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I’m so glad I live in a world where there are cats ♡

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Nobody’s ever like rah rah ah ah ah anymore. Not to mention ro ma ro ma ma.

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somehow instead of saying "as a treat", I've started using the phrase "for morale", as if my body is a ship and its crew, and I (the captain) have to keep us in high spirits, lest we suffer a mutiny in the coming days.

and so I will eat this small block of fancy cheese, for morale. I will take a break and drink some tea, for morale. I will pick up that weird bug, for morale.

I'm not sure if it helps, but it does entertain me

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today is my birthday! i’m 33 today and i have done an ungodly amount of stupid shit in my life that honestly probably should have gotten me killed. so here are 33 hard-won things i’ve learned that i wish someone had told me sooner.

whenever you buy an object, you are going to own that object for your entire life unless you make the conscious decision to throw it away or give it a new home. maybe other people don’t struggle with this as much as i do, but i’ve grown to become a little exhausted by finding a thing and realizing i don’t want it anymore, but i don’t have the energy or motivation to do anything with it. signed, a woman with a packed 10x10 storage unit who is now extremely hesitant to buy new things.

food, and by that i mean good food (and by that i don’t necessarily mean healthy food, but food of good quality that you love), is necessary to live, and buying it, preparing it, and eating it is not a chore. the sooner you accept this and make food a priority in your life, the healthier you’ll be. 

speaking of food, not everything you buy should be the cheapest version of it. personally i’ve found it’s always worth it to splurge on good olive oil, butter, and canned tomatoes. for years i thought i was an awful cook because i was cooking with cheap, disgusting olive oil that made my food taste like shit.

speaking of food part 2, i can’t BELIEVE how long this took me to figure out, but mise en place is the real real. get your shit out and organized and prepped *before* you start cooking, even if it makes things take longer. and yes, it is always worth it to do the dishes as you go, which pisses me off.

when i was teaching myself how to cook and feeling daunted about it, the best advice i ever got was to aim to learn 15 recipes and then put them in rotation.

this is the most horrific and awful truth i have forced myself to accept: there may come a day you can no longer digest your favorite foods, and you will either have to stop eating them, or remain very close to a toilet. i’m sorry.

other people are always going to misperceive you and misunderstand you, sometimes willfully. other people’s opinions of you don’t actually have anything to do with you. they’re not your business, and you don’t have to worry about it or change yourself.

when innocuous or neutral things make you irrationally angry or upset, step back, realize you’re having a big reaction, and then when you’re ready, pay very close attention to the thing that upset you, because you’re about to learn something important about yourself.

a pill sorter can save your life. i don’t know how i managed my meds without one.

sometimes college is about learning stuff, and not about becoming something.

no matter how many perfectionist tendencies you have, it’s worth it to remind yourself that no matter how much of a mess you actually are, you deserve to be loved.

if you’re always forgetting to do important but tedious things, set an alarm and set aside one hour of each week, not to do the important tedious things, but to assess what needs to be done, and *schedule* the important tedious things for the following week. this literally changed my life.

during that hour, make a meal plan too. the point of doing this is condense the time in which you’re making decisions (what to do, what to eat, etc) so you don’t have to burden yourself with them throughout the week. decision fatigue is real. any way you can alleviate that is a good thing.

learn the difference between aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, and assertive behavior. recognize when you’re being one of the first three, re-assess and aim for being assertive, even if it’s hard.

you can tell you’ve processed trauma, not when the traumatic thing stops upsetting you to think about, but when the traumatic thing takes up the same size in your brain as all your other memories.

if you’re one of those people who never seems to finish projects or follow through with things, there’s a chance you may just grow out of it naturally. until then, follow your interests and don’t feel bad about putting down a hobby to pick up another.

if you love stickers but have sticker anxiety, buy vinyl stickers. you can re-stick them.

there are only a few careers i can think of that you have to commit to early in life because getting the undergraduate credentials is a pain in the ass (teachers, doctors, and engineers, from my research). nearly everything else you can switch to later, which takes a LOT of pressure off having to figure out what you want to do with your life.

people say there’s no money in becoming an artist, writer, musician, etc. actually there’s a ton of money in all of those things, it’s just in the stuff other people want you to make and never what you want to make. it’s still worth it to develop the creative skill and not force yourself into business school because it’s more “practical” or whatever. 

sleep when you’re tired. SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE TIRED. don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t be tired or that you’ve already slept too much, just take a fucking nap. you would never say “hm i’ve already had enough water today, therefore i should not be thirsty” so don’t treat sleep the same way.

when you build a piece of furniture from target or ikea or whatever, the first thing you should do is count all the little screws and things to make sure everything’s there that should be. it sucks to get halfway into putting something together only to find there’s a piece missing and you have to go buy it.

learn to travel by yourself, go out to eat by yourself, see a movie by yourself. in my early 20s i was scared to do these things, but i do them so often now i don’t even think about it. it’s the most fulfilling skill i’ve ever learned.

adding to the above, if you’re a people-pleaser, being alone is especially important, because you’ve probably developed the habit of making the people you’re with more comfortable and happy than yourself, and you’re missing a lot of the beautiful and interesting things around you. when you’re by yourself, you can focus on what *you* want without guilt. 

sometimes you’ll want to break things off with a friend for reasons that are no one’s fault, and you don’t want it to be volatile or make a big thing of it, in which case the goal is to simply fade out of their life. it is okay to let people go.

shame is useless. get rid of it.

no matter how much of yourself you put into your art (or writing, or music, or whatever), when people criticize it, they are not criticizing you. they are having a reaction colored by their own tastes and perspectives. their opinion of your work has nothing to do with you. you don’t have to take everyone’s feedback. in fact you don’t have to take anyone’s feedback. the other side to this coin unfortunately is that compliments don’t have anything to do with you either. it’s good to accept this because it means you’ll stop seeking validation from other people and won’t let anyone else’s perspectives impact your work. anything nice anyone says about your work is merely a bonus to an already good thing.

if you’re an artist of any kind, take one day a year to look up opportunities like grants, funding, residencies, workshops, whatever. put the due dates of all of them on a calendar for the year following and get into the habit of applying for stuff. getting rejected sucks, application fees suck, but in all the years i’ve been doing this, it has always, always been worth it. these things give you a chance not only to help fund and support what you’re passionate about, but they force you to take your own work seriously, and that is something that’s absolutely necessary in order to be successful.

you must become your own greatest advocate. in all respects–in health, in love, in happiness, in freedom, you must. no one will ever fight as hard for you as you will. this in turn will give you the strength and motivation to help others fight for themselves too. the only way the world will ever get better is if every person on this planet learns to see themselves as equals to everyone around them.

brag about yourself as often as you can. for one, people develop their perceptions of you based on how you treat yourself and speak about yourself. but for two, it’s the fastest way to figure out which people to keep in your life, because they’re the ones who are going “oh hell yeah, you’re awesome.” 

be the person other people want to brag to.

at some point in your life, someone is going to hurt you, and it’s going to be willful and intentional. it is not worth it to waste brain space figuring out why they did it or why you think you deserved it. all you have to do is let yourself feel that pain, acknowledge it, and try to move on.

no matter how bad off you think you are, recovery is possible. the first and hardest step is to learn you’re worth the time and effort it takes to recover from the awful things that have happened to you.

developing an expertise does not mean you’re getting objectively better at something. becoming an expert is only the process of seeing your mistakes and having the patience to sit in the discomfort of not knowing how to fix them.    

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Girly Self-Care Tips for Girls

Work out every day. Get ripped.

Quit wearing makeup, and ESPECIALLY quit wearing full coverage makeup. It's terrible for your skin.

Don't shave your bush. All it does is increase risk of vaginal infections and give you razor burn + ingrown hairs.

Eat healthier and eat more iron. In the United States, 40% of women are iron deficient.

Fix your sleep schedule.

Take your vitamins.

Learn about your own anatomy.

Learn to self-advocate. It's hard to do, but it will help you massively if you can accomplish it.

Stop dating men. Go 4B.

Stop having sex with men. They are disease vectors.

Ditch coffee, drink green tea. Green tea improves cognitive function and heart health.

You don't need any fancy skincare products. Unless you have an actual skin condition, the only thing you need to put on your face is sunscreen, face-safe soap, and water.

Go outside more. Spend time in nature, or just stand outside in your garden or driveway.

Don't get cosmetic surgery or fillers. By doing so you're just putting yourself in danger for the sake of beauty standards.

Learn everything you can possibly learn.

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btw I am doing it afraid

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Mictlantecuhtli, Mixtec death god, pendant found in Oaxaca.

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This video makes me think about you @toddstool

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I took out my DSLR camera to take halfway decent photos of the books I was wanting to post about, but turns out my camera uses SD cards and my laptop has no SD card slot sooooo (I'll buy a converter next week, it's not a big deal but I was very *headdesk* about this)

Instead I took out the special features of the Fujiko F Fujio complete short works collection and found these fun little preview pages for a 1968 issue of Shojo Comic, because Fujiko F wrote a silly comedy one-shot for the magazine called "Super-san":

AHHHH the sparkly ballet manga by Kitajima Yoko! The ad for the "study seal" furoku with art by Tani Yukiko and Satonaka Machiko! (I wish there was a photo.) The text advertising how the magazine contains a ton of news on Group Sounds, the boybands of the time! Love it. I also love how you can see the clear trends in girl fashion and hair at the time, especially the "fluffy bangs, ribbons, long hair flowing down" look that was obviously admired by girls.

"Super-san" is a silly nonsense comedy about a girl who suddenly gains superpowers. It mostly reminds me of Akatsuka Fujio, both in how nonsensical it is and how it's clearly meant to be an homage, with the protagonist doing Iyami's "Sheeh!" as a punchline (Akatsuka and Fujiko were old friends). I have no idea how shojo readers at the time might have reacted to it, but Fujiko didn't write another shojo manga until 1974's "Akage no Anko" ("ESPer Mami" prototype) so I don't imagine it was massively popular. Of course, like most other male manga artists of his generation, Fujiko used to draw quite a bit of shojo manga earlier in his career; such as the absolutely adorable "Yurika-chan" he drew for Shojo in 1954 and which features way more typical shojo style art, and "Bara to yubiwa" (based on the Thackeray story), the furoku manga he drew that goes for insane amounts of money these days.

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my sincerest wish for Cathy

16/30

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Huang Yishan.

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It can be so healing to stay up until 3am. Unfortunately, it will also completely ruin your life.

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VALERIE ISSUE 3 IS AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD NOW !!!!

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Series: Mekakushi no Kuni Artist: Tsukuba Sakura Publication: LaLa (01/2001) Details: LaLa 2001 Calendar (June) Source: Scanned from my personal collection

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