thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

You can't budget your way out of poverty. There is nothing to save on, and going without the one or two $5 expenses per month that might bring you a tiny amount of joy, isn't going to get you out of the trap they've set for you.

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

sir Precious!!!

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

he's built like an unsecured ikea bookshelf and brother, am i a toddler

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

Things in the Woods by Skyler Brown

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

Corrupt doggo bribed by bear

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

Yknow when you see a post and you're like "oh I have to reblog this for The Mutual" and then you scroll up and you see that the one who reblogged it is The Mutual

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

crow singing along to flute music

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

i forgot how fucking weird november is theres no afternoon its just night after 2pm

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

“La Llorona” by Daniel Vazquez

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

Puddle of cat

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

tbh shoutout to the over 40s on tumblr, sorry the internet acts like yall belong in the retirement home when ur literally just regular adults with hobbies

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

Head scratches will be an additional dollar

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

don't use "ftm" it's outdated and offensive. it implies that the trans person was their agab, which we never were. i was always a boy, never a girl who became a boy.

i'm 35 years old. i've been IDing as trans or something similar to trans for nearly 20 years. i was probably calling myself FTM while you were playing tag during recess, anon.

i WAS a girl. i IDed as a girl early in my life. i recognized myself as a girl, called myself a girl, lived as a girl, and was a girl. who then IDed as a man. hence, F t M.

spend more time worrying about yourself instead of strangers on the internet, anon.

sorry not sorry if this comes off as needlessly hostile, but i've been getting a lot of shit from a lot of teenage trans kids about the language i use to describe my own goddamn experience, and i'm growing real fuckin weary of it.

i have elder trans friends who call themselves transsexuals and transvestites and trannies. are you going to seriously go to a 60-year-old trans person who survived the reagan years and tell her she's not allowed to use certain language to describe herself because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of some teenager on the internet?

do yourself a favor and log off, find some real-life trans people who are over the age of 20 or 25, and spend time talking to them instead of getting all holier-than-thou at random strangers on tumblr.

[thisisnotwhatyouhadplanned]

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.