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hope you're doing okay. i think about you still from time to time. -your old friend shy-ramen

I’m still alive, which is a blessing since it means I got to see this message from you. I also think about you from time to time. I think about many of the people I used to talk to on here. Thank you for checking up on me. 

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For the sake of my future, I am leaving Tumblr.

I haven’t been very active on here, and I know I haven’t been particularly talkative either, but I’m making this post to let people know that I’m going. I may delete this blog in the future, but I’m keeping everything for now.

There is a long list of reasons why I’m doing this, but if you don’t want to read the entire post then the long story short version is: My life is a dumpster fire that will not change for the better unless I devote as much of my free time as possible into improving my craft so I can make a living through my art/writing.

Full details under the cut.

I’ve been planning on making this post for a while, but I didn’t want to abandon this account forever because despite not being as active on here as I used to be in the past, I’m still emotionally attached to my account and still wanted to use Tumblr as a means of entertainment when I wasn’t working. And I knew that if I made this post, I’d have to commit to staying away and I wanted to avoid that. But two things happened last Sunday that acted as a major wake up call for me.

1) There was a false alarm at a power plant not too far away from where I live. I don’t live in the same city as the power plant, but I live in what would be the danger zone should the power plant have a melt down. The false alarm for the power plant was issued in the morning. I don’t have a cell phone, but my sister (who I share a room with) does and received the alert for the “meltdown”. Since it woke her up, she was tired and accidentally exited the alert without reading it first. She then went back to sleep.

Now I don’t blame my sister for doing this. Hell, I probably would’ve done the same thing in her shoes.  My issue lies in the fact that, had there been an actual emergency, I would’ve a) slept through it or b) had no reliable way of getting out of the city.  I can’t drive, never learned how, so I couldn’t have driven myself to safety if my mom had decided not to leave the house (I know what you’re thinking; “why wouldn’t she leave the house?” and honestly she most likely would’ve left the city, but my mom has made enough stupid decisions throughout her life that her staying home isn’t outside the realm of possibility for me to believe).

Even though I know it was a false alarm, it’s still scary to think about how I could’ve died- or at least gotten very sick- had it been a real meltdown. I hate living in this city and I want to move, but I don’t have the means to do so at the moment.

2) My stepfather. For those who don’t know, my mom married a man she only knew for a few months and he is a horrible human being. He has threatened to kill me and my mom in the past, has been arrested multiple times since arriving to Canada (late last year he was arrested for possession of heroin), and is altogether an unpleasant and annoying man to be around.

So last Sunday night, I was doing the dishes when I heard a knock at the door. It was my stepfather, who had left the house for whatever reason and had returned. However, as I neared the door, I noticed that it was unlocked. He could’ve let himself in, but for whatever reason he was still knocking. I suddenly got it in my head that he wanted me to open the door so he could yank me outside without having to drag me through the house first.

I know that sounds paranoid, but the man is disturbed. I don’t think I’ve gone a week without at least worrying once that I was going to come home to my stepfather having murdered everyone else in the house while I was out. Added to the fact that he and I really hate each other and I was the one to call the police on him two times, and I think you could forgive me for thinking that he might try to hurt me if given the chance.

Despite my fears, I still opened the door for my stepfather. He didn’t attack me. He just went back inside and did whatever it was that he did. But even though nothing happened to me, I was still wound up for about five minutes and it felt like all the nerves in my body (especially my arms) were somehow taut and weak at the same time.

Aside from my sister, who is my only bright spot in this house, I don’t want to live with or have anything to do with this family anymore. I would’ve left years ago if I could. But again, I don’t have the means to do so at the moment.

This is why I’m leaving Tumblr.

I know that it’s super hard and almost impossible to make a decent living off the arts. I know I could try and try for the next decade and still not get anywhere I want to be. But I need to try, because I’m tired of my life being the way it is right now and I’m scared that things will never get better if I’m too passive.

I currently work at Walmart. I’m on my feet during the majority of my shift and my legs and knees hurt so bad I think I might be doing long lasting (but hopefully not permanent) damage to them. I work evenings, so I only have mornings and the weekends to get my art and writing done, but I’m so tired that my artistic productivity tends to drop off after Monday morning.

It’s too easy to spend my mornings and weekends procrastinating. It’s too easy for my life to turn into sleep>eat>Walmart>sleep>eat>Walmart until the day I die. The fact that it’d be so easy for me to be an old woman and still be at a similar stage in my life, even if I work my ass off trying to get my art/writing career going, fills me with so much existential dread I can hardly stand it.

But I’m tired of being so poor I could only visit my biological dad once while he was in the hospital for cancer. I’m tired of living with student loans that never seem to end. I’m tired of working at a job that demands so much of my time and energy. I’m tired of living in an area where people keep getting murdered in a less than a ten minute walk from my house. I’m tired of being afraid that I’ll come home from work and see police outside my house and body bags being taken into an ambulance. So I have to try, even if my chances of success are low.

I know I chose a bad career path for someone who wants to be financially comfortable. “Starving artist” is a stereotype that exists for a reason. But aside from it being my passion, I know I’m not good enough at anything else to make a proper living doing anything else. If I can’t make my dreams a reality, I’ll just be stuck in retail for the rest of my life, and I would honestly rather die than live like that. And I don’t want to die. Despite my anxiety and depression issues, despite the fact that I sometimes struggle with suicidal idealization, I don’t want to die. I just want my life to get better.

So when I say I’m leaving Tumblr, I don’t mean I’m just leaving Tumblr. I mean I’ll be using the internet as a whole for mainly a research/resource tool for my art and writing. Which means I’ll be spending very little time for leisure on the internet. It also means I won’t be socializing much anymore, which sucks because I like having internet friends (even though I’m bad at keeping in touch) but if I want my dreams to come true, I can’t be distracted by anything, even other people. From this point onward, I’ll essentially be working (almost) nonstop, only taking enough breaks so my brain doesn’t melt from the stress.

I know this is all very extreme, but I really haven’t fully expressed how absolutely desperate I am for my life to stop being so horrible. Maybe if I grind hard enough, things will be okay someday.

If you made it this far, thank you. And I’m sorry if I ever did anything to make you uncomfortable or hurt you in any way.

Goodbye everybody.

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Time for a short, romantic song.

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It’s a small world, Diego Speroni

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by  Calum Alexander Watt

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Was this Kojima’s coke? Or Norman Reedus’ Coke?

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It's such a shame That you became such an Issue Oh dear Johnny, I'll Miss you.

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Mildly Interesting Dump #6

Giant puffball mushroom my sister found in the woods

My local laundromat is also a bar

This toilet lock that doubles as a tray so you can’t leave without taking your stuff.

My keycard is like a cute baby next to the cutting board

A creepy little Christmas tree fully decorated in the middle of the woods. Powered by what looked like mini solar panels

I fired a flashgun in my mouth and lit my face from the inside.

This duck passing by its own sign

I dropped my headphones in the sand and all the iron collected on the magnets

The wool of an Australian Merino sheep

Pickle under ultraviolet light

I found a door (and nothing else) on an abandoned beach

My rotting Goomba pumpkin looks more like Goomba now than it did when it was freshly carved

This general store sign showing that there is actually a difference between jelly and jam

Nation Geographic Gallery uses its logo as a door handle

Hotel I stayed at was formerly a train station and had an actual train inside it, with rooms inside each car.

This three story dog house I saw that someone built.

I got a 40-year pocket calendar that works till 2057

In my country the cereal can’t have cartoons in the boxes

This building has cartoon windows

My school has racks in the front office for kids to put their skateboards on during the day.

My family’s Yankee Swap is so intense that we make all 30 people use the same wrapping paper so no one knows who brought what.

This bird that looks like Danny DeVito

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#well i mean there are plenty of people on this site who struggle with moral greyness in general. full stop.#like sometimes the writers will basically yell ''this character did a bad thing and it's bad that they did it''#and these idiots will STILL think the writer condones the character's actions just for simply writing it#but in general yeah this post is very valid (via silvercr0ssbow)

An observation: fandoms (and writers) on this website can stomach morally gray characters a lot easier than morally gray narratives.

What I mean is, characters are allowed to do both good and bad things as long as the narrative is clear and explicit about which of their actions are good and which are bad. Moral grayness is fine as long as the narrative picks a side even when the characters don’t, basically.

“But if the narrative doesn’t condemn the character, that means the author condones the character’s bad actions and that the audience should as well!” If you’re writing exclusively didactic fiction, sure! Otherwise I am begging you to let some genuine moral ambiguity into your stories.

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youm are welcome

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Herald of Redemption by Pedro Krüger Garcia

…and death shall have no dominion.

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Nan Goldin, Smokey car, New Hampshire, 1979

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oh to be pinned against a wall by my arch nemesis who i am secretly pining for and smirk insolently up at them while fantasizing about kissing them and being kissed back as they lean forward until our noses are almost touching to whisper threats which are meant to intimidate me but only turn me on more in my ear

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Would you believe it? This is the first time I’ve ever been alone with a man!

It Happened One Night (1934) dir. Frank Capra

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You already killed them by Boris Groh