#to be a ref but my laptop broke before i finished it

[sn4k3r0t]

bizkit doodles

[futurebicon]

Hit

For the many people who requested #12. Finally a long one I’ve slowly been working on forever.

12- I feel sick, so anxious and sick and like my heart is trying to beat it’s way out of my chest

TW- slight panic attack, blood, injury, hurt

“This better be a good game” Logan said as he tossed popcorn into his mouth.

“It obviously will be. It’s the Snakes.” Kacey shook his head and looked at him like he was stupid.

“Everyone shut up it’s on” Talker shushed them, even though they all knew they would start talking about the game in a matter of seconds.

“Are you going to be okay watching this?” Remus whispered to Sirius.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine, amour” Sirius smiled at him. Regulus and the Snakes had been taking jabs at Sirius and the Lions every chance they got.

Remus nodded and cut into the argument between James and Olli.

***

Everyone was on the edge of their seats watching the game intensely. It was a gruesome game, both teams hitting hard. The game was tied 2-2.

Sirius was beside Remus, elbow on his leg, one of them bouncing. He had his hand in a fist in front of his mouth. Remus was rubbing his neck lightly.

Everyone reacted as a fight broke out, all the players on the ice joined in. It took the refs a few minutes to separate them.

When everyone was out of the pile of players. There was still someone laying on the ice. Sirius sucked in a breath. Regulus. Refs surrounded him, waving over medics.

No one was able to see what exactly was wrong or what had happened, but they could tell that it was bad.

The medics were too frantic for it to be a simple knock out. And the blood, there was so much. Too much. It cut to commercial as the audience started screaming.

“Oh god” Sirius gasped and stood up, hurrying up the stairs. Remus followed him up.

“Hey, can you open the door please. It’s just me” He asked quietly as he knocked.

“Sirius come on” he said again when there was no response. He could hear Sirius pacing. The footsteps got closer and clicked the lock open.

“Hey, come here” Remus said softly, stopping Sirius’s pacing and letting him fall into his arms.

“I don’t know why it’s scaring me. He doesn’t care about me so why do I care about-“

“Stop, stop.” Remus said firmly.

“He’s your little brother. You’re allowed to care about him.”

“He’s going to be okay, right? You’re kind of like a medic. You saw the hit, do you know if he’s going to be okay?” Sirius looked at him, his eyes hopeful and scared.

“I don’t-I don’t know, okay?” Sirius deflates. “I couldn’t see it really, there was a lot of blood but you couldn’t see where it was from. Some injuries bleed more than others do.” Remus tried to comfort his shaking boyfriend.

But he really didn’t know. From what he saw it was bad, really, really bad. He wasn’t going to tell Sirius that right now, maybe later but right now he didn’t want to stress him out more.

Sirius pulled back and wiped his eyes minutes later “We should go back down, they might talk about how he is.”

“Are you sure? We can watch up here if you don’t want to be around everyone.” Remus asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll be okay.” Sirius nodded.

The team didn’t stare for too long when they walked back down. Just a glance and then back to the TV, even though it was a stupid commercial. Remus laid in the spot they were in before, this time pulling Sirius onto him. He kissed the top of his head and tucked it under his chin, fingers running through the slightly curly hair.

“Commercials have been playing since the hit” James told them.

Sirius tensed slightly, that couldn’t be good. Yeah commercials were long but not that long. After a few more commercials it cut back to the announcers.

“Welcome back folks” they said somberly. “As you saw, Regulus Black took a hard hit in the middle of a fight. Now the next few clips might be a little gruesome so viewer discretion is advised.”

That couldn’t be good.

The screen showed the fight, Regulus shaking over and trying to separate them, unlike his teammates who were egging it on. He was shouting something that couldn’t be heard before a hand hit across his helmet, knocking him to the ground. They showed the bottom half of the fight, clump of skates and padding. Regulus was obvious in his green jersey, caught in the cross fire of skates.

Sirius turned his face into Remus’s neck, unable to watch anymore.

Remus rubbed his back, trying to sooth him.

He couldn’t see much of what was happening before the fight was broken up, and you were able to tell where the blood was coming from. His arm, but apparently it was too gruesome to show on TV, it was blurred out.

“Hey, it’s his arm, okay? It’s just his arm.” Remus whispered.

“How bad?” He asked, his voice gravely and tight.

“I don’t- I don’t know. They, uhh, they blurred it out”

Sirius tensed even more, just nodded and kept his head buried safely in Remus’s neck. Letting it act as a barrier between the things he was scared to know and the comforting smell and feeling of his boyfriend.

The team glanced at them sadly, Lily reached over and patted Remus’s thigh. He smiled sadly at her.

“Are they continuing the game?” Sirius asked, lifting his head the slightest bit. His voice still tight.

“Yeah, I think so” Dumo answered.

Right on cue the game started up again. The ice was cleaned as well as it could be for right now. A section of ice stained red.

The rest of the game was quick, the Snakes didn’t slow down even when the Flyers did. They won 4-2.

At the end of the game they gave an update on Regulus. He was at the hospital, in surgery, in extremely critical condition.

Sirius clung to Remus, his fist clenching Remus’s shirt as he shook his head as if it would get the words out of his mind.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m sure he’s going to be okay” Remus tried hard to comfort him. But he wasn’t listening. A broken sob escaped, breaking everyone’s hearts.

The team trickled out until it was just Sirius and Remus.

“Do you want to go up to bed love?” Remus asked, getting a nod in response as he sat up and walked upstairs.

Remus helped him change out of the black jeans and t-shirt he was wearing into sweatpants.

“I love you” he kissed him softly, holding him against his body.

“I love you too” Sirius muttered back.

They climbed into bed, the bedroom silent and swimming in darkness before Sirius spoke.

“What if he dies” his voice smaller than Remus had ever heard.

“He’s going to be okay. He is. But if he isn’t, you have me, the team, James, Harry. All of us. I don’t know what’s going to happen but you will always have us no matter what. I know it will hurt if it does happen, but I can’t have you going back to the way you were before. I need you to talk to me or the team or Heather or someone. You can’t bottle this up and have it shut you down.”

Sirius nodded “Okay” he whispered.

A sob escaped, Sirius covered his mouth with his hand and tried to stop any more.

“Don’t do that. It’s okay. It’s just me, you can let it out.”

Sirius flung himself onto Remus, sobbing.

Remus doesn’t know how long Sirius cried for, but finally he quieted, taking a hiccuped breath. “Love you” he managed to mutter before exhaustion pulled him under.

“I love you too” Remus kissed his hair, drifting off to sleep himself.

***

Sirius didn’t wake up till late into the day. Remus stayed in bed, only leaving to get something to eat. He wanted to be there for Sirius when the memories of last night came back.

Sirius stirred in his sleep, blinking his eyes open.

Remus put his laptop on the nightstand and brushed his fingers through Sirius’s slightly sweaty hair. “Good morning baby”

Sirius hummed before sitting up quickly. “Reg”

“I’ve been checking all day, there’s no update on him yet.”

“Is that good or bad” Sirius asked.

“I don’t know. But we would know if he was-“ Remus trailed off.

“Dead?” Sirius finished for him.

“Yeah” Remus sighed.

Sirius nodded and moved away from him.

“Hey, remember what I said last night? You can’t push us away. You can’t shut down again.”

“I know- I just. I feel sick, so anxious and sick and like my heart is trying to beat it’s way out of my chest.” He confessed.

“Baby” Remus breathed, pulling him into his chest. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Hold me” Sirius whispered.

Remus nodded and laid down, holding Sirius tight.

Sirius fell asleep again, still tired from staying up last night and crying for so long.

Remus’s phone vibrated while he was asleep. Remus reached over carefully and answered it without checking the caller ID.

“Remus” James voice came through. “Did you see the news”

Remus went to sit up but then remembered the sleeping boy in his arms.

“No, what happened.” He asked not even trying to hide the worry in his voice.

“Regulus is out of surgery” Remus let out a breath, his body relaxing.

“But the damage to his nerves was too bad. They- they had to amputate.”

Remus sucked in another breath. “God”

“Yeah. Is, umm, does he know?”

“No, he’s asleep right now. I’ll tell him when he wakes up.”

“D'accord. Give him our love”

“I will” Remus hung up as Sirius began to stir.

“Hey, who was on the phone?” He asked, still tired but his voice held worry.

“James, Umm.” Sirius tensed, his eyes wide with fear.

“No, no, no. He’s alive” Remus reassured him quickly.

Sirius relaxed a little.

“But they, uh, they had to amputate his arm”

Sirius sat up. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know. But the nerve damage was too much. I haven’t read anything on it yet but that’s just what James told me.”

“Will he be able to play, if he gets a prosthetic, is that even allowed in the NHL”

“I don’t- I don’t know. He would still be able to play with a prosthetic but I don’t know about the NHL”

“Our parents...” he trailed off.

“I know, I’m sorry. What do you think they’ll do?”

“Disown him. If he can’t play anymore he’s no good to them”

Remus nodded.

Sirius’s phone was ringing and pinging with texts. “Probably the team” he muttered.

“Yeah, probably”

“I don’t- I don’t want to talk to them right now. I’ll talk later but not right now.”

Remus pecked his lips and reached over to turn his ringer off. “Umm, baby?”

“What?” Sirius looked up at him.

“Regulus is calling you.”

Sirius grabbed his phone out of Remus’s hands and quickly answered the phone. Putting it on speaker.

“I’m alive, chienne” A familiar voice announced.

“Jesus Reg, we haven’t spoken in years and that’s the first thing you say to me.” Sirius laughed, he moved around to the other side of the bed so he could rest his back against Remus’s chest as Remus leaned against the headboard. Remus kisses his neck and shoulder.

“Yeah. Umm, about that. I’m really, really sorry about... all of that. I-the Snakes, our parents. They’re awful. They wouldn’t let me talk to you or anyone. I had to say all that awful stuff about you. God I wanted to punch every damn player in the locker room for the shit they said about you. I, they just. I’m so sorry.” Regulus rushes out.

“Hey, it’s okay. I kind of figured. Or hoped at least.”

“I really want you to know that I don’t care that you’re gay. I don’t know if Remus is listening or there or whatever but you seem happier then I’ve ever seen you when you’re with him.”

“I am, I really, really am” Sirius smiled. “And yes he is listening.”

Regulus let out a laugh.

“So, how are you with...” Sirius trailed off.

“Loosing my arm and possibly ending my hockey career?”

“Yeah, that”

“I don’t know. Mom and Dad won’t talk to me. No one from the family will. Well, Andromeda called me but she was disowned so it doesn’t really count”

“Andy? Why was she disowned?”

“Married a girl” You could hear the smirk in his voice.

Sirius barked out a laugh. “Not surprising honestly. Good to know there’s more of me”

“True. Oh and get this, better prepare the puke. Sissy’s marrying Malfoy”

“WHAT” Sirius no less than screamed. “Narcissa?”

“Yep” he popped the ‘p’.

“No” Sirius whined. “I had hope for her.”

“So did I. But at least she doesn’t seem that happy about it. It’s more of a bloodline thing”

“I don’t want to be related to Lucius”

“Neither do I”

“What about Bellatrix?”

“Rudolph Lestrange.”

Sirius groaned again.

“What is up with the names in your family” Remus laughed quietly.

“Stars. All names of constellation.” Sirius explained.

“The Black family will be as old as the stars. Never let the bloodline down. Generations and generations of powerful leaders are in your blood. Traitors to the DNA are not true Blacks. Keep the stars alive, at all costs.” Regulus and Sirius said at the same time.

“What?”

“We said that like a prayer. Every night. What I would give to forget it” Sirius groaned. Remus kissed his cheek.

“Besides our fucked up family, how else are you feeling?” He asked, the playfulness leaving his voice.

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s really set in yet but I’m getting fitted or whatever for a prosthetic as soon as my stitches are out. A bunch of high school students are working on a design I can use for hockey. They’re having some contest or something like that”

“That’s cool” Sirius told him. “NHL going to te laisse jouer” Sirius switched to french subconsciously.

“I don’t know yet. They’re having a meeting about it I think. The Snakes don’t want me anymore, they made that very clear.”

“I’m sorry”

“Oh no don’t be at all, I hate that fucking team anyway.” Regulus said quickly.

“I’m sure teams will be fighting over you” Sirius smiled.

“Maybe. But let’s not talk about it anymore, how are you?”

“I’m good. You fucking terrified me last night. God Reg I thought you were going to die.” Sirius breathed out shakily.

“I’m okay though. That’s what matters.”

“Yeah, yeah I know” Sirius nodded.

Remus held him tighter, pressing a kiss behind his ear as he remembered Sirius falling apart in his arms.

“How are you and Remus?”

“We’re really good. I love him and, yeah” Sirius blushes, playing with his necklace.

“Awww” Reg teased.

“Oh tais-toi”

Regulus laughed. “I’m not lying when I say I’m happy for you. Remus, just know that if I’ll hurt him I’ll kill you. Prosthetics are metal, tu sais”

“Stop it” Sirius scoffed.

“I promise I will never hurt him. I love him more than anything” Remus assured him, turning Sirius’s chin so he could kiss him.

“I love you too” Sirius told him.

“Awwww wittle Siri in wove”Regulus ruined the moment.

“Je te deteste” Sirius groaned.

“You love me” Regulus laughed.

“Sadly”

“Rude”

The brothers bantered back and forth like nothing had ever happened.

“Alright I’ve got to go get more needles poked into my skin but we’ll talk later, ouais?”

“Absolument”

“Bye, love you” Regulus said.

“Love you too” Sirius told him before Regulus hung up.

“I’m so fucking happy for you right now” Remus squeezed him tightly.

“Me too” Sirius smiled widely. “God I’m so happy”

Remus felt like crying, all he wanted was for Sirius to be happy in life and he finally was.

Sirius was crying, a tear fell down his cheek.

“Hey hey what’s wrong?” Remus picked him up and turned him so he was straddling his waist. “What’s wrong, love?”

“Nothing. I- I never thought I could have this, you know. Never thought I would be allowed to love who I wanted, much less have someone who loved me back. I have the most supportive team I could ever hope for, they’re more of a family then my actual family is. Reg doesn’t hate me- never hated me. I never thought I would ever be able to have this” he confessed, tears slowly falling down his face.

Remus kissed them away. “And you deserve all of it. Everything you’ve been through, you deserve the world baby.”

“Good thing I have it” Sirius smiled as he cupped Remus’s face.

“God that was cheesy.” Remus scoffed with a smile.

“It was wasn’t it?” Sirius laughed, kissed Remus’s lips slowly. Safe in the feeling of his arms on his waist, hair tangled in his fingers, soft lips on his. It was him and it was home.

He was lost in the feeling of it before Remus pulled away. Resting their foreheads together.

“I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Sirius whispered. “I want to adopt a couple of kids, let them run around the house and take them to family skate. I can’t imagine my future without you. I love you more than I can explain. Every time I think about how much I love you it’s like I can’t breath.”

“God, yes. I want that more than anything.” Remus captured his lips in his. Both of them smiling into the kiss.

@lumosinlove

[sexysilverstrider]

I would love to see a you rank all the dating sim games you’ve played from best to worst!

hello hello! sorry for the late reply! i wanna reply this with a read more but i cant do it on mobile hhh BUT IM ON LAPTOP NOW HAHA lets do this :3c

take note that these are the otome games ive played so far. and when i say otome games, i meant actual dating sim games where the aim of the game is getting to your favourite characters good end in their route. so im excluding any non-main dating games like fire emblem and rune factory and the like. LETS BEGIN

FAFAR’S TOP 11 OTOME GAMES

11

TWILIGHT BLOOD

the only reason i downloaded this game was uhhh hot guys. the story was mediocre tbh. no voice acting. relies too much on sexy scenes with was fun at the first few chapters but then eh :// also if u wanna be a f2p it sucks coz they practically force u to pay to move on with the story and yeah....not worth it. 2/10

10

Love Story of Share House

made by HUNEX.CO, the games about mc moving to a share house with a bunch of hot dudes. The DreamTM. no voice acting but the characters are bearable. ive played the meganes route because thats who i am as a person and mr moustache man. latters route was okay. the story does have smutty elements so that surprised me tbh hahahha. its okay imo and u can be f2p to finish each route :) 4/10

9

My Horse Prince

can you BELIEVE this game got better ranks than the previous two??? its about mc wooing a horse. with a mans head. horses body. i cannot simplify this enough. the reason it beating the 2 games before is because it made me lose my shit SO MUCH i remembered tears coming out of my eyes coz this game is a fcking ride. mc has 1 braincell and its for the sexy horse man. f2p and im thankful for that. no voice acting and honestly im glad it doesnt. 5/10

8

Hatoful Boyfriend

a classic game. no voice acting. there ARE gijinkas and drama cds however outside of the main game. in the main game u get to date pigeons. actual pigeons. i believe this game was unironically enjoyable like 10-15 years ago. dont be fooled by the pigeons. some of their routes can be EMOTIONALLY NASTY. i cried at one of the pigeons. i lost sleep but its what i deserve. 5/10

7

Hakuoki

my first ever dating sim game!! hence the 3ds picture. full voice acting. it was p enjoyable and while i know the steam version covers most of what the 3ds lacks, i love playing the routes and this was the first game tht traumatized me at the sight of a bad end. sadly not a fan of the canon route despite me loving stoic emotionally guarded characters. i do enjoy the other routes and okita souji has my heart and soul i love and hate him. 6/10

6

Ephemeral

another game by HUNEX.CO. compared to the share house game, i ADORE this one. its surprisingly a sweet mobile otome game! f2p friendly! no voice acting, but they make it up with the story and characters. basically u got tsundere wolf. baby invisible man. yandere mummy. bastard but then gets soft to you vampire. guess who i love in the end. also sidenote the reason this gets higher ranks is the vampires routes alone (they have dating route AND lovers route all in one game) and also the invisible mans route broke me as a person. i hate it. so much. oh my god. 7/10

5

Amnesia

my second otomate/aksys game! when i found it its sold in google store i legit bought it and left my assignments to play flksdnfjdbf. full voice acting. VERY interesting stories. v intense stories too so its not fun playing at night lol sometimes. all the characters are loveable to each players ref. some of the routes do irk me which sucks coz i have to finish all in order to unlock the canon route. i DO love the canon character so its fine. this game is the game that introduced me to fear in a form of a toma. 8/10

4

Code: Realize

HONESTLY A GAME WHERE I LIKE ALL THE CHARACTERS LMAOOO!! all the routes are great and the full voice acting has me scream. a lot. also they have A LOT of post stories that are released internationally so it makes me love the characters (saint-germain) even more. i believe this is the game that actually made me love the yandere. so i gotta give kudos to that. the canon route is really lovable! the stories can be a mix of cute and angst so its a wild ride when i played it ;w;b 9/10

3

Ikemen Sengoku

honestly one of my fav and long-running mobile otome game!! the game is f2p but you need to be veeery patient to finish one route (in my case i sometimes am patient. other times im not). partially voiced. the best thing about this game is THERE IS A LOT OF CHOICES LMAOO n youre not obligated to do a route of a character youre not too keen. the characters are both lovable and stupid. the mc has 1 braincell and shes using it to helps these hot morons. sugitan is there. bfkdjbfdkj also the stories are smutty and its so goood i remembered screaming a lot. their stories range from funny to sad to angsty to romantic its a roller coaster ride. 9/10

2

Collar x Malice

i LOVE all the characters. i LOVE all the routes. i even love the villain of this series. which is why it gets number 2 in my book. the stories can get intense but when the cute romantic funny parts hit it hits you off guard and it just makes u laugh or scream or cry or all in 1. im a big kaji yuki fan so to finally get to play a game where kaji yukis character is in it just earns this game a top spot in my heart. a very special spot too considering his character is my fav character and route hehehhe! its sequel is coming out (n im getting it tmrrw eyy). love it so much! and the canon character is easily my 2nd fav character too! 10/10

1

Mystic Messenger

this game easily ruined my sleep schedule. at one point my body automatically woke up at 3 am at the single sound of a beep EVERY TIME. just to text some fictional characters. i even got out of class once to respond to jumins call. i hate this game. the games gameplay is so unique and fun and all the characters are very VERY lovable. i love all the characters and their routes. while the voice acting happens during certain cgs (full voice in all scenes in vs and saerans routes) it redeems itself with the amazing voice calls. i laughed A LOT whole playing this game. its absolutely amazing. did you know that i bawled in saerans route? bawled? as in cried in absolute anguish and sobbed nonstop? and stared at the blank screen????????? once in front of my own mother and again alone in the darkness of my own room? my heart was shattered in pieces and it literally felt as if the love of my life is gone for good. 11/10

[marvelsdc22]

The Professor And I(Christmas Special)

Intro: SURPRISE!!! Here is my Christmas gift to you guys, I hope you guys enjoy this part!! Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah to you guys!! :)

Note:  Y/N is gender neutral. Lena is a professor. Y/N is a student. This was hella longer than I had originally planned, apologies!!

Word Count: 2099

When you and Lena pulled up to your parent’s house, you looked at her with a timid smile “It’s not going to go like last time, right?” You asked, knowing it wouldn’t but you couldn’t help but have that small fear of it happening again “Of course not” Lena assured, reaching over and gently taking your hand, giving it a small squeeze and giving you a reassuring smile “Okay” you said, giving her a small nod before getting out of the car and going to grab your bags, only for Lena to grab them before you could “You’re not supposed to be lifting anything heavy” she scolded, looking at you and you pouting but you knew she wouldn’t break with this one.

After the whole Lillian thing, you had quite a bit of physical damage done to you which included broken ribs, sprained ankle, various cuts and gashes, along with a concussion but you also had mental damage, you often found yourself waking up from nightmares, most of them being you shooting Lillian in the back or somehow managing to hit Lena instead or sometimes it was Alex and other times it was Kara, you hadn’t had a decent sleep since that day but you hadn’t told Lena, having Kara promise to not tell her even though she was worried about you.

When you got up to the door, you raised your hand to knock only for the door to swing open and your mom engulf you in a gentle yet tight hug “I’m so glad you’re okay” she said, them having gone to the hospital as soon as they were called but they hadn’t been able to stay longer than a few days “I’m okay, I have great people taking care of me” you assured, gently patting your mom on the back as you hugged her back, her pulling back and pressing a kiss to your head before she looked at Lena, obviously unsure what to do after everything that had went down.

“It’s nice to see you again Mrs. Y/L/N” Lena finally spoke up, looking at your mother with a small smile “It’s nice to see you again as well, Lena… Please call me Y/M/N” your mother said, giving her a smile in return before pulling her into a quick hug “Where’s dad?” You asked as your mother finally let the two of you inside “He’s out getting some things from the store, should be back in an hour” your mother said, taking one of the bags from Lena to help carry your things to your room.

Once the two of you were settled in your room, you sat on your bed with your laptop in front of you “What are you doing, my love?” Lena asked, going and sitting behind you, wrapping her arms gently around your waist and helping you onto her lap, you wincing slightly but otherwise didn’t react as you leaned back against her chest, her chin resting on your shoulder as she looked at your screen “Looking at my final grades” you said, glancing at her as you scrolled through your grades “You gave me a B?” You asked teasingly, watching her roll her eyes before pressing a kiss to your neck “Just because you’re my favorite student doesn’t mean you get your grades bumped up” she muttered, lightly biting your neck as a scolding “I was teasing” you chuckled, reaching up and gently running your fingers through her hair as the two of you relaxed for the first time in forever.

Later that night, you woke up with a gasp and cried out slightly when you jarred one of your ribs when you shot up, this waking Lena quickly and her immediately pulling you to her “Hey, easy… It was just a dream” Lena whispered into your temple, gently rocking you to try to soothe you and her not asking anything until she heard your breathing slow, pulling back some to look at you “Do you want to talk about it?” She asked, cupping your face and gently wiping some tears away with her thumb “I keep seeing that day… Sometimes I shoot Lillian, sometimes it’s Kara, sometimes it’s Alex… But, most times it’s you” you whispered, feeling the tears start to come again “Shhhh, I’m fine, I’m right here… You didn’t hurt me” she assured, pulling you to her once more and her heart breaking at how upset you were “I’m never leaving you, never again” she promised, slowly easing herself onto her back and pulling you down with her so that your head was resting on her chest, holding you as you slowly cried yourself back to sleep.

After that night, it became a nightly routine of you waking up from a nightmare and Lena comforting you and you hated that you kept waking her up, so the night before Christmas Eve, you stayed in the living room in hopes to let her get her full nights rest; you laid on the couch and stared at the Christmas tree that had a bunch of presents underneath it, it still lit since you hadn’t felt like going to sleep yet, you getting broke out of your trance when you heard someone say your name “Lena? What are you doing up?” You asked softly, trying to not wake your parents as you watched her come and sit by your feet on the couch.

“I was waiting for you to come to bed and when you didn’t I came looking” Lena said, looking at you and gently rubbing your leg “I wanted to let you get a full night’s sleep, not wake up again to my stupid nightmares” you said, sitting up and leaning back against the armrest “Baby, I don’t mind that you wake me up in the middle of the night… I love you and I’m always going to be here for you” she said, holding her arms out to you and pulling you close to her as you both got resituated on the couch, pulling the blanket over the two of you, you switched on the tv so you guys could watch something “I love you too” you said, pressing a gentle kiss to her jaw.

The next morning, your mother and father walked down the stairs to find the two of you passed out on the couch, your mother smiling before she grabbed her phone and took a few pictures “That reminds me… Y/F/N, can you get the photo albums down? I’m sure Lena and Y/N’s other friends would love to see them” your mother said, looking at your father who nodded before he went back upstairs to find the albums while your mother went to go make breakfast.

After a few hours, you were playing a game with Kara on your Xbox that was in the living room “You cheated!” You shouted, looking at Kara who was laughing “How did I cheat? I’ve never played this game before in my life!” She laughed, shaking her head as you pouted and looking over at Lena who was helping your mother finish cutting the cookies “Lena! Tell them I didn’t cheat!” Kara said, looking at Lena who looked up from her dough “I can’t be a ref to this” Lena said simply, laughing some as she looked back down at the dough.

You pouted more and set your controller down before going into the kitchen, wrapping your arms around Lena from behind “She cheated” you pouted, watching as she turned in your grip and you laughing slightly when you saw the flour on her cheek “I’m sure she didn’t and you’re just pouting” she chuckled, pressing a kiss to your nose “You’re supposed to take my side!” You whined, hearing Kara’s laughter from the living room “I’m not taking a side, I’m stating the obvious, now let me finish” she said, looking at you and you pouted once more “Fine, but you have something…” you said, reaching up and lightly brushing the flour off her cheek and causing her face to turn red “Thank you, now go” she said, giving you a quick kiss before you pulled away and returned to your spot in the living room.

Once the cookies were made and lunch was in the oven, you were all sitting in the living room getting ready to open some gifts “Before we open anything, I’m sure you all want to see these” your mother said, holding up some photo albums much to your dismay “No, they really-“ “Yes we do” Alex cut you off, laughing as she watched you pout before they all gathered around your mother and father, Lena pulling your pouty self onto her lap as she looked over your dads shoulder.

“Awe! Look at that happy naked baby!” Kara said when your mother opened to the first page, you feeling your face flush as you buried your face in your hands “Oh, that was the first time they learned how to take their diaper off” your father chuckled, watching as your mother flipped through the album “Oh look, here’s the one from when they had their first costume party” your mother said, pointing to you in your bright purple outfit “Are you Barney?” Lena asked, laughing some as you felt your ears start to burn “I liked him at that time, okay! I was five!” You whined, huffing when Lena laughed more and gave your shoulder a small kiss “I think it’s adorable”.

Once the embarrassing photos and stories were over, everyone was sat in their spots with gifts “Alright, who goes first?” You asked, looking around and watching as everyone opened their gifts, most being either some new clothes, a watch, some movies, also some new bedding for Kara since the puppy had destroyed hers “Hey, Y/N… I have something else for you, take a walk with me?” Lena whispered in your ear, you nodding as you set your movie down and stood up with her help.

After you both were bundled up, you headed outside, Lena lacing her fingers with yours as she led you towards the small park near your house and glancing at you every so often “It’s so pretty out here” you said, smiling as you looked around the park which looked like a winter wonderland with all the snow “It is very pretty” Lena said, smiling at you as she led you over to the small pond and the two of you sat down on the bench “I have something for you too” you said, taking one of your gloves off so you could dig in your coat pocket easier without fear of the wrapping tearing.

Once you had your small gift out, Lena had hers in hand too “Same time?” You asked, watching her smile before the two of you traded gifts and tore them open, you watching as Lena stared at the box in her hand before she opened it, gasping when she saw the gorgeous necklace inside “Y/N… You didn’t” she said, looking at you and it being a necklace that had both of your birthstones in it, surrounding a heart in the middle “I wanted to” you said softly, smiling at her and watching as she stared at the necklace before handing it to you “Help?” She asked before turning her back to you and moving her hair out of the way.

You gently helped Lena put the necklace on and smiled when she turned around and looked at it “I love it… I love you” she said, smiling at you and then gesturing to the box in your hands “Open yours” she said, watching you intently as you opened it and watched as your brows furrowed “A key?” You asked, looking at her and watching her nod “It’s to my apartment… After next semester, I want you to move in with me” she said, knowing you had already paid for a year in the dorms “It’s also to show there’s no more secrets between us, you have free access to my private place” she said, watching as you stared at her before she saw tears build in your eyes “No no no, I didn’t mean to make you cry” Lena said, assuming the worse as she scooted closer to you “Happy tears… Of course I’ll move in with you” you said, giving her a small smile and watching as she grinned before pulling you into a searing kiss; knowing there were still a lot of bumps in the road you two would have to face, you were ready to do it… With her.

Permanent Taglist: @rianncreates​​​​​​​​ / @5aftermidnight​​​​​​​​ / @youngandwildx7​​

Supergirl Taglist: @x-danvers-x​​​​​​​​ / @aznblossom​​​​​​​​ / @stop-drop-and-drumroll​​

Lena Taglist: @life2-live​​​​​​​​ / @supergirl-imaginess​​​​​​​​ / @ianarec​​​​ / @thelonewriter247​​ / @kalistory-blog​​ / @ess0h​​

The Professor And I: @youlookterribleilookawesome​​​​​​​​ / @ironsnowstorm​​​​​​​​ / @rebornpoet​​​​​​​​ / @scottishgirl1998​​

End Note: I hope you guys enjoyed!! If you want to be added to a Taglist, shoot me a DM or an Ask!! The Professor And I will return after the first of the year!! Have a good Christmas/Hanukkah or a good holidays or a good day/night!! :)

Requests Open

[i-live-off-of-coffee-blog]

I need to get this off my chest.

I know nobody actually checks my posts besides @apotatosworld but I’m sorry for not being active. I recently broke my phone and my laptop was acting up so I couldn’t do anything sooner. I know I said I was trying to finish things and I really am but because I have my own life to live, it won’t be finished for a while. I’m still trying to finish the profile for Blink AND make a ref for Bubbles for  @mugmansharem. My anxiety and depression have been getting worse the more I think about this, the more I think I’m disappointing people, the more I think I’m crazy for thinking I actually have people who enjoy looking at my account and artwork. On a side note, I’m working on other drawings so I can soon upload daily and get my everyday schedule for average life ready as well. I’m currently trying to also keep up with a Wattpad account. I’m sorry for trying to balance that with everything else. I may not feel perfect or keep up as well as I say I will but I’m just doing this for my health before I end up hurting myself. Physically and mentally.

[because-its-important]

transitions & transformations

i. the rest of my batch at RC

I spent the first six weeks of my batch at Recurse Center in an out-and-out sprint. I learned Python, built and released projects, and wrote blog posts every week. I wasn’t sure where my limits were, but I was determined to find out - preferably by overshooting them, then adjusting after the fact.

A curious thing happened. I kept finding that I was more than capable of starting and finishing projects, especially when I had a firm mental image of the end goal. There were at least as many unexpected good-turns as there were setbacks, and I certainly didn’t come up against any inscrutable barriers. Mostly the challenge was in overcoming the distance between a thing that doesn’t exist and a thing that does, which I was able to sort out pretty handily through a consistent application of effort across time.

Who’d have thought?

A selfie taken on my birthday, which also happened in the last few months and was really great!

The second half of my batch was not so visibly productive - with the exception of The Question Game. The Question Game is a simple game designed to help groups of people get to know each other better IRL. I designed it with my friend Brittany a few years ago as an icebreaker when we found ourselves in a group of folks who knew us but didn’t really know each other. The game only really needs a method of generating random numbers for a small but arbitrary group size, but building it out as a toy webapp was a good excuse to get practice working with a JS-only stack. I learned React, got a lil more familiar with node, and even went as far as to attach an otherwise completely unnecessary PG database and Sequelize ORM. You can see the code for it here. Outside of this project, however, I didn’t publish any code. I didn’t publish any writing, either.

So I’d like to take a moment and shine a bit of light on the work that I did during the rest of my batch.

🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘

First, I made the decision to leave community.lawyer, the social impact startup I co-founded in 2016 following the Blue Ridge Labs Fellowship.

I’m happy to report that I left on the come up, which seems a rare and privileged thing for a founder to be able to say. Gaining traction in a hyper-specialized industry like legal tech takes a gargantuan amount of sustained forward momentum, and I departed just as we began to reap the fruits of our labor. In the last few months community.lawyer has reached final approval on partnerships a year in the making, won federal grants we’d submitted to in 2016, and every day our software is being used to help connect people who have legal needs with credible lawyers. Our first two partners were exactly the types of legal organizations at the heart of our mission: the Justice Entrepreneurs Project and the DC Reduced Fee Lawyer & Mediator Referral Service.1 Based in Chicago and Washington DC respectively, these orgs are specifically chartered to deliver quality services at rates that more Americans can afford. I am so proud. ⚖️

Second, I started my first ever job hunt as a software engineer. Wowee, this was scary! I knew that I had to prepare for interviewing, which meant a) getting my career change narrative straight, b) studying Data Structures & Algorithms 101, and c) learning how to perform my handle on both of these in a live, semi-adversarial environment.

At one point during my batch my laptop broke. I read through this wonderful illustrated book during the two days it was being fixed.

In order to direct my search I also had to craft a set of selection criteria of my own. Foremost: “What good will my work do for the world?”2 Additionally, “What degree of access will I have to supportive mentors?”

Getting started with interview prep was a challenge, at least partly because I had so many options for where to start. But I did get started! I read Cracking the Coding Interview, I did the free trial and weekly free problems on Interview Cake. I attended a few group mock interviews at Recurse Center and signed up for a 1-1 mock interview with an RC alum. Her name is Leah, and she’s amazing - the superbly friendly and encouraging Comp Sci TA I wish I’d had years ago. 💚Brittany also set up mock technical screens for me with her pals, Leaf and Ian. They were the vanguard against my outsized anxiety about programming for an audience and they each took the time to give me solid feedback.

Third, I extended my batch at Recurse Center by another 6 weeks. I had decided early on I wouldn’t extend (for no real reason) and stuck with this decision up until two days before my batch ending. A small group of folks - Lily, Connor, Alicja and I - went to NYX in Union Square to try out lipsticks. We played with different colors and finishes (satin! matte! shimmer!) for half an hour or so. There came a point when I looked up, glanced across the narrow makeup store at my beautiful friends’ beautiful faces and thought, “You know, you don’t have to leave yet, right? What’s the rush?” I’d already accomplished my primary goal, to forcibly rework my identity as an engineer, but it sure seemed that I could stand to reach for a second one. That night I decided to extend my batch, with the intention of sampling a more open method of self-directed learning, i.e. with a little more chill and a lot less panic. Specifically, I wanted to practice connecting meaningfully with my limited supply of social energy.

In my bonus six weeks, I: gave three talks (2 planned, 1 impromptu) under encouragement from Ayla and Lily, learned to juggle thanks to instruction from a fellow RCer, Edward, who also loaned me a book about learning, made it into weekly Feelings Check-in (read as: opt-in support group) fairly regularly, picked my first ever lock, saw a live-coding show and then later attended two live-coding workshops (one on TidalCycles, another on Super Collider), sat in a dark room and played howling wolf clips while Microsoft Sam read grimoires aloud, got my hair braided for the first time in a decade, made dumplings and DJ’d for a dinner party, connected with folks about queer-poly relationships, gave fiery advice, and received compliments so earnest and rational and persistent that it was difficult to refute them.

Zine fair plus Lightning Bolt concert inside a movie theater in Times Square??

I also put my interview prep to use and interviewed with a handful of Recurse Center partner companies. Job searching meant squaring off against impostor syndrome and a ton of related anxieties in rapid succession. I successfully choked most of that down when it mattered, though, and it was only a couple short weeks before I received my first offer.

To that end, I’m super happy to say that I’ll be joining Blink Health as a Fullstack Product Engineer! Blink Health is a healthcare startup in SoHo. They make it easier for people to afford prescription drugs, especially for those with limited insurance plans or none at all. These savings aren’t trivial either: an extra $50 can spare someone from choosing between groceries or medicine that week, and for some folks Blink saves many times that. I’ll be starting at the end of this month. ✌️🤓

The last two years have been a wild ride: participating in a social impact fellowship and accelerator, busting my product chops and learning web dev to get a public benefit company off the ground, then diving into four months of self-directed learning at Recurse Center. I’m really looking forward to having some externally imposed structure again. Real health insurance, too.

ii. some hard truths

I made a few radical life changes in 2016, like getting involved in activist spaces, dating more, biking everywhere, building strong friendships, going capital-B Boogying, programming full-time. As I carried those changes forward through 2017, I began to notice a lot of mental and emotional reconfiguration happening to me.

Did you know that along its way to becoming a butterfly, a caterpillar nearly completely liquifies inside its cocoon?

Psychological growth is confusing, full of false starts, and generally painful. You’ve got the static pain of stretching beyond your limits, the pleasure-pain of feeling an old knot finally release, the frustrating pain of stubbing your toe because some helpful asshole has been rearranging your psychic furniture when you weren’t looking. There’s the more dramatic knife-in-the-gut pain of realizing that just because you’re growing doesn’t mean the people closest to you are, and that now in certain cases what you previoulsy regarded as friendship actually looks a whole lot like run-of-the-mill exploitation or even emotional abuse, if you're being honest, and it's a realization that only hurts more because it’s so irredeemably cliche and boring. And despite all that pain you gotta go ahead and grow anyway, claw your way out of the relative comfort of ignorance. Transcendence may not be the only show in town but afaik it’s the one most worth watching.

Prior to attending Recurse Center I’d spent lots of time exploring my surroundings and cataloguing people and places worth coming back to. My view of myself did change (and positively!) as a consequence. But sooner or later, ya get tired of the taste of low-hanging fruit.

So, armed with the bookshelf of a philosophy grad and a burgeoning psychoanalytic vocabulary begging to be let off leash, I decided to use my time at RC to try confronting a few of my Hard To See truths in addition to becoming a better programmer.

Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Truth #1: People like me a lot. This causes me problems.

I’ve been metabolizing this one for some time. I remember having a conversation with Brittany in January of 2016. I don’t remember what social anxiety I’d been vocalizing, but I must have been worrying that someone “hated me.” Brittany cut me off, exasperated in the way that only a friend can be in the face of utter delusion: “No one hates you Nicole! You’re always worried that people don’t like you and it’s never true!”

I carried that admonishment with me through two years of voracious friendship-building. On the whole, seeing that people do in fact enjoy and seek out my company has curbed the most egregious overreaches of my social anxiety. But reckoning with my anxiety honestly has also meant acknowledging that my compulsive instinct to withdraw from social situations is also a protective (if suboptimal) response to a few very real dangers.

Most acutely: being friendly, generous, and intensely empathetic makes me a ready target for users. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can, which makes me proportionally susceptible to being taken advantage of and then gaslighted about it. A lifetime of socialization as a petite woman don’t help, neither. This leads to a pattern where, semi-regularly, I look up and take stock of how someone has been treating me and realize that the answer is Very Badly, For Quite A While. This in turn leads to rough periods of cutting ties and moving on. Ideally I’d like to be be able to filter bad actors out sooner, but I also want to stay open, giving, and hopeful beyond reason. Those desires are fundamentally at odds with each other - raising vs. lowering one’s defenses - but it’s clear that I need to come up with a strategy that balances both.

More broadly, though, I operate under an ever-present dread of inevitably disappointing everyone who knows me. Whether people project onto me because they already like me or like me more because they project positively onto me, I am extremely sensitive to the fact that when people meet me the conception they form has waaay more to do with what they want to find than what’s actually there. My body is a surface readily projected upon: young, female-shaped, ethnically ambiguous, small, smiling. These well-intended projections cause me the most trouble when people see me interacting socially; they’ll witness fifteen minutes of seemingly effortless extroversion on my part and extrapolate out massively. As far as they’re concerned I’ve got plenty of social energy to spare, and if I don’t spend it hanging out with them, it must be because either my friendliness is fake or I don’t like them.

Pretty much none of this is conducted consciously, of course, but it still creates a lot of unnecessary pressure that I can’t pretend not to feel and resent. I know there are people who dream about attaining this kind of “popularity” - to be assumed Cooler than one truly is - but getting buffeted around by folks’ totally unexamined, unarticulated psychological desires mostly sucks.

Truth #2: I’m non-binary.

I’ve also spent a very long time resisting this one. Two decades on the rack, easy. As such, the story of getting here is long. Perhaps one day I’ll tell it. 😛

The short of it, though, is this: I’m probably at least as much of a boy3 as I am a girl. Outside of where my life has been mutated by the chronic background radiation of sexism, “benevolent” and otherwise, I don’t strongly identify as a woman. Furthermore, I find the two-gender system to be infinitely more alienating than comforting. Gender is a social construction designed to impose order on the natural messiness of sexual experience, and as far as I’m cool with that, I am decidedly Not Cool with the “normal” state of affairs, i.e. aggressively shoving whole human beings into an absurdly reductive false dichotomy.

Between its either-or-ism and its forced assignment, the traditional approach to gender reveals itself to be obviously bullshit to anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about it. Its boundaries are arbitrary, inconsistent, and generally ill-fitting at the level of individual experience, which why they require such an outrageous amount of coercion and bodily violence to enforce. As much as other folks want to participate in a system of ritualized violence I guess they are free to? Personally, I’d prefer to see it actively dismantled.

If gender is to be saved it’ll be by subverting it, taking it apart, remaking it into something life-affirming. Not the dehumanizing garbage we’ve got now.

As of yet I don’t have any plans to change my presentation because I don’t fuckin’ gotta!

I do have a preference towards They / Them pronouns, but She / Her is still fine. For most of my friends this isn’t going to be at all surprising nor will it in any way negatively impact our relationship. Anyone who needs me to just-be-a-girl, however, can expect turbulence.

Truth #3: My righteous anger is justified and I am good at using it to help others.

I have felt conflicted about my anger for a long time. Since a very vocal childhood I have been regularly frustrated by prejudices and injustices, and I was frequently the first voice of dissent against them, whether that meant challenging adults or my peers. Unsurprisingly, I became well acquainted with the standard strokes of the backlash.

When you are confronting bigotry in a mixed environment, the voice of the status quo will generally manifest in one of two ways:

Gaslighting, e.g. “you are wrong to have said this at all, obviously I am a Good Person, you are just imagining that what I said sounded like XYZ, honestly how could you even think this, as a matter of fact it is I who is offended!”

Tone policing, e.g. “you’re too upset about this! after all, I, the person who did Fucked Up Thing, am perfectly calm about Fucked Up Thing, so any amount of anger makes you irrational by contrast, and I get a raincheck on whatever this is about!”

I know these responses are repulsive. I know they are merely the signs of a weak and imperiled ego acting out of fear. And yet I still spend an inordinate amount of time second-guessing my own anger. Gaslighting and tone policing are a favored weapon of the status quo because they work, and they work in direct proportion to how agreeable their target wants to be.

content warning: the following segment talks about sexual harassment and assault

About couple weeks ago I had the misfortune of being sexually harassed at a club in Bushwick. After numerous rejections and explicitly telling a creep bothering me, my friends, and other women in the club to get lost, I finally went to get a bouncer to eject him. The bouncer got the creep to leave. When I went to thank him, the bouncer told me a whole story about how the creep was “a harmless guy.” Then he reached down and grabbed my ass. Presumably he felt entitled to do this after helping me get rid of a person I asked him to remove... for unwanted touching.

It Really Sucked.

At every turn during the whole ordeal (and its aftermath) I had to hold onto my anger, convince myself that I wasn’t overreacting, remind myself that anyone who thought this was acceptable to do to me is almost certainly doing worse to more vulnerable people. I kept picturing myself the way this guy, this man in a position of power, must have seen me in order to feel okay doing what he did. That I was young, small, female, too friendly to say No, already indebted anyway; that he was one of the Good Guys, that his behavior was also “harmless” because he had decided it was. I conjured up as much anger as I could, pushed down the nausea of envisioning my own degradation from an attacker’s POV, and got to work. I reached out to the club and was quickly put in contact with the owner. The venue now has a publicly posted zero tolerance sexual harassment policy. The entire staff is going through training with a local org dedicated to creating safer nightlife spaces. And that motherfucker has been fired.

I demonstrably made the world better. I wasn’t alone, but all that happened because of my actions. Me and my anger, we did that.

I wish more people were this fucking angry. 💢

~ end of content warning ~

iii. an opinion

My Saturn return is upon me, y’all. As Frank Ocean serenades, we’ll never be those kids again. I have lived a few of these here nine lives and it seems only prudent to be moving forward with some sort of opinion on the matter.

My opinion is this: us folks with financial and physical security should be spending more time fixing shit around here. Figuring out what needs fixing and how you might help are the first steps.

If you’re operating on a similar scale of privilege as I am, maybe that means changing jobs to do more mission-oriented work. If you can’t swing a change of that magnitude, maybe it means showing up to community events and engaging with, caring for, supporting people you otherwise wouldn’t talk to. Churches, libraries, volunteering, supporting local artists, participating in local politics - this all counts. If you’re already doing this sorta thing, that is awesome! Maybe you also have a friend worth inviting who you sense is just itching for a chance to exercise compassion?

I’m using “fixing” pretty loosely here, too. Fixing, to my mind, means making the world brighter, safer, and sweeter for your fellows, human and otherwise. We’ve all got different ideas about what that looks like, and there are definitely folks - myopic or malevolent or both - who will swear up and down that their fear- and hate-driven behaviors will bring about better world. Ultimately, though, I believe that many hands reaching towards their personal vision of Better will in fact make things Better, especially when that vision is informed by meaningful interaction with the real world and its real sorrows and its real triumphs.

But ya gotta reach. Ya gotta try.

I am so tired of hearing my well-fed, well-homed friends piss and moan about late capitalism4 without lifting a damn finger in service of the communities bearing the brunt of material hardship. Unfettered capitalism sure does have a marked tendency to wreak havoc on organic life! But capitalism is not a monolith, and lamenting the abuses perpetuated by its principle benefactors as unchanging or inevitable only normalizes them. Any investigation into the history of capitalism (or the broader phenomena of how a Few come to subjugate the Many) will very quickly disabuse you of the notion that this shit is going to stop without a great deal of active resistance.5

So unless you are personally doing work to put our current strand of democracy-withering corporatism six-feet-under, seriously, just STFU instead. Your nihilism is boring! You don’t sound woke! Save it for your local DSA working group!

Which isn’t to say that I’m not convinced of the wickedness6 of the problems we’re facing: skyrocketing wealth disparity with no relief in sight; the destruction of most of Earth’s biodiversity via mass extinction; a pernicious climate of racism and xenophobia that scapegoats black and brown folks and then visits misery upon them; the weight of an aging population bearing down on the shittiest healthcare system of any nation in its class; a widely disenfranchised electorate further fragmented and fatigued by hyper-polarization; the gendered terrorism that is inflicted daily on women, trans and non-binary folks, and queer people at large; a rising wave of depressive anxiety as people become more aware of these problems and how thoroughly they’ve been disempowered from changing things for the better.

So yeah, I get it. These are hard problems. I just don’t see any better option than trying anyway. I want to spend my time fixing things around here and encouraging others to try their hand too. You already know the bad news: real change is hard and it can take a very long time. You might work your whole life sowing seeds whose fruit you never get to taste.

The good news, however, is that you can get started whenever and wherever you are. The good news is that a sense of purpose is its own reward.

iv. how to get started

When you’ve got hard work ahead of you, your best bet is to use your beautiful human brain and create some leverage. Ask Archimedes about it.7

Lever systems got two parts:

The lever, which is the tool you use to amplify your effort. The longer your lever is, the easier your job will be.

The fulcrum, which is the wedge the lever rests on. The nearer your fulcrum is to the thing you want to move, the easier your job will be.

If you’re starting from zero - “I want to do more for the world but I don’t know how!” - my advice is to forget about the lever arm for now. A lever ain’t shit without a fulcrum, anyway. Your time is better spent exploring the world, keeping an eye out for problems you’d like to solve, and identifying nearby points of leverage. If you want to get into activism, a fulcrum might be volunteering to fold pamphlets for an organization with a mission you believe in. If want to see more self-expression in the world, it might be might be inviting your friends to a zine-making class or hosting your own arts and craft night.

The best fulcrum is one that makes you Feel Good when you apply any amount of effort against it. Too many people get caught up in a self-defeating belief that if they can’t give 110% of their creative energy to something they might as well not try. I can confidently say that trying is itself a virtue. Every time you try even a little bit you make it easier for yourself to try again later, and more importantly, you make trying easier for others. A bunch of people altering their behavior a smidge in the same direction doesn’t add up to nothing; on the contrary, it’s a sea change.

If you’ve got a decent idea of the types of problems you want to solve, though, and you’ve tested your fulcrums, and you are thinking, “Okay, but is this all I’m capable of giving?” then it’s probably time to work on your lever. Given your own interests and inclinations, what skills can you develop that will increase the good you’re doing 10x, 100x over? This is the long game, but it scales a whole lot better than “keep doing what I’m already doing, but more.”

For me right now this means deepening my technical knowledge, building a resilient support network, and sharing what I’m learning. Helping others has been a powerful motivator for self-improvement, not the least of which because it’s a convenient shortcut through the snarl of self-confidence issues.

I am so grateful that Recurse Center was a stop on lengthening my lever! What a concentrated cluster of helpful, considerate beings.

I’ve spent the last two years wandering around New York City in wide-eyed wonder, asking myself the most ambitious question I could think of: how do you save the world?

Getting older comes with a lot of downsides, but asking yourself big questions and living your life as the answer is the primary pleasure of adulthood. It took a ton of courage to get started and I am still frequently awed to find myself moving in the right direction. I’m humbled by the grace and fortitude of the folks who’ve been at this for way longer.

I’m also a hell of a lot happier. This summer’s gonna be rad. ☀️

There are lots of extraordinarily sexy company names like this in the legal world. ↩︎

Having the choice to direct my energies in this way is a privilege. Working in tech gives me this freedom of motion and I have been drawn to software engineering in part because it is the freest of the free (if you still gotta labor for your living). ↩︎

😱😫😖😬😬😬... 😏 ↩︎

Substitute with whatever modifier is en vogue. As a point of fact, “late capitalism” is a term that’s been floating around for literally over a hundred years. ↩︎

Thankfully, history also clearly demonstrates that the tide can be turned. ↩︎

“The use of the term ‘wicked’ here has come to denote resistance to resolution.” Wikipedia page. ↩︎

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” etc etc. ↩︎