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neuro-whump · 4 years

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Lost in Transit, Part 5

This is my entry to the Box Boy Extended Universe which was originally created by sweetwhumpandhellacomf and written by shameless-whumper and I’m using a lot of world-building which was done by @ashintheairlikesnow. Still somewhat vague on hospital procedure here and also despite my research, I may be misrepresenting acquired dyscalculia here, pubmed is not helping me out and neither is google scholar.

CN: Dehumanization, human trafficking, amnesia, mistaken identity, box boy universe, IVs, panic attack, hospitals

798591 was woken with a start the next morning by a dream he didn’t remember and didn’t know where he was.

He was lying in a bed, in a small white room with an IV in his arm, and his heart was fluttering with nerves and he felt sore and battered and didn’t know why. There was something about the room. Something he’d remembered — but he didn’t remember it now.

He was in his new home, with his new owner. He remembered that and it made his heart slow down. But a few more memories trickled back and made his heart speed up again, he’d got lost and he’d been sick and he thought he remembered being in trouble, already. But he was definitely in the right place now, his owner - the person who wanted him - had been there, he remembered her face and that made him feel better. He would just wait here, and she’d be back, it still seemed like it was early in the morning.

The first person who came in wasn’t Dr. de Courcy though, it was a rumpled man with ruffled hair. 798591 stared at him for a moment before he remembered that he’d seen him last night. He couldn’t remember his name though.

The rumpled man came and peered at him, “how are you feeling this morning?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” said 798591.

“Do you still have a headache?” asked the rumpled man.

798591 nodded.

“Can you tell me how bad the pain is, out of ten?” asked the rumpled man.

798591 thought about it, his head didn’t feel very bad, but he couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a number, and trying made the pain spike up behind his eyes. And not answering the question was making a sinking, anxious feeling low in his belly.

“Hey now,” said the rumpled man, “its okay, don’t answer if its too hard. Just relax now. Take some deep breaths.”

798591 took a few big gulps of air and the rumpled man nodded encouragingly.

“That’s good,” he said, “let’s try again. Can you tell me if your headache is better or worse than last night?”

“Its better?” whispered 798591, “I think?”

“Well that’s good,” said rumpled man, “and do you have any other pain at all?”

He did, but he wasn’t supposed to complain and the questions were making the fluttery, anxious feelings worse, so he shook his head.

“That’s good,” said rumpled man, and smiled at him, so it was probably good he hadn’t said anything, “are you still feeling nauseous at all?”

798591 shook his head, he didn’t even have to keep that to himself, his stomach wasn’t turning over in unhappy ways any more.

“Good,” said the rumpled man, “good. Can you sit up for me?”

798591 sat up and the rumpled man came over and pressed his stethoscope against his chest, and then his back, and then his belly. He had 798591 hold his hands out with his eyes shut so he could press down on them the way Dr. de Courcy had the day before, and then shone a light in his eyes. He still didn’t understand why. But when he was done, he stepped back and nodded to himself.

“Okay,” said the rumpled man, “do you know your name?”

“798591,” he said, which earned him a frown. But he knew he remembered it. He knew that number.

“And what’s the date?” asked the rumpled man.

“I don’t know,” said 798591.

“Do you know what month it is,” asked the rumpled man, “or the season?”

798591 shook his head.

“Do you know how long you’ve been in the hospital?”

“Since yesterday,” said 798591.

“Yeah,” said the rumbled man “that was a good effort. You’re doing fine. Someone will bring you breakfast in a couple of hours.”

He turned around as if to go.

798591 summoned up his courage and asked, “is Dr. de Courcy coming back?”

“Huh?” asked the rumpled man, “yeah at some point today, rounds are usually early, but everything’s still off this morning, from the accident.”

He hurried out before 798591 could work up the nerve to ask anything else. He huddled down into his blankets and tried not to be afraid. He didn’t know what was making him feel so scared, but he wanted it to stop. He wanted Dr. de Courcy to come back and take him somewhere else. He’s not supposed to want things, it sent a twinge of pain shooting through his head.

The next person to come in was a small woman with lots and lots of curly brown hair carrying food on a tray and more pills for him to take. She looked comfortingly familiar but it took him a while to come up with her name. Like his brain was going very slowly.

“Remember me?” she asked with a nice little smile.

“Kenna?” He asked, he still wasn’t totally sure.

“That’s right,” she beamed, “you remembered. That’s really good. I brought you some breakfast, sorry its late, there was a thing with the dietetics orders. And I’m supposed to stay with you and make sure you’re swallowing okay, alright?” She came over and put the food in front of him and asked, “can I sit here? I promise I won’t come and loom over you every time you eat.”

It took him a moment to figure out that Kenna was actually asking his permission, like he got a say in where people sat. He nodded and she perched on the edge of his bed.

“Do you feel like you can eat anything?” Kenna asked him, “or are you still feeling too sick?”

He wasn’t feeling sick, having food in front of him made him suddenly realize that he didn’t know when he’d last had any food and he was awfully hungry. He shook his head hard.

“Well that’s a good sign,” said Kenna. She gave him another nice little smile. “But I want you to eat this very slowly so we can make sure you’re not having any trouble with it okay? We normally have a speech path to do this, but everything is still sort of mad and we didn’t want to make you wait that long to have some food,” she added.

798591 didn’t really know what that meant, he was just happy to be fed, and to have Kenna there. He did as he was told and took small, slow mouthfuls Kenna encouraged him a bit while he ate, and patted his legs a few times through the blankets and it made it easier to eat slower, so she would stay and he wouldn’t be left alone again. He could only drag it out for so long before he didn’t have any food left.

“You did really well,” said Kenna, getting up and patting his shoulder, “I’ll be back at some point to take you to imaging, but I’ve got to run.”

And then she left, and 798591 was left alone for hours and hours.

A stranger came in at one point and brought him more food but they didn’t stay or talk to him and even after another meal he was still lingeringly hungry. It felt familiar, and that made him feel anxious and he just wanted it all to stop. Everything felt wrong and he didn’t know why.

He lost track of the time a little, but it was sometime after that that a group of people in white coats, including the rumpled man again filed into the room followed, at last, by Dr. de Courcy. 798591 immediately straightened up and tried to look alert and tidy. Dr. de Courcy’s eyes brushed over him briefly before she turned to face the rumpled man.

“Dr. McCormick?” she said, and then stared expectantly at him.

The rumpled man, who must be Dr. McCormick and who looked more rumpled than ever, picked up the pad of paper that hung off the edge of his bed and looked from it, to Dr. de Courcy.

“An unidentified and unclaimed male patient, admitted yesterday afternoon and believed to have been involved in the shipwreck. He was assessed by you and by Joey Mallory and presented with disorientation and - pure retrograde amnesia - and moderate dehydration and nausea, believed to be secondary to - ingesting salt water, treated with oral H2 inhibitors. The patient experienced more nausea and headache overnight and I administered oral acetominophen. As of this morning he reported reduced headache and no further nausea. And the RN noted no dysphagia or nausea with breakfast this morning. Initial labs taken during admission showed minor electrolyte imbalances but no other abnormalities, and follow-up labs taken during the early morning are entirely normal.”

He ended his long report by gasping in a big breath, like he’d just run.

“Where are we in the imaging queue?” Dr. de Courcy asked. 798591 still didn’t really understand what that meant.

“They’re hoping to get him in this evening,” said a woman who was standing behind Dr. McCormick.

“Are the labs in epic?”

“Yes,” said Dr. McCormick.

“I want them redone every day until I say otherwise,” said Dr. de Courcy, “maintain the H2 inhibitors for 48 hours to be on the safe side. What’s the obvious next step diagnostically?”

“We need brain imaging,” said one of the women.

“Does everyone agree with Dr. Yeo that imaging is going complete our clinical picture?”

The woman who was standing behind Dr. McCormick spoke up again, “we need to do a neurological exam.”

“Thank you Dr. Halabi,” said Dr. de Courcy, “yes, don’t ever neglect diagnostic exams just because you have, or expect to have imaging. And frankly, becoming over dependent on high tech imaging is a bad idea. You never know when you might suddenly not have it, as we’re currently experiencing. However, because this patient is showing some atypical symptoms I’m going to be doing his work up today and full neurological exam tomorrow, so you will all have to practice on our next patients.”

Dr. Yeo put her hand in the air.

“Yes,” said Dr. de Courcy.

“Shouldn’t we also do a psychological exam? I thought pure retrograde amnesia was usually psychiatric?”

“Yes,” said Dr. de Courcy, “that is correct, your reward will be contacting the psychiatry department and scheduling the exam. Do not conflict with my exam we can’t do both at once.”

“Yes Dr. de Courcy,” said Dr. Yeo.

Some of the other people scrambled for notebooks and scribbled notes.

“And what else?” Dr. de Courcy said.

The scribblers stopped scribbling.

“We have a completely unidentified patient,” said Dr. de Courcy, “we need the police. The world outside the hospital does continue to exist during your shifts. I realize you’re tired, but please attempt to retain object permanence.”

They scribbled some more.

798591 looked between the cluster of people as they talked and tried to figure out what was going on and why Dr. de Courcy wouldn’t look at him or speak to him. He didn’t feel sick anymore, and he didn’t know why Dr. McCormick had said he was unclaimed. He had been delivered. Someone wanted him, someone had to want him, or he would be sent back and refurbished and -

“Well,” Dr. de Courcy said suddenly, and everyone else looked as confused as he felt, “begin the neurological exams on our next set of patients.” she barked, “and go find me Kenna.”

“But -“ Dr. McCormick started.

“Now,” she snapped, and he ran away.

They were alone in the room but 798591 suddenly didn’t feel good about it.

Dr. de Courcy moved a bit closer and leaned over him.

“Take deep breaths,” she said to him.

798591 obediently sucked air deep into his lungs.

“Slowly now,” she said, “good. Try and stay calm, we’re nearly done. We’ll leave you alone soon.”

No, no, she couldn’t leave, he didn’t know what he was going to do, he didn’t want to be alone again.

“Please,” he whispered, “please, I’m better, I’ll be good, please don’t send me away,” he tried desperately not to cry again.

Dr. de Courcy frowned down at him, “what are you talking about? And stop biting your lip you’ll make it bleed.”

798591 opened his mouth like he’d been told, but then he couldn’t stop tears dripping out of his eyes. He wasn’t supposed to cry. She really wasn’t going to keep him if he couldn’t stop crying.

“Oh no, Fawn, what happened?” Kenna said, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, he didn’t know when she’d come in, “you were doing so good earlier. Are you hurting?”

“Fawn?” said Dr. de Courcy.

If Kenna said anything in response he didn’t hear her, but he felt a little better while she was stroking his shoulders, and he managed to blink away the rest of the tears.

“That’s better,” said Dr. de Courcy, “now, what are you crying about?”

798591 risked a glance up at her. She was frowning down at him with her arms crossed.

“Did you sleep much last night?” she asked.

“S-some,” he said, timidly, “I can do better - I’ll be better.”

“I may write you a prescription for a sleeping pill, just for the night,” she said, “there’s no point in spending an hour on a neurological exam that will just tell me you’re exhausted. Would that be easier?”

“Whatever you like ma’am,” said 798591.

“Kenna,” said Dr. de Courcy, “I’m hours behind as it is, when you’re finished here, I need you to go contact the hospital legal department, about contacting the police and about what we discussed yesterday. Hand off your other patients if you need to and blame me for it, I want this handled.”

798591 felt his breathing pick up again and he couldn’t stop it, even though he did try.

“Oh is that what got you all wound up,” said Dr. de Courcy, “you’re not about to be arrested, we always call the police when someone gets lost.”

“You’re okay,” said Kenna, “you’re safe here. You’re safe.”

798591 gasped in a very shaky breath, and then his stomach gurgled loudly, and he couldn’t stop it. He also couldn’t stop himself from blushing.

“Are we starving you?” said Dr. de Courcy.

“No,” said 798591, “no I’m alright.”

“Feed him before you talk to legal,” Dr. de Courcy said to Kenna.

“Will the kitchen -“ Kenna started.

Dr. de Courcy took a wallet out of one of her pockets and handed Kenna a folded bill, “the cafeteria will be faster. Hopefully he’ll be less panicky when he’s comfortable.”

She swept out of the room.

Kenna stood up and looked at him, which meant she wasn’t holding him any more, “what would you like?” she asked him.

“I don’t need anything,” 798591 whispered, “its okay.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Kenna, “ you need to eat if you’re hungry. And you’ve had a time of it, I’ll get you a treat, kay? I’ll be right back.”

And she dashed off, and he was alone again.

@haro-whumps @whatwasmyprevioususername @whump-it

#lost in transit #box boy extended universe #bbu #poor kiddo #i swear i will give him a name soon #hospitals

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skaylanphear · 6 years

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I didn't realize you were so critical of Voltron's writing. Is there anything you think the writers did really well?

Not… really?

The one episode that sticks out to me as having been well-written was an episode in season 3–the one where Keith is leading them into that planet and all their tech gets screwed to hell. It works on a lot of levels because it introduces Lotor as a scary villain, establishes Allura as inexperienced while giving her the chance to learn, and shows Keith learning a lesson while Lance gets to stretch his legs as an actual competent member of the team. What I loved about it though was the lesson Keith learned onscreen and how he learned it–we got to see actual development as well as him opening up to another member of the team other than Shiro. It’s one of the best episodes in the series and really goes to show what Voltron could have been if the writers actually knew what they were doing. I assume, at this point, that the episode was merely a happy accident.

Now that isn’t to say Voltron doesn’t have memorable moments for other reasons–the scene where Keith and Shiro fight was wonderfully animated and probably the most beautiful looking scene in the whole series, but that doesn’t mean how we got there was as good by comparison.

One of Voltron’s biggest problems (among other glaring issues) is that it relies heavily on concepts, but pretty much fails to expand those concepts into actual narrative development. We’re told via Hunk’s one episode in the Galra empire that he’s become quite the diplomat, but we never see that in action or see him struggling with that arc at any other point in the series. We’re told Lance has become a great member of the team by seeing his sword form during training, but we rarely get to see those skills in action. And yeah, Lance takes up giving commands when Keith and Shiro are busy, but it’s never highlighted. He’s never given his moment to truly prove himself to the audience. Which makes it all little different than telling the audience that development is happening offscreen, which you should NEVER do. Which brings me to Keith. Not only was Keith’s path through “development” poorly concocted, but we didn’t even get to see it. Why was he such a great leader after having spent time with his mother? What did that do for him? Fans can speculate all they want, but at the end of the day, Keith is one character when he left and another when he comes back, and WE DIDN’T SEE IT HAPPEN!

This leaves me with one of two conclusions: Either the writers were too lazy to put any effort into telling a proper character arc OR they simply don’t know how. And seeing how poorly every other character in the series is handled, I’d bet on the latter. The Voltron writers don’t know how to do their jobs on the most basic level. Even Shiro, the second-shining child of the series after Keith, doesn’t get any development. He’s got PTSD, sure, but he’s literally the exact same character he was in the beginning as he is now, much like the rest the cast. What would have made Shiro’s character really great would maybe be some regret on his end, or some self-doubt following his PTSD issues, or maybe a loss of confidence he had to overcome or literally ANYTHING! Instead he’s relegated to a plot device.

Which brings me to another glaring issues with Voltron alongside the character development–they’re taking what should be a character-driven narrative and pretending it’s a plot-driven narrative.

You want to know why Voltron was so promising from the start? Because it had a perfect premise for character building. It was like Avatar the Last Airbender but in space. You had a big baddy in the distance that the characters had to work their own skills up to in order to face. It gave the characters time to explore both themselves and the world around them, while still retaining a goal that implemented a sense of urgency. Which is why the originally episodic storytelling of Voltron in the first season worked so well and why the series seemed so promising. Each episode had a different character or couple of characters that had a problem they needed to overcome before the resolution of the episode, or a couple of episode as they sometimes did them in twos. This is a good format for storytelling with a big cast because it gives each character the turn they deserve, while still giving time for things like comedic relief and problem solving/conversations between characters, which is the FOOD of character development. Being able to have two character sit down and simply chat is the main course of character development and interpersonal relationships, hence Shiro and Pidge’s relationship was so precious in the first season, and why people latched onto Keith and Lance so hard, because they were constantly snarking at one another.

The problem comes with season 3, where the writers tried to change Voltron from an episodic format into a serial format while trying to retain the same tone. Serial storytelling has an overarching pot that the characters work toward the whole season–like all of a season is a single episode. Yes, Voltron already had an overarching plot, but it was secondary to the character story-telling. That was, until season three, when the writers decided that they wanted the story to be “epic all the time” instead of sticking to what was originally good.

Avatar the Last Airbender isn’t good because it’s epic all the time. It’s good because it’s well-balanced. Because the characters got the time to build themselves up so that when those epic moments finally happened, the audience actually cared. Voltron decided that they wanted to be edgy and took all of that away from us to make the show serial and focus more entirely on the end plot instead of each individual character’s struggles. They tried to retain a bit of this, but in contrast with the more serial episodes, it feels like whiplash. This is why season 3′s tone is so vastly different from season 1 and 2, and why so many people were so shocked. And why it feels so fast.

But the problem is that the writers clearly want to write an episodic show, they just don’t realize they do, which is why we’re getting TOLD character development instead of shown in favor of over the top battles and other “intense” mumbo jumbo that falls flat when anyone takes a moment to sit and think about what they’re watching.

This is why I got so infuriated when all those new characters were introduced in season 7–we don’t even know the characters we got originally and now I’m expected to care about these new ones? No, absolutely not. And this is also why I get angry every time we get a “filler” episode. Avatar had filler episodes, but Avatar was also episodic and used that filler to develop the characters, with the exception of Tales of Ba Sing Se, which was amazingly done for other reasons entirely.

Voltron made itself serial, which means we don’t have time for filler. It’s jarring and takes the viewer out of the experience. I don’t care about a stupid gameshow episode because the writers have made it overly clear that the situation is dire and serious and now I feel like I’ve been slapped. Especially when that filler does nothing for the characters. It’s a waste when they could have been using the time for something more worthwhile. Instead, they just wanted a Q episode, or a D&D episode, as if their storytelling had been good enough prior to earn them that wasted time.

Which brings me to yet another glaring issue that Voltron has–pacing. Not only did the change in storytelling alter the pacing in a way that was jarring for everyone, but they can’t keep up with the pace they decided to set, nor do they know how to keep tension going in the story so as to take advantage of that faster pace they forced on themsleves. Pidge, Lotor, and Zarkon are prime examples of characters whose arcs were slaughtered by this incompetence. Why was Pidge’s search for her brother concluded at the beginning of a season in a standalone episode that is so far outside the serialized plot? Well I can tell you why–because they didn’t know how to integrate it properly with the rest of the story. Which is why it feels like filler. Like fan service. Why it’s so out of the blue. Why is Zarkon’s death so lackluster? Because we’d been told that Zarkon was the big baddy the whole time and then they ended his reign in the middle of a season. Not only do we see Zarkon suddenly in the daylight outside his scary space darkness, but his entrance is lame and lacking impact. And then Lotor, a newer character by contrast, is the one to take him out. Suddenly, the show is without the big baddy that had been pushing it from the beginning, which is glaringly obvious in how disorganized the plot becomes after his death and Lotor’s subsequent defeat. Sorry, but by default of the role she had previously, Haggar is not as scary as Zarkon was, nor is Sendak. It’s like we’re supposed to now watch Voltron clean up the leftovers instead of fight a war, which is fucking stupid. And don’t even get me started on Lotor’s arc. They wanted to make him seem like Zuko and then pull an Azula? Well, sorry hons, but your storytelling capabilities aren’t strong enough to accomplish either.

Lotor was not made sympathetic or psychotic enough to pull off either act, which just makes him fall rather flat. The most interesting thing about him was his relationship with Allura, which was only interesting because we hadn’t gotten any romance yet in the show so everyone was super paying attention to how it’d unfold.

This pacing issue is continuous from season 3 onward. The story regularly takes detours it shouldn’t and focuses on things we don’t care about and interjects important plot-points at the wrong time while completely leaving out others. Like Haggar coming back in season 7. If we’d actually seen a bit of what she was up to, the addition of the last robot to the final fight might have been a little less stupid, but we didn’t see that, so it’s still just regular stupid.

So the characters in Voltron suck, the plot sucks, and the pacing sucks. The only thing that’s saving Voltron is the fact that it looks nice and that the fandom is happy to take concepts and run with them in fan works. There’s a reason the fandom is so happy to explain away everything in the series, because expanding the series for themselves is the only option they have. Voltron itself doesn’t do it on but rare occasions, and if the fan creators didn’t give the characters depth, no one would. Every piece of “character” we get in Voltron is a concept, not actual storytelling. They set up what could be something amazing and then dash it at the last moment by completely ruining everything. People say Voltron never ceases to surprise them, but this isn’t because they’re great storytellers, it’s because of the exact opposite. Voltron rarely follows through with minor plot points set up previously, instead settling to just tell you about them later in favor of laser battles. Lance is insecure? Just give him a sword, he’s fine. Hunk has no development? Give him a short, five minute moment about his family–a family he talked about one other time and a plot point that should have rightfully gone to Lance. Pidge’s “arc” is over? Just have her say a whole bunch of nonsense in the next scene. Need someone to do something cool? Better get Keith since that’s all he’s good for anymore due to his character being so inconsistent. Need some of that quality angst? Throw in Shiro too, because god forbid Keith relate to any of the other characters on a personal level and actually break out of the isolated existence that caused all his character problems in the first place. Oh, and don’t forget Allura, whose overpowered abilities have become such an expected norm and so unexplainable at this point that she’s nothing more than a bore-fest to watch.

Voltron had everything going for it–it could have been great, on par with Avatar the Last Airbender by sheer default of how the original premise was set up and how interesting the characters were to start with. And then the writers screwed it up because they didn’t know how to properly tell the story they’d set up in the first place.

This is why people who don’t watch Voltron or who don’t see anything special about it don’t understand why it’s such a big deal (and why comparing it to Avatar the Last Airbender is such an insult). Why it’s plain toast in comparison to other, better shows. Because anyone who actually takes a step back and looks at the show with more thought than “oh I like this character because of what they could have been,” they’d realize just how badly concocted Voltron is.

I know. I was once one of these people that had faith in the concepts that I eventually realized would never come to fruition. I was happy to ignore the faults in the show because I kept hoping it would get better. But then it never did and all that was left were the faults.

Voltron is not a good show. Like, it’s just literally not well done. The visuals are nice, which is part of the reason it’s gotten so popular. But even if the art is nice, at the end of the day, the writing has been and always will be the heart and soul of any narrative, and if that’s a pile of trash, the entire show will end up that way.

#skaylanphear replies #anonymous #voltron #vld #voltron legendary defender

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baronfulmen · 5 years

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For the 3 people that care about my thoughts on Endgame

Okay so I’m putting this under one of those “keep reading” links which should save you from seeing anything because OBVIOUSLY this is all spoilery.

Tony dying was the most obvious and predictable thing in the whole universe, I don’t know why you guys are so surprised.

The time travel was an absolute fucking mess. Wow. It’s like they set out to do it as badly as possible. It’s possible to come up with an explanation that kinda works for most of it, but the work is all on the viewer because as presented it’s total nonsense.

Big funeral for Tony, no funeral for Black Widow.

Actually we don’t even need a funeral for her, you have time travel now. Go save Black Widow. The time travel is enough of a mess that you clearly don’t need to worry about that causing any paradoxes or whatever anyway.

Spider-Man’s fancy suit was fine at the end, but in his upcoming movie he’s using a way lower tech one that also isn’t one we’ve ever seen him with. Why would he switch to a non-Stark suit? Will the explain it, or just handwave it because the real reason is to sell more toys?

The scene where all the un-snapped folks showed up was perfect because somehow in all the excitement my dumbass brain forgot they were back. I’m sure that’s exactly what the filmmakers wanted, not sure what percentage of the audience it worked on but I’m glad it worked on me.

Fuck you Tumblr, for spoiling the fact that Steve got Mjolnir. Still cool though.

Fuck you, random clickbait headlines for kinda vaguely spoiling things about Loki and the tesseract (new band name, dibs) and Asgardians of the Galaxy.

As others have pointed out, Steve had to return the soul stone to Red Skull and I would pay extra to see that scene.

Is it just me or did Thanos put up more of a fight without the gauntlet than he did with it?

Captain Marvel is overpowered as compared to the rest of the cast AND she has no history with the rest of the Avengers, which means whenever she’s on screen she’s the hero rather than it being a team. I wish they had found a better way to handle this than just having her be “somewhere else, busy with space stuff” for most of the movie but I don’t know exactly what I would have done.

Loved the Hulk. Every second of him. Perfection.

The biggest missed opportunity caused by the infinity stones being destroyed was the chance for Vision to communicate with them from within the Mind stone, just like Ultron did.

I was still hoping that Dr. Strange would show up to give them the Time stone, then at the end go back to give it to Thanos and get snapped.

They only fixed the snapped people. Not the tens (hundreds?) of millions of people that died from secondary effects. Suicides like you wouldn’t believe. Enormous numbers of plane and car crashes. No emergency response because there’s too much happening at once and also half of them have vanished. Total breakdown of infrastructure, Safety measures failing all over. Children left in dangerous places by themselves. Food and resource distribution totally disrupted, leading to starvation and chaos. Collapse of the government leading to people carving out their own petty kingdoms. Thanos also eliminated half the food sources on the planet because his plan was totally stupid, so that killed people too. Entire ecosystems collapsing. THEN people come back, and it’s the same sorts of problems. Babies appearing on the freeway. Sick people appearing in hospitals that aren’t open anymore. Suddenly the population has (at least) doubled and food distribution is still planning for the reduced headcount. This whole world is totally irrevocably screwed.

Despite the time travel being awful, props to Marvel for making one of the only time travel movies where they actually think about the people in the current timeline. Usually they’re just “yeah I dunno I guess all the current people cease to exist, it’s fine, just don’t think about it”.

Totally bad lazy writing at the beginning where they’re like “We have no idea where he is” and then a second later after a comment from Nebula that didn’t come close to helping at all or giving them any new information they say “Oh and BTW we already detected the Infinity Gauntlet being used at THIS location the other day somehow” which, okay first of all that means you DO know where he is but also how exactly did you detect that?

The Girl Power scene was a little silly. These are all awesome characters that I would love to see working together and getting more screen time, but having them all take a moment from the battle to strike a pose and one by one stand up only to... honestly not do anything at the moment because Captain Marvel just flew off way faster than they could hope to keep up? That was dumb. If you want to show off your bare minimum representation do it by actually giving them cool stuff to do (which, yes, also happened to some extent but I’m just saying more of that rather than the blatant “LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEE”).

As a fat guy who doesn’t like how fat people are portrayed in media, I still wasn’t really bothered by Fat Thor. Maybe I should have been, I don’t know, but I wasn’t. And you know, he stayed fat when he was kicking ass at the end so there’s that.

I called that Captain America would somehow be given a chance to retire, I wasn’t sure what that would look like. In theory I don’t mind him using time travel to live through all the years he missed, it’s a nice way to give him an ending, but of course it just makes all the time travel stuff worse and it felt a little sudden even with the thousand times they mentioned / showed Peggy.

I liked it. Did I mention I liked it? Because I did.

#avengers #endgame #mcu #marvel #infinity war

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bluethisisforyou · 6 years

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Klance, 22 🌹 i'd lOVE THAT 😍

22. “I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.”

Lance didn’t feel himself slipping. In fact, he had toned down the longing glances and the smiles. At least, he thought he had. Looking in the mirror one morning, he’d decided to limit himself to two glances a day, maybe three if he’d thought he deserved it.

“That’s a stupid plan.” Pidge said, half under some machine. “Lance, not to be mean, but that’s grade A idiotic.”

“He’s right, you know?” Hunk sat off to the right at the table, fiddling with some new alien technology that glowed a terrifying shade of red. “Why don’t you, I don’t know, say something?”

“Ok, first off, please be careful with whatever you’re doing because that looks ominous. Second, there is no way in hell I’m saying anything. That’s how he finds out.”

“So wait for him to notice or die first.” Pidge rolled out from under. “What a way to live.”

“I mean, it’s all about the power of wishful thinking.”

“Lance, I hate to be the one to do this,” Hunk looked up, “but we’re in the middle of war. In space. We might all have a time limit, here.” He set the tech aside. The thrumming noise it was giving off left them in complete silence. “If anything, you might really-”

“Ok, thanks, Hunk, for that.” Lance rubbed the inside of his arm and the quiet enveloped them all. After a pinch to his arm, Lance looked off into the distance at the high castle walls. “I just, and then what? Say I say something. Then I die…or he dies…I mean,” he smiled sadly, “then what’s the point?”

“It might be a chance for you to be happy.” Pidge moved their head so they made eye contact with Lance. “I think that’s what this life is for, to be happy. You won’t know unless you try and to die not knowing is something you’re gonna regret if there’s an afterlife.” Lance’s eyes widened. “You know, if ghosts exist in space.”

In space.

Lance nodded at each of his friends. Wordless, he turned tail and didn’t think about where he was.

Instead, he thought about where he was not.

He wasn’t in the backyard where the grass usually got long because he’d rather help his little sister look for ladybugs rather than kick them out of their home. He wasn’t five minutes from the ocean, the salty breezes acting as good night kisses in all their secondary nature. He wasn’t where the sky faded and the lights got strung up for parties and the food was better than anything in the world. He stuck his hands in his pockets and continued walking.

He noticed the streaks on the castle floor, thinking back to when he would race the lights in the convenience store and how his older sister would have to scoop him up for their mother.

He laughed, gently, as the tears began to prick at the corners of his eyes.

It just-

“Hey.” The voice was soft as Lance looked up. “Lance.” Keith stood there, just leaving his room.

Lance gently bit his tongue before speaking. “Hi.” There was pause. “Where are you-”

“What are you-”

They both stopped, looked at one another- really looked.

“Hey, are you okay?” Keith managed before Lance said something that would’ve given everything away. “You can tell me, if you want to.” Keith offered a smile smile before it faded. “But only if you’re comfortable.”

“I, uh, just feeling. Feeling homesick.” Lance supplied a smile. “Y’know, the usual.”

“Listen, I was going to go up to the observation deck to clear my head.” Keith looked off to the side.

“Oh, yeah, don’t let me-”

“Come with me?” Keith looked back, a slight eyebrow raised.

“Keep you,” Lance finished.

“What do you say?”

“Sounds,” Lance thought about everything, “sounds good.”

“Great.” Keith smiled and Lance took another quiet look at Keith.

That was allowed glance number two.

Lance walked alongside Keith quietly until they got there. He let all the memories continue to pile like blocks, even when they sat down on the steps to see the sky a bruised purple. He let his family’s voices run around in his head, telling him to do simple chores, to help do this, that, and to come back home.

Determined to get it all out of his head, he started to look over at Keith, then stopped. Looking ahead at the stars, he went, “So, what’s going on with you? Why are you clearing your head?”

“Well, firstly I’m the black paladin now, so that’s a lot.” Keith looked over at Lance slightly. “It’s not bad, since you kind of helped me out, you know?” He hugged his knees to chest. “It’s a lot, having to be the head. I mean, I know how Shiro dealt with it but I’m just…a boy from the desert.”

Lance didn’t dare look over.

“Yeah, well, I’m just a boy from Cuba, Keith. We’re all capable of leading but the black lion chose you. You should be honored.” Lance finally allowed himself a glance to see Keith looking right at him. “I mean, you were pretty good at the Garrison until you got kicked out.”

“God, how long ago was that,” Keith muttered, ending in a smile. “I remember everything, the fights, the assholes, and Shiro. Man, that place sucked.” He paused as he looked out at the stars, slowly smiled, and then looked back at Lance. “I remember you used to sneak glances at me back then, too.”

Lance felt his heart skip three consecutive beats. “What?”

“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.” Keith let go of his legs and extended them.

All the voices in Lance’s head vanished because they’d know never know what to say.

“What-what do you mean?” Lance let himself take another good look. “Just how…do I look at you?”

“Like I’m the only one in the room.” Keith played with his hands on his lap. “Like you’d be heartbroken if I left. Like when I left.” He looked over, offering a small smile. Lance kept his eyes on Keith, watching his fresh new rule vanish into thin air. “I don’t, I don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?”

“Why you look at me like that.” He let his hands separate slightly. “I know why I look at you like that but that’s-”

“You what?”

“You know you’ve been looking less lately?” Keith placed his hands on the floor. “That’s when I’ve been looking more. I just, uh, I’m not wrong, am I?” Doubt crossed his eyes as he looked back at Lance. “Am I?”

Lance took a quiet deep breath. “You’re not.” He smiled a small smile. Then he lost it. “What makes it so hard to understand why I look at you the way I do?” He sat still, waiting, glancing out of the corner of his eye.

Keith slightly moved his jaw around with one hand. He dropped it and let it rest on his leg. “Well, I was alone for most of my life. It got kind of rough until all of you came along and we found Shiro. I just, I just didn’t spend a lot of time with other people because it was getting easier to keep my distance. In fact, getting kicked out was what my body had been wanting.

“It’s strange, feeling that kind of craving unconsciously. But, it’s amazing when that want surfaces. Like, I suppose, how it feels for the both of us. But,” he hesitated, “I don’t feel like I’m worth it-”

“Neither do I.”

“Lance,” Keith looked over at him, ready to argue.

Lance felt Pidge’s words from earlier finally sink in.

“But you make me happy, underneath it all. And, well, I’d like to be happy and it’d all be better together, wouldn’t it?” Lance finally smiled a full smile. “We won’t know what that’s like if we both deny it. We won’t know until we try, right?” He felt the butterflies in his stomach stir and quiet all at once. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Keith breathed, the world almost lost to the stars outside. “You’re right.”

Taking another deep breath, Lance stood up and walked over to where Keith was. He held out his hand. “What do you say? Want to try? Together?”

“Sounds good.” Keith took it and Lance pulled him up. They stood there together, close. Hearing each other’s breathing that close, Keith wrapped his arms around Lance and pulled him close. He squeezed tight then began to slip away.

Lance caught him. “Hey, you’re good.”

“Sorry, I just didn’t know what to do.” Keith smoothed out his hands on Lance’s back.

“No, you’re…you’re good.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “You feel good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Lance tightened his hold. “You feel like home.”

Keith responded by holding on a little tighter. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

After they broke off of one another, Lance took a step back to get a good look at Keith. It was as though starlight had managed to make its way into the palace.

“What is it?” Keith cocked his head.

“I hope one day you understand why I look at you the way I do.” Lance said gently.

“If only you do the same for me.” Keith smiled, honeyed and quiet.

“I can try.” Lance breathed and it was the best he could do. He smiled in return as Keith echoed his words.

It was the best they could do, for now.

Walking off side by side, they both took numerous glances at one another.

Smiling, they knew this space was theirs.

It was just a matter of growing into it.

Trying to, anyways and it was enough.

Always would be.

#I think this is longest of this batch @ 1625 words #I really loved this prompt #also I tried adding more around the dialogue and wow that did wonders #hope you like it #asks #uroskana #mini fic #klance #klance fic #klance fanfic #klance fanfiction #voltron #voltron legendary defender

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byigoose-blog · 5 years

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Monocle, part 1. “Clyde and Bennie’s”

The day started off like any other my mum was standing on the balcony of the apartment just staring with that monocle on, she grew up in a fancy house where those things were common it was like an heirloom or some shit. She would wear it most times and people always gave her weird stares who wouldn’t?

“Morning Gabriel did you sleep well?” She asked when I walked in. She hadn’t said it in a friendly way she always wanted me to find a house. She said it would be easier for you if you had your own house. I did sort of agree my mum did some weird things she had some sort of laboratory in one of the rooms and she had a room that was constantly locked which I could hear her in sometimes. Also sometimes when I come home I find a bunch of stuff on the ground the floor would be covered in all sorts of shit vases not all intact, pillows that were torn I once found a green substance on the ground that I could only describe as smelling like a dead rat. I have a theory that my mum is a hit man or some shit or an assassin and brings her targets to our apartment for some reason. It’s a shitty theory I know but come on There was knife holes in the walls of my bedroom one day.

“Fine I’m just gonna head out okay?” I worked at a local fast food restaurant called Clyde and Bennie's. They sold the average thing you would expect from a fat food restaurant. It wasn’t busy most days and I liked that, that’s why I chose to work there.

“Okay, but Gabriel? Can you not come home right away afterwards? I have..... Friends over.” She was doing something I knew she had no friends because she never left the house all she did all day was make “alternative medicine” which she sold at the shop downstairs to Abbey. Abbey was the only person that mum talked too except me. The reason for that was she’s also fucking insane like my mum. Sometimes I see her eating raw meat when she comes over for dinner she gives me chicken and her uncooked chicken it’s weird, and she never get’s sick at all.

“Alright mum I’ll go and do something with Adam.” Adam was my friend. We have known each other for a couple of years since the end of secondary school through college. His dad was super rich but Adam didn’t act rich which I think meant he was insecure about being the guy who bought his way into a college because there was no way he could have made his way into it any other way, his dad payed extra for him to be top of the waiting list, I only got in because I did some quiz that gave me a scholarship I can’t remember it was like 5 years ago.

“Okay bye Gabriel!” She shouted as I walked out the door. Clyde and Bennie's was only a ten minute walk from the apartment so I made it there fairly quickly. The day went fairly normally some annoying customers came in, There was one woman who was nearly the size of a fucking car so I have no idea how she got here unless she walked which I seriously doubt and there were some weirdo’s that normally come in. Of course the weirdos were always directed to me so I had a lot of fun. One was a guy in a suit, tie and a top hat who was a common sight here even though it was obvious he was loaded or trying to look that way, My coworkers didn’t like him that much because she was always saying he wanted one thing then changing his mind, but I kind of liked him he was funny in a laughing at him sort of way he also had weird English accent. Another was girl with the biggest eye bags and she wore the same purple with black stripes jumper she looked like she never got any sleep she was also a regular I think she worked across the road at a hotel I think she was a janitor, me and her were friends... kind of she had introduced herself to me when I was working the late shift she said her name was Nancy and she apparently came here to listen to the radio we had playing. When she came in all she ordered was an ice cream which is all she ever did and would keep doing that until closing. Final weirdo was a new one, he was a guy covered in tattoos and I mean covered his entire face was tattoos he was also massive he was bigger than anyone I had ever met before, he was like 9-10ft tall, but the really weird thing was he had an realistic looking sheep skull on his fucking shoulder he was wearing it like a shoulder pad I couldn’t stop staring. He also ordered a kids meal to go and nothing else I was terrified of him I don’t know who wouldn’t be scared of a 10ft man covered in tattoos with a sheep skull on his shoulder. Luckily he was gone fairly quickly but it was the longest time ever he was breathing really heavily and grunting sometimes. He had to bend down to fit through the door.

Finally after eight long hours I could leave after all the late shifters arrived. I grabbed my phone and called Adam telling him to come pick me up and take me to his house. He agreed which was usually the case as my mum most nights asked me to come home later than usual which meant wait until 7pm so I normally hung out with Adam until then. I just stood outside the restaurant when after 5 minutes Nancy came out.

“They stopped playing the radio channel I like inside so I came out why are you still here didn’t you leave?” She said this all in one sentence not changing tone once and having a completely dead pan face on her.

“Yeah my mum said I couldn’t come home for a couple of hours so I’m waiting for a friend here.” I replied.

“Oh okay don’t get stabbed out here.” She said as she walked away I didn’t even get a chance to say good bye she was eating an ice cream as she walked away.

After around 10 minutes more of waiting I saw Adams car at the top of the street and I was so glad while I didn’t take Nancy’s advice seriously I seriously thought I would get stabbed if I was out here any longer.

“Hey Gabe how’s it going?” He asked as he pulled up in his Mercedes E class, I couldn’t even dream of affording that kind of car but of course Adam could he worked at his dad’s tech company that developed shit like robots, guns, phones and laptops, cars and everything else you could imagine, they were developing a hover board at the moment. Now not to be rude but Adam could not make any of these things of course he couldn’t he was a test subject which to be fair was a nearly impossible job to get in the company he was extremely lucky to get the chance to do that.

“Not much I’ve just been standing in the same spot for a couple of hours serving people food.” I said sarcastically.

“Well come on get some scientist wants me to do a thing and I asked if you could help and he said sure you’ll even get paid.” I looked at him confused

“How much?” I asked I was curious because I knew the company had some very dangerous thing at it and if I was getting paid £100 to risk my life I would have to decline.

“£5000 Come on!” I instantly jumped in the car and we went straight to the building. It was a huge tower with the logo of the company on it HyV co. (it’s pronounced like high v encase your wondering) He led me into the lift and up to the 37th floor and into a room with a window in it standing on our side of the glass was a man in a lab coat and on the other side was a forest? I guess it looked like it.

“Ah yes hello! boys I heard you two were in the business to enter my experimentation room?” He spoke with a thick German accent. Of course the first scientist I met was a German scientist who looked like Dr. Frankenstein.

“Yeah me and Gabe want to go in there and do whatever you want us to do.” Adam replied without me having time to consider.

“Alright good I have put a specimen in the environment and would like you two to retrieve it.” He said handing us a rifle.

“Specimen?” I said looking at the rifle.

“Yeah they do experimentation on animals now Gabe didn’t I tell you?” Adam said already walking towards the forest I was surprised but I followed after him. I would do anything for 5 grand if it meant I could have a chance to get away from my mum I would do anything.

We walked in and didn’t say anything to each other I had no idea what kind of “specimen” they need us to retrieve but I was sweating. Around half an hour was spent just walking around the forest I don’t know why they spent that much money to make an environment this big to keep only one thing which I still had no idea what it was. I suddenly heard a sound from behind me it was branches snapping I tapped Adam on the shoulder and told him

“Holy shit dude I think somethings back there fucking hell.” I whispered. He could hear it as well.

“It’s fine.” He said as we looked around.

Suddenly from one of the bushes out came a fox that just walked up to us and stared at use. Adam the continued to shoot it with the rifle that fired a tranquilliser at the fox it fell down almost immediately I felt kind of bad as we brought it back. We gave it back to scientist, he gave us the 5 grand and we left I checked the time it was only 6:15 but I wanted to go home so I arrived home at 6:45 which was only 15 minutes early I’m sure mum would be done by now. Oh how I wish I hadn’t came over at all. When I walked in I saw my mum lying on the ground bleeding with claw marks on her side I ran over and tried to tried to talk to her.

“Mum what happened?” I asked while also typing in my phone pin.

“No time to explain Gabriel. You need to listen.” She said as I was calling 999.

I finished the call while my mum was tugging on me to listen but I couldn’t I had to get help. After I had done she grabbed me by my collar.

“Listen Gabriel the ambulance won’t be able to help me I’m going to die I need you to listen.”

“What?” I said feeling threatened by an injured 55 year old woman.

“This monocle is special” She said as she passe it to me.”It can help you see things normal people can’t see with their eyes.” I gave her a confused look as I had known that monocles helped people see did she think I was an idiot?

“I know what monocles do mum.” I said hoping she would calm down and stop moving while the blood was pouring out of her.

“You’re not getting it idiot!” She shouted.”Point it at Abbey some day and that’ll show you what I mean.” I knew Abbey and mum were insane but I never knew they were this insane.”There are books in the room that’ll help you just trust me. Please.”

“But it’s locked.” I said as she slowly stopped moving.

“You’ll get the key soon enough.” She said as she completely stopped moving.

“Mum!” I shouted as I heard the ambulance outside at this point Abbey had came and was looking in she seemed shocked. I waited for the ambulance as they came in and brought her as quickly as they could to the hospital.

But I knew it was too late anyway...

#story #monocle #fantasy #fox #Clyde and Bennie's #storytelling #Byigoose #creature #my writing #literature #monster #monster story #monster hunter #hunter #alternative medicine

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thedaveandkimmershow · 3 years

Photo

Okay. So we don't know it yet, but someone (or someones) removed the hubcap of the Rialta's left rear tire. Including the lug nut covers. While we were in the Rialta. That's a discovery that's still ahead of us, though.

The day actually begins with waking up to a very cherry blossom tree posing beside us.

A brief word about our sleep during this adventure: we both wear watches that keep track of steps, heart rate, blood pressure, and so on. The watches also keep track of our sleep and the quality of that sleep which we can then observe in a phone app that breaks it down by hours slept, time spent in light sleep, time spent in deep sleep, and so on. The app then rates our sleep, which is the metric I'm most interested in because so far... the scores don't play out the way I think they should. Poor quality sleep falls in the zero to sixty range. Sixty to seventy-five is considered "secondary". Seventy-five to ninety is "good". Ninety to a hundred is "excellent".

With me so far?

Now, I've worn the watch for several months now and, in that time, I only ever score in the middle to high range of "good". In my own bed. Indoors. Temperature controlled. "Good"... is my best score.

But then sleeping at these rest stops along I-5 in the back of an RV, I started scoring in the "excellent" range. For example, 60-ish miles north of Roseburg, the watch app documents six deep sleeps where I usually only score five at the most. Plus, my score's now firmly in the Nineties. Apparently, then, my sleep quality really grooves in the back of RVs parked in rest areas next to busy interstates.

Who knew?

So we pull out of the rest area without our left rear hubcap and lug nut covers without realizing it. When eventually we stop for gas first thing, though, Kimmer spots it just as soon as we step out of the RV.

Pretty creepy to know that happened while we were right there just a few feet away.

Movin' up the freeway afterward, it's 10am by the time we hit Eugene for a morning Starbucks run. Interestingly, this one has three tables in its dining room open for seating. Which is a revelation since I haven't seen a single Starbucks with anything open in its dining room for over a year. So this is both different... and super normal.

Okay so something we've been thinking about: when... do we actually and intentionally start going home? Because just out of idle curiosity, I check Google Maps... and Astoria's a doable thing for us if we wanna take another night to ourselves. Plus, we won't have to backtrack all the way to I-5 in Portland once we leave Astoria. We can cross the Columbia river and sneak up on Kelso, Washington, from behind and join I-5 there. A grand idea for sure... but we're still experiencing the occasional transmission hiccup or misfire. Couple yesterday. Once this morning. And with Astoria only three-ish hours south of Seattle, we decide to add that to our list of future road trips along with the miniature golf tour we thought up on our way out of Medford, Oregon. Better to do Astoria, after all, when it's summer... since right now it's overcast along the coast with rain in the forecast.

For us, right now, then, we're gonna hug I-5.

Now the parking lot we're in for Starbucks is also the parking lot for Trader Joe's a little farther away. Which is where we pick up our salad lunches (Cobb salad and Spicy Arugula & Quinoa salad, btw) before continuing north on our way to Tualatin. Along the way, Kimmer's Zooming with our new hot spot. I realize it's not new tech... but wow.

It's liberating.

By the time that meeting's over, we're stopping in at the Fred Meyer in Salem which is something we seem always to do going both directions. In this case, we need to score some dry ice for our cooler and we need to top off the air in each of the Rialta's well-traveled tires. And as we did on our way south, once again we spot the "High Ped Activity" sign the local DOT's placed before the Market Street offramp.

"High Ped Activity"

High Pedestrian Activity. Meaning... Meaning two densely-packed tent encampments wedged into the spaces beneath I-5 on either side of Market.

"High Ped Activity" indeed.

Now while I'm pumping up the RV's tires, I look up just as traffic on Market on the west side of I-5 catches the red light while traffic coming off the freeway southbound is clear to turn onto Market eastbound. They're turning onto Market through the stretch of road that runs underneath I-5 where the encampments are. And right then... as southbound traffic coming off I-5 gets the green, a man in a wheelchair decides to cross the street from one encampment to the other and is nearly hit by an SUV.

Yeah.

It was a very close thing. And the image of it's something that's indelible.

At quarter to one we're on our way north again, stopping, finally, at that Comfort Inn where, yes, they hand me the wayward Rialta cushion we accidently left in our room eleven days ago. Then it's duplicating the keys to the Rialta at the key place next to Fred Meyer that's finally finally finally open. Then the GoodWill in Tigard, a town that's basically attached to Tualatin. Then the Dollar Tree down the street a ways. Then that Whole Foods that's just barely north of Tualatin but in Tigard... with an employee by self-checkout who basically looks like a young version of our friend Jeff. Plus there's the guy working in hot foods where we get our $10 special meals who worked at the Seattle Whole Foods in South Lake Union a few years back, 2016, our daughter’s store.

After we buy our dinners, we drop them in the Rialta and walk across the parking lot to that REI that's right. There. We're over at REI 'cause we're still interested in solar powered gear and want to know what recommendations they have. Nice guy we spoke with, by the way, with fifteen minutes to close. He talked about the brand REI sells, Goal Zero, and explained his personal experience buying products from that company.

Then the store’s officially closed and we’re outta there with fare-thee-wells all around. :-)

Now we're back, sitting in the Rialta, eating our dinners and discussing our plans, the first of which calls for us to spend a night or two at an RV park along the mighty Columbia River. So we call an RV place but it's after 8 already, too late in the day to accommodate us. Also, it's turning out that many such RV parks don't accommodate RV's built before a certain year. And no matter what year that is... the Rialta we're driving was built before it.

So an RV park along the mighty Columbia River's not something we can make happen. Not tonight.

Maybe tomorrow morning, though. So we figure that, since we wanna stay in the area, better to backtrack a touch and spend the night at the nearest rest area south of where we are and then see what's possible tomorrow. Which is how we wind up at French Prairie Rest Area Northbound... but only after missing the southbound exit because my phone died even though it was on charger up front with all our other electronics. I missed the southbound exit eleven miles down I-5 'cause the nice lady in Google Maps didn't say to take that exit. So I didn't and had to eat another ten miles southbound before turning around and doing those miles all over again plus the ones we would've done had I taken the exit I was supposed to take in the first place.

Yeah.

It was another not great moment for me.

By the time we arrive at French Prairie Rest Area Northbound, it's 10. Interesting thing, though, the place looks closed. Like for construction.

Fortunately, and even though there’s construction going on, French Prairie's basically a two-parter: the parking lot in front that's under construction... and the massive parking lot in back where all the 18-wheelers, RVs, and everyone else spends the night. There's a second restroom building back there (open only during daylight hours). There's even a huge solar panel farm behind all of that.

So.

What initially looks very small and closed for construction... is really a huge parking lot with plenty of space and facilities and woods and grass. Basically hidden behind a façade that screams "Closed". How very clever.

This is our home for the night and SPOILER ALERT we manage not to have anything stolen whilst sleeping this time around.

Once again, Hot In Cleveland...

And then we're out like lights :-)

#California road trip #Rialta #Salem Oregon #Eugene Oregon #Tualatin Oregon #Tigard Oregon #French Prairie Rest Area

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ellewritesfiction · 7 years

Text

Never Say Never for @sciencebrosweek

Day Two: Pending (one week post patient zero)

Despite the huddles of administrative staff watching TV shell shocked and the multitude of samples shipped in to be studied and cataloged from the west coast, the clinic was surprisingly a haven of relative calm.

Bruce had been there for over two days now, coming in on Friday night to study the arriving samples in full hazmat gear alongside Natasha. The looting hadn’t started yet, the panic hadn’t fully set in. He wouldn’t go out now, though. The CDC was giving it another twenty-four hours before it fully settled into New York, Atlanta. Then Bruce wasn’t really sure what was going to happen, but a part of him was glad he was able to maintain the image of his city unmarred by this disease.

“You should have Steve come here,” Bruce had suggested softly in the breakroom as they chugged stale coffee and tried to relax for a minute – whatever that meant.

Natasha hadn’t replied.

No one had come in on Monday. The only staff that was there had been there since Friday and it was a skeleton crew. Bruce didn’t blame them, really – who the fuck would want to spend what might be the last remaining days of their lives at work? The thing was, he really just wished Tony had been there.

Fury was supposed to be reaching out to people, making sure they were okay, but he hadn’t come out of his office for hours and Bruce sure as hell wasn’t going to knock on that door so he just dutifully donned his yellow full body gear and went to work.

It was better in the lab, anyway. Made him feel like he had some measure of control over the situation.

“It reacts differently to epithelial tissues than brain tissue,” Natasha murmured from behind her mask.

Bruce glanced up, interested. So far nothing had seemed to affect the pathogen. Not heat, not cold, not electricity – at least not in any meaningful way that they could see. The only thing that appeared to affect it was starvation – when it became dormant until reintroduced to a food source. So far, the length of dormancy before it expired was unknown.

“Holy shit,” Nat muttered, getting Bruce’s full attention – Nat rarely cursed at work. “How much brain tissue do we have in storage?”

“I...” Bruce trailed off, with no knowledge of that answer.

“It’s going crazy,” she murmured, eyes glued to the magnification as her hands worked to turn on the projection without looking away.

Bruce glanced up, staring at the spots of methylene blue as they danced around the screen, the extra large flagella characteristic of this bacteria practically corkscrewing as they shot back and forth across the brain tissue – markedly different from the relatively still expression found in epithelial tissue thus far. And then, suddenly, they all stopped – gliding along in their projected patterns but otherwise dormant.

“What the fuck?”

They sat there in stunned silence for a moment, stewing over the possibilities – was it a fluke, was it this specific brain tissue, was it these specific samples? But slowly they came to the same conclusion.

“Didn’t that CDC memo say stage one was asymptomatic, stage two characterized by bursts of energy, and stage three –”

“True death?” Bruce finished, confirming his memory of the document.

“Could stage two be related specifically to the brain?” Nat asked as she poked at the sample with a pipette to no avail.

“It’s certainly possible,” Bruce said, mulling it over himself.

Up until this point they had seen no extreme activity from the pathogen – not that that was any indication that it wasn’t able to affect the host in such a way. But still, although stage one seemed asymptomatic, it ended in brain death according to LA, and to reanimate a host in such a way as seen in stage two, well...

It was sci-fi. Until now.

“How much tissue sample do you have?” Bruce asked, offering to get her more when she indicated she had only what the sample came with.

He knew it would be difficult to convince her to leave after a finding like that, especially when it meant a shower and having to redon the damn hazmat suit. But if he were honest with himself, Bruce would’ve admitted that he had a selfish, secondary reason for leaving the lab.

“Check coms?” she asked as he stood. “No one is telling us anything in here.”

“Sure. Someone else might’ve had similar findings,” Bruce agreed.

Natasha had the dedication of a saint. Nothing could drag her from that room. It made Bruce feel guilty that he could be persuaded out so easily by an unrequited crush.

Bruce padded through the break room after his shower, prolonging the inevitable disappointment he’d find downstairs, grabbing a styrofoam cup of coffee and a granola bar before heading to his desk to check e-mail. He printed out a couple for Nat – seemed a team in Denver had similar findings. There was also some info out of the CDC on the supposedly asymptomatic first stage and signs to watch for.

Things looked bad on the west coast – already an estimated five percent of the population was dead and in 36 hours it could easily be ten. There were a hundred and fifteen reported cases in Atlanta alone, more in New York. He couldn’t bear to watch any live video broadcast – though he guessed it probably wouldn’t be long now before there wasn’t anything live out there at all.

When Bruce checked downstairs he found a couple members of the office staff had come in, another lab tech who was zoned out watching the TV downstairs, clearly in shock – but Tony wasn’t there and Fury was still locked in his room. Of course Bruce was disappointed but that was the thing about having a crush – he was always disappointed. So he shoved it down in the little hole in his heart he had built just for it and moved on.

He made his way back upstairs with his handful of papers, checked a large amount of brain tissue out of storage, glanced down the hallway at the rooms empty of the normal array of sample subjects, wondering how long it would be before they descended en masse – sick and dying and wildly contagious. Why the fuck would Tony want to be here? Bruce didn’t even want to be here.

But he had nowhere else to go – so he headed back down the hall to the lab to don his suit once more. Yet halfway down the hall he heard his name and the sound of it sent his heart reeling so hard into his chest he nearly dropped the haphazard collection of stuff in his arms from the whiplash.

Turning carefully – unable to believe it was really him, that he said his name that way – Bruce found himself staring at Tony, breathing heavily, eyes panicked and simultaneously mimicking the relief Bruce felt just to see his face there, really there, looking for him. He didn’t know what the fuck his heart was doing, standing there, watching Tony watching him. And he sure as shit didn’t know what his brain was doing, making the whole thing ever more awkward with each passing moment. But he knew he was going to remember the way Tony was looking at him right then for the rest of his life.

“You – you’re here!” Tony stuttered at long last, trying to save it and make it sound smooth when it was clearly nothing more than unrestrained relief.

Bruce managed a much more suave half grin. “Where else would I be?”

“You weren’t answering your phone and it’s fucking – it’s fucking crazy out there,” Tony explained but Bruce shook his head. “Took me half the day just to make it down here in one piece with the looting and people just shooting anyone that looks remotely suspicious on sight since they’ve started reporting cases and Jesus Christ – I thought you’d never make it from fucking midtown and – fucking hell Bruce.”

“No – I’ve been here with Nat since Friday night going through samples,” he explained, watching Tony slacken, run his hands through his hair, relax. “My phone’s at my desk and I was so caught up – I’m sorry. I thought you’d be... I don’t know where.”

“It’s – the cell phone towers are glitchy as fuck right now anyway and – wait. Samples?” Tony asked, curiosity piqued as he finally stepped towards him and Bruce nodded, handing him over some of the tissue.

“Yeah – a few of the partner sites out west overnighted them,” Bruce began, easily slipping into their amiable work mode, unable to feel anything but relief now that Tony was there, safe, where he could watch over him and make sure they both made it out of this thing alive.

#science boyfriends #sciencebrosweek #my fanfiction #marvel

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wish4youff · 7 years

Text

05 ~ Nonetheless,

Chrissie

“I finally got you the paperwork for Raphael Lewis and Valentine Williams. Surprisingly both of them have been coming every day and most importantly staying the entire day,” The words came with the offer of two different manila folders. “You need anything else?” Looking from Chelsea Hopkins to the folders again, I shook my head in a denying response. Right now, I had five kids in my possession; surprisingly only two of them were giving me such a headache that I needed to reach out on school officials. Chelsea was the sectary at Columbia Secondary School. While she didn’t work with Valentine at Richmond Hill, but she had good enough connections to help a needy case worker. Since I could never get through. “No, I believe this is enough. I’m working on trying different tactics for them. I need something to keep them interested, you know?” “Yeah. I hate to say it, but maybe a different school will help. They’re both talented, I love that Ralph can paint and Valentine has an amazing skill and love for piano playing.” I knew Chelsea was right, but neither of them say it’s the school. ‘Just distractions around school, distractions that every school has…’ “Thanks, Chels. I’m going to look over this and I’ll call you if I need anything else.” “Alright, take care of yourself, Chrissie. Get you some vacation time, girly.”

Nothing escaped me but a laugh of audacity, the thought of leaving these kids for a week or even weeks at a time is absurd. Even Chelsea, someone I know on a rare occasion could see the exhaustion. Only making me proud of the fact I wasn’t bothering a man to love or look at me in this mess of a life. Yet, I could never turn my back on them and so exhaustion came with the playing field. I know the feeling of having nobody and wanting an authority figure. It’s surprising how much it’s wanted when it’s missing.

That’s freakishly comical in more than one way. Taking my time, I checked through the attendance sheets; making it a priority to check every class. Raphael tends to skip throughout the day, while Valentine will leave school early to take on shifts at her job. While I respect the work ethic and determination in the young girl’s heart, she must be carefully and mindful. The time flew as I sat there, putting in notes on my computer as I tried to get my things together, still attempting to reading over minor details. The clock was reading nine, fifteen when I finally walked out and to my car. By good fortune, during this time the traffic isn’t as heavy as five through seven o'clock traffic. Pulling off onto the road, as usual, the music from my phone filled the ride as I headed home.

“Hold on!” Drying my hands of dish soap; I hurried to the front door of my apartment. It had to be after eleven at night and someone was pounding at my door. It couldn’t be Olivia, at least I hope not. She and I were meeting for lunch tomorrow and then planned an overdue nail appointment tomorrow night with her favorite nail tech Gloria. Plus, I was taking her shopping for her in-laws visit the day after. My sister had no need to be visiting.

I may not have much experience with mothers-in-law, well I have none, but I have good taste and a positive attitude.

“Who is it?” Turning the locks on the door, I swung it open. Coming face to face with the last person I expected.

“Why are you here?”

“I gotta talk to you about something.” I shook my head at Michael’s words.

“Ain’t nobody outside, Mike, what’s good?”

“Don’t play, you know I’m not about to stand in the middle of the hallway and have a conversation with you. Let me in, man.” In only a true Mike Shaw fashion, he pushed himself past me and into the kitchen I had just spent an hour cleaning after a late dinner.

Once the door was locked, I followed his trail. Finding him in the refrigerator grabbing an individual bottle of fruit punch and a container of day-old homemade lasagna.

Or what I would’ve called my lunch for tomorrow.

“You came to eat or talk?”

“Both. Shit you got food, why not eat while I’m here?”

Popping off the lid, he slid the plate in the microwave while I took a seat at the counter, watching him.

Mike and I have been close since Harvard. He too was a Miami soul along with Kingston. Since graduation, we have drifted due to his scheduling and me trying to take care of my sister at the time and getting my first “real” job. Yet; he has been in New York since me and a few other college friends returned home. His main reason was because of the opportunity he saw with working on Jay Z’s, at the time, new record label - Roc Nation. Fortunately, Omar Grant saw something in Mike’s ability to find new talents, giving him the second authority figure in Roc Nation’s A&R department.

Nevertheless, I don’t see much of Mike. Not until something goes wrong. The last three times he’s been caught in some scandal of lies with females, actually the very last time he was here dealing with the fact he could possibly be fathering a child with a female whose name or face he couldn’t even remember.

He’s funny and charming, and as much as he reminds me why I’m still standing by him even with how much has changed, I can’t afford, emotionally, to continue to take on his issues.

“Mike?”

“I’ll get to it, just let me eat something real quick.”

Four minutes went by before he opens his mouth and I know because I watch the count on the microwave tick on until the twelve o'clock hour and some.

“Ibrahim is getting married.” He finally says.

For a second I almost missed it. Not because I didn’t understand what he said, but because I almost through he wasn’t speaking to me - considering the fact I didn’t care. Ibrahim? I haven’t spoken with him since college. He’s…….FBI too. There’s not much to say to his kind.

“And?” I asked, wondering where the issues lay with him or better me.

“And that means King is coming into town.”

“Kingston is always in New York, at least from what I believe. He’s……..well you know.”

“FBI?”

He’s more than that poor Michael, but I understand.

“Yeah,” Frowning, I looked at him. “That’s why you came over here? To tell me Ib was getting married?”

“Hell no, I came to eat with all honesty,” He said holding up the plate, as if I couldn’t already see that. “And……..give you this,” Reaching in his back pocket, he pulled out wrinkled up golden envelope with the names ‘Chrissie and Olivia’ written on the front.

“It’s an invite to his wedding and reception. He didn’t know if you’ll accept it from him. Y'all haven’t talk in forever, but I don’t remember much of a problem between y'all. But you know.” Shrugging his shoulders as if I was supposed to fill in the blanks.

“Who’s all coming?”

“You and your sister, me, maybe King, Damon, and that’s all I know for now.”

“Are you in it or just attending?”

“Attending, with you,” Laughing, he shook his head at the inside joke. “You know Ib got like five brothers by himself. He don’t need no more groomsmen.”

Chuckling, I had to agree with him on that. There had to be at least four or maybe five Aubry brothers, including one who was named Bas that attended MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge a year after we’ve started. And one younger sister, who I believe was named Jesse. She was only twelve the last I had seen or heard about her.

“Look, I know it’s been a minute since you’ve been around all them, but I figured it was worth the chance. You have friends, I don’t why you revolve yourself around work twenty-four seven. Spend some time doing something relaxing,” Michael said with another mouthful of my potential lunch.

“Just look at it as our very own version of Best Man and you could even be……….Mia.”

“Oh, no. Hell no. She ended up dying, my guy.” I replied, frowning at the fact he gave her. I much rather be Jordan or even Robyn.

“No she did not. Mia was the one with the football player, Lance.”

“Yes, she died in the last movie, Best Man Holiday, Mike. ”

“Oh shit, I never watched that. Thanks for ruining it, Chris.”

“You brought it up!”

“Anyways,” Tossing the plate in the sink, he untwisted the bottle’s top. “You’re going, Liv going and we are having a good time. I just wanted to deliver this to you myself so you couldn’t punk out. Or lie and say you never got the invite.”

“So that’s it?”

“I guess, since you don’t have any more food,” Turning he picked up his phone and then an unopened box of fruit snacks caught his attention. “Well never mind. I’m going to watch a movie instead.”

“I got to work in the morning, Michael.”

“I’ll be alright. You won’t be bothering me.”

King

“I need a week vacation.” Releasing the typed request form onto Stephen’s desk, he looked up at me, taking in my words. For the past few days we’ve kept our distance, obviously the run in at my mother’s gravesite left us both feeling uneasy around one another. Maybe he overheard me, maybe he didn’t. Regardless I was competent with the temporary gap. Perhaps it gave us both time to think and focus on something else of substance. “For what?” “Because I do. Just for starters.” “……Right.” And just like that he went back to reading his newspaper. It had been his early morning pattern along with a cup of coffee since I was old enough to structure a memory of him. What wasn’t a part of his routine was him agreeing so willingly to my commands or requests. “Cool, I’ll take it in a couple weeks. I’ll let you know a week in advance before it happens as a reminder. What’s for today though?” Stephen picked up a folder, the word ‘confidential’ stamped across the front. Choosing a staple remover from his possession, I opened the ends, reading over the text of the official papers while walking to my office two doors down on the top floor of the Bureau headquarters in D.C. I had been here for the past four days, wishing at times for the comforts of my own home and bed, the silence of the small city and neighborhood where my only issues was my own kind kicking my door from neighbor speculation. My townhouse here was amazing, Stephen threw one of the best interior designers stationed around District of Colombia, Jonathan Adler, in my hands, yet told me to back away and 'allow the man to work.’ While the house looked great; it wasn’t all my style either. I speculate its “home” regardless. Inside my office I closed and locked the door behind me, my mind processing the information I was reading over. Apparently, an ex-agent was meeting up with Russians, there was no telling of who he was talking to exactly or talking about, but still there was meetings being held. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but with our new President, he’s so paranoid of the smallest what-ifs the man would kill his own family over speculation. I didn’t know if I had much room, I never killed anyone of my family, but I’ve pushed them away enough to break their hearts. Still he’s Trump. I rather Bush. Something moved and my head snapped up, locking eyes with a smirking Yasmin. The tip of my favorite pen being toyed with in her mouth. It’s been some time since I last seen her, still I wasn’t so restful with her presence here. “What?” I asked. Closing the document in my hand, holding it tightly. She stood, coming towards me, her eyes and body having that seductive vibe feeding towards me. I’ve known Yasmin since I was accredited. She was at the party Director Thomas Griffin, at the time acting attorney at the headquarters, threw for me as the up and coming government assassin. The celebration did last for an hour and not to long afterwards, she was on her knees in front me in the privacy of the bathroom stall. As wrong as I knew it was, she was gifted and I took the chance to unwrap her talents. Now I regret it, only because she’s too clingy. Clinginess gets you either hurt or killed around me. And I’ve only let one stranger come in my life and learn my secrets while staying alive.

“I thought if you had a moment, we could……….you know.” It wasn’t a question, she knew, I knew exactly what she was hinting at. “No, I got to work. Get out.” “Why you play hard to get, now? We’ve already been down this road.” Going around her, I took a seat at my desk, putting the portfolio underneath the Mac Pro occupying my desk. “Why you not playing hard to get?” I shot back, able to give her my attention for a while and when I say a while I mean a few seconds. “We’re grown, we want what we want. Why should either of us be playing around? You help me, I’ll help you.” “You know if we ever get caught, you’re fired.” “You used to be more………….unrestrained. More willing to take challenges and have fun,” Her long red finger nail trailing down my button-down shirt to the top of my belt. I hate it. “More excited. I’ve bored you.” True. “I’m busy.” “You didn’t go get in a relationship behind my back did you, Vitale?” “No, Yasmin. I’m just not with it,” Motioning to the door, I showed my true intentions. “See yourself out please.” Opening the computer, I hoped to show myself doing something; busy enough to brush her off. One day I’ll regret this, but today wasn’t that day. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

#j. cole ff

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mecasloth · 7 years

Text

“Cool Cat Saves the Band” (rock dog x cool cat)

Chapter 1: Rude Awakening

It was raining. Yanjing was always raining, or at least seemed like it. Bodi sat up on the bed, his blue hat falling of the back of his head, he quickly pushed it back onto his head. His fur was all ruffled and stunk of the night before. Everything smelled like Dharma, when they had sex she would sweat and stink up the room, the room would smell even stronger after she would light up her cigarette. She was sleeping soundly, the large neon sign from outside beautifully made her fur shine a reddish purple. She almost seemed divine as he looked over her body, he smiled before standing up.

He would go into the living room, the phone must’ve rung when he was sleep or with Dharma because the voicemail machine was blinking. It was the dead of night and he hadn’t cared about what the message was or whom it was from. He wanted a snack, peanut butter would serve him well. The counter was covered in musical sheets and notes, the latest album had been pretty hard to come up with. It seemed at every angle Angus wanted the show to be about him. “Glorious” had set himself, Dharma, and Germur to stardom and they had all gotten rich off the name. And the band had been drawn together because of that song but Angus thought he was the band and everyone was secondary.

The half gone peanut butter jar sat in the fridge, Bodi dug his spoon into the peanut butter and started to eat it out of the jar. Going over to the messy living room with chinese food and magazines littering the coffee table. The red sofa stood out in the dark room and could allow Bodi to navigate it easily. He half laid down on it and turned on the large TV. First was some cartoon channel showing a group of dogs fighting great monsters with weird weapons, the next channel was the ZNN Tech with some news story from Sancta Caecilia about a new technology boom happening in the city with “Dot Com”, it seemed like just a fad. ZNN had a news story about growing unrest in Germaneigh over old political grudges. JCTV had a news story of the first Food Donkey opening up in Yanjing, Bodi was glad the old grudge between Zootopia and Yanjing were finally coming to an end. The music channel had an interview with the great musical singer “Nana” releasing her final album “Strangers in the Night”, she was a friend of Angus and she seemed like a nice woman. Finally he got to MTV, the more pop-culture song channel. Suddenly the phone rang, it was loud and boomed through the house. “God dammit.” Bodi said to himself as he went over to the phone “Hello, this is Bodi if you're looking for-”

“Bodi! Fucking help me man!” Angus was clear over the other line, there seemed to be a commotion.

“Settle down Angus, what’s is-”

“Don’t you fucking tell me to settle down, you don’t know what I have to deal with!”

“Angus, Angus settle down, what are you dealing with?”

“My cousin, he’s in town.”

“You have a cousin? You have family?”

“Yes! That’s not the point, he’s the worst person to the family!”

“C’mon, he can’t be that bad. You exist.”

“THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR GAMES BODI!” Angus screamed into phone. “Ozzie! Keep the door barred.”

“Why do you care? Just set him in an open room and lock your doors Angus, anyways what would I do?”

“I tried that Bodi, do you take me for a bellend? I was thinking you and Dharma take him out.”

“Do you not know what time it is?”

“He comes from the Sancta Caecilia area! He just flew in and is on their time, this is noon for him!”

“Just lock your doors.”

“What do you think I asked Ozzie to keep a door barred for? Santa is here to give me fucking presents?”

“Dharma is still sleeping Angus, I don’t fucking care if your cousin is in town and is annoying you I am not waking her up for that.”

“What about Germur then?”

“I don’t fucking know Angus, you call him.” Bodi hung up and sighed, going back to the peanut butter. “God damn that fukcing cat.” he mummled to himself as he ate thinking of the conversation. “How bad could he really be?” he whispered to himself and turned around to a sleepy Dharma.

“Hey Baby, what’s up?.” She said, sitting down at one of the stools across from Bodi. “Oh crap, did I wake you up with that?” Bodi replied concerned.

“You did wake me up by getting up.” She leaned her head against her arms.

“Oh crap, I am sorry baby.”

“It’s good, who called?”

“Angus, something about his annoying cousin. Not our problem.”

“You seemed angry.”

“I was angry that he called so late. It’s like 3 in the fucking morning.”

“Actually two.”

“Still doesn’t excuse it.”

“He’s still our friend though.”

“He’s my bandmate, not friend.”

“Still, you need to work with him.”

“No, he needs to work with us. He’s been trying to be a glory hog like he did with my first song.”

“Yes but our other single was properly credited.”

“Still.” Bodi replied and went back to eating. “How was your sleep?”

Dharma chuckled slightly, “You mean how was my sleep before you got up?”

Bodi smiled and looked over to her, “Yeah, how was your sleep before I got up?”

“It was good, I always sleep after we do that.”

“Point taken, I love being able to get you to sleep like that.”

“Yeah?” Dharma sat up and smiled. “What else do you like to get me to do.”

“Sleep, do I get you to do anything else?” Bodi actually wondered. Dharma started to crawl over the counter and kissed Bodi before sticking her finger in the peanut butter, “Oh yes you do, now come on. We need to get showered.” Before smiling and getting down from the counter and walking towards the bathroom.

#rock dog #cool cat #cool cat saves the band #rogdock #jesus christ why am I writing this #it's a cool cat fanfiction #fanfiction #rock dog x cool cat #writing #this is so stupid

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makingbabyk · 4 years

Text

May 30, 2019

So here’s the beginning… well, really I guess the beginning was when I made this decision 10 years ago. But for our purposes, this is really where the fun starts. Let’s start with a disclaimer though.

Hi everyone. If you’ve come to this blog, you probably know me to some degree. So let me be clear, I’m using this space to chronicle my journey into the world of fertility, and the life events that happen around that journey. That will probably mean I spend some time talking about bodily functions that you maybe don’t want to hear about. Whether you’re a friend, or family, I don’t want to hear you complain because I talked about my vagina and you don’t want to hear about it. This blog is about making a baby. And if you don’t know how babies are made, you need to go talk to the person who raised you.

So why am I doing this? Well, I want a kid. I’ve wanted a kid since I was a kid. I’ve always known I was supposed to be a mom. It just took me a long time to realise that it wasn’t going to happen in the traditional way. Let me tell you a story…

When I was a kid, I was sure that all women did things the way my mom did. You got married at 20, you had your first kid at 22 and your second by 26…. That was just the way it was done. As I got older I of course knew that those ages weren’t set in stone, but the general timeline was still stuck in my head. I was 25 before I woke up and realized that getting married and having a kid before I was 30 probably wasn’t going to happen. I needed to change my expectations.

And so I did. It occured to me that what I wanted was to be a mom… being a wife was secondary, just a stop on the road to mom. And honestly? I wasn’t all that concerned with finding a life partner. If it was going to happen, it would happen, there’s no time limit on relationships. There IS however, a time limit on getting pregnant. And my clock was starting to wind down. So I made myself a promise. If I hit 35, with no partner in sight, I was going to have a baby on my own.

When I hit 30 I became less concerned with the 35 age limit, and more concerned with making sure I was capable of having a kid by that age. I needed to lose weight, save money, and make sure my income was such that I could afford this kid. That’s a multi-year project, and it was hard work.

But now? I’m 34. And it’s baby time.

More to come….

September 6, 2019

So I haven’t written anything in the last few months because there hasn’t been anything to tell.

After a very stressful end to 2018 and a hectic beginning to 2019 I’ve spent the last 6 months trying to get my eating and exercise routine back on track. It’s been an uphill battle and it took me longer than I like to realize I can’t do it on my own. So I hit the nutritionist for a kickstart on the food thing, and I’ll be seeing my old trainer for a kickstart on the workout thing.

In addition to that, I got into my doctor for my regular yearly check up yesterday, and told her I wanted a referral to the fertility clinic of my choice. So in addition to the regular yearly check up tests, I also had to do extra bloodwork and then book an ultrasound, since the clinic would make me do all that anyway.

My doctor, Dr W, was very supportive and we talked a bit about what the fertility clinic would probably have me do once I got in for my initial consult. She also confirmed that she can’t be my primary care once I get pregnant, which is a bit of a downer, but not too much of a surprise.

Today I had the ultrasound appointment, which was ooddles of fun I can tell you. (If there was a sarcasm font I’d be using it here.) First the tech did an abdominal ultrasound, which wasn’t anything special. Then she sent me to go pee and it was on to the fun times. The transvaginal ultrasound.

For anyone who doesn’t know, that is exactly what it sounds like. They shove a probe up your vaginal and take pictures that way.

It wasn’t enjoyable by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t painful or anything. The last part of if was a bit more uncomfortable because apparently my left ovary is a bit higher and she had to really press in order to get a clear picture for the measurements they need.

Overall it wasn’t the best way to spend my lunch hour, but I figure I’m about to have a lot of people all up in my business, so I better get used to it.

Next week will be my follow up with Dr W to go over all the results and then send them off to the clinic. Then it should be 6-8 weeks for me to get an appointment. Followed by a month or two of cycle monitoring, I’m sure. It’s going to be the new year before I even get to try and actually get pregnant, I think. But at least the process has been started!

More to come…

September 12, 2019

Today I had my follow up to last week’s physical. My Cholesterol is still a bit high, but only in the range of “cut back on the processed foods please” and not “you need to be on medication.” So that’s not too bad.

The ultrasound came back good, I have a couple of fibroids, 5mm and 9mm each, which aren’t a big deal, according to my doctor.

And all the other bloodwork came back fine.

So Dr W is sending the referral request to Create Fertility today. Hopefully they’ll give me a call in the next week, and I’ll be in their office inside 8 weeks.

Yesterday I got the news that a coworker and his wife are expecting their first baby. That’s starting to be a very annoying thing to hear. On the one hand I’m super excited for them, and for all the people in my life who are having babies (and there seems to be a lot of them). But on the other hand… I’m months away from even getting to start to TRY and get pregnant. And it’s going to cost me thousands of dollars to do it. It’s frustrating, and a bit depressing at times.

But I’m trying really hard to keep an upbeat attitude and not let other people’s successes make me feel like a failure.

Easier said than done, but I’ll keep working on it.

Or maybe it’s just hitting me so hard today because it’s rainy and gloomy and I just want to curl up in bed because my stomach was messed up last night so I didn’t get a lot of sleep.

Yeah. I’ll go with that.

More to come…

September 21 (10:30pm)

Someone remind me why I can’t just go out and find a guy to have sex with on the right days who will then then fuck right off and I never have to see him again?

I may have woken up at 4am and had a full day of sun and alcohol. I need to go to sleep.

More to come ….

September 30 (9:30pm)

I got the call from the clinic today.

I was at work and when I looked at my phone to see who was calling me… I damn near cried. I was just so relieved to know it was going to happen.

My appointment is October 29 at 11am. They say it’ll take 2-3 hours. That’s a Tuesday so I had to talk to my boss about what kind of time I should take off, since it’s right in the middle of the day. I also decided to tell him why I’ll be going to appointments. He was very understanding and said it wouldn’t be a problem for me to take the time when I needed it.

So the appointment will include blood work and another set of ultrasounds. Apparently the previous tech didn’t do a follicle count, so that needs to be done.

On the one hand I’m so excited and I want to talk about it with everyone. On the other I’m scared out of my mind. I’m doing this alone and some days I wonder how I can make it all work. I know I have support but when I start to think about going to birth classes alone. And going through labour and delivery alone. Midnight feedings alone.

Some days it all feels like it’ll be too much. Then I see a mom with her baby and I ache for it. It scares me how much I want this some days. How much I ache to have a baby.

I’m terrified it might not happen. And I don’t know what I’ll do if none of this works. I think I could be content without a child. But I’m not sure I’d feel happy or fulfilled.

Truth be told, I probably need to start therapy. There’s so much going on in my head, it’s probably a good idea to talk it out with someone.

Just another thing to add to the growing list.

More to come ….

October 8, 2019

So on Friday last week I got a call from the Co-op housing building that I’ve been on the waitlist for the last 3 years. There’s a one bedroom available on December 1 and they were asking me if I wanted to come view it. I said yes and I’m going to look today. The problem is that I seem to be the only person in my life who absolutely doesn’t want me to have to move right now. I’ve already told my landlord I’ll be staying past the end of my lease, which is November 30. It’s also the holiday season, which is an insanely busy time for me. And I’ve got the start of my fertility treatments coming up. The thought of having to move right now makes me want to vomit and cry.

Thankfully I’m pretty sure I won’t actually get the unit, there’s a couple of people in front of my on the wait-list who want it, apparently. So I probably won’t actually have to worry about it. But if they both change their minds, then I’m going to need to figure out if I can actually handle moving in December, AGAIN. But also if I can afford two apartments in December since I don’t have enough time to give my landlord the 60 days notice I’m required to.

If I don’t get it/don’t take it if I do get it, AND if my promotion comes through this month. In the new year I’m going to ask to get moved to the two bedroom waitlist. If I wait until I’m in a one bedroom unit, I won’t be able to apply for the two bed until I’ve been there for a year. And I will need a two bedroom unit once the kid is here, or at least after they leave a crib.

Overall this week has sucked large and I’m so ready for it to be done. And it’s only Tuesday.

But I’m going to Shady Queens, a charity drag ball, on Thursday night and I’m taking Friday as a personal day to reset my brain and go to Tweed early. Dad and I have the home opener of the Belleville Sens Friday night and Sunday is turkey day. So some family time, a four day weekend, and a chance to recharge my brain are on the way. I just need to get through these next three days.

More to come….

October 22, 2019

Remember when I said “Thankfully I’m pretty sure I won’t actually get the unit, there’s a couple of people in front of my on the wait-list who want it, apparently. So I probably won’t actually have to worry about it.”? Well… I got it.

I went to the viewing and when I got there the property manager told me there were actually two units available and I could have my pick. Somehow 23 people in front of me on the waitlist decided they didn’t want either unit. So I went and looked and fell in love with the second unit, it’s on the 7th floor and is above the courtyard tree line so it gets lots of sun, faces south west and is generally awesome.

I left the place and called home to freak out with mom and dad about having to move in less than 2 months with everything else that is going on. They managed to talk me off the ceiling and I called the co-op the next day to tell them I wanted the unit. Since there was going to be reno’s happening in the month before my move in date, I also asked if it would be possible to move in a day or two early, December 1 would just be a really awful day for me to have to move. And that’s when the manager said the sweetest words I’ve ever heard, “Oh, the 7th floor unit isn’t available until February 1.” Folks, I damn near cried in relief.

I went back the next week to pay the deposit and get the hydro info I needed and now I’m officially moving February 1. Well, probably a day or two early, but yeah.

It was an emotional few days, but thankfully I now don’t have to worry about adding a move on top of all the other shit going on. I don’t even have to think about it until January, really. I just have to give my notice to my landlord and arrange the movers.

And now I can focus on my consultation appointment in a week… holy shit, that’s in one week.

More to come….

October 28, 2019

Well I was doing fine, not really nervous, and not really thinking about tomorrow’s appointment. Then a coworker asked me if I was taking tomorrow off for my appointment and my stomach dropped and now I want to throw up. Of course that isn’t helped by the fact that I’m stress eating. So I’ve had too much sugar, am feeling nauseated. And I’ve got more than a half dozen other things going on this week that also need my mental attention.

Needless to say, I'm feeling pretty freaked out and just want to crawl back into bed and cry.

I’m not anticipating a decent night's sleep tonight, which will make tomorrow’s appointment all the more fun, I’m sure.

I’m absolutely terrified that I’m going to get to that appointment tomorrow and they’re going to tell me I’m too fat to have a baby. I don’t even know what I would do if that happens.

I keep starting sentences and then deleting them because all I can think to type is the same circular freak out over and over again. So I guess I’ll close this until I have something to say tomorrow.

Although if they tell me to worst, I’ll probably just delete this entire thing; no point in a baby blog if there will never be a baby.

Fuck. I need to find something else to focus on.

More to come… hopefully...

October 30, 2019

Yesterday was the consult and it actually went well.

First I had a 30 minute wait then the pelvic and intra-vaginal ultrasounds, followed by another wait before getting in to see the doctor, Dr Dv.

We went over my medical history and what it was I wanted to have happen. She immediately recommended a high dose of folic acid, so I started that last night too.

She then ordered half my blood be drawn for tests, they took 12 vials yesterday and I need to go back for more today.

She also wants me to have a tube test done, that’s where they put a foam up through my cervix and use an ultrasound to see if my fallopian tubes are blocked.

I also need to go to a counselling session, since I’m using a sperm donor, which is fine because I wanted to do that anyway.

And then I had to get another pelvic exam with some swabs taken.

So the total for the day was 12 vials of blood, three times I had to get undressed and redress, and 2 different people up my vagina.

She did answer a lot of my questions, like:

I need to pick my sperm donor before my next appointment so we’re ready to go when it’s time

I only need 1 vial at a time for the insemination

She wants to try 3 rounds natural, and if I’m not pregnant after that then we will reevaluate the treatment plan

My BMI is high, but she’s happy I’ve been losing weight and wants me to continue what I’ve been doing, every pound lost will only help me and it’ll make pregnancy easier

Overall it was an emotional day, but it’s actually happening!

Next up is the last of the bloodwork today, tube test and counselling on November 26 and then my follow up with Dr Dv on December 4.

It’s gonna be a crazy month, but holy shit this is happening.

More to come….

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dorothydelgadillo · 5 years

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Increase Traffic by 88% With a New Keyword Research Strategy Ft. Emily Maxie of Very (Inbound Success Ep. 78)

How can a simple change in your keyword research approach dramatically increase traffic, leads and revenue?

Emily Maxie

This week onThe Inbound Success Podcast I spoke with Emily Maxie, VP of Marketing at software development company Very, and Stacy Willis, Emily's strategist at IMPACT, about the incredible results they got by focusing on pillar content and topic clusters.

The two of them shared how they worked together to revamp Very's SEO strategy and why the new approach they used for keyword research at Very has inspired Stacy to change how she carries out keyword research for all of IMPACT's clients.

The results of this work are impressive - an 88% quarter over quarter increase, and 1100% year over year increase, in website traffic, along with notable improvements in the quality of the company's leads.

This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live, the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with keynote speakers including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel.

Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".

Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live

Some highlights from my conversation with Emily and Stacy include:

Very is a software development company that focuses on IoT and machine learning.

The company was doing digital marketing and while it was successful in driving traffic to its site, it was the wrong kind of traffic and the leads were unqualified.

Working with her strategist, Stacy Willis of IMPACT, Emily identified three key topic areas that all fit within service offerings that would be the right fit for Very, and developed a pillar content and topic cluster strategy aimed at building credibility in those areas.

For those three main topic areas, Stacy and Emily used SEMRush to identify the related keywords that had the highest search volume and lowest competition.

Pillar content needs to be at least 4,000 words long and to gain immediate traction while her team worked on creating that long form content, Emily started by publishing blogs that were focused on her subtopic keywords.

Emily makes it easy for her team to produce content on highly technical subject matter by interviewing her company's subject matter experts and then writing the blogs herself, but giving them an opportunity to review the articles for accuracy before they are published. Her big tip? Don't "write past what you understand."

Emily began posting the subtopic blogs at a pace of three articles per week in June of 2018 and before she could even publish her pillar content, the company saw an 88% quarter over quarter increase in website traffic.

As of this January, the company's year over year traffic increase has been 1100%.

Very is now also ranking number one for "IoT application development" and for "IoT app development" - two of its target keywords.

Stacy shared that the experience with Very has been so positive that it has inspired her and the team at IMPACT to change the way we approach keyword research, and now they focus exclusively on keywords that are related to their pillar content topics.

Resources from this episode:

Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS"

Visit verypossible.com

Check out the Very blog and resource center

Connect with Emily Maxie on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter

Connect with Stacy Willis on LinkedIn

Check out two of Stacy's favorite keyword research tools: SEMRush and Answer the Public

IMPACT's pillar content on website redesign

For great examples of companies and people doing inbound marketing really well, check out Emily's recommendations, Women Who Code and Harvard Business Review, and Stacy's recommendation, Invision.

To stay on top of the latest changes and trends in the startup world, check out Emily's recommendation, the Reboot Podcast.

Listen to the podcast to learn more about the changes that Emily and Stacy made, and get the specifics of their new keyword research and SEO strategy.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. This week on the Inbound Success podcast, I have two guests. One is Stacy Willis, who is a strategist with IMPACT. And the other is Emily Maxie, who's the VP of marketing with Very. Welcome to the podcast.

Emily Maxie (Guest): Thanks. It's great to be here.

Emily, Kathleen and Stacy recording this episode

Kathleen: Stacy's been on the podcast before. She's a familiar name. You haven't been on before. Tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, your background, and also about Very.

About Emily Maxie and Very

Emily: Yeah, absolutely. So, my long ago background, I went to school thinking I was going to be a journalist, and graduated the year that the iPad came out. And all newspapers were laying people off. And so I worked at a newspaper for about a year, but ended up pivoting into marketing pretty quickly. And landed doing marketing at a technology company, and just really love doing marketing at tech companies because it's kind of the fact based very analytical side of journalism that I love.

But it's also an ability to be creative, and it's much more in demand than print journalism is. And yeah, it's just kind of my niche, and it's something I love. And then Very is a software development company that focuses on IoT and machine learning. And we have been around for about seven years. I've been with them for about a year and a half.

Kathleen: And IoT, for anyone listening, is the Internet of Things. Which I feel like I want to ask you to define that, but I also know that that's an incredibly hard thing to define. So I don't know, are up for it?

Emily: That's like the Pandora's box right there, right? Yeah. I can give kind of ... I'm sure this isn't the official definition and it might make our technologists cringe, but for the marketers out there, any devices that you have that are connected to the internet is the Internet of things. So we've seen the refrigerators that are connected to the internet and you can see inside of them from your cell phone or things like that.

We recently created a connected fish tank where you could turn the lights on and off, and check the water temperature from your phone. So all of those interactions between our physical world and the internet is what Internet of Things is.

Kathleen: That's so cool. Well good definition. All I could think as I was listening to you say that is the last thing I want to be able to do is see inside my refrigerator, unless I absolutely have to because it's gross.

Emily: Yeah, yeah.

Stacy: And that refrigerator that can tell you when something's gone bad. That's great.

Yeah, or if you're out of milk.

Kathleen: I saw something in People Magazine the other day and it was Ryan Seacrest's refrigerator, and I'm not kidding, it looked ... There's no way they cook in that house. And he had baskets with ribbons on them inside of his refrigerator. And I think the only food in there was like spirulina shots.

If I had that fridge I would be fine looking at it all day.

Stacy: Of course.

A Keyword Strategy for Very

Kathleen: So interesting. So the reason that I was excited to talk to you guys, the two of you, is that you worked together on a really interesting effort to revisit the keyword strategy for Very, and it had some really impactful results.

So let's rewind the clock and start with really what ... First of all, obviously Very is doing digital marketing. That's what you're focused on. What are your goals? What type of clients are you looking to bring in? And what types of keywords were you targeting?

Emily: Yeah. So really our goals ... I came in a year and a half ago being the first marketer that Very had ever had. They'd been in business for seven years and never had any marketing. And it all had just been the partners out there hustling and using their personal network, some things like that. And the first time that we had someone reach out to us through the website, it was like magic to them. They were just like, "What? This is so much easier."

After that happened I was really able to kind of not only grow the marketing budget, but I think elevate marketing within the company as more than just fixing the website or making things look pretty, stuff like that.

So really, our goal with marketing this year is to drive millions of dollars of revenue for the company. Last year marketing drove 2.2 million for the company, and that was our first year actually doing marketing.

So I'm really excited about 2019, and the keywords that we were focused on. Well, we spent about a year focusing on the wrong target segment. So we now rank really highly for a lot of blockchain related keywords, which is not a segment that we're going after anymore. So it might be something that we go after in the future, but we just really found that ... You think Internet of things is hard to explain, try explaining blockchain.

And also just there was a lot of immaturity in the market. People didn't really know what they were buying or what they wanted. There was this gold rush with initial coin offerings where people got money overnight and then they were spending it very recklessly and it was just not the type of client that we wanted to work with for now. But that was really what we were focused on, with kind of a secondary focus on IoT and machine learning, which are now the core tenants of our business.

Kathleen: So if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like what you're saying is that you understood that they were the wrong keywords mostly because the type of client you were getting was a poor fit. Is that accurate?

Emily: Yes. We understand now that they were the wrong keywords because we ... And SEO and AdWords were not the only things we were doing, we're also sponsoring conferences. And so we were doing huge push across the board for these types of clients. And we kept getting people raising their hands and saying, "I have a project." And then they would move through the sales cycle and then, "Oh, I don't actually have funding." Or they'd get to the end of the sale cycle and then we'd just never hear from them again.

We should have pivoted faster away from it, we should have seen it faster, but we have a pretty long sales cycle so it took us awhile to identify. Yes, we're getting tons of interest from this, but it's not the right fit for our business.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that's definitely a situation I see a lot. And I've seen it with a lot of clients we've had at IMPACT and when I had my own agency, we saw it too. Inbound marketing can work really well, and you can be getting lots of leads and still not feeling like it's right. And that's a familiar refrain to me. So you recognized that you were driving leads but they were not the right kinds of leads. And at the time you were working with Stacy, correct?

Emily: Yep.

Kathleen: So you guys sat down, and how did you approach the challenge of determining what is the best way to attract the right kind of lead?

Emily: Go ahead, Stacy.

Kathleen: I'll let you start. Or you want me? Okay. You want me to jump right in?

Emily: Yeah. Go for it.

Stacy: What we wanted to do when we were looking to put together a holistic keyword strategy was to not isolate ourselves so far down one path, but to make sure that we were building credibility on a number of topics that all fit within service offerings that would be the right fit for Very. So full disclosure, at the time that we created this, we still weren't 100% sure that blockchain was the wrong one. So it is one of the three topic areas we did cover.

But what we did was we created a bit more breadth, and made sure that we had three major topic areas we were going after. And organize these into a topic cluster kind of keyword strategy. So I'm sure that most people hearing this will probably be familiar with what pillar content is. But if you're not, it's the organization around a high level topic area, and then you'll have subtopics that are highly related.

So the example that we always use from our own website is website redesign. And separately, a subtopic from that might be how much does the website redesign cost? It's a really specific area of that main topic. And so we wanted to go ahead and create a wholistic strategy for Very. That worked to give us coverage over three topic areas instead of just a single one.

Kathleen: And what were those three topic areas?

Stacy: So at the time that we created it, it was blockchain, IoT, and machine learning, were the three.

Kathleen: And how did you ... And knowing the situation you had previously with that wrong type of client, how did you approach this in a way that you felt would eliminate that same issue from happening?

Emily: So just to clarify, we realized that maybe two months ago and we did this keyword strategy probably five or six months ago. So it was after we did this keyword strategy, we got a ton of volume in the door, and then we were able to see, okay, two hits, one miss. And we're able to kind of eliminate blockchain from the bunch. But at the time of developing this, we were still very focused on blockchain. And in fact, it was the one that we're most focused on.

Kathleen: Wow. That is so interesting to me because that, what it says to me is that the new strategy worked really quickly if you were able to see that fast.

Emily: Definitely.

Kathleen: And it worked in the sense that it did deliver leads, but they were the wrong leads and you realized it. So that's so interesting. All right, so let's go back to before you knew that you didn't want to target those.

Stacy: Naive little Emily.

Kathleen: Yeah. And no, I mean I don't think if there's anything naive about it, I mean I think this is just the reality in marketing is you have to try things and you have to watch them, and recognize quickly when they're not working and pivot. And so kudos to you for doing that.

Pillar Content and Topic Clusters

Kathleen: So going back, you identified these three big topics that you wanted to build clusters around that Stacy described. Walk me through the process that the two of you used to determine what those subtopics would be.

Stacy: So I was lucky. Emily just gave them to me. She knew what her team was really, really good at, which I think is really important. So I'll let her speak to that.

Emily: Yeah, I basically went to the team because we are a services company, we are very dependent on what our team's capabilities are. And because we're technical services company, it's not just, okay, we do blockchain, which we no longer do, but it's, we do blockchain, we build smart contracts. We don't work on this framework or that framework, we do work on these.

And so it got down in the very specific nitty gritty and the technical. And so I kind of gave Stacy a list of here's what I think, I have no idea what the search volume is. And then she curated that list, and said, "Okay, here are some of the keywords related to these that we should be going for."

Kathleen: Okay. And Stacy, so Emily delivered this list to you. How did you go about evaluating that and coming back with those recommendations?

Stacy: Well, I'm a giant nerd. So I enjoy diving into really, really specific data. So not everybody may get as super excited about this as I do, but-

Emily: No, we must both be giant nerds then, 'cause this is what I like to talk about every week. So-

Stacy: Oh, that's good, that's good.

Emily: Yeah.

Stacy: So then nobody's gonna hold it against me as I talk about it at length right now. Excuse me. Apologies, I'm fighting a little bit of a cold so I might cough throughout this.

Kathleen: Oh, there is something going around.

Stacy: Especially if I get more excited. Yeah.

Kathleen: There's something going around and these were the times when I'm happy that I can podcast over zoom so that I don't get your cold.

Stacy: Darn, I wanted to give it to you.

But what we did internally is we went and dove into a tool called SEMrush, which is possibly one of my favorite tools of all time because it gives you access to the greatest level of data on keywords that's out there. What we did is took the areas in which we knew that the team was really good at delivering, so those three topic areas, and said, "What are the combination of the terms that have the highest search volume?" So that's the most number of people out there looking for those terms.

And the lowest competition. Essentially not that many other websites are competing with you trying to rank for the same term. And what bubbled to the top throughout all this research of keywords that were related to these areas, keywords that were maybe variations of ways to say this.

The example that I can put there is machine learning and artificial intelligence, kind of ended up being synonymous terms. But they're very different terms when you're thinking about search, right? They have no words in common, but they're highly related. So it really helps to know which way people are referring to it to find you, right?

And so what we did is we looked at all of those kinds of related terms and bubbled up to the top those that had the best potential based on that search volume and competition crossover. And we organized them into a structure that looked like we talked about what these topic clusters were.

There was a high level keyword which is our big very general topic area that had a very high search volume. And then we connected all of the smaller subtopics that we found that were the best crossover of that high search volume, low competition, that are more specific.

And some of the tools that we use when we're trying to get a little more specific with our keywords or things like Answer the Public.

Kathleen: I love that one.

Stacy: That's one of my favorite. Yeah. It-

Kathleen: They also have the best website home page experience with that grumpy-

Stacy: Oh my gosh. I sometimes will sit there and watch his face for about 30 seconds because I'm like ...

Kathleen: Same.

Stacy: I just need someone to be mad at me for about 5 seconds.

Kathleen: He's mesmerizing. So if you're listening and you've never gone to answer the public, check it out and there's this super grumpy older man on the home page, and it's awesome.

Stacy: Yeah. It's great. He's judging you for how fast you're typing in your keyword. It's hilarious.

Kathleen: Okay, so you used to answer the public.

Stacy: Yeah. So we pulled the data out of SEMrush, we bubbled up the best opportunities, and then we go to answer the public to say, "What questions are people asking about these terms that we want to be answering?"

And so what we did was we actually started building out all of our subtopic blogs before we even started on our pillars. So pillar content is typically 4,000 words and above. So we're talking pretty hefty material that takes a little while to get all of the content put together that get maybe the subject matter experts you need on board and get something out the door.

So we didn't want to hold that up. So we put together the full editorial calendar of all the subtopic blogs and started diving into those first. And I can let Emily share how she worked with her team to get those moving and forward because I think that's probably her journalism career coming out. I've never had a client that's been so great at getting content out the door.

Creating Content for a Highly Technical Industry

Kathleen: Ooh, Emily, I need to hear about this because this is the universal challenge that all marketers face. So talk to us.

Emily: Yeah. Well, first of all, I've never been at a company where I have had such a responsive team of experts. We're small company and we are completely remote, which means we all have to be really good communicators. And so everyone in the company is just great at getting back to me. And so that is one thing that really helps.

Another secret weapon thing of mine too is I'll interview them for a blog post on a topic. I'll write it up and then I'll tell them, "Hey, here it is. You can preview it. It's going live on this date. Please get your feedback to me before then."

And so it's not leaving it to them of a question like, do you have any edits? Is this approved? It's just saying, "This is happening." And I always give them their respectful amount of time. I'm always very respectful of the fact that they have a job to do. And there's been times where someone has been like, "Oh, I had edits, and it went live." And I'm like, "That's okay, it's the internet. You can go and you can make edits."

So that's kind of my sneaking enjoy of getting things out the door.

The other thing I'll say is just having a writing background. I write a lot of it myself. And then just get them to sign off. So for a lot of the topics I would just go and become a subject matter expert on whatever it was by doing research and things like that. And then running it by our internal subject matter expert. And they'd say, "Here, this wording isn't quite right. But other than that it's good to go." And that's-

Kathleen: I am impressed because it's ... I , it's one thing ... I've had lots of clients from lots of different industries over the years, so it's very funny and random, but I mean I know a weird amount about commercial landscaping and insurance. It's one thing to become an expert on commercial landscaping, it is entirely another to do research and make yourself into a subject matter expert on IoT machine learning and natural language processing. So I mean how do you do that? How much time does that take? And-

Emily: It's very time consuming. Yeah. So it is very time consuming, but again, the journalism background, really they taught me. I mean I had classes where they would say, "Go attend this event and deliver us an article about it within the hour." Because that's the type of thing you have to do if you're a journalist.

And so it's really kind of like going in, understanding as much as you can, not writing past where you understand. Don't go beyond what your understanding is.

But just doing a ton of research and not getting hung up on, is this perfect? And I think that's one thing that is really difficult for a lot of people. It's difficult for me. You want everything that goes out to be perfect and the best that it can be, but sometimes just getting something out, especially if it's a timely topic or something that is a new term that no one's ranking for, is getting something out is better than getting nothing out. And then you can go back and refine it in the future.

But at that point I was doing a lot more of that. Now I've moved into ... So I was director of marketing then, I'm VP of marketing now. And since being promoted I've been doing a lot more strategic work. And so I've offloaded a lot of that copywriting to IMPACT. And they're working with our internal subject matter experts on blog posts. But yeah, at the time I was writing a lot myself.

And in fact, this morning, I spent about an hour writing a blog post about something that the fun thing about being able to be a marketer and a writer is we can have a client who has a question, and I can just write something about it, and get it on the blog post that day, and have our sales team send it over to the client. And potentially win that deal because I'm just able to be very responsive and nimble.

Kathleen: That's fantastic. We have one of the partners at IMPACT is Marcus Sheridan, who's fairly well known in the marketing world. And he is adamant when he works with companies that they have an in house content manager. And he specifically tells them to hire journalism students. And I think it's for the reasons that you outlined, which is that they tend to be well trained in how to get the story out.

And I loved what you said about not writing past what you know, because I think that that definitely is a trap that marketers fall into. And sometimes it's because you want to sound smart. And there's lots of reasons for it, but I think understanding your limitations and sticking within the guard rails you have is a really good lesson. And I love that you give people those deadlines and say, "I'm putting it up. If I don't hear from you, it's going up regardless." Very smart.

Emily: Yeah. We also have just a great working culture at Very. And a very much a fail fast culture, and an agile, nimble, get out the MVP type culture. And so there are other companies that I've been at where there was a lot more bureaucracy around what goes out the door and who sees it, and the checks and balances and all of that. And here it's really just me, and I love that. I really find that interesting and engaging.

Kathleen: Yeah, the startup world is not for every marketer. Some absolutely love it and wouldn't have it any other way. And some don't need a ton of resources.

So I'm curious. Alright, you identified all these subtopics, you built out the themes you wanted for the articles. It sounds like you started writing as the pillar was being developed. Can you talk me through, how much content was this? And in what amount of time? How many articles did you put up?

Emily: That's a really good question.

Stacy: You guys were on pace for at least three a week for an entire quarter, is what the cadence is that we'd look like in terms of blogs.

Yeah.

Kathleen: Okay. Go ahead.

Emily: We're not still at that cadence. But that's what we were for a while.

Kathleen: Okay. And this started when?

Emily: This would be, we were looking at the launch of this strategy around June of 2018.

Kathleen: Okay. So that's when the articles started going up, or that's when you finished the strategy?

Emily: So that's when the articles started going up. So the really interesting thing about this is we built this strategy knowing that the capstone is the pillar, right? The pillar pages was gonna tie everything together. But what we found is because over the course of the quarter is when we were going to even get the first pillar out. So we were like, "We'll just tackle the subtopic blogs first, then they'll all be there ready for our pillar when the pillow goes live," right?

The Results of Very's Pillar Content Strategy

Emily: Well, before the pillar even went live, our traffic went through the roof. So it was really telling in terms of how we should overall be structuring keyword strategies going forward.

Stacy: And the results of this which had originally been, let's just put together three pillar content strategies, was now let's change the way we do keyword strategies as a whole for our clients at IMPACT. So that was what came out of this.

Kathleen: So when you say the traffic went through the roof, put some numbers behind that for me. What was it at and what did it go to?

Emily: So we saw an 88% quarter over quarter increase in traffic.

Kathleen: 88?

Emily: 88%, yeah. It went from 8,800 range of organic businesses, just organic, to 16,600 for the quarter.

Kathleen: In one quarter.

Emily: Yeah. So that's quarter two compared to quarter three.

Kathleen: Wow.

Emily: And the crazy thing about that is that in May of 2017 this was a brand new domain with zero SEO juice. When I came in, it was a 100 percent brand new domain.

Kathleen: Wow.

Emily: So our year over year growth this past year, January nine to January nine, compared to the previous period was 1100 percent gross.

Kathleen: Oh my gosh. And do you have any numbers around what happened to your lead generation? What was the growth there? And I know some of it is growth, but some of it is also just the quality of the leads. I'd be curious to know more about what you saw.

Emily: Yeah. So the really interesting thing is, obviously we dabbled in and in blockchain for a while, but we were also working on building up the topics around machine learning in IoT, and we have started to get in really, really high caliber clients. I wish that I could mention their names because they're names that you would recognize, but they're still in our pipeline and I definitely shouldn't.

But we have gotten through organic really high quality leads coming to us and saying, "You are obviously the experts in facial recognition." Or, "You're obviously the experts in building internet connected products."

And the content speaking for itself, we're ranking number one for IoT application development and for IoT app development. Several of those key words that if you'd asked us a year ago, it would've just been, no, that's not a thing that's possible. Maybe in five years or something like that. So yeah, we're definitely seeing the results in terms of business as well.

Kathleen: And how long is the typical article that you're producing? Are these 800 words, 1600 words? Do you have any kind of guideline around that?

Emily: I don't have any guidelines. I like to say right until the topic tells you to stop. Because again, it's kind of like getting too far out in front of your skis or getting to a point where you feel like you're just saying things just to say them. So I don't have any guidelines. If I had to guess, I would guess it's between 800 and 1600 words for the ones we're producing.

Stacy: And I'd say on average the ones that you've outsourced to IMPACT, probably run around the 1,200 range.

Emily: Yeah, that makes sense.

Kathleen: Now when did you wind up getting the actual pillar content up?

Stacy: That's a good question because it wasn't even in the quarter. No, where we grabbed all these results from, which is why it was so exciting. And we're like, "okay, all keyword strategies have to be done differently from now on." The blockchain one, I believe, Emily, was the first one to go up?

Emily: It was, and it was created in September.

Kathleen: And when that went live, did you see, again, any sort of a boost? I know that you wind up kind of shifting the focus away from that, so I don't know if that's the best one to use as an example. But I'm curious to know if that had an impact on the traffic as well.

Emily: Yeah. But not as much as I kind of thought. So we got about 300 views to that pillar page. But compared to the blog posts, it's nothing. And so I think really the thing that shines about this or thing that stands out about this strategy is the strategy itself. And I think the ... At least, I don't know what you've experienced with other clients, but for us the pillar page is kind of like an afterthought, and it's more of the strategy behind it. Yeah.

Kathleen: Well, it makes sense because if you have the more niche topics covered in the blogs, I think that tends to be what people are searching. So that does seem logical.

Emily: Yeah. And quite honestly with every pillar strategy, it's the combination of all of the pieces is what really drives the traffic. There's not really any one piece that you'd say, "Hey, this is the only thing that matters." It's really the fact that all of them are connected together.

Stacy: And Kathleen, we've seen this on the IMPACT website with our website redesign pillar.

The traffic boost that it's given all of the blogs that it's been connected to has been far greater than the traffic boost to the actual pillar itself.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's absolutely right. Interesting. So now at this point, fast forward to today, do you have all three pillars and clusters completely up? Or are you still working on some of 'em?

Emily: No, we're still working on the content for IoT and for machine learning. And really it's not because we've been slow on the marketing side, but our business has been figuring out exactly where we want to play. And within, we say we do IoT and machine learning, well both of those are huge umbrellas. That's like saying we're a marketing agency.

Well for who? And what do you do? And what technologies do you use? And so I'm still in the process of a couple of things. So first is working really closely with our sales team to do customer interviews and prospect interviews to figure out service market theft. And then the other thing is just publishing a lot of blog posts that could be potential pillar content reference material and seeing how they perform before going too deep into one.

A New Approach to Keyword Research

Kathleen: Interesting. And what would you say ... Stacy, I'll throw this one out to you. You talked about how this experience kind of inspired you to say we really have to change the way we do keyword research now and content strategies. If you had to distill this down into what was the biggest change that you made, the before versus the after, how would you describe that?

Stacy: Yeah. So the way that we use to deliver keyword strategies was, here's a list of keywords that are completely ... We're not even considering how they're related to each other. We're looking at each keyword on an individual basis and its own performance, which is still important. But what this has done is now involved a layer deeper where we're actually grouping our keywords that we're recommending clients target into groups of related clusters.

So if we ever are presenting a keyword strategy to a client and there's a single keyword, they're saying, "Go after this keyword," and there's nothing else related to it, that's not gonna happen anymore, essentially.

So that was kind of the old way, that you know, it's been the way since inbound became a thing. It's get your long tail keywords and write a blog. And you just think about that one keyword at one time for one page, as opposed to thinking of it more holistically across your website, of how many keywords do I have in this group that can all lead up to the same topic area?

And so now we're making sure that if we are putting together a keyword strategy or an editorial calendar that we are grouping topics together into groups like that. Because when we saw that even before we had all of the pillar built up together, that was a signal to Google that we were a topic area expert. And they rewarded us greatly for it.

Kathleen: That's interesting. Now have you seen that ... What is the pace of growth look like since that first big jump? Has it been fairly steady, or?

Emily: Yeah. Yeah, it's been pretty steady. I would say that we have some months that it looks like, "Oh, it's not growing quite as fast" and part of that is just we have backed off on the content creation to focus really hard on the business strategy. So that then we can go back and go hard, and know that we're making the right bet so that we don't make the same mistake again that we made with focusing on blockchain.

Kathleen: It is so interesting how literally as you scale up and scale back content publication, it's like turning the faucet on and off. You can really see a direct correlation to traffic and leads-

Stacy: Definitely.

Kathleen: And that's fascinating. Interesting. So if somebody wants to check out your site and see some of this content that you're talking about and get a sense for what you guys are doing, where can they find it online?

Emily: Yeah. Our URL is verypossible.com. And you can go to our blog or you can go to /resources, which is the place where we have a lot of videos and white papers and things like that. And you can find the pillar page there as well.

Kathleen: By the way, I love your domain name.

Emily: Oh, thank you.

Kathleen: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah, talk about SEO Challenge when your brand name is Very, forget about branding traffic.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's tough.

Kathleen's Two Questions

Kathleen: Well before we wind up, I do have two questions I always ask my audience. And I'll start with you, Emily. Company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?

Emily: So I'm going to be a terrible marketer and just let you know that I don't keep up with other marketers because I'm really occupied keeping up with technology so that I can be really good at my job where I'm at. And that's one reason I work with Impact is because I need people to help me who are keeping up with the latest trends and things like pillar content and stuff like that.

Kathleen: So my question for you is - and I love that answer because I actually am more fascinated to hear about your experience as a consumer of content - so you just said you try to keep up with technology. Is there a technology website or blog that you think is doing a really great job?

Emily: Yeah.

Kathleen: Who do you like to read?

Emily: I love Women Who Code. I love reading HBR, Harvard Business Review. Yeah, Women Who Code is really my favorite newsletter because they keep up with both women and tech stuff, but also just trends in the industry and things like that.

And we're also ... Another thing that I'm just passionate about is women in tech, and we're really trying to recruit female developers. And so I'm looking at not just how are other tech marketing themselves, but how are they marketing themselves as an employer brand. And so figuring that out and kind of seeing what other people are doing.

Kathleen: Ooh, I'll have to check that out because I'm kind of curating my own list of really good email newsletters. So that sounds like a good one to add to it.

Emily: Yeah.

Kathleen: And I love examples from outside of the marketing world.

Emily: I also love the Reboot podcast, which is just a very grounded and thoughtful podcast about being in a startup and kind of keeping your head on straight while you're at a startup. So that's a really good one too.

Kathleen: Ooh, that sounds like a good one. And it sounds like I already got my answer to my second question from you, which is, with digital marketing changing so quickly, how do you stay up to date? And it sounds like what you said is for you at least it's relying on an agency to kind of keep you up to date.

Emily: Absolutely.

Kathleen: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. I'm a one person marketing team, and I do events and the website content. I'm now an interim head of sales for a little bit and covering for someone while they're on leave. And so I have a thousand hats. And being able to stay up on marketing is something that is so important, but I just don't have the time to do. And so that's the biggest reason that I work with IMPACT.

Kathleen: Great. And Stacy, I interviewed you recently and I got your answers. Any new tidbits to add to what we talked about last time?

Stacy: Yeah. Um, I'll just throw out that I've also very recently been super impressed with Invision. Their content production engine is amazing. Not only to people who aren't users, but their community for designers and the way in which they engage people to use their tools successfully.

So they have great examples of how you can use this part of their program or things like that I think probably go a whole heck of a long way in keeping their users satisfied and more engaged with their product over time, which is still a function of marketing, although we don't always think of it as such when we're really focused on bringing in new leads. But I've been really, really impressed with what they do.

Kathleen: Oh, that's a good one. I'll definitely check that one out. Well, thank you both. This was so interesting.

How to Reach Emily

Emily: Emily, if somebody wants to find you personally online, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

Emily: You can find me on Twitter @EmilyMaxie, M-A-X-I-E. Or on LinkedIn. The awesome thing about having a super weird last name is I'm the only Emily Maxie. So-

Kathleen: Perfect.

Emily: Just Google Emily Maxie and come find me. Yeah, I would love to connect and geek out about marketing or technology or whatever it may be.

Kathleen: I love it, and Stacy, what's the best way for somebody to connect with you?

Stacy: So directly through IMPACT's website is the easiest way to get to me, or on LinkedIn. And you can find my LinkedIn profile through the Impact website, which is probably easier 'cause Stacy willis is not a very unique name.

Kathleen: Well and I'll include links in the show notes to all of your various profiles.

Stacy: Awesome.

Kathleen: Thank you both. It's been fascinating. I'm really excited to check out some of the content, Emily, and just get a sense for what you guys did to get these great results. But I appreciate you joining me.

You Know What To Do Next...

Kathleen: If you are listening and you learned something new or you enjoyed this episode, you know what to do. I would love it if you would give us a review on Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice.

And if you know someone doing kick ass inbound marketing, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thank you, Stacy, and thank you, Emily.

Stacy: Thank you.

Emily: Thanks.

Stacy: Have a good one.

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from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/increase-website-traffic-keyword-research-emily-maxie

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gibsonsflowofthoughts · 6 years

Text

T.I.'s Grand Hustle - Black Enterprise

Hey I ain’t trippin’ pimp but the truth is Really you don’t know me Yeah you know they call me T.I. But you don’t know me You be hatin’ and I see why Cuz you don’t know me —From the song, “U Don’t Know Me”

For those who think that the rapper T.I. (aka Tip) is just another hip-hop artist then those lyrics from his 2005 hit are most appropriate. The Grammy Award-winning artist, whom entertainer/record producer Pharrell Williams once called “The Jay-Z of the South” has spent the past 15 years building a sprawling, multimillion-dollar business empire that extends into the entertainment, apparel, technology, and real estate sectors.

Ask T. I. about how he defines his entrepreneurial approach and he boils it down to the following audacious descriptor: “Grand Hustler.” In providing further elaboration, he asserts that he represents business people “willing to invest in themselves and work tirelessly to make their dreams come true regardless of their resources, conditions, or environment. They overcome every obstacle to make it happen.”

Clifford Harris Jr., 37, was raised by a single mother and grandparents in northwest Atlanta’s working class Center Hill community, where at an early age he learned that success was the byproduct of an unyielding entrepreneurial spirit. He started selling candy to his fifth-grade classmates and then graduated to making money in the drug trade as a teenager. A childhood acquaintance, however, encouraged him to use his musical talents as a rapper—he’s considered one of the originators of the Southern-flavor “trap music”—as a platform that could lead to wealth and fame. However, it was his early experience in the late 1990s with a major label, Arista’s LaFace Records, operated at the time by music mogul Antonio “L.A.” Reid and R&B crooner Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, that placed him on the path to independence and business diversification.

T.I.’s Business Ventures

Today, Harris says Grand Hustle—which he co-founded with his former manager and business partner, Jason Geter—includes:

-Grand Hustle Records, an independent record label with a roster that includes Harris and other hip-hop acts like 5ive Mics, Trae Tha Truth, Tokyo, Jetz, and Zonnique, his stepdaughter.

– Grand Hustle Tech, which has made several investments in Atlanta-based startups including fintech app Mulaah and early-stage logistics and supply chain tech company Sudu.

-A.K.O.O. Clothing, which Harris defines as “upscale urban apparel”—the acronym stands for A King of Oneself—that can be found at Dillard’s chain of department stores, among other retail outlets.

-Buy The Block, a venture that “aligns my interest in real estate with community development” in which Harris has “strategically acquired parcels” to revive Center Hill, the neighborhood of his youth.

His latest project—a partnership between his television and film company, Grand Hustle Productions, and BET Networks—is a reality business competition show, aptly titled (you guessed it) The Grand Hustle. In the show, which debuts July 19, Harris challenges 16 entrepreneurs to compete for a $100,000 cash prize and a position within his enterprise. “I don’t want to spoil it for you but I found it interesting how those from Harvard versus those from the hood handled business adversity,” he says.

The Interview

In an interview with broadcast journalist Ed Gordon at the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Summit, Harris further shared how he developed his business acumen and strategic focus. The following are edited excerpts of that interview:

Gordon: How did you make the transition into rap? Harris: Rapping was something that I’ve always done since I was like 10 years old. I had started doing demos, trying to get record deals. [An older family member ] introduced me to DJ Toomp, and the rest is history.

Did you see rap as an art form solely or did you see that as a means to make money? When Kris Kross and Another Bad Creation came out and I found out they were my age and from Atlanta, I began to tirelessly pursue it. I started asking my daddy for money for studio time and trying to find talent shows. That’s when I actually saw it as an industry.

So you become a pioneer of trap music. When do you start to understand that this is a business; I am a commodity? Right around my second album. My first album was just real fun and I was on the same record label as OutKast and Goodie Mob. So I really thought I was about to take off. When my album didn’t work, I had to resort to different tactics and had to formulate a plan. Just because LaFace Records didn’t see [me] as a priority did not mean that I didn’t see me as a priority. I started making mix tapes and traveling a small circuit from Atlanta to Birmingham; Montgomery; Columbia, South Carolina; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tallahassee; Jacksonville, and then I spread out. That is what caused me to get the buzz that I needed for LaFace to then call me and say, “Hey, what we doing with this second album here?”

So it took a fall for you to understand that you didn’t know enough about this business. Your second go-round you figured out what you needed to know. I needed the resources to fund my own movement rather than wait on another infrastructure to care enough to say, “I’m going to invest my marketing department, my radio department, my PR department behind you.” So, I did the research and learned the different levels of participation as far as equity is concerned between an artist and a record label.

So, I go in there, and L.A. sits down and said to me, “Man, I really love the response. It just came out of nowhere.” I said, “No. It was not out of nowhere. It was some significant effort put into this…Since my album dropped, I have been tirelessly investing in myself, and basically operating as an independent record label. So, for me to work on the second album, to ensure that it won’t turn out the way the first one did, I will need $2 million and a joint venture.” He said, “Or what?” I said, “Or you can just let me go.”

So he turned me loose. But what I didn’t understand then was he turned me loose into the industry with a buzz as a free agent. I already had a song going on the radio. I was already doing shows. So, I went and got $2.5 million from Atlantic and a [joint venture]. That was the beginning of me building my own label, and I haven’t looked back.

We all have faced adversity. How do you get up and say, “This is not the way I thought it was going to go but I will keep going?” You have to be relentless. You have to be tireless in your efforts to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. There’s a vision everybody has in their head. How stubborn you are and how married you are to that vision will determine how far you’re willing to take your action. I’ve never been ready to lay down. As long as there’s air in my body, I continue to fight for whatever it is I feel I should have.

What made you decide to diversify beyond music? Talk to us a little bit about the other businesses that you’re involved with. My first ‘other’ area of business was construction and real estate. By the time I was 18, I was just getting a record deal and a $60,000 check. I was bragging, and my uncle—a father figure and mentor—said, “OK. Good. Give me $25.000.” I gave him [the money]. Luckily I was so hot, I continued to earn income so I never looked back at the $25,000. So four to six months later he rode me through our neighborhood, and he pulled me up to an old house that I used to trap out of. It was completely renovated, and it looked nothing like it did when I was there. He said, “That’s our house. With that money you gave me, I bought this house for $8,500 and put $15,000 into it. And now, we can either put it up on Section 8 and get about $850 a month for it. We can sell it for $60,000 to $75.000, and take the profit.” I said, “Let’s sell it.”

So we sold it, and we bought two more houses and did the same thing. We got some more, and we end up doing about 65 houses in our own community.

Entrepreneurs face failure. Talk to us about how you’ve dealt with that. You had a restaurant that ultimately closed. It tanked. You have to either understand every part of the business or need to include someone who knows every part of the business. And the person that you include you either have implicit trust or have a fail-proof system. For me, I just knew I could get people in here as long as the food is good. We can turn as many dollars needed for a profit. What I did not account for is the thievery. I underestimated that particular industry. Luckily for me, the thing that I always appreciate is, any industry I go into is secondary for me. The things that I have done in my primary business have afforded me the ability to take risks.

In terms of business, talk to us about you being a work in progress. I think life is a series of adjustments. You can either move with the times or be left behind. So, for me, it’s about diversification. Continue to learn, grow, and evolve. In business, I’m [going to] win. I’ve done well and I’ll do well again. God has given me everything I need to get everything I want on this earth.

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Good article originally from: blackenterprise

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