. Usually there are between forty and a hundred and fifty, depending on if I’ve published something recently or been recommended by someone.
I go through all the one-sentence comments first, because those are the ones that are least likely to require a response. I read all comments but I learned through trial and error, twice in ten years, that I am physically and emotionally incapable of responding to every comment I receive even if it's just with a "Thank you!" and I'm just going to live with the fact that people think I'm an asshole for that. Also while I appreciate someone who leaves a "Great fic! <3" comment, that's genuinely really cool and validating, I don't think they truly need or expect a response. So most one-line comments, unless they are super weird or contain a question, get read, appreciated, and then deleted.
Then I go through the longer comments that need a closer reading, and delete any that are cool but still don't seem to require responses. If someone has left a ton of comments, I'll find the one I think is coolest or most needing of response, delete the others, and reply to that one comment with a thoughtful response including a line thanking them for all their other comments.
Finally, I respond to comments that are in-depth or have questions that require some thought. I find that if I don't respond to these on a weekly basis they pile up and then someone who asked a question like six months ago is still waiting for an answer, so this one is non-negotiable: my AO3 inbox has to be empty at the end of each week, and everything that needed a reply has to have one. (I do have one or two that just live in my inbox because they are cool ideas I will one day get round to writing, and I want to credit them when I do, but it's never more than two.) For me, it's easiest to wait until Friday or Saturday and just take an hour to clear them all out, rather than clearing as I go, because I don't have AO3 open all the time the way I do some other sites.
Tumblr: Every morning, before work, I go through the previous night's responses; I open all reblogs/mentions in new tabs to read and reply-as-necessary, and I reply to all comments that need responses. (This is also something I'll do throughout the day, but especially if I'm tired or pressed for time, the comment replies might be saved as a draft or left in an open tab until I can get to them). Occasionally shit doesn’t show up or I miss stuff but I’ve learned to just live with that as the price of doing fandom on Tumblr.
If there's a post by someone else that requires a response from me -- either a reblog of one of my posts, or someone tagged me in a post -- I Like it to find it later or I save it as a draft. I don't use Likes as anything other than "I want to be able to find this again in less than a week's time" and I never have more than about 20 Likes in my files. (Unless I’m traveling; it’s easier to Like something than save it as a draft or respond, so when I get home from traveling I often have 30-50 Likes in my file.)
Often on Tumblr I go through what I call the Line Cycle -- I read my dash, and then I go "down the line" and open all the other pages that might need attention, in specific order. I open asks and try to respond to a few -- I try to answer at least five every time but sometimes I don't manage to answer any for whatever reason -- then I open likes and try to convert as many likes as I can to either queued reblogs or drafts. I open drafts and try to convert some of those to queued reblogs. Then I go through the same process for one or two side blogs.
(Also in drafts are a lot of things that I'm not sure I want to put in my queue yet, or things that I put in the queue weekly like the Zero Comment Challenge post, which I dust off when I'm ready to queue it, then immediately re-save to drafts when it posts.)
Occasionally if I feel shit is getting out of hand I dedicate myself to, every time, not leaving the page I'm on until I've reduced its "count" (number of asks, likes, drafts, etc) by five, or at least to below the next multiple of five -- if I have 23, for example, I'll try to get it below 20.
Sometimes posts in tabs sit open for a while because in order to respond I have to read an article or watch a video, which take a lot of focus and attention. It used to be that recommendations for books or stuff to watch also sat open forever until I could get round to doing it, but now I just have a "reccs" file on the cloud that is a list of what I've been recommended and who recommended it, and I work my way through them slowly.
Email: Once I've read them, site notifications in my inbox get deleted; I've turned off follow/kudos notifications because they tend to be white noise.
Email is tough for me, it requires a lot of focus and emotional attention to answer emails, so I treat it the same way I would asks or likes or whatnot, but much more slowly. I tend to have a backlog of about thirty emails in my inbox, though often five to ten of those are emails that don't need response and that I'm saving (I star them to mark them as not needing attention). I have the multiple-stars function in Gmail turned on, and when it gets really bad, I start opening emails and triaging -- "This will be easier to answer" "This will take some time" etc. by starring them different colors.
I like to have no more than fifteen emails in my inbox but that is a rarity.
The Internet: Because social media takes up a lot of my time and I also work eight hours a day (well, four, we'll get to that in a bit) I have streamlined the way I encounter the internet, as well. I have a list of "daily reading" bookmarks that I open every morning and check through -- the horoscope page, the mustard tag on tumblr (which I don't follow because then the same dumbass two hipster fashion posts keep showing up on my dash), a blog that follows and posts about new small flash games that I might enjoy playing, a few others. (I also have a Monday file that I open once a week, it's calendars of events and such, and I go through on Mondays and add anything to my calendar that looks interesting.)
But if I can, any regularly-updated page that has an RSS feed gets converted to RSS and put into my Netvibes reader account, where I peruse it at my leisure. The Netvibes reader account includes a direct feed from the Steve/Tony and Steve/Sam tags on AO3, plus a few others; longform.org, some cooking blogs I follow, a bunch of podcast pages, a few webcomics, and one or two tumblrs that I don't want showing up on my dash (mainly artists' porny sideblogs, what up you glorious pervs) or think I would make the person uncomfortable by following them.
I have five tabs pinned to Chrome at any given time, and four tabs pinned to Firefox. The Chrome tabs are my personal Netvibes, Google Drive, a Google Sheets spreadsheet with my calendar and accounting tabs in it, Gmail, and Tumblr. The Firefox tabs are a second Netvibes account I use for work (we have several news sources we all monitor daily), my non-fannish gmail, my non-fannish facebook with a custom reading page so I never see anything twice, and the Google "family calendar" that I and my family use to track where we all are and what we're doing.
My parents use this more than I do, which is why I often open the calendar app on my phone to check my work schedule and find that my parents are taking the dogs to the groomer's today (yes, I know I could turn this off, but it amuses me). When I introduced my mother to Google Calendar her eyes got super big and she fell in immediate love; the first three things she added were the birthdays of her two dogs, followed by the birthday of Jesus. I would be more insulted by this but I had already added all the family birthdays, so at least I didn't come in behind the dogs AND the Christ Child.
Once in a while, when I'm at work and I feel like I'm not sure what I should be doing or that my day is spiralling out of my control, I'll take a deep breath, pull up Chrome, and go through all my pinned tabs, one by one, changing or fixing something on each -- I'll clear out my Longform reading, answer a few emails, check the calendar, etc. Then I'll go through any open tabs and try to close at least one. I get anxious if I have more than five or six non-pinned tabs open. Like having an inbox that's rarely over thirty emails total, it's not a sign I'm more effective or efficient than anyone else, it's just a sign I'm debilitatingly anxious about this kind of thing.
Work: I've read, many times, that people who work eight hours a day in a white collar job like mine really only do four hours of actual work. And for a while I joked that I wondered if I even did four, because I dick around on the internet A LOT. But lately I started to genuinely wonder, and so for the past six weeks, I've put that statement to the test.
When I arrive at work, I immediately put in two hours of solid work. I don't read tumblr, I don't read anything but work-related material. I triage all my work emails, I go through my Google Task list for the day and sort things by most to least urgent, and then I work my way through them for two solid hours. It's not easy at all, but any time I think "This is when I would stop and read tumblr" I shake my head and try to do one more work thing, and then I get back in the groove and can do like, three more. I also use this first morning period to take care of "personal work", stuff which has to get done to keep my life running smoothly, like mailing packages or replying to my parents' emails or whatnot.
Then I get a half-hour break to read tumblr, play a flash game, maybe read a piece on Longform. (I don't read fanfic at work; I sometimes clean out Netvibes of fics that from the tags and summaries I know I won't be interested in, but I don't open fanfic at work at all.) I also use this time to get some food in me.
Then I do another two hours of work, same deal. And that's four hours of work. And I get a shitload done, let me tell you.
For the next three hours after, I am basically free to do whatever I want. I usually use about an hour to do some freelance work, and I spend time on tumblr or on personal email, reading articles, listening to podcasts, playing games. I eat a snack, I talk to my coworkers. I find I actually run out of new stuff to read, and I do try to process the old stuff, like empty out my drafts and likes. And of course the nature of my job means that sometimes there is work to be done that comes up suddenly, but it's usually just a matter of teeing it up for the following morning's work shift.
For the last hour of my work day, I go through my work inbox, make sure everything's set up for tomorrow, send any last emails, do any last wrap-up, and make sure all my documents are either saved or closed. (Our IT team likes to run updates and involuntary restarts without warning, so I've learned to always save at end of day.)
So, yeah. Those are some of the systems I have in place in order to run a very mentally busy life. I'm not necessarily recommending them; a lot of them won't work for everyone because everyone is different, and I recognize that some of them are inapplicable (I work a job with no outward-facing element to it; a barista or a librarian or a teacher can't do what I do, schedule-wise), and some of them are a level of regimentation I'm not sure most people would find healthy. But that's how I do my thing, and maybe some of my techniques will sound appealing to other people who occasionally feel, as I do, like they're drowning a little bit.
(Did you find this useful or interesting? Keep me organized and drop some change in my Ko-Fi or at my Paypal!)
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