#I like this quote because it inspires me to be less bad at eating breakfast at a decent time

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

I'm listening to @re-dracula again now that it's all out, and Dr. Van Helsing has so many good quotes.

#dracula #re: dracula #food #I like this quote because it inspires me to be less bad at eating breakfast at a decent time

[thebananniediariesbyannie]

let's talk recovery...and the many ways you can begin to refuel and recharge your body

*the topic of today’s video is recovery. this is from my perspective as a professional dancer and athlete, however, you don’t have to be a professional to gain insight from this post

✨ i ignored recovery for a while and just kept pushing and pushing myself until one day, i literally had nothing left to give. now, i take recovery very seriously. 💖 here are some ideas how you can incorporate recovery into your daily life or however it fits into your routine

keep reading! 👇

higherDOSE

let’s talk about why higherDOSE is an integral part of my recovery process

- the PEMF go-mat: i LOVE this device! this supports improved muscle recovery and makes me feel great after my workouts! the heat adds a relaxing touch. another reason why i love it…it helps me to sleep better. i’m a very bad sleeper so this is a game changer for me!

- the red light face mask - i not only love this mask because it’s helps my skin, but the red light is a total mood booster! one of my struggles as professional athlete is being in a positive mental space. it’s very easy for me to feel like i’m not good enough or i haven’t worked out hard enough. so having devices that help to boost my mood, seriously do so much for me! PLUS…i’m glowing once this mask is done working its magic!

- sauna blanket (not seen in today’s video) - i usually use my sauna mat on practice days. once my dance practice is over, i’ll spend about 40 mins in the sauna blanket and follow it up with a cold shower. this helps me to detox my body and also boost my mood tremendously!

#recoveryroutine #higherdosedetox #sportswellness @HigherDOSE

#higherDOSEpartner #TheBanannieDiaries #TheBanannieDiariesByAnnie

a wholesome lifestyle and positive relationship with food

what i’m about to tell you will take a commitment to you and your body, but in my opinion it was totally worth it; meal prepping. meal prepping forced me to look at what I was eating and intentionally plan out my meals. this has led me to intake more wholesome foods that are nourishing to my body instead of stopping on-the-go and buying random breakfast sandwiches or fast food.

here’s how i did it…i first began by looking up recipes and seeing if there were healthier versions of foods i tend to be drawn to. for example, my dunkin donut and starbucks breakfast sandwiches are now replaced with breakfast sandwiches i learned how to make. i just take one out of the freezer the evening before, and in the morning i pop it in the air fryer…DONE

by no means am i a trained or chef, baker, or cook. i took some time to watch youtube, do some trial and error, and just figure out what recipes and meals worked for me. here are some websites and social accounts where i gained inspiration for recipes (keep in mind, sometimes i substituted some ingredients based on dietary restrictions, etc.). at the end of the day, you need to do what is right for your body.

want to shop cookbooks? here are some i love 👇

reading books and resting your brain

as a believer in resting your brain, taking a break from social media is not only a suggestion, but absolutely neccessary…(and yes, that’s coming from someone who uses social media as a positive platform). this quote (i did not quote it exactly…sorry…) can apply to A LOT…too much of a good thing isn’t always good.

let’s talk about why I (and many others) suggest taking breaks from social media:

it can be overwhelming and cause your brain to process a lot in short amounts of time

takes you away from the present moment and opportunities that are happening in the here and now

looking at accounts that make you feel less than, sad, or invaluable is going to bother you to a certain extent

taking in too much negative news could bring you into a bad thought process

mean people writing and commenting mean things on your posts or on posts of others can be damaging no matter how strong you feel you are

here are some positive accounts i like to follow:

what can you do instead of scrolling social media? here is my favorite idea…reading books. i’m talking paperback and hardcover books. not a nook, not another electronic device..a good “old-fashioned” book…and yes, an audiobook is also a good idea too! here are some of my current favs!

click the button below to find other social media outlets where the banannie diaries posts content! follow, subscribe, and stay tuned for more beauty, fashion, and positive vibes!

#TheBanannieDiariesByAnniey #fitnessgoals #professionalathlete #workingout #fitnessroutine #athletes #athletesoftiktok #recoverygoals #biohacking #biohackingskincare #redlight #redlightmask #pemftherapy

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat cure, or prevent any disease.

#food #alcohol free #healthy living #healthy living goals #healthy #good food #wholesome #protein #fitness

[vivithefolle]

Vivs, I came across this from a "Ron's a jealous slacker" fan, please use your expertness to contradict this stupid statement. Y do ron stans refuse to accept that he just wanted attention without actually doing any hardwork! Didn't he just desire being a headboy & a quidditch captain? He would have achieved it if he would stop being a self piting, lazy person & actually study or practice to achieve his dreams! he doesn't deserve any sympathy we live in actual world where hardwork matters only.

The funniest thing about this is that they’re actually talking about Harry.

Harry actually never did put in effort to achieve things. Except this once when he mastered the Patronus at 13, we’ll give him that. But Quidditch? Oh he just hops on a broom and woah suddenly he’s flying so well he’s in the Quidditch team and gets a great broom and is totally the bestest and a total fucking Mary Sue! Fighting against Voldemort? Well thank god for Loveus Ex Machina that always saves your ass without ever making you lift a finger ever! And how he defeated Voldemort too? With a spell he learned in second year and he only won that fight because ~surprise~ Voldemort’s wand wasn’t okay with killing Harry for bullshit plot reasons. Amazing. Wonderful. Inspiring. Our hero, everyone, never actually worked for anything a day in his life, ever.

Meanwhile Ron? Actually worked hard to get on the Quidditch team, which was something he dreamed of. Actually moved his ass to learn to fight and didn’t have the luxury of ~lurrrrve~ to excuse him out of fights.  Ron actually did MORE than Harry ever did, but of course, protagonist-centred favouritism paired with mindless Harmonian propaganda won’t let you realize that because it’s just so much easier to imagine yourself as ~the special one :))~.

...

Ron is lazy you say.

Did he really believe he was better than Ron? No, said the small voice defiantly. Was that true? Harry wondered, anxiously probing his own feelings. I’m better at Quidditch, said the voice. But I’m not better at anything else. That was definitely true, Harry thought; he was no better than Ron in lessons. But what about outside lessons? What about those adventures he, Ron, and Hermione had had together since they had started at Hogwarts, often risking much worse than expulsion? Well, Ron and Hermione were with me most of the time, said the voice in Harry’s head. - Order of the Phoenix, chapter 9

Harry must be lazy too then.

Ah, but Harry’s word isn’t enough, since, after all, he does say himself that Hermione is like his sister, yet there’s a bunch of irreducible folks who insist on disregarding their hero’s agency whenever it is convenient for them. Therefore let’s go grab quotes that will settle the matter once and for all:

Ron had taken over responsibility for Buckbeak's appeal. When he wasn't doing his own work, he was poring over enormously thick volumes with names like The Handbook of Hippogriff Psychology and Fowl or Foul? A Study of Hippogriff Brutality. He was so absorbed, he even forgot to be horrible to Crookshanks. - Prisoner of Azkaban, chapter 15

Doing his own work AND working on something that won’t give him extra credit once Hermione finally swallowed her pride and apologized (for the first and last time in the books). But yeah totally lazy blah blah blah.

“But what have you got your broom for, you haven’t been flying, have you?” Harry asked. “I — well — well, okay, I’ll tell you, but don’t laugh, all right?” Ron said defensively, turning redder with every second. “I-I thought I’d try out for Gryffindor Keeper now I’ve got a decent broom. There. Go on. Laugh.” ‘“I’m not laughing,” said Harry. Ron blinked. “It’s a brilliant idea! It’d be really cool if you got on the team! I’ve never seen you play Keeper, are you good?” “I’m not bad,” said Ron, who looked immensely relieved at Harry’s reaction. “Charlie, Fred, and George always made me Keep for them when they were training during the holidays.” “So you’ve been practicing tonight?” “Every evening since Tuesday... just on my own, though, I’ve been trying to bewitch Quaffles to fly at me, but it hasn’t been easy and I don’t know how much use it’ll be.” Ron looked nervous and anxious. “Fred and George are going to laugh themselves stupid when I turn up for the tryouts. They haven’t stopped taking the mickey out of me since I got made a prefect.” - Order of the Phoenix, chapter 13

……………. Well damn. Remember how hard Harry had to train to get the Seeker position?

Oh that’s right, I forgot: HE DIDN’T! Because Chosen One Boy-Who-Lived poor orphan protagonist blah blah.

Ron though? Ron WORKED to get his position. Ron practiced, Ron worked out a way to practice alone by enchanting stuff to fly to him. When did Harry do that? Ah yes, he didn’t, because he had Oliver coaching him so he never had to figure out how to train by himself.

Meanwhile Ron was reading two years of Charms notes with his fingers in his ears, his lips moving soundlessly; Seamus was lying flat on his back on the floor, reciting the definition of a Substantive Charm, while Dean checked it against The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5; and Parvati and Lavender, who were practicing basic loco-motion charms, were making their pencil cases race each other around the edge of the table. Dinner was a subdued affair that night. Harry and Ron did not talk much, but ate with gusto, having studied hard all day. Hermione, on the other hand, kept putting down her knife and fork and diving under the table for her bag, from which she would seize a book to check some fact or figure. Ron was just telling her that she ought to eat a decent meal or she would not sleep that night, when her fork slid from her limp fingers and landed with a loud tinkle on her plate. - Order of the Phoenix, chapter 31

Another one for “EW FOOD HOW DARE THESE TEENAGERS EAT, DISGUSTING”, and also oh, surprise, Ron actually worked. Incredible. Can you believe. Isn’t he supposed to be lazy. Woah. I totally and utterly did not expect this at all.

Of course I must bring up something else -

“How many hours d’you think you’re doing a day?” he demanded of Harry and Ron as they queued outside Herbology, a manic gleam in his eyes. “I dunno,” said Ron. “A few...” “More or less than eight?” “Less, I s’pose,” said Ron, looking slightly alarmed. “I’m doing eight,” said Ernie, puffing out his chest. “Eight or nine. ‘I’m getting an hour in before breakfast every day. Eight’s my average. I can do ten on a good weekend day. I did nine and a half on Monday. Not so good on Tuesday — only seven and a quarter. Then on Wednesday —” - Order of the Phoenix, chapter 31

Okay first off - Ron estimates his study time to be “a few [hours]”. That’s more than I ever did for my own exams and wouldn’t you know it, I passed them.

Second off: THIS CONVERSATION IS CLEARLY MEANT TO BE HUMOROUS AND YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE THE SAME REACTION AS RON.

As in “holy shit this guy is insane”.

To top it off, here’s also Harry’s reaction in case some people still care about their hero’s agency:

Harry was deeply thankful that Professor Sprout ushered them into greenhouse three at that point, forcing Ernie to abandon his recital.

Harry isn’t impressed. Harry isn’t awed. Harry isn’t filled with sudden godly inspiration to “ditch Ron and join a study group and become the smartestest in the school!!!”

No, Harry doesn’t care for studying and spending hours bending over a book. Harry would like to pass his exams and then never think about them again.

But the only thing Harry felt he was really good at was Quidditch. In the end, he chose the same new subjects as Ron, feeling that if he was lousy at them, at least he’d have someone friendly to help him. - Chamber of Secrets

Harry wouldn’t have expected Ron to help him had Ron never helped him before. So we can extrapolate that not only does Ron does his homework, but he will also take time and effort to help Harry out if need be.

But of course Harry doesn’t need or care for Ron totally absolutely of course yes. (Another one for the “Harry picks Ron over Hermione” guys!!! Canon is on our side, sorry not sorry!)

...

Also, let it be said:

we live in actual world where hardwork matters only

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

Look at Kim Kardashian, at Donald Trump, at basically any billionaire. Did they really do any hard work, or did they build their whole career out of exploitation, cheap scandals and their parents’ already-existing fortune?

In our world, Harry would be rich because Mummy and Daddy left him a trust fund, Hermione would have Mummy and Daddy’s money to help her get by until she can find some dead-end job she hates because the job market is shit, and poor Ron would be stuck in poverty because he was poor to begin with and getting out of poverty is much, much harder than getting rich.

#vivi answers #ask #harry potter critical #hp meta #hp fandumb #harry potter series #ron weasley defense squad #ron weasley defence squad

[far-off-flower-fields]

Weird Questions that say a lot

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans? Teacups!

2. chocolate bars or lollipops? Lollipops

3. bubblegum or cotton candy? Cotton candy

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you? We call elementary school primary school. It depended which teachers you asked, my favourites always said I was “conscientious, kind, and a pleasure to have in class”.

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups? Glass cups or bottles.

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear? I have like 4 looks, pastel, boho, and goth/witchy/grunge, also vintage-inspired which wasn’t mentioned but I love it.

7. earbuds or headphones? Depends on the shape, I love my Razr headset because it doesn’t squash my ears, and I like galaxy bud shaped earbuds, the ones with the little rubber doo-dads that fit actually in your ear. Apple or a lot of older flat earbuds cause me a lot of pain.

8. movies or tv shows? TV shows. Movies are getting longer and longer and my focus is getting shorter and shorter

9. favorite smell in the summer? Rainy days!

10. game you were best at in p.e.? The game of queue-ducking (where you go to the back of the queue to avoid your turn), or dance, or the less strength intensive parts of gymnastics. Or crying, always been great at that xD

11. what you have for breakfast on an average day? Muesli, or nothing.

12. name of your favorite playlist? I prefer to listen to full albums rather than playlists, but I have a few favourites on Spotify. Born to Run 150BPM, Infinite Indie Folk, Irish Folk: Jigs and Reels, All Out 80s/90s/00s. I also love scene/pop-punk playlists.

13. lanyard or key ring? Key Ring

14. favorite non-chocolate candy? Message Hearts (or anything with that texture), the red pack of starbursts (the UK version is vegan). Does Turkish Delight count because if so then that is my fave. I also like gummies if they’re vegan.

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment? To Kill a Mockingbird (high school), or The Bloody Chamber (uni), or Hamlet (uni)

16. most comfortable position to sit in? One foot under me, the other foot out to the other side, but both in the same position (if the surface is flat), or knees up.

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes? I own a lot of shoes so there isn’t really a single pair I wear the most. Recently my Air Force 1s, I’m trying to wear them in because the previous owner didn’t so the cause blisters.

18. ideal weather? Cold, overcast, rainy, still. Or without the rain. or snow (as long as I’m not going in the car and I can go crunch my shoes in it xD

19. sleeping position? Either side, but my body is kinda rotated towards the bed so it’s like half way between on my stomach and on my side. 

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)? Notebooks

21. obsession from childhood? Animals, dinosaurs, goddesses, magic, crystals, neopets, sims. I still love all of these things, I am a rotating door of obsessions, usually a bunch of the same obsessions on repeat.

22. role model? I don’t have one particular role model, I do have tons of people that I love and respect.

23. strange habits? I have so many strange habits that I have become one myself. Nothing actually stands out though because 99% of it is because of my brain.

24. favorite crystal? rose quartz or moonstone.

25. first song you remember hearing? Maybe Dancing Queen by ABBA, definitely the first I remember dancing to, but my dad loves music so I grew up with a constant stream of it.

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather? Suffer xD when I’m able to do so comfortably I’d love to go out looking for pretty stones, and nice sticks with my fiance, also would like to go on picnics with him, or a friend if I had one.

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather? Baking, drawing, crafts, standing in the rain. Everything.

28. five songs to describe you? 6/10 - Dodie Robert Frost - Mal Blum Caught in the Middle - Paramore Side Effects - Jade Bird Snitches Get Stitches - Onsind  Bonus track: The Seed - Aurora I wish I still had the playlist I made of songs I relate to, several of these were on it though.

29. best way to bond with you? Oversharing, or telling me about things you’re into.

30. places that you find sacred? Nature. My favourite spots are little creeks/rivers in wooded areas, but just like, all of it is special and should be treated as such. Also bedrooms.

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names? I think maybe I’m not gutsy or whatever enough, but also unpredictable. I wear whatever I like, and I’m just as likely to cry in all of them as I am to accidentally get in a fight.

32. top favorite vines? I feel so basic because I never really did the vine thing.  There was one that nearly killed me because I literally started to choke that was in some kind of office and the bit like can you run this past me again, and they just fucking legged it past them holding a folder up, Saw it once, never saw it again. Road work ahead. Why you can’t lift a house (might be a tok?) Brass dad and oven kid Look at this graaaaph Never learned how to read I can’t sit I have hemorrhoids The one with the people in blankets bobbing the nana nanana song Fr esh avo ca do Look at all these chickens

33. most used phrase in your phone? I love you - if I had to guess

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head? right now, nothing. I often get the old Super Liquor jingle lodged in there though.

35. average time you fall asleep? 6am?

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing? Charlie the unicorn or that one Noodles video by Cyanide and Happiness. Are those even memes?

37. suitcase or duffel bag? Depends. I mostly use a bag though since I never go anywhere for long.

38. lemonade or tea? Tea? Usually if you ask for lemonade here you get Sprite which is not lemonade.

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie? I had a vegan lemon meringue pie once, so good. Cake is easier to make though, and I can eat more in one sitting without getting sick xD

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school? Um, the principal in my last year of school got caught for being a peeping tom a few years after I left.

41. last person you texted? My Fiance.

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets? Jacket pockets

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket? Depends on the rest of the outfit and the weather. I wear Jean jackets most though.

44. favorite scent for soap? I love lavender, or vanilla/candy/fruity/baked goods type scents. I still have a bottle of Sugar Fairy spray from lush from a year ago and I love the smell of that.

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero? Fantasy I think.

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in? Nekkid?

47. favorite type of cheese? As a kid it was feta. Now I only eat vegan cheese. I was never a huge cheese fan tbh.

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be? Rotten xD um probably a cranberry or something because I’m small, and I’m not a fan of cranberry.

49. what saying or quote do you live by? An it harm none do what you will. Or treat others as you wish to be treated.

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have? Probably one of the vines I listed above, either “run it past” or “can’t lift a house” because both of those resulted in crying and choking.

51. current stresses? My cat has been throwing up and having diarrhoea the past week or so, she’s been to the vet, it got better for a bit, but tonight suddenly got worse. Living with my parents who I have a very toxic relationship with. Living in a single very overfilled room. Trying to not spend money so that I can save up to move next year. Nightmares about my trauma. Either the house is haunted or there’s a build up of negative energy (probably that).

52. favorite font? I always liked the look of all of the script style fonts (freestyle, french, lucida, lucida calligraphy, Edwardian, Palace) but they’re not accessible so for anything people will actually see (which is literally nothing) I always go with arial.

53. what is the current state of your hands? Slight rash on one finger because I’m sensitive to what is in a lot of hand washing products apparently (never an issue until the pandemic), one broken finger nail that is a bit shorter than the rest. Not painted nails because energy. I always wear my engagement ring, usually I wear several other rings but with how my skin is being I thought I’d better not for a while.

54. what did you learn from your first job? Bakeries are hell, my circadian rhythm will not adjust to anything besides its natural state for longer than a couple of days at a time no matter how long or hard I try. I can absolutely fall asleep standing up.

55. favorite fairy tale? Ugly Duckling

56. favorite tradition? I don’t have anyway... Yet? Hopefully when I move this can become a thing.

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome? I’m interpretting overcome loosely here, meaning “I have not died from this” - Suicide of my first love - Bullying - 3 different jobs that all nearly killed me

58. four talents you’re proud of having? Literally can’t think of one. I’m not talented. I’m passable at a couple of things, but I worked for those things and I’m still not good enough for anyone to confuse me for being talented xD Those things I care about that I’ve worked on a lot are singing, art, languages, crafts? I still struggled to come up with 4. My bad.

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be? Aw jeez xD

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be? Magical Girl! This is an easy one, give me the powers and the clothes yessss.

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.? Literally sitting here drawing a blank, so instead of favourite here is the first one that came into my head “eyes are the genitals of the head” (may have that wrong, I’m watching the Office for the first time rn)

62. seven characters you relate to? Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Amelie from Amelie Matilda from Matilda Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notredame (also my favourite plush as a kid) Iris - The Holiday Jess - New Girl Amelia Shepherd - Grey’s Anatomy Struggled with this because suddenly I drew a blank and also couldn’t remember who my Fiance was talking about every time he’s watched a character and said “that’s you” repeatedly.

63. five songs that would play in your club? Starlight - Superman Lovers Pump It - Black Eyed Peas I Bet that You Look Good on the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys All the Things She Said - tATu Doctor Jones - Aqua Bonus: Push Up - Freestylers These are ones  I have memories of dancing to when I was younger so that’s how I picked, but I’d absolutely be a themed night club with different music on different nights.

64. favorite website from your childhood? Neopets, which I still play daily. The first I played was MaMaMedia, then Bubblegum Club.

65. any permanent scars? That’s a SORE subject heh get it heh

66. favorite flower(s)? Lavender, rose, peony

67. good luck charms? I usually carry gemstones if I’m needing to be particularly lucky, or sigils.

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried? I hate anything spicy. I had rootbeer candy that tasted like literal dirt. I can’t eat banana stuff without gagging and getting a headache. I hate anything that is artificial blackberry or blackcurrant, tastes like shitty cough syrup.

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned? Sea Monkeys breathe through their feet, but I remember where I learned that.

70. left or right handed? right

71. least favorite pattern? depends entirely on the colours, I like patterns. but certain stripes do make my eyes feel funny.

72. worst subject? If PE counts, then that. If not, math.

73. favorite weird flavor combo? I love pineapple on pizza but that’s not weird. Iused to eat cheese and jam sandwiches as a kid though.

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen? I operate on how long it has lasted instead of how bad it is, essentially I get so desperate so I’ll try it even though it probably won’t help. I have the resistance of a rhino to most meds.

75. when did you lose your first tooth? No idea, like 4 I think? I did keep them in a weird little box for no reason though because they never got taken away from under my pillow.

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)? I’m a fan of a good mash if it has lots of flavour (like gravy). Otherwise, crisps or fries.

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill? I grew a radish once! Something cat safe though these days, also maybe something heavy, and hard to knock over?

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store? Grocery Store sushi, if it’s just veg.

79. which looks better, your school id photo or your driver’s license photo? My only ID is my passport, and it is BAD.

80. earth tones or jewel tones? Both.

81. fireflies or lightning bugs? Fireflies (ten million of them to be precise)

82. pc or console? Grew up with PC. Now play my switch mostly.

83. writing or drawing? Both. Wrote more as a kid, draw more now.

84. podcasts or talk radio? Podcasts.

84. barbie or polly pocket? Both. But I prefered pollies as a kid

85. fairy tales or mythology? mythology

86. cookies or cupcakes? cupcakes

87. your greatest fear? Based on my nightmares, stairs.

88. your greatest wish? To live in a comfy house, in the country, with my Fiance, I have travelled the world, we have pets, I can function, we are free.

89. who would you put before everyone else? My Fiance and out animals.

90. luckiest mistake? Can’t think of any, most of my mistakes have been more like bad choices, also never turned out well for me.

91. boxes or bags? Depends what it’s for?

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights? lamps, or fairy lights. Unless I’m particularly anxious, then overheads.

93. nicknames? None.

94. favorite season? Winter

95. favorite app on your phone? LINE, it has my fiance, and animated stickers.

96. desktop background? Little Twin Stars

97. how many phone numbers do you have memorized? My own.

I never get asks and needed to distract myself so I’m going to just answer these anyway, like a survey or something. Original post by tr33-g1rl 

[flamestoflight]

candid.

this is a breaking point

i really have not been taking care of myself lately. i’ve been neglecting my physical health and my mental health to an extent that i haven’t done in years. everything is just happening so fast and all at once. graduation, a new job, a new city, a new apartment, a hard and painful breakup, an exciting new relationship, an upcoming trip, trying to get my licensure in order before I leave, dealing with all the new employee stuff.....it’s just a lot. it’s a hell of a lot. and i’ve been neglecting every aspect of caring for my physical and mental health for the past month.

it started after i finished my last rotation in early December. I was in the mindset of “fuck it, I’m finally done with school, I have 2 months until I start a real job, I’m just going to let loose and not care during this time period because it’s an opportunity i won’t have again.” And I was right about that, I will never have 2 months like this again. I will likely never even have a full week like this again - free to do whatever with my days, no 8 hours a day/5 days a week work. and at first it was in the name of mental and physical health. a rest from nonstop grinding for yearssssss. A rest from 4:30am alarms to get to the gym before work, of working 10 hours and then coming home and studying, of 5 hours of class followed by 3 hours of clinic followed by studying for my exam the next day, of meal prepping and skipping the dinner outing or the trip to the bar in the name of discipline, of working like an absolute dog to get to where I am. 

But it’s turned bad. It’s turned into a blatant neglect for my health. I’ve stopped taking my prescribed meds, I’ve stopped working out, I’ve stopped eating well....some days I don’t eat at all and others I eat like shit for every single meal. My weight has fluctuated like crazy these past 2 months, low to high to low to high. I honest to god cannot tell you the last time I had a fruit that wasn’t a garnish on a drink. I haven’t cooked for myself in 2 months. I haven’t eaten brown rice or quinoa or spinach or chia seeds or oats or literally any vegetable or fruit or anything that used to be a staple for me. 

I haven’t spent time outdoors. I haven’t read a book. I haven’t organized my space, I haven’t been washing my face, I haven’t had any semblance of a sleeping schedule. 

and to a certain extent, that’s okay. You know, that’s living life and that’s being flexible and adaptable and understanding that your life isn’t supposed to fit in a box and you aren’t supposed to be a solid mold. I understand all that, and in a way I am proud of my ability to break out of my routine time and time again, and choose friends and late nights and beer and a weekend trip out of town over rigidity and strictness and anything that I am used to.

But it’s gone too far and it has been for a few weeks now and I’m just ignoring the problem as if it’s going to go away. To be fair to me, I have been emotionally all over the place and gone through ups and downs that I never saw coming. and i’ve been trying to handle this emotional whirlwind, trying to handle the nighttime depression that has started creeping back in, trying to handle the couple of panic attacks i’ve induced over the past month, trying to handle my tendencies to use food as a weapon against myself, to use self-deprivation (water, sleep, vegetables, fresh air) as weapon against myself. Trying to handle the overwhelming pressure I feel to be good at my new job, with my fancy new degree at a fancy new hospital and not let everyone down and not let myself down. 

I kind of feel like I’ve lost myself a little bit. I haven’t been engaging in the things that have always been important to me. At least not the ones that only involve me. I’ve been very present in my relationship, present in my family life, present when it comes to making plans with friends. But I’ve lost the part of me that cares about the food she puts into her body, who respects her body and moves it every day, whether that be stretching and handstands or squatting and pressing or walking and hiking. I just haven’t been. 

Yesterday I went with my boyfriend to get his hair cut and he said it was going to be about an hour and for 5 minutes I sat in the car mindlessly scrolling through my phone and that’s how I was planning to pass the time....and I instantly started getting anxious and antsy. Because that’s not me, that’s not what I do. I got out of the car and walked a little less than a mile to the local library and grabbed myself a latte and perused some books, sat down at a table and opened one at random and started reading. I walked!! outside. and I read!! a book. while i sipped my latte. THAT is me. That’s what I do, that’s the Lauren that’s engaged in her life, engaged in her surroundings, takes care of her mental stimulation and moves her body a bit.

It’s very tough for me to be in this state of transition. Nothing is permanent right now, everything, everything is about to change. And in order to deal with the impending change and the stress that’s associated with it, I’ve become lost in the moment. (as a side note, I think that living in the moment is extremely important and valuable. I, however, have become completely lost in it...directionless, unsure, lacking confidence, losing myself kind of lost). And I want to change that. I need to change that.

this is a breaking point.

And this breaking point comes at a really unfortunate time. I’m leaving in 2 days to fly to Tanzania, I’ll be gone for 10 days total in the wilderness with zero semblance of routine and zero control over any of it. Two days after I come back, I drive to my new city and start the move-in process. I’ll be in Baltimore for 5 days, I’ll be back home for part of the next week where I’ll be trying to figure out how to get my stuff out of storage, how to get my furniture from my ex, how move into my own place...and also trying to cram in seeing my boyfriend who will have started classes and has more limited time. I have to figure out how ad when to get the cats to Baltimore, I have to figure out what furniture I need and how to get it, where to get it, how much I can afford to spend. I have so little control over anything the next 2 weeks, my opportunities to work out will be slim to none, my opportunities to cook for myself and meal prep will be slim to none, my opportunities to decide how much time I get to spend with the people I care about and those that give me comfort will be slim to none. 

but I can’t fight this breaking point anymore. It;s been a longggg time coming, and I’m almost relieved it’s here. Time to break out the journal, the planner, time to break out the attitude that gets shit done, time to break out the side of me that is fed up with my current bullshit and wants to be better. I can’t let this go forever. It’s grind time again. It’s time to sleep better, eat better, move better, treat other people better, engage more, work harder, get shit done. I cannot start my new job in this slump. I have to be on my A+ game from day one, out the gate. I have to show them why they hired me and what I can do for them. And that starts with reminding myself what I can do for myself. 

And there’s balance to all of this. I’m not done drinking wine or eating ice cream or taking rest days or choosing to live in the moment with others. I just need to find my balance again. Restore the scales back to where they were, restore myself back to where I was. Bring myself back from the brink that I have been standing on for weeks and weeks and weeks. It’s not easy, the opportunities in the next 3 weeks will not be handed to me. I will have to fight for every single one of them, and make it a priority. 

It starts tonight. It starts with getting my ass out of bed, drinking some water, making a salad for dinner, meal prepping some breakfast for tomorrow, getting to bed at a reasonable time. It continues tomorrow, when I get up at a reasonable time, get my ass to the gym, pack my bags for Tanzania, get all my travel documents in order, make the last purchases I need to make. Make my bed. Get outside. Take a fucking walk. Breathe some fresh air, read my book. 

I’ve always been an all or nothing person. The last month, taking care of myself has been off my radar, it’s been at nothing. Tonight I start to bring it back. I don’t want to go back to “all,” because I know that side of it isn’t good for me. I know what I can end up doing when I put my everything into “bettering myself” - I know that that pendulum swings waaay to fast and too hard in the other direction. I’m gonna play some video games tonight still, I’m gonna facetime my boyfriend tonight still, I’m going to probably have a small glass of wine tonight still. I’m just going to also do better, be better than I have for the past month. Better to myself and better to others. 

There is SO much I haven’t even covered in this post, but it’s a semblance of what I’ve been laying in bed for the past 3 hours thinking about. And it gets me going the way I need it to. I know what else is going on in my head, I know what else I need to address besides this ^. But this is a start. This is a breaking point. And even though I’m mentally tired and emotionally strained and physically under-nourished and dehydrated and my skin hates me and my body feels worn down and my motivation is close to zero....I’m walking headfirst into this.

My phoenix tattoo was inspired by a quote I saw: “in order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn.” And at the time I got the tattoo there was a specific moment in mind, a specific time frame of my life that I was thinking of, I have come to realize that it can apply in many ways. I’m going to have a lot more downs in my life, I’m going to be burned in my life, I’m going to be reduced to ashes. But we rise up. That’s all we can do. We hit our bottom, we hit our breaking point, we gather ourselves, and we rise.

this is a breaking point. and i will rise.

#personal #did NOT proofread this lmfao #or even read it over

[16cent-blog1]

CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES I For TEACHERS

How To be Less Stressed at Work?

It is never easy to start work perfectly and things will not always go in your way that fast. There will always be students, co-workers, or situations that will get in the way! And if you want to get the hang of it or at least survive the first years with less sweat, I am offering to you these 7 tips in choosing your battles in the profession. In my years of experience in the challengingly-fun teaching profession, here are the most helpful ones I have come up with. Enjoy!

#1. SET A FEW RULES AND FOLLOW IT CONSISTENTLY

A room without rules is chaotic. Have you ever lost your temper in class and shouted at your students? Then you felt embarrassed and guilty about it, told yourself you’re not going to do it again the next day. But then again, you still found yourself doing it, even worse. I was admittedly like this during my first year of teaching until I attended a very helpful seminar with an American speaker who inspired me to come up with my own consistent rule. We cannot always wish for a perfect class with a perfect flow of lessons. One of my most effective ways of taming students is the “Give Me Five” rule. It’s quite simple. I simply stand in front of the class and raise my right hand. After a second or two, students start to raise their right hand as well as they go back to their seats and wait for my next instruction. Once everyone is settled, I start to talk with my normal voice.

What is the Give-Me-Five-Rule?

I always introduce this to every class in the first day of the school year. They are only to do five very simple rules: Zip your mouth, Go back to proper seats, hands free, eyes on the teacher, listen. Disclaimer: The contents were adapted from the Google images. With this rule, I didn’t have to shout nor glare at students just to keep them still. I have also found this effective in a big crowd with the whole population of the school. It may be hard to establish this at first, but once you do it consistently, your teaching will more effective.

#2. SET A REASONABLE DEADLINE

Don’t get caught up in this major reason of stress! There were times when students come up to you asking for your considerations and extend miles of help for their projects or other requirements even if you’ve already set a due-date and reminded them a thousand times. We feel less respected then here come complaints and excuses, until we eventually get unnecessarily angry at them. More often than not, when they fail to accomplish the requirements, we give them a package size of project with a pea size of time. At the end, both we and the students are stressed. So when we require them to do something, think about the deadline first and as much as possible, don’t change it. Consider if it’s long enough to produce a great result, not just a petty finished product, and if you are also available to receive them.

As teachers, it is important to put some integrity on our words. When we set it, we stick to it. It is also one way to earn respect from our students.

#3 DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

There was one time when I entered the faculty room, a co-teacher was ranting, early in the morning about something. I was not intentionally listening but the tone of the voice, the negative words and emotions are too strong that I can’t help but eventually get affected. When I went out to meet my class, this naughty student didn’t even show any polite gesture to greet a teacher, so I scolded him. When they were having a seatwork, I noticed him not interested at all.

There was a cycle that went on and I was guilty for starting it. Negativity is everywhere! But the good news is, we can control how we receive them. This can be the example above, or a co-worker talking down on you, an unruly student, an unappreciative boss, a complacent parent, a slippery path, an awful smell, a bad outfit etc.

Before you let it get the better of you, ask yourself first:

Is it worth my attention and emotions? Will this compromise a relationship? Will my response give a positive impact?

If no, let go!

#4. LESS GOSSIP, MORE LIFE TALK

Women, especially, can’t help but talk. I got myself caught up in situations where I enjoy talking about others’ lives. Sometimes it’s healthy, sometimes it’s unnecessary. Gossip, in any reference we can look up to, destroys relationships.

Talk about people only when it’s helpful. The ‘talk’ becomes healthy if we talk about helping them about the situations they’re having or appreciating them for the great things they’ve done. The ‘talk’ now becomes life talk.

Talk about how you can be better, how inspiring something/someone is, how you felt about a situation and how you can cope from it. In this way, you and others can brainstorm about an idea or solution and both of you can inspire others. In this way, sarcasms, misunderstandings, misinterpretations may be avoided. In this way, life is much easier.

To make conversations more meaningful, look for a mentor.😉

#5. Make a SMART check-list and accomplish them

We only get productive when we are busy. So be busy with Specific-Measurable-Attainable-Realistic-Time bound goals for the day or for the week. Get yourself a planner or a mini notebook and commit it to that checklist of the day/week. It is good to know that you are aware of the things you need to do but putting them into writing is something else. When you are writing these mini goals, they somehow register in your subconscious mind and they become part of your day. I always do the listing before I sleep or in the morning before I start my work. I find this habit very helpful; it makes me busy and productive. I also feel fulfilled as I end my day. I don’t rush on things I should’ve done, I accomplish what I needed to do for the day and most of the time, I don’t forget commitments I agreed on.

#6. EAT BREAKFAST!

If you want to have a more peaceful day with your students, eat your breakfast! As the quote says, “Skipping breakfast is like trying to run a car without gas; you will not get very far. Food is the fuel for your body- start your day right.”

Most of the stress and the unnecessary emotions we have in the day are all simply because our stomachs are empty. It is actually one of the routines I take time in the morning. A breakfast can’t be that good if you can’t even savor it. So, as you have it, at least eat slowly and enjoy it before the rest of the day get the better of you.

#7. RESPECT YOUR COLLEAGUES’ PREFERENCES

Even though we have the same goal as educators, we have different beautiful ways of fulfilling it- and that needs to be respected. There is relativity in this matter, where in what is okay to you doesn’t always mean okay for others. In the small, four corners of the faculty room live a set of different personalities. Be sensitive to everyone’s preferences. Maybe you speak too loud or playing a loud music in the background, it may be fun sometimes but it helps to tone down when someone’s focusing on paperwork. Maybe your colleague’s quite out of fashion or would rather be simple, watch your words when giving comments. Maybe he’s not interested to something you’re very into, don’t insist too much. And the list goes on. This tip can also be applied when it comes to disciplinary actions.

I have confronted and observed teachers who don't do what the majority do. There were times I got offended by the disagreements of my terms and by others who judge and get impatient with my ways. When a problem arises, some prefer confrontation in general, some will insist in a one-on-one. But as I further understand, I don’t need to insist what should have been done and they shouldn’t have as well to me.

We can only encourage, share, and advice but we cannot force people to do the same. The rest is their choice.

SHARE if you agree :-)

#ChooseYourBattles iLoveTeaching TeachForExcellenceTeachWithLessStress

[goddamnitconnor-a]

I’d mentioned something about this a little bit ago, but there’s been something on my mind for a while, now, and I want to finally write something down. This is mostly because I was asked on the sidelines if I could make a post like this-- so here goes.

I’ll put most of this under a cut so anyone not interested can just scroll by without too much fuss, but first I’d like to say what this is all about.

Anxiety. Or, rather, how to not let it consume your life. Because we all experience it, most of us on a daily basis, but I’ve seen so few people actually do the right things to stop it from escalating to a critical point or try to do anything to manage it when they’re not in a critical mode. So, the rest of this will be cut for sake of length, but please:

If you have struggles with anxiety and recognize that it’s holding you back from enjoying any part of your life to the fullest extent, give the rest of this post a look over. These are honest, tried and true methods of reducing the impact of anxiety, both the obvious and less obvious, and I promise I wouldn’t offer them as suggestions unless I knew they’d have a beneficial impact on your overall health.

I’ll say this one last thing: if you’re thinking anything along the lines of ‘none of this will work for me’ or ‘my anxiety is too bad to do anything about without medication’ or ‘I’ve tried everything before and nothing really works so why bother’, then I’m speaking directly to you: please read the rest of this post. I don’t say it often, but you are so wrong.

Firstly, before I begin spewing out suggestions, everything I talk about here I have seen take a positive effect on both myself (dealing with bipolar depression and I’m sure other shit by this point) and people with severe intellectual disabilities (autism being the primary diagnosis), whom I support and work very closely with. I’ve also taken two college courses focused entirely on managing anxiety through very different strategies (mental vs physical activities) and a handful of others on building mindfulness, confidence, and self-image. Honestly, though, I’m drawing mostly from the former experiences because there’s nothing like seeing the words in action.

These techniques will be listed here only briefly because talking about each of them at length would make this an entire book. I might go into more detail in additional posts, if enough people would like me to or I’m feeling especially talkative another day. They are listed roughly in the order of most effective or most necessary, but honestly they all work in tandem with each other, so saying one is better than the other is a little misleading.

Attitude: We’ve all got it. Some are better than others, and some are just downright-- wait. Not that kind of attitude. I’m talking about our attitude towards our own mental health. I’m sure a lot of people believe they’re just supposed to suffer as much as they do or that it’s not really so bad and changing is too much effort. Essentially, the message is saying ‘I don’t care enough about myself to make the effort for my mental health’ no matter how you say it. Point blank, that’s a pretty shitty attitude to have, and no one wants to have a shitty attitude. No one likes feeling like shit, we just kind of get used to it and grow numb to it out of self defense against our own brains. Not the best habit to pick up. But one thing is certain: if you don’t believe you can help yourself and if you don’t believe you’re worth the effort, then nothing else is going to leave much of a mark. It all starts here, friends, and it’s usually the hardest step to take.

Deep breathing: Has to be next, doesn’t it? And it’s a very easy next step after that last one. The rules are very simple: block yourself off from outside stimuli (whether this means closing your eyes or fixating on a fixed spot in the distance to focus your attention or doing whatever you need to in order to take a minute to yourself); take a deep breath in through your nose for at least five but ideally seven seconds (breathe in so your stomach expands and not just your chest-- your shoulders shouldn’t rise more than they do when you’re yawning or sighing); hold the breath for up to three seconds; release your breath through your mouth slowly (take at least three but ideally five seconds) and make sure to fully push all of the air from your lungs. Repeat at least three times and up to ten times, depending on how high your stress and anxiety are at the time. The idea of the numbers is equal parts providing a structure so that the breath is under your control and providing a distraction from any other thoughts that might intrude. If you’re focusing entirely on counting the seconds of your breath or focusing on how the breath feels going in and out of your lungs, then you’re much less likely to worry about anything else. So don’t get too hung up on the specific numbers; understand their purpose and adjust them as you need to in order to fit your current situation. Do this before you go into a full-blown panic attack. It’s much more difficult to focus on deep breathing when you’re in panic mode, but taking a few deep breaths when you feel the first signs of something coming on could lessen or negate the physical and mental strain. Remember: It takes less than three minutes, even if you do all ten breaths, and there’s no equipment or special requirements. That makes this by far the easiest thing on this list to do, and the effects it can have are fucking mind-blowing.

Diet: Okay, maybe this will be the hardest step. But it doesn’t have to be! Diet changes can be huge, cold-turkey everything bad or small, subtle changes that ease you into a better lifestyle over the course of a few months or even a year. Both are totally cool! In fact, I’ve done both. There is so much I have to say about dieting, but I’ll list out the major points. Stop counting. I don’t care what it is, just stop counting it. Right now. Because guess what: you’re not counting the right things. Things you should be looking at? Sugar content. How processed the food is. Artificial flavoring and high fructose corn syrup. Things that really aren’t that important if you’re organizing your diet to be balanced and actually healthy? Fat content. Calories. What a coincidence. Also, eat breakfast. I know it means getting out of bed a little earlier, but for all that is good in this world, eat breakfast. Snack more often (not on potato chips; try some fruit), especially in the morning when your body is trying to balance out everything from the previous night (or, you know, whenever you sleep). Fruit, vegetables, nuts, protein bars (check that sugar content!), hard-boiled eggs, cottage cheese, and yogurt are all super easy and cheap snacks to grab and most of them are portable if you’re out and about often. Lunch doesn’t need to be big, but it needs to exist on some level. Heavy lunches will weigh you down and make you tired much earlier than you would be otherwise but no lunch will sap your energy and also leave you feeling drained earlier in the day. Dinner should be focused on protein and this is usually where people actually eat their vegetables, so keep that up! If you’re going to have a lot of empty carbs (like fries, mashed potatoes, rice, etc.), you better plan on having a post-dinner workout because guess where that belly fat is coming from. If you have anything to eat before bed, make sure it’s at least an hour before and it should have as little sugar and calorie content as possible. Protein is ideal for this time of the day!

Exercise: Oh boy. All of these steps are sounding pretty hard, aren’t they? Good news! You don’t have to go to the gym. You don’t even have to go outside. And I’m not about to preach youtube workout videos and giant squishy balls to roll around on. I am about to preach yoga. I know we only ever see super attractive and skinny women perching themselves in ridiculous poses on a fucking mountaintop at sunrise with some inspirational quote plastered everywhere and that’s what we think when we hear yoga, but you know what? I’ve taken yoga courses, and the only one even half-capable of flipping herself upside down on her head was our instructor-- because she’s been doing it forever. Most people had to use blocks and bands to assist them with most of the poses. Yoga is not for the fit and bendy only; in fact, the less fit and bendy you are, the more you’ll probably benefit from the practice. A few simple stretches in the morning isn’t going to change your life, but it’s a start. There are plenty of free videos and apps around to help you get started with easy things that will make the rest of your day a little easier, and I guarantee you’ll start feeling so much better that you’ll get addicted to it. If you happen to already be a reasonably active person, then just make sure you’re getting at least 30 minutes of at least moderate activity in order to get the most benefit out of your workout. The most beneficial time to do any exercise is first thing in the morning after you wake up, but right before meals or mid-day when you might be feeling a bit of a drag are also ideal times. Anything above low-intensity exercise before you go to bed will definitely hurt your sleep cycle, but there are some yoga poses and other kinds of exercise that are actually very beneficial to relaxing and getting a better night’s sleep.

Meditation: This should be higher on the list, but again the list really isn’t a ranked thing. I’m only putting it this far down because I believe that meditation doesn’t always stick out to people as something especially helpful. That’s because meditation doesn’t show instant results and a lot of people do it very wrong, so they don’t get any results at all. Because of this, I think if the above techniques are implemented then meditation will become more attractive because some control and balance in your life will have already been established with the other things. I would recommend starting with guided meditation no matter what, if you’ve never done it before or even if you think you’ve been doing it ineffectively. Meditation is very flexible, which is one of the things I love most about it. Once you understand the real purpose of meditating and how to handle any potential distractions while you’re meditating, you can do it almost anywhere and at any time-- and you can spend five minutes with yourself or two hours. Any amount of quiet and calm for your mind will help it immensely! Also, if you’re feeling drained and are unable to do any stretches or exercises to wake yourself up, meditation can actually make you more alert and refreshed. This is especially helpful for people trying to focus on a task that needs to be accomplished but that attention span just isn’t cutting it. Meditation should center you, calm your mind, boost your focus, and clear your head of distracting thoughts and worries unrelated to the task at hand. Stress and anxiety should reduce and if you go into a deep enough trance, a sense of euphoria (similar to that infamous ‘runner’s high’) will accompany you for a while afterwards. If it’s not doing that for you, then you should probably seek out some sort of guide to help you meditate more effectively.  

Water: Just drink it. I won’t say that you can’t drink too much, because of course you can, but chances are high you aren’t drinking as much as you should be. It depends a lot on your activity levels, what you’re eating throughout the day, and your exposure to the sun or other high heat elements, but a few signs that you’re not drinking enough water are: if you get frequent headaches, especially near the top/crown of your head; if you get muscle cramps-- they can be anywhere, but leg cramps are very common and I experience stomach cramps easily when I’m dehydrated; if you’re thirsty (simple as that); if you find yourself yawning/breathing deeply excessively. Drinking water first thing in the morning will help you wake up and cold water before meals will reduce your appetite so you don’t overeat. 

There is so much more I could say about anxiety and so many other, little things that can be done to make things easier on yourself, but these are the really big ones. The ones that I guarantee, if practiced together even on a minimal level, will improve your health both physically and mentally to the extent that you’ll never believe you lived so miserably for so long without doing these simple things. Because here’s the hard news: We weren’t meant to sit in a dark room in front of a computer screen all day. We weren’t meant to play video games for 12 hours a day. We weren’t built to digest the obnoxious amount of empty carbs and overload of sugar that is basically forced in our face every time we turn around. Our bodies are meant to work and they’re meant to be maintained-- and if you feel like that statement doesn’t apply to you, you probably don’t understand your body as well as you think you do. I’m not saying I know anyone’s specific situation and of course there are always outrageous exceptions to even the most reliable of rules, but for the majority of people reading this, the only real block against you and a healthier you is just plainly you. That’s not an easy thing to accept or make peace with, but the sooner we realize that we most often are the only ones holding ourselves back, the easier it will be for us to help ourselves get better. These are just steps and suggestions. Just words on a screen. Any time they’re put into practice and any time they give anyone any sort of benefit, that victory is not mine. Don’t give me the credit. Because you’re doing all of it. And you’ve been able to all along, so I’m glad you’re finally waking up and realizing it.

#i could never pull the trigger // ooc #this got long anyway #and trust me #i could have said so much more #share this around if you think it'll help someone #reblog it or whatever #or just share the information yourself #just get some helpful info out in the world #the more you know

[yukheii]

kiss, bite, foreplay

notes: title is a reference to the song haunted by beyoncé, which inspired this piece

warnings: nsfw; jungkook’s drabble has hints of light bdsm and polyamory so if you’re not comfortable with that i suggest skipping his

disclaimer: blanket disclaimers

KIM SEOKJIN ◦ [cr.]

“Ah—Jin, stop, I’m gonna fall!” you screech through laughter as Jin finally seizes tickling your sides.

Any other time he’d pay your orders no mind and continue on tickling you to his heart’s content, but he supposed that maybe the shower wasn’t the best place to do this.

Jin laughs at your tight grip on his shoulders, “If you did fall, holding on to me would only bring me down with you, you know.”

You growl and slap his chest, but are quick to lay your head there right after. You let the warm water cascade along your bodies before finally replying, “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”

You hear Jin’s laugh reverberate in his chest. You’re too cute for you own good, he thinks. “Stop laughing at me,” you mumble.

“What are you gonna do? Bite me?” he quips.

His words bring back flashes of your night together; bits and pieces of images of Jin’s soft lips trailing along your body replay in your mind. You remember the way he used those same words against you just a few hours ago.

But this isn’t last night; you’re not tied up to the bed and if wanted to, you could bite back.

You look up, your chin poking into his chest as your angle your head upwards. You squint your eyes as your boyfriend continues to both chuckle and coo at you. You huff, deciding that’s exactly what you’ll do.

You nip at his skin, just under his collarbone, “Maybe.”

MIN YOONGI ◦ [cr.]

“Funny,” you scoff, “I’ve never seen you have this much energy in the morning before.”

Yoongi hums into your neck and bites you—punishment for your snarky words—before carefully licking the wound. His left leg brushes against yours under the sheets, and you feel his boner as his body moves into yours.

The hand previously sprawled along your stomach reaches up to cup your face, turning it the opposite direction from where his mouth was on your neck, allowing him more planes of your bare skin to nip at.

“We’ve never had morning sex before,” he finally mumbles, taking your earlobe between his lips for a spilt second.

You inhale sharply, before trying to let your breath even out. “And you decide the morning I’m supposed to meet up with Youngjae is the best fucking time?”

Yoongi brings his hands to your chest. He flicks his thumb across your nipple over the thin cotton of your shirt. You can feel his wicked smile on your skin as he buries himself in your collar bone, “I like to be spontaneous.”

You roll your eyes just as Yoongi props himself on his knees, semi-straddling your half-naked body. He admires the dark circles beginning to form along your neck.

“You’re a sadist.”

“I’m an artist,” he chuckles, bringing your wrist up to his mouth and sucking just hard enough to leave a bruise to match the left side of your neck.

“Have fun with Youngjae, baby.”

JUNG HOSEOK ◦ [cr.]

You’re not quite sure how but less than halfway into your movie night you’d ended up in Hoseok’s lap with his mouth hot on your neck, but you weren’t really complaining.

His hands reach under your shirt to pull you even closer to him as his tongue works its way around the base of your neck.

“Fuck, Hoseok.”

Okay, maybe you were complaining.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he tuts, scraping his teeth along your skin, “You have to be quiet, doll. The boys are sleeping.”

His voice is gravelly and low and commanding and so so hot you moan in submission. But with the end of his sentence, his teeth retract and his endless teasing kisses return. He doesn’t suck hard enough on your neck, doesn’t grind deep enough into your hips, doesn’t give you what you want.

“Fucking hell, Hoseok, do something, please,” your whine pathetically.

He pinches your waist when you try to roll your hips. You hear Hoseok scowl into your skin before he’s biting into your collarbone, sure enough to leave a deep bruise. You roll your eyes back, his warm tongue finally relieving some kind of wanting on your body.

But when you moan out again, he’s quick to take a hand off your hip and coil it around your throat.

“I thought I told you to be fucking quiet.”

You don’t respond verbally, only nod, and it has him chuckling in the most sinister way. He presses his thumb a little deeper into your neck. He likes watching you choke at his hand, “So now you want to listen to me? Think you can just listen when you feel like it?”

He clicks his tongue, shaking his head and slowly drags his thumb along your bottom lip. He suddenly pulls your face forward, so that your right hear is directly in front of his mouth. He licks the shell of your earlobe, tugs with his teeth and laughs, “That’s not how my rules work, baby.”

KIM NAMJOON ◦ [cr.]

Namjoon’s quote on quote soft side is not one he shows publicly very frequently. That’s not to say your boyfriend parades around openly proclaiming his dominatrix fantasies—because he, really, doesn’t—but he’s not one for aegyo every waking moment of the day.

But he is cute. Really cute, if you do say so your self. And his cute habits are your favorite. Like the way he sits at the kitchen counter on a morning like this, very slowly cracking open eggs, so careful as not to break them.

He’s adorable.

“Namjoonie, what are you concentrating so hard on?” you question, coming behind him, wrapping your arms around his neck to make sure you don’t startle him.

“I, ah, um,” he blushes, “I was going to make breakfast, but I gotta, ah, you know, crack the eggs first.”

You giggle, letting your chin rest in the crook of his neck, before kissing his cheek, “You’re so fucking cute.”

“Ah, stop,” he says, flustered as you nuzzle your head further into his neck, “I’m not cute.”

“Yes you are,” you retort quickly. You place an open-mouthed kiss where his neck meets his collar. “You’re so. Fucking. Cute,” you reiterate, kissing him in between words. 

You don’t have to look up at him to know he’s a blushing mess, but just the thought of it makes you smile into him.

“Baby, don’t, if you leave a mark the boys will see,” he whines at the soft sucking on his neck, but tilts his head anyway.

“Would that be a problem?” you ask, dragging your nails along his sensitive neck, “Maybe I want the boys to know just how much I love my baby.”

PARK JIMIN ◦ [cr.]

“I’m going to fucking murder you,” you swear, scowl in place as you look down at Jimin.

He has the audacity to fucking giggle and scrape his nails down your sides. What a piece of shit.

“That’s no way to talk to someone who’s about to eat you out, is it?” Jimin muses with that stupid fucking smirk on his pretty lips.

“I’d be talking a whole lot less if you just got to it already,” you growl, feeling Jimin’s breath ghost over your core—again.

Jimin makes note of your words with an audible hum, but also makes it his point not to take them into account. He nuzzles his nose over your panty-clad cunt, dragging his lips along the inside of your thigh. As slowly as he can, he beings to litter kisses along your thighs, enjoying the way to beg for him to do more.

He makes it all the way down to your ankle on your left leg, and then retraces the trail of marks he’s made back up to your hips.

“Chim,” you moan when he bites the meaty part of your thighs, tongue jutting out to cool the burn right after.

He reaches out to pin your thrashing arms on either side of you.

“Look at me,” he orders. He smiles lopsidedly at the eye-contact, surprised by your obedience, before licking a broad stripe over your underwear.

“Such a good girl,” he hums. The vibrations go to your stimulus starved clit, and you’re on the verge of tears. But then Jimin is sliding your panties to the side, “Good girls get their pussy eaten.”

KIM TAEHYUNG ◦ [cr.]

“Tae, stop, no more,” you groan, attempting to push his body off of you—or at least get his face away from your neck.

The two of you had been on vacation for about a week now and Taehyung has refused to leave your side. More specifically, his lips seemed to be permanently attached to your neck, and his dick inside of you, for the entire duration of this trip.

And that was fine, because truth be told, you couldn’t stay away from Taehyung either. But the both of you had to return to work on Monday, which means you were left with only three days to hope and pray that all your hickies would start to fade.

“Taehyung, come on,” you drag out, sighing deeply as he sucks oh so gently at the weak spot right below your ear.

“You’re full-naming me now?” he responds lazily, no real intentions of holding a conversation.

“You—ah—you can’t leave anymore.”

“You don’t sound too convincing.”

“Taehyung.”

“Alright, alright,” he gives in, but you can feel, practically hear, the grin on his face, “I won’t leave anymore.”

You exhale, thinking you’ve finally got through to him, but you’re proven wrong when you feel him kissing at the dip in your collar. You groan, your skin still sensitive from the same spot he’d spent torturing last night.

“Tae, you just—”

“You said I couldn’t leave anymore,” he says, looking up at you through his eyelashes, “You didn’t say I couldn’t go over what I’ve already done.”

JEON JUNGKOOK ◦ [cr.]

“You look so pretty like this,” you praise, taking in the cream chiffon bows tied around his wrists and the way his adam’s apple bobs behind his black choker. “Such a pretty boy.”

Jungkook whimpers when you drag your nails down his chest, catching one of his nipples. He feels lightheaded—between your words and the restrains and the lips kissing deep into the dip of his hips, Jungkook feels like he could pass out.

“Doesn’t he look good, Hoseokie?” you reach out to bring your hand to the back of the older boy’s head as he continues to leave kisses along Jungkook’s hips.

“Yeah,” Hoseok he stops to look at Jungkook’s eyes and the lust swirling in them, “Really good.”

“You’re twitching so bad already, Jungkookie,” you point out. Hoseok lays his hand flat on his stomach, pushing him back into the mattress, “Hobi and I have barely touched you yet.”

“Want you,” he mewls, “Please, touch me.”

“But you look so good like this, Kookie,” Hoseok moves his kiss tease from his hips to jaw, “What if we don’t, huh? Gonna cum untouched for us?”

Jungkook moans from the pressure on his cock when you straddle him. You sprawl your hands over his pecks as Hoseok continues to trail wet, sloppy kisses wherever he pleases.

And when you rock your his hips forward, he does. He whines and groans and arches his back up into as much as he can, sensitive everywhere he can think of between you and Hoseok. Because of you and Hoseok. You two watch on with half-parted lips as Jungkook comes down from his high; watch as his chest heaves and his ears go pink and his eyes double in size.

You reach over him, stroking his flushed cheek, “Such a pretty, pretty boy.”

#bts smut #bts scenarios #bts reactions #bts fake texts #kim seokjin #bts jin #min suga #min yoongi #jung hoseok #bts jhope #kim namjoon #bts rm #park jimin #kim taehyung #bts v #jeon jungkook #jeon jeongguk #m:ot7 #*nsfw

[jiminandlemonade-blog]

Penpals / Don’t Leave Me - Part 4

Jimin:  

Series: Fluff/minor angst  

New to the series? Part 1

Missed the last chapter? Part 3

You honestly weren't ready. You didn't want your heart to explode or your mouth to gape open when you saw him on the screen. That is, if he looks anything like he did in the picture he sent you. It was a Saturday so no school. A prime opportunity for you to both talk for a while. You had your laptop sitting open, an orange juice and a bowl of cereal next to you that your father had just brought up for you.  

You were browsing the internet whilst eating your breakfast and came along a video ad for an acting audition 20 miles away from you next week. It was to play a role in a small drama series and the description fitted you perfectly. "I could do this!" You thought, but sighed when you realised that your lack of confidence would hold you back. You couldn’t stop thinking about it though when scrolling through the internet some more. The idea of this audition was playing on the back of your mind.

You walked downstairs with your glass and bowl once you were finished your breakfast and heard a 'ping' come from your laptop when you were half way up the stairs. You started running as fast as you could to reach your laptop. Your legs taking control of every action you were making. 

Park Jimin: Y/N, are you ignoring me?

He sent a laughing emoji too, knowing he was only joking.

Because your laptop was open, you've been online on Skype this whole time..  

Y/N: Sorry Jimin! I've just woke up and had my breakfast. I'm quickly going to get ready and then we can Skype  

Why did you just type that? You knew you didn't want to do it in case you got lost in the eyes of those who belonged to Park Jimin but in the moment, you didn't care, you just wanted to see him, the real him.  

You had been ready for about 5 minutes and you were questioning every decision you were about to make. You really felt something deep for him and couldn't put into words what you were feeling, why or even how. You had only ever contacted him via letter or through Facebook Messenger!

Your head and heart were giving you conflicting ideas, where-as your hands very eager to see him. Before you knew it, your hand was reaching out to your laptop and clicked the video call button. "No turning back now" you thought to yourself, knowing that you would look idiotic if you were to cancel the call.  

Within a matter of seconds, Jimin answered the call. "I mean, what's the point in a Skype call if all you're going to show me is your wall?" You giggled, noticing the darkness of his room. "No, I'm here" he answered in slightly broken English, "I just like to lie in the dark and my screen brightness turned all of the way down". That's exactly what you did. He was just like you. "How about, for me, you turn a light on or turn the brightness up a bit?" You chuckled, watching his hand make it's way over to the brightness button of his laptop and his face getting brighter to the point the screen was just all white. He finally corrected the brightness so that he didn’t resemble Caspar. 

He was gorgeous. Even more beautiful than you expected. He was wearing a black and royal blue check shirt open with a black tee underneath and his hair was jet black. You could hear your heartbeat and felt as though you could feel it at the back of your throat, it was that powerful. You both seemed to be looking in awe at eachother, like none of this was real.  

"So," you started, trying to break the silence, "I thought you said you weren't very good at speaking English?" You questioned, realising that what he had said so far was quite good for somebody who called themselves 'satisfactory'. He giggled. "I'm okay at it I guess. But I really need to think about what I'm saying" he replied. You could tell. He would pause after a few words and raise his eyebrow to try and pluck the word from his head. You found it adorable.

Before you knew it, the Skype conversation was already an hour in and you both had been talking about absolute nonsense. Big Bang, K dramas, food, the possibility of alien life.. All sorts. No matter the topic, you could feel yourself falling harder. You wanted to get out of it, but didn't at the same time.

"You seem to like cryptic messages" you said, leading off on a new topic of conversation and talking about Jimin's CD. You were also trying to take your mind off your racing heart. "Yes, I do. I thought you would too" he smiled, gazing back at you. "You're right. It's weird how much you seem to know about me" you replied back, wondering how he seemed to second guess you. "I know, it's weird for me too. I just get these feelings about things I think you'd like and I seem to be right all of the time" he replied, winking at you. That wink. It sent you to hell heaven and back.  

The conversation carried on for a while longer when you heard a 'ping' coming from your Facebook messenger that was open in another browser. You went to click on your browser and before you could even realise what was happening, the video ad for the acting role started playing in the background. "Please, don't hear that" you prayed to yourself.  

"Acting, huh?" He smiled. He heard. "I thought you weren't going to pursue that?" He questioned. "I was browsing the internet this morning and I just found it. I honestly wasn't looking for any acting jobs. I seem to fit the role perfectly. It seems like fate. I'm just not confident enough.." You trailed off. He smiled at you and seemed to be attacking your every being with questions radiating from his face. "Why have you got the tab still open then, if you're not going to open it? He questioned, not realising what his gaze was doing to you. It was as if you were being put into a trance.

"Um, I, honestly. I don't know" you sighed back after a few minutes of gawping at him. "I tell you what Y/N. Let's make a pact. You want me to go on auditions, yes?" He asked. You replied with a nod of the head. "Okay then, so you told me to go for dancing and singing auditions. How about, for every acting audition you go on, I will go for an audition?". He looked nervous saying those words. A complete stranger was willing to put his own personal embarrassment and fear on the line for you, so that you could follow your dreams. Why didn't he live closer?

How was it that you had never met him but had every faith in him? How was it that he could easily be lying about going to auditions himself but you somehow knew he wasn't? How was it that he made your heart rate increase every time he said your name?

"Just don't leave me if I fail, because I probably will" you laughed, lowering your head. "If you think like that, you'll never succeed" he replied. Jimin was full of inspirational quotes and you liked it.  

You both spoke more about upcoming auditions and you still had doubts lingering above your head but Jimin was trying to put them at ease. "Why not make your dreams your number one priority and then language and linguistics your back up plan?" He soothed, seeing you getting worked up at the thought of all your hard work at school not mattering anymore.  

It got to the point where you could see Jimin was exhausted. "Jimin, really, you can leave. It's fine. I don't want to make you tired" you confessed, staring back at his bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to go but I should" he said with a half-smile. "I'll talk to you tomorrow, yeah?" He asked, as if it was even a question. "Of course" you smiled back, not wanting him to leave either.  

You said your goodbyes and the call ended. Your whole body was in overdrive. Your head was doing that thing where you imagine so many different scenarios all at once and you wanted all of the nice ones to come true. Your heart was only just starting to return to its normal pace until you started thinking about him again. You then realised something..

Y/N: Wait

When are you going to go for your audition?

You completely forgot to ask him. The conversation was all encompassing on you and you didn't even ask Jimin anything about his audition plans. You felt bad that the whole audition conversation seemed to only focus on you. You could seem him starting to type as you went to close the lid of your laptop so quickly opened it again.

Park Jimin: I hoped you weren't going to ask that

But um

It's tomorrow

An open casting call for a dancer in a music video

I was going to tell you tomorrow after it was done

To give you the courage to go next week

I only found out about this audition today too

I really do think it's fate

Y/N: JIMIN

IT'S 2AM OVER THERE

WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME

YOU SHOULD BE ASLEEP

Park Jimin: Don't worry

I run better on less sleep

I think it's all of the coffee I intake

I best be off if I want to make it to the audition

Wish me luck?

Y/N: Good Luck Park Jimin

You'll do amazing

I lo---

You backspaced what you had just wrote. Why did you just type that? It's like your hands took over you again. You couldn't be feeling this way. Could you? You shouldn't be feeling this way. Should you?

You slumped back into the fluffy pillows on your bed. The pyjamas you had changed into midway through the skype call started to make you very warm. "What is he doing to me?" You sighed. You eyed the CD of him dancing on your dresser drawer. "I can play it one more time, can't I?" You thought to yourself.

Part 5

#jimin #park jimin #bts jimin #jimin imagine #jimin imagines #jimin scenario #jimin scenarios #jimin reaction #jimin reactions #jimin au #jimin writing #jimin writings #bts imagine #bts imagines #bts scenario #bts scenarios #bts reaction #bts reactions #bts au #bts writing #bts writings #bts fluff #jimin fluff #jimin series #bts series

[condensed-theorem-shop]

some anecdotes, an odd poem, and incidental history

(1) some anecdotes

The other day, I was trying to find the text of an old childhood favorite poem of mine, and google just wasn’t turning it up.

This happens to me pretty regularly. My early poetry was almost entirely from the Oxford Book of Poetry for Children, which is fantastic and gorgeously illustrated and full of the most eclectic selection of poems imaginable.

It’s got all sorts of nursery classics, of course, from Carroll (“...If seven maids with seven mops/Swept it for half a year...”) to Silverstein (“Nobody loves me/Nobody cares/Nobody picks me peaches and pears...”).

Then there’s the classics that maybe aren’t so obviously for children, like Dickinson (”I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you -- Nobody -- Too?”) and Yeats (“The silver apples of the moon,/The golden apples of the sun”). Those seem reasonable enough once you put them with the others; “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” goes opposite Shel Silverstein’s “Nobody loves me,” with a cute silhouette of a little boy, and it seems as natural as anything to cut your teeth on Dickinson.

And then there’s the weird ones. These leave you wondering, as an adult, why someone put them into a book of poetry for children -- but as a child you don’t see anything strange about it, of course. And I tend to think it’s one of the great strengths of this book that it does include these; children have weird dark things going on inside their heads, and giving them words for those isn’t a bad thing. Still -- I wrote weird stuff, as a kid (like I don’t now, but), and it’s not hard to have some guesses why, once I look back on excerpts of what I was reading:

‘I wish the wind would blow through you,’     said Meet-on-the-Road. ‘Oh, what a wish! Oh, what a wish!’     said Child-as-it-Stood. ‘Pray, what are those bells ringing for?’     said Meet-on-the-Road. ‘To ring bad spirits home again,’     said Child-as-it-Stood. ‘Oh, then I must be going, child!’     said Meet-on-the-Road. ‘So fare you well, so fare you well,’     said Child-as-it-Stood.

‘The years passed like shooting stars, They melted and were gone, But the path itself seemed endless, It twisted and went on. ‘I followed it and thought aloud, “I’ll be found, wait and see.” Yet in my heart I knew by then The world had forgotten me.’ Frightened I turned homeward, But stopped and had to stare. I too saw that signpost with no name, And the path that led nowhere.

Yeah -- weird childhood. But fantastic -- both the childhood, and the poems. The latter really stuck with me. It didn’t hurt that they are all of genuinely excellent quality, though different kinds; obviously you can’t exactly compare Robert Louis Stevenson against Blake against “Solomon Grundy/Born on Monday...” head-to-head-to-head, but none of them are anything like bad at the thing they’re being.

Plus, it’s just really quotable poetry. Especially if your whole family’s grown up on it, so that everyone speaks the same language. I’m not sure a month of my life has gone by where I didn’t recite at someone --

Don’t Care didn’t care, Don’t Care was wild: Don’t Care stole plum and pear Like any beggar’s child. Don’t Care was made to care, Don’t Care was hung: Don’t Care was put in a pot And boiled till he was done.

(What can I say; nothing takes the wind out of a teenager’s sails like reciting that to them when they’re in the middle of a fit of pique.)

Or someone will get started off on nagging someone else with “A man of words and not of deeds/Is like a garden full of weeds/And when the weeds begin to grow/It’s like a garden full of snow,” and by the end the entire family will be reciting together for “And when your back begins to smart,/It’s like a penknife in your heart;/And when your heart begins to bleed,/O then you’re dead, and dead indeed.”

(I did mention it was weird poetry.)

There’s always late risers to be teased with “A potato clock, a potato clock/Has anybody got a potato clock?” Anyone tagging along at someone else’s heels can expect to hear “I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me/And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.” Breakfast is accompanied by the eggs poem, with quips for every way you can have them done (scrambled: “I eat as well as I am able,/But some falls underneath the table.”) Sleepy small children get “the Sugar-Plum Tree/In the garden of Shut-Eye Town” recited in full, if they’re lucky. And of course adorably bossy tiny people get tolerant recitations of “James James/Morrison Morrison/Weatherby George Dupree/Took great/Care of his Mother,/Though he was only three.”

All that to say, then: growing up in my house, this particular poetry gets under your skin. You find yourself thinking in it, at odd moments. You have quotes on the tip of your tongue and you’re not quite sure where they’re from.

So you go look them up, because it turns out that not everyone in the world knows what you’re on about when you start in on “The King asked/The Queen, and/The Queen asked/The Dairymaid...” And that one, it turns out, is Milne, and really everyone should know it; and later you discover that other poems are Blake or Lear or Yeats or Farjeon (and go “oh, that’s why I liked that one so much, no wonder”); and it’s weird and delightful to find out that these childhood poems of yours are actually the great classics of English literature.

So, yeah, half the time when you go look a poem up, yeah, it’s Auden or Wordsworth or someone, that would explain why it’s so good. (And, yeah, maybe this is why I find theories about ‘the canon is only considered so great because it is the canon’ less than compelling; for half the Great Authors out there I can remember finding them vastly, insistently fascinating well before their names meant anything to me.)

But then the other half of the time, you go look it up and it turns out there’s -- nothing. No one’s ever heard of that author. The full text of the poem isn’t even on google. And so you’re left with these lines that are written as deep in the quiet parts of your mind as this was the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses, only where you expect there to be a shared cultural construct: nothing.

The Terrible Path is one of those. It clung to my brain enough for me to end up making a setting inspired by it. It’s dark and eerie and bizarre, and the sum total the internet has to offer about it is a link from Trinity College that’ll let you download a PDF of the text. I’m not sure why it’s not better-known than it is; I’m no lit critic, but I really think it merits it.

It turns out, the one I was trying to find is another, though this one I at least have a bit of an explanation for.

(2) an odd poem

I ended up having to look it up in the same hard-copy book I read it in the first time, however long ago that was. (How twentieth-century of me, I know.) In this case, that wasn’t technically The Oxford Treasury of Children’s Poems, it was The Oxford Treasury of Story Poems, which has a slightly different selection but is much the same in spirit.

The title is Count Carrots; the author is Gerda Mayer; the one-line note says only from a Bohemian folk-tale called Rübezahl. It’s sandwiched in between Bishop Hatto (the exciting, child-friendly tale of the Wrath of God exacted in the form of the titular bishop being eaten alive by rats) and The Lady of Shalott (Tennyson, also surprisingly weird and dark).

The poem reads like a children’s poem; it’s written in a light, conversational tone. Free verse.

He’s the giant of the mountains; they call him Count Carrots. How he hates that nickname. Let me tell you how he came by it. Well -- there was that princess who -- Persephone-like -- had strayed from her companions. Perhaps you know the story.

(As far as I can tell, that right there? That’s the only place that’s been put online. This poem is nowhere.)

You can probably guess the basic outline of the narrative, just from that quote. The execution, though, is -- something else. The giant gets these odd little humanizing touches --

Some say he brought her gifts of precious stones to tempt her to love him. This is untrue, he was simpler than that. He brought her, I think, bilberries from the forest, baskets of raspberries, mushrooms, many sorts, which Bohemia excels in, and clumsy importunings, day after day.

And there are beautiful morsels of description, serving no purpose at all but to be there:

The fact is -- to paddle your feet in a mountain stream, shallow and fast and cold as molten ice, water which rushes and swirls over white pebbles, -- to paddle your feet in this on a hot day is pleasant and delightful: to wash in it, day after day, indubitably cold. So the princess had discovered.

The tone, already, is getting strange. This should be straightforward -- kidnapped princess, evil giant -- but there’s something bittersweet about every part of it: about the giant who’s really trying to please her, about the homesick princess, about her parents --

‘What shall we tell them at home?’ And who will comfort ever the queen in tears, the king in despair?

And then it gets weird.

The princess is lonely. The giant brings her a basketful of carrots from his garden, and explains that they’ll be magically transformed into “whomever, whatever, you wish.”

The princess wishes up her puppy and her friends and her retinue, and she’s happy again. (“She was gracious to the giant. She didn’t see much of him.”)

Then, on the third morning, they start to wilt -- her horse first, then her friends -- stumbling, their flesh shrunken, pale, complaining of headaches, dead in a ditch -- and, finally, carrots again.

(This is -- kind of horrifying, right? It’s not just me?)

The princess goes to the giant. The giant promises to bring her fresh carrots each day, to replace them as they wilt. This satisfies her for a while, but then she feels uneasy, so she comes up with a clever escape plan: she worries aloud that the giant might run out of carrots, and begs him to count them. While he’s distracted, she wishes up a pair of horses and a companion and rides home.

The ending is about as bittersweet and strange as you’d imagine from the rest:

Henceforth, the giant was called Count Carrots by all; a nickname he hates, as I told you at the beginning. Woe to him who so calls him in mischief. Let the impudent traveller, shouting his name, beware.

When I was small, I called his name into the forest: ‘Count Carrots! Count Carrots!’ then leapt into bed, half in fear. He didn’t come for me though. Could it be that perhaps he forgave me? He loves children, they say. -- May the forest stay green for him ever.

(3) incidental history

If you’re anything like me -- which, I acknowledge, is a bit of a leap -- this leaves you with two questions. One is: what was up with that poem? And two is: why has the internet never heard of it? (There are, after all, all sorts of poem archives online. Why does this one show up nowhere?)

I don’t have a really good answer to either question, but I have one answer, which split between them makes for maybe half an answer to each.

That answer is in the author. Gerda Mayer: Jewish, Czechoslovakian, born 1927.

It doesn’t take much to do that math. She was eleven in 1939, at the start of World War Two, whereupon Czechoslovakia was not such a good place to be a little Jewish girl. Gerda was (though one hates to use the word) lucky enough to find a place on a Kindertransport to England.

She’d stay in touch with her parents, writing them letters -- them still in Nazi-occupied territory, her off in England. Mayer, much later, writes about the experience:

I am on a raft and they are in a choppy sea. I am eleven, possibly just turned twelve, and they cry out to me -- though in the politest possible way -- ‘If you should happen to have a lifeline or lifebelt on the raft, if it is not too inconvenient...’ It is a forlorn hope. Their heads bob on the surface and the waves grow higher and higher.

Reading an excerpt from one of her mother’s letters, you can see what Mayer is talking about:

Under no circumstance do I want you to bother your benefactors who have already done so much for you; but if you should meet someone who strikes you as particularly kind...

Little Gerda never was able to find someone particularly kind. Her mother would die in Auschwitz; her father, in a camp somewhere in Russia. Mayer writes:

My father went hiking without pass- port or visa and was                                   intercepted My sister went mad my mother went into that Chamber trusting                                   in God God picked the bones clean they lie without imprint or name dear                                   mother

By this time, at eleven-or-maybe-twelve, Gerda had already been writing poetry for some time, and shown a distinct talent (though notable, perhaps, only to her parents as yet). Her first poem was written at age four (as any number of biographies available online attest), and saved by said parents in a “Baby’s Diary”.

(None of the online sources include a copy of the poem, as far as I can tell, but full scans of the diary are available online via the Center for Jewish History Digital Collections. My German might be up to the task of translating a four-year-old’s poem, but unfortunately it is definitely not up to deciphering her father’s cursive. If anyone else wants to give it a shot, pages 117 to 124 are dated from 1931-2, when she would have been four, so it should be somewhere in there.)

In any case, Mayer herself says that her poetry suffered severely as a result of the change in language. In a letter written at the request of, and published in, a poetry magazine, she says:

I was born in the Sudeten, the once-German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia. I came over at the age of eleven and, as I was surrounded by English speakers, my reading had caught up with my own age group before three months were out. In any case, I was reading Browning’s Pied Piper to myself and, came the summer holidays, What Katy Did. Conversely, my mother, in a letter from Prague, fretted that my German was deteriorating. If I had caught up linguistically, poetically there was a time-lag. My first English poem, written at the age of twelve was no better than one I had composed (in my pre-literacy days) at the age of four (proud parents had entered this into my ‘Baby’s Diary’) and a poem I wrote at the age of sixteen was on a level with one I had written at the age of eleven, just before leaving home.

This seems to me the most satisfying explanation available for why Mayer never became more famous than she has. It really doesn’t seem to be a lack of skill; the introduction to her Wikipedia article has Britian’s poet laureate praising her as a fine poet “who should be better known.”

Rather, Mayer is limited by writing in a second language (and one she learned late, at that -- eleven is old to be learning a new language). She compensates for this to some degree for writing children’s, and childish, poetry, where maybe a gift for vivid imagery and tone can compensate for the linguistic handicaps of writing in a second language (poetry! in a second language! I can’t get over how impressive that is to do at all).

Hence we have Count Carrots, which is effective partly because it’s really an adult poet, writing about adult topics, but using the format of children’s poetry; hence also we have commentary on her repertoire like this from Peter Lawson:

Although some of Mayer’s poems are aimed specifically at children, other collections feature what Peter Porter describes as ‘children’s rhymes for grown-ups’. Such poems juxtapose, in the lilt of nursery rhymes, the tentatively self-assured perspectives of children with adult knowledge of the murder of innocents in the Holocaust.

And Mayer absolutely makes this work for her. A characteristic ‘children’s rhyme for grown-ups’:

Grandfather’s house rose up so tall, Its steps were like a waterfall It had a deep stairwell, as I recall.

And down the banisters slid my mother, And her sisters, and her brother, And many a child, many another.

The banisters wobbled and down fell all. Down down, down, and beyond recall. And so I was not born at all.

Better it is not to have been, Than to have seen what I have seen. So deck their graves with meadow-green.

Or again:

The children are the candles white, Their voices are the flickering light.

The children are the candles pale, Their sweet song wavers in the gale.

Storm, abate! Wind, turn about! Or you will blow their voices out.

Mayer gets compared to Plath (doing her an injustice, I think, but I’m not overly fond of Plath) and to Blake (much fairer, in my opinion). But she’s nothing like as famous as either -- will probably never be famous, except for her story -- and I think that can be chalked up to the linguistic hobbles she’s working under.

But those don’t prevent her from writing truly great children’s poetry -- and Mayer knows that, and the Oxford editors, evidently, knew that, because the strange beautiful haunting Count Carrots somehow made it into my book of children’s verse.

#long #poetry #holocaust cw #death cw #horror cw

[potter-imagines]

Being Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Daughter...

Lin would cry the day you were born but he would also brag a lot.

He’d shower you with gifts but he was also careful not to overdo it

Chances are, (depending on your age and whatever year you’d picture this for) you’d be friends with a lot of the Hamilton cast/ and or their kids

There’s no doubt about it you’d be a freestyling genius much like him and musically talented.

And Lin would be so proud of this

Lin’s heart would melt every time you called him ‘dad’

He is probably one of the most caring, sweetest, and involved father out there.

And if your mother wasn’t in the picture, Lin would be sure to work to fill in her shoes.

He would attend all your school events and extra curriculars too.

On mother’s day he would plan a brunch inviting his sister and mother over making sure you knew you weren’t alone when it came to the amount of females in your life.

Whenever he goes to Richard Rodgers Theatre or goes to work for whatever project he’s working on he is constantly pulling his phone out to show his fellow coworkers pictures of you

He can’t help it

But one thing is for sure, Lin would make sure you knew how strong of a woman you were. Being a strong activist for equal rights Lin knew how easy it was for girls in today’s society to feel weak and defeated by the powerful and he never wanted you to experience that. So he would make post-it notes and stick them in your lunchbox, on your mirror, and anywhere he could find with sayings such as…

“I am woman hear me roar!” “Though she be but little, she is fierce!” “A strong woman looks fear in the eye and gives it but a wink.” “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”

And because your father is one of the most encouraging and inspiring figures in the world, not only in tweets but reality as well, he excels at giving the best, most needed pep talks when you’re down in the dumps.

Lin had you speaking Spanish as soon as you said your first word

Lin would practically document your entire life. He liked taping you and taking pictures while you were doing casual activities such as coloring, singing, dancing, playing with your dolls, running around the house, etc.

Tobillo basically being your best friend

That dog follows you wherever you go

Lin has thousands of videos from when you were learning to walk, practically waddling around and Tobillo was right on your heel the entire time following you.

The whole Hamilton cast would be obsessed with you

Especially Phillipa

That girl loved you as if you were her own

And if you were old enough, you would join the Schuyler Sisters in their inbetween shows closet talk.

Sleep overs at Jasmine and Anthony’s while your dad is out of town

And they would absolutely LOVE having you over

You made them want to have kids that much more and Anthony loved taking you to the movies and Jasmine loved taking you out shopping

Speaking of shopping, Renee, Jasmine, and Phillipa are always spoiling you with the newest trends and what nots.

The Hamilton cast would be like another family to you

Always running around backstage with Groffsauce, who usually was assign babysitting duty.

The Schuyler sisters- as well as Leslie teaching you how to harmonize

Daveed loved helping you with your freestyling

You and him always got in heated battles- in good spirits of course

Playing childish games during intermission and between shows with Oak, Daveed, and Anthony.

Trying to braid your dad’s hair during his Hamilton days

Let’s be real, Lin would dedicate Dear Theodosia to you

And during Stay Alive (reprise) and It’s Quiet Uptown he had genuine tears pinching at his eyes as he fathomed the thought of losing you

But Lin would always run to you and spin you around every night after shows

The two of you would walk hand and hand together home and Lin would sing you to sleep every night

He’d love making you breakfast and basking in that domestic life

I could see him making some of the best pancakes in the world

And one morning when you were little, you convinced him to let you have a sip of his coffee

“Daddy, what’s that black stuff in there.” “It’s called coffee, bebé.” “Can I try some?” “Uh, I don’t think so, Y/n. You wouldn’t like it.” “Please, papi.” “Oh alright.”

Like he predicted, you hated it. The liquid burned your throat and young little you cried at the bitterness for at least a minute which broke Lin’s heart.

Lin would be the type of parent that would love to show you off to family and friends but when it came to posting pictures of you on social media, he usually made sure your face was covered, just to keep an element of privacy in his life.

But he does love tweeting stories about you or cute things that you do

Your childhood years would be a little hectic. Lin probably wouldn’t be around as much as he wants with filming, acting, composing and all but he would make an effort of a lifetime to be as involved as possible.

By your late teens you had already seen much of the world but that didn’t mean you were bored by any mean. Adventure was in your soul.

Lin would spend a lot of time with you during his time working with the film Moana. He liked to come to you to find inspiration.

Family trips to Disney World and Land

Lin is constantly trying to help you with his homework

“You know I was a teacher.”

Coming to him when you start learning about the American Revolution

“Well I mean you came to right person. I did write an entire musical about this stuff. Just use the album for a reference, it’s mostly accurate.”

Walking into your house one day after school infuriated as you set your pop quiz on the Schuyler Sisters in front of him, a large 9/10 circled with red pen.

“And I quote, I’m the oldest and the wittiest… My father has no sons… dad you cost me a perfect score! Why did you lie in the lyrics, I thought you said I could trust them!” “I’m sorry I forgot they had other siblings!”

Similar to your father, you swore like a sailor

Which also meant you were constantly getting scolded and death glares from your father who claims “He didn’t raise you to speak like that.” Even though you both know he did.

But honestly I could see Lin being into girl drama. Like when he picks you up from school and sees an annoyed look on your face he’d just shake his head and say,

“Spill the tea, honey. I’m ready!”

And on your bad days after dropping you off at home after school, Lin would drive to the nearest DQ and Chick-Fil-A and movie store returning home with gifts in toll.

He was one of the only people in the world you trusted enough to tell everything too

Dad jokes, so many dad jokes.

“Dad I’m thirsty. Do we have any-“ “Hi thirsty nice to meet you I’m Lin-Manuel.”

Being very close with your grandparents

Your grandpa teaching you how to cook

Your grandma would spoil you tbh

Girl talk with your Aunt Luz

Your dad would be really big on making sure you knew and understood the importance of equality and treating others with respect. 

Weekly meals at their place where your grandpa is also telling tales

“You know pequeño, when your father was your age I couldn’t get him to shut up!” “Papi-“ “He was always doing his rapping, talking fast and never making sense but he had passion just like yourself so don’t you ever give up on yourself carino. If your father did he would not be where he is today- and neither would you.” “Thank you abuelo.”

And when you finally do make it, doing whatever or being wherever that may be, you’ll have Lin’s as well as the rest of your families support because Lin knows exactly what it feels like to have millions of people doubt you and laugh at you for doing the unexpected so his support will never run out.

When Lin finds out you have a passion for writing and composing, he immediately takes you with him for a daddy daughter date to the studio.

He pretends to be out of ideas for a song and you play along knowing it would be a lot less painful to take the easy path.

“Well there are a few different projects I’ve been working on lately. They aren’t too good… pretty shitty-“ “Y/n.” “Sorry… but uh, you can have a look I suppose.”

Becoming a co writer beside your dad on his next project

Going on walks and hikes together with Tobillo

But for real though Lin would be insanely protective over you

Like when it comes to you Lin always needs to know where you are and constantly has eyes on you

When you got your first boyfriend/girlfriend Lin would FLIP

You’d suddenly become a player in the game ’21 questions’ or more like 101 questions when it came to your dad

He demanded meeting your significant other and no matter the gender, he held his strong demeanor and hardly cracked a smile- well until he saw how happy you looked in their presence.

But eventually he’d come to term with it. Although he would always see you as his little girl, he knew you had to spread your wings and he was not about to hold you back from doing so.

And when you finally land a lead role on an upcoming Broadway show, Lin is ecstatic.

Every day he calls you to ask how rehearsals are going partly because he’s interested and excited for you but also because he remembers his restless days and nights where he’d come home so stressed he’d forget to eat for days. He didn’t want to see you go through the hardships he did.

Ironically enough the new production is held, opening night, in the same old theater you grew up in, Richard Rodgers. Home sweet home. 

And on opening night you can guarantee your father is sitting front row with four bouquets of various flowers surrounded by all your family and friends as well as a handful of the original and new Hamilton cast.

And he would cry. A lot.

But he would also be that dad that right before the show starts, as the lights are dimming, he stands up and shouts,

“Go Y/n!”

His proud dad tweets would be never ending that night

After the production he was sure to be the first backstage and the first to hug you.

“You did it, you did it! I’m so proud of you, mi ángel. Congratulations!”

You’d be lying to yourself if you said your dad didn’t have a surprise party planned for after the play because he did.

Not to be a downer but there would be days where Lin would cry himself to sleep thinking he hasn’t done enough, or given you the life you deserve. He worked himself far too hard to make sure you had everything you could ever need and knew you were loved, but sometimes he couldn’t help but fear the worst.

Although at times he can be overbearing, you wouldn’t want it anyway else.

This was so fun to write oh my lord, hope you enjoyed!

-Daizy xx

#lin manuel miranda #lin manuel imagine #lin manuel miranda imagine #lin manuel x reader #hamilton #alexander hamilton imagine #alexander hamilton #hamilton imagine #hamilton cast imagine #Anthony Ramos #anthony ramos imagine #anthony ramos oneshot #Daveed Diggs #daveed diggs imagine #Jasmine Cephas Jones #phillipa soo #renee elise goldsberry #phillip hamilton #poly hamilsquad imagine #poly hamilsquad #John Laurens #john laurens imagines #john laurens imagine #alex hamilton #alex hamilton imagine #Hercules mulligan #hercules mulligan imagine #marquis de Lafayette #lafayette imagine

[thea-studies-blog]

morning routine & tips

Since our morning can be that make-or-break time that sets you up for a good day or a bad day, I googled a lil bit to try and find some stuff that might be helpful for establishing few nice habits that  (with no special effort I hope) will put you on the path of stringing together good day after good day. So here they are; ♡

1. Drink a glass of water (if possible warm one so you get your body going because it was 8! hours without any water!! And you can add some lemon that will help get your digestive system ready for the coming meals, and make the water tastier or maybe a little bit of honey!

2. You probably heard this one like hundred of times but TRY TO WAKE UP EARLIER! There are so much benefits of waking up early and here are some of them that people who wake up early are proved to do;

Studies from 2008 showed that people who wake up earlier earn better grades!

Better planners - using that extra time in the morning for organization and setting goals is awesome?!

Get better sleep (the irony tho, but for real!) - your body is getting more restorative sleep and is in tune with earth’s circadian rhythms.

They are more optimistic and satisfied

3. Do a stretching routine 

 Your body will be thankful and you’ll feel awesome. Here’s a 5 minute stretch that you can do in the morning to wake up your body (or if you have any work out routine - that’s even better!)

4. Listen to your favourite music

Or anything that is uplifting and makes you feel good! Here’s one playlist that’s really calming if you don’t have any ideas on your mind. If you don’t feel that one, check out this one!!

5. Eat a real breakfast

Because you will have more stable blood-sugar levels, and you will be less hungry over the course of the day. And these are just the statistics for people who eat any breakfast. When you eat a healthy breakfast, the doors to a productive day swing wide open. A healthy breakfast gives you energy, improves your short-term memory, and helps you to concentrate more intensely and for longer periods!! So eat and NEVER EVER skip it please!

6. Smile at yourself for 30 secons in the mirror

This one might be awkward (well, it is) but you’ll be surprised at the positive thoughts it inspires plus it’s basically just a matter of designating some time as true “me time” and seeing a happy you reflected back in the mirror.

AND 

7. Set 3 most important things you need to get done for today. 

Once you establish the habit of getting the most important three things of the day done, you’ll be able to build up confidence and go for bigger and bigger things. A funny thing also happens, all of the smaller stuff that you thought needed to get done either does get done without being on your list of three, or fades away because it wasn’t that important to begin with.

And before finishing, I just want to leave this quote here; 

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” ― Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

#studyblr #studyspo #tips #ref #reference #morning #morning routine #morning tips #studyspiration #studyign #focusign #studying #getstudyblr #quotes #change #change quotes #changing #changing quotes

[colourline]

15 ways to take care of yourself through the winter depression + a Spotify-playlist

If you're living in the northern part of the world like me, you're in the winter season which also means a lot less daylight. For some, this means that the mood sometimes drops a few levels.. and then it's extra important to be gentle and patient with yourself.  Someone I know who struggles with winter depression reached out to me and asked for some advice or things to do when the winter depression is sneaking up on us. I thought she probably wasn't the only one going through this. I know what depression can feel like, but again depression feels different to different people, but I've written some things I know have either helped me or others. And even if you're not a sufferer, we all need some self-care now and then.  There are different things that work for different kind of people. One thing can be a stress-factor for some and a stress-reliever for others. Find what works for you. Our bodies and minds respond differently to different things..

Here are some ways you can take extra good care of yourself this winter.. 

 Check in with yourself. I received an advice ones, she told me that every morning before she went out of bed, she would ask herself what she had the energy to do that day. She would really check in with herself and be honest. This may take some practice, especially if you have ignored your feelings and body's needs for a long time. The less you've taken care of yourselves, the less you probably have the energy to do, but the more you practise self-care the better your body will feel. Some days don't have the energy to plan a week ahead, some days it's enough just "planning" the day in front of you. Some days it's necessary to take one day at a time. And that's o k a y .   

Eat breakfast in bed. Some days it's just too much to leave bed, but it can also make us feel even more hopeless. Why not make your own little shelter in bed. Camp there. Bring a cup of tea (the bigger the cup the better). Sometimes I feel good enough to do some "work" (like writing a blog post) in bed. Other times all I can do is read a book or watch Netflix (but let's be mindful of what we watch, sometimes what we watch make us feel even worse about ourselves). Again, it all depends on what we need. No shame in staying in bed. ;)  

Organise your Pinterest boards. Okay okay, listen.. for some this can feel like a totally unnecessary chore, if so.. then don't! BUT if you're like me and you like organising (bonus: while looking at pretty pictures) then I've found this is perfect for me! I still feel somehow productive and cleaning out old pins actually makes me feel a little better. It's always good cleaning out. On my Pinterest boards whenever I need inspiration, and then I always appreciate that I cleaned up (it's also interesting to see how your personal style & taste develops over time, I should totally write a blogpost about that some time!) and Pinterest's algorithms will know better what to show you.  

Pin some quotes. ..talking about Pinterest, when I burned out last year I dedicated a whole Pinterest board to self-care. It's called // care, love + grow yourself and I'll link to it right here. So if you're in need of some self-affirmation, good quotes or just wanna read something encouraging - check it out and pin away!  

Occupy your mind. I'm all about feeling your feelings and give yourself time to listen to what your heart is telling you aka. not pretending like you don't have feelings, BUT there are times when the mind just won't shut up. I usually explain it as "a war in my head". Now, you only know yourself if you're just avoiding your own feelings, please don't do that, eventually, they will find a way out. When all that is said, I have days when my anxiety is sky-high and my depression keeps re-playing "the-bad-memories-movie" to me. And no matter how many times I try to think about something else, it just doesn't work. It keeps screaming. Music doesn't even work for me on those days. It just brings up even more memories, weird situations or dramas that doesn't even exist. If you've struggled with your mental health, I'm sure some of this sounds familiar. On days like this, I try to distract my brain so that I drown the war going on in there. But as always, there can be good and bad ways of doing that. When I'm feeling like this I like listening to a podcast, reading, writing, declaring, watching something I enjoy, makes me laugh or fills me with inspiration.  

Listen to podcasts. When music doesn't work for me, a podcast does. Then I'm focusing on someone else's voice. Or an audiobook if you're into that. And I can either learn something new, be inspired or enjoy some good entertainment.  

Read. If you can focus enough, then read. A book (check my recommendations: "Stuff that shaped me"), a magazine, a blog, some old cards or maybe a dairy from your childhood. I've found that whenever I enter into another world my minds get occupied, just great! Or if I find a blog I really like, I keep on finding new blogposts I wanna read (I recommend Ashley Morgan Jackson and A Girl Named Leney). When all that is said, even though I love to read, sometimes I just can't. I just get too distracted all the time.. and then I forget where I left and you know.. It's better to stop and do something else for a while.  

Write. Write something. It's a good way to get feelings out of your system. Or just get down on paper all the things swirling around in your head. If it's about a person, write them a letter and burn it.. or hide it, it's up to you. I actually wrote a letter to someone. I was tired of hearing their judging comments in my mind and needed it to stop. It actually helped me - I even shared it with you. Go leave a nice comment on someone's instagram post. We can all use some love. And what a beautiful thing it is to be supportive of others. Or maybe write a song? It works for the brilliant songwriters like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. Let me make it a cliche, write your heart out.  

Watch. Your favourite YouTubers. Or a great movie (May I recommend The Shack? This is an affiliate link, but 100% my opinion) If I need to focus on happier things I either go to my Pinterest board dedicated to The Cat Family. Cats always make me happy. There are so many photos, memes, videos.. may I recommend videos of cats getting scared of cucumbers for an instant laugh?! They're always a joy watching. Especially when you live a place where you're not allowed pets. If you like some food for your mind I also made a playlist out of my favourite bodypositive & mental health videos.  

Talk to someone. Skype a friend who lives far away. Call your parents or grandparents. Sometimes when we feel lonely or a bit sad is because we simply haven't spoken to a living human being.  

Fingerpaint. I know it sounds like something a kindergarten would do, but getting all the tools away and litereally using your body, your hand, your fingers to *smoosh* out the paint. Feel the texture. Play around. Let go of all the pressure to create something pretty. Use some colours that fit your mood and make those fingers work!  

Create a "hygge" atmosphere. It's actually gramatically incorrect, it should say "hyggelig", but since it's the noun version that's taken the world by storm, and probably the only one you recognize then I'll be a little gramatically incorrect, just for you, haha. I actually created a Pinterest board (has the fact that I'm a Pinterest freak sinked in yet? #noshame) it's called hygge by a danish girl. Yes I'm danish. I'm born in the country of hygge; Denmark. Any other danes out there? If you check out the board, you'll know it's the real deal ;) Anyways, whenever I'm feeling a bit weird or in need of some mood-boosters. I put on some of my favourite music, I light up al the candles, I mean ALL the candles, I'll find more if I need too. Make myself a hot cup of tea with milk! I might even make myself a little snack platter with whatever I find like some fruit slices, buiscuits, candy, some yoghurt with müsli.. you name it. Bring out your favourites and when you display it all on a plate it looks fancier, feels more luxurious and might even taste better (no promises). A blanket. Depending on what you need or want you can bring over a friend, a pet, a little brother, a book, a movie.. you name it, but creating a hygge-atmosphere can make it feel more homely. And a nice treat for ourselves. Sometimes just doing something for ourselves can make us feel better. 

Listen to some upbuilding music. I don't think it's a secret that music can make us feel things and we can resonate with the words. As promised in the title, I created a spotify-playlist filled with songs that bring hope, bring courage, take away fear and makes us feel less alone or makes us wanna change the world. It's called Fight for yourself-playlists. I believe the words we say and listen to effects us more than we know. I try my best to fill my playlists with good music - especially lyric wise. There's a lot of lyrics filled with destructive thinking, not honourable and disrespectful behaviour, not to mention words I'd never say out loud.  Feel free to share the playlist! (will continue to update it, so send me your suggestions!)

Create a self-care-box. Or feel-good-box. Whatever you wanna call it. Fill it with nice things. Like letters and cards you appreciate, cute notes, maybe your favourite perfume, some good-smelling soap, photos of people that make you smile, some nostalgic things from your childhood, your favourite snack (check the expiration date first!), some dried flowers, facemasks, a good hand cream, maybe even some scrubs, things that make you smile, feel better and taken care of.. you name it. I even have a album with screenshots on my phone of every time I receive a message or nice comment I wanna remember. I call it my happy album, with lots of emojis. One can never have too many emojis.  

Paint your nails & wear some lipstick. What nonsense. You serious? Yes. I've sometimes felt a bit of shame if I used "too much" time in front of a mirror, but you know what? I've found that when I've played around with some makeup, I've actually enjoyed myself. I've used time on me. I took care of me, myself and I. Even if I were just to spend the day at home, by myself. I did it for me, not for you. Actually; painting my nails has worked as a stress-reliever for me. Such a small weird thing, but first of all; it makes me happy to look at my pretty painted nails (as long as they're not chipped), we look at them all day long and the process of creating some art on my body has made me feel better. I've heard others talk about the power of putting on some lipstick. It's not the lipstick in itself that brings magic, but the symbol of putting on putting on some war-paint on our lips actually does something to our psyche. Believe it or not. It's a little like putting on a uniform. If you've ever worn a uniform or if you have a special dress code to work, you know that it makes a difference. Imagine a lawyer in a jumpsuit!? Or a cop in a dress? How we dress makes us look differently at ourselves and at others. It's not just about judging people, it's about what signals we send out to ourselves and each other, but let's stay on track. Putting on a little lipstick or painting your nails may not transform you, but can make a little difference in how we proceed ourselves. And on days we might not feel like dressing up (we all have those days) a little lipstick will do. And you know what, you guessed it: I have a Pinterest board for that too. It's called // hair & beauty  (I've organized them into different sections, so it's easier getting what you/I want ;) You're welcome)  

If you've got anything you do that helps you when you're feeling low or some self-care tips, feel free to share with us in the comments.  I wish you the best winter. I want you to know that this is a safe place. I hope you can feel less alone when you're visiting my online home. Know that the bad days won't last forever and that even the queen has days she doesn't feel good. You're not alone in this. If it encouraged you, please share it and pass it on to people you think could need a little extra encouragement, I mean who doesn't?  Thank you for reading. Thank you for being you! // Line Thybo Xx

#mental health #depression #winter depression #spotify #self-care

[gamethyme]

Let's Talk About 5E, Shall We?

I eat a lot of Mexican food. Probably too much, actually. But when I go to a new place, I'll generally order either something I've never seen before or chicken fajitas.

"Something I've never seen before" is pretty obvious. Those are likely to be the specialty of the house and will set them apart from the tacos and burritos that are ubiquitous on Mexican menus. Chicken Fajitas are a little less obvious - it's because chicken is a good platform to highlight unique or special spice blends. And I've never had two chicken fajitas that tasted the same. My wife, by contrast, orders enchiladas. Most of the flavor of an enchilada comes from the sauce, and - much like fajita spice - that can vary wildly from restaurant to restaurant. Most Mexican restaurants have more than one enchilada sauce (and many of them allow you to mix and match sauces on your enchiladas). So what does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons?  Especially the fifth edition of same? A lot, actually. I've been playing D&D since I was ten. It was 1e at the time, and we played it on the playground at recess. I didn't get to play a lot, as my parents were part of the satanic panic of the eighties. This means I definitely wasn't allowed to own any books or dice. Because of this, I played the simplest class. The one that had the fewest complex rules. In 1e, that meant I played a fighter. Why? Because the fighter's only real decision was "Which foe do I want to hit?"  Mechanically, 1e fighters were (and continue to be) super-boring. By the time 2e rolled around, I was familiar enough with the rules that I was able to play something different. I dabbled with Wizards and Rogues before settling on (don't laugh) Bards. Because Fighters continued to be boring. When Wizards dropped 3e on us, Feats made some interesting changes. Suddenly every class had interesting customization options (and Fighters were more interesting). Some of the fighter feats meant that there were occasional interesting decisions to be made. I only played a tiny bit of 3e (I was much more a DM than a player at that point).  By the end of 3e's run, however, it'd turned into an optimization game. "The best fighter takes and and ." Or "Check out this broken Feat combo!" Pathfinder took the optimization aspects of 3e and turned them up to eleven. The game's power curve was structured so that players who didn't optimize were left behind. It also highlighted those parts of 3e that I didn't like, turning them into the focus of play. Note that I'm very carefully not saying "Pathfinder was bad." I'm saying, "Pathfinder wasn't for me." Then we hit 4e. Suddenly every class was equally interesting. And theoretically balanced. Fighter powers/abilities hit harder or applied status effects (stun and knockdown were pretty common). Wizard powers/abilities did elementally-flavored damage and applied different status effects to foes. Feats were less-important than power selection. And now we have 5e. For those of you who are wondering, I haven't broken my self-imposed boycott of 5e. I received a copy of the Player's Handbook (PHB), Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG), and Monster Manual (MM) as gifts from a friend.  I spent the next few days following that gift reading the 5e PHB and ... meh.  I don't get all the love it gets. One friend, when he saw that I had 5e in my hands, asked if I was "finally tired of that tactical combat simulator" that 4e was. I've got news for you, Matt: All editions of D&D are tactical combat simulators. And 4e is the best/most interesting of the bunch for most classes. Every edition of D&D has fallen desperately short when it came to mechanically rewarding non-combat encounters. Which means that 5e is - for what I want in a game - significantly less-good than 4e. Because it's a less-detailed tactical combat simulator. Reading through 5e, it's like a bizarre cross between 2e and 3e. There's good in there, mind you, but for the most part it strikes me as a huge step backwards. The only real "killer app" of 5e is the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanism. And possibly "Inspiration," which lets you trigger Advantage. I did what I often do when I confront something that is so popular that I just plain don't understand: I went online and asked my friends. Here's what I heard from them:

Combat in 5e is faster. This is both bug and feature, as you can have multiple small combat encounters in a single session, but big set-piece battles are less interesting.

Classes in 5e have three sub-classes that characters move into at 3rd level. Only one of the Fighter subclasses is boring 2e Hit 'Em more/better.

There are fewer ways to apply fewer status effects in 5e, which is cleaner and easier to understand for newer players.

Combat in 5e supports "theater of the mind" better than 4e and 3e. While you can use a map and grid, it's not as strictly required as it was in those editions.

DIY players have an easier time tweaking 5e, as 4e was so tightly interconnected. Creating a power here-and-there for 4e was simple enough, but creating new classes was a lot of work.

Even a lot of 5e players expressed frustration with how boring and limited it felt after a very short time. One friend said, "Loved 5 E at first, got bored with it after a couple of years." And that was pretty close to consensus.

5E hits on more cylinders than 4E for me and also has some good ideas. I have played it several times and will likely play it again. 

All things considered, I would still prefer to play OSRIC, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Blueholme, or Low Fantasy Gaming.

Other games came up, too. Both OSR retroclones and newer branches of the d20 tree (Pathfinder and 13th Age especially). And games that aren't from that family (Fantasy Age got a lot of love).

Indie gaming legend Ron Edwards left a long comment that I'm going to quote in full, here:

I just played 5E for the first time, just a couple of days ago, as a player. It struck me as a very 2000s game, maybe even 2010 on the nose. That's not a slam, but identifying it very much as of its era, and not any kind of old-school whatnot which in this case makes most sense as precise marketing.

More importantly, as a game, it is caught like a writhing insect in what I called The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. If I play my character, in the sense of all this characterization and agency that the creation process fires up, then the DM cannot create the story, as everything about DMing and especially the published scenarios and campaigns emphasizes. And vice versa, perhaps especially, vice versa. Everything for the player presumes a DM who isn't actually the DM as written/encouraged, and everything for the DM presumes players who aren't actually those players as written/encouraged. The net effect is almost always the same: the players are reduced to posturing, establishing and repeating tropes, and (eventually) goofing in order to enjoy themselves, as the DM waltzes them through fights that lead to clues, and clues that lead to fights. 

Exalted, all over again, and that's merely a refined point of reference among a sea of game texts of this kind. 

As with so many of these games, the solution is obvious: pick one or the other, and ignore, as in obviate, reject, abandon, defy, reverse the text and most of the rules concerning the one you didn't pick. But that solution is not arrived at very often. The more usual one is to play while insisting loudly online that this is the most awesome thing ever, then to limp along wondering about or resigned to the necessary outcomes of the Impossible Thing, and eventually to shift into lonely fun with one's extremely expensive purchases.

 There was also a ton of nostalgia for 3.x.  Publisher/designer Cam Banks said (in one of his comments):

When I moved to 4E, I hit a wall with the way the game was designed to centre around powers/techniques/etc. As a 3rd edition designer, I knew that system back to front; I could come up with stats and monsters and spells on the fly, and I even ad hoc'd a prestige class for a player (and wrote the whole thing up the next day). 4E was an inscrutable black box by comparison. I ran it like I ran 3E, and stumbled. I couldn't make my own classes easily, I couldn't eyeball anything, even with the famous page 42. It was extraordinarily frustrating because I liked what they were doing with the game, but the game didn't let me in.

 Peter Darley said:

It seems like D&Ds primary strength, in any edition, is to be a lowest common denominator. I don't think I would ever chose to run or play it given the universe of games available, but since not everyone likes the same stuff, D&D is often something that people can agree on.

 I had more than fifty comments on that post.  I'd link to it, but it's on Plus and Google is shutting that down next week, so the link would be useless.  There was disagreement, but not much. And it never got heated. So the long and short of it, for me, is this: If I am forced to play D&D and am given a choice of edition, I will still choose fourth edition. I can see some of the appeal of fifth, and I might play it a bit to see how it compares to second and third, but I don't see anything there that I can't easily find in a dozen other games.  Realistically, though, I'm more likely to play something else. I didn't get into it here, but it's worth mentioning that the DMG for fifth edition is quite good with some solid advice that applies regardless of the game being played. It's a shame that the game itself is so uninspired. from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Ulyp0F via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

[thegloober]

Happy Marriage Advice: 11 Rituals That Keep Our Relationship Strong

In his book, The Seven Principles For Making A Marriage Work, renowned relationship expert Dr. John Gottman stresses the importance of “developing rituals that promote better communication and attunement with your partner.” In other words, creating (and sticking to) little things that help you enjoy life a bit more is essential to a happy, long lasting marriage. Maybe it’s a daily text or a weekly trip to the spot you first met.

ADVERTISEMENT

To see how this plays out in real marriages — and to offer you a bit of inspiration if you’re looking for a ritual of your own — we spoke to 11 dads about the small things they do to keep their relationships fun and exciting, no matter how complicated life may become.

I Always Leave a Note (or Dirty Drawing) in My Wife’s Lunch

“I’m a big note guy. I work better in the morning, so I usually handle the lunch-packing duties, which includes packing lunch for my wife. I like doing it — it makes me feel useful. I always put notes in the lunches, too. For my kids, it’s usually just a ‘Have a great day!’ type deal. But, with my wife, they can range from jokes, to dirty drawings, to words of wisdom, and everything in between. The last one I wrote said, ‘It was so awesome how you didn’t give Halloween candy to the kid dressed as Trump.’ If I can make her laugh or smile during the day, I think I’ve helped our marriage thrive.”  – Collin, 38, Ohio

Featured Video

Loading Video Content

Watch more Fatherly Subscribe

We Have a Couch Date Night Every Week

“We always watch American Horror Story together. Every week. I hate it. It’s weird, and terrifying. But, she loves it. And, I love her. Truthfully, I enjoy doing it because she gets scared and does all the ‘I’m scared!’ things that make me feel like I can protect her. She cuddles with me, puts my hand over her eyes. Stuff like that. So, while the show is definitely not something I’d watch on my own, I love the time I spend watching it with her. I look forward to it every week, and I wouldn’t miss it.” – Michael, 37, Illinois

We Get Sweaty Together 

“My wife and I exercise together before work, every other morning. Before we met, neither of us were super into working out but, after a few kids, we realized that it could be a good thing to start doing. So, every morning, while the kids are eating breakfast and waking up, we just do a quick, intense, 15-minute workout together. I’ve definitely become the more enthusiastic one about waking up and exercising, so I think it’s become ‘my’ ritual. But, we do it together, and we always end up smiling.” – Kirk, 36, Oregon

ADVERTISEMENT

I Surprise Her With “9 Second Hugs”

“When we first started dating, I shared a news article with my wife that said nine seconds was the ideal length for a hug. It’s something about the amount of time it takes your body to release endorphins that makes nine seconds the sweet spot. So, randomly, I’ll grab her and say, ‘Nine-Second Hug!’ She laughs, usually. Sometimes she gets frustrated, if she’s trying to do something and I interrupt. But, it really does work. We just sort of stand there together for nine seconds and, when it’s over, we laugh, kiss, and go on with the day. It’s a pretty simple trick, I think.” – John, 42, New York

We Return to Our First Date Spot

“Every month, my wife and I have a date night at the place we went to on our first date. It’s just a small, basic bar in Akron, Ohio but it’s a special place for us. They ‘know’ us there by now — we’ve been going for years — so it’s a fun, welcoming experience overall. The recurring date was her idea, but going back to that specific bar was mine, so it’s also a great reminder that we’re a good team when we put our heads together.” – Joel, 35, Ohio

ADVERTISEMENT

No Matter What, the Last Words We Always Say Are “I Love You”

“I was raised by parents who never, ever, ever let the last words said in a conversation —in person, over the phone, whatever — be anything but, ‘I love you.’ So, when my wife and I fell in love, I mentioned that to her, and I sort of insisted we adopt it, too. It might sound a little neurotic, but it’s just a way to make sure that, God forbid something bad were to happen, the words we’ll always remember hearing will be, ‘I love you’. Even if we’re fighting, we don’t walk away or hang up the phone without saying it. We do it with our kids, too. ” – Matt, 43, Florida

We Talk Trash Online Playing Word Games

“I challenge my wife to — and usually beat her at — Words With Friends at least once a week. It’s not the game itself, so much, but the chatting we do throughout. The trash-talking and stuff. For some reason, talking inside of WWF feels different than talking over email or iMessage. It’s almost always game-related, but the way we pounce on each other and go back-and-forth feels super flirty a lot of the time. Like talking on AIM in college. I guess it’s just my way of keeping connected with her a little less traditionally.” – Jeff, 33, North Carolina

ADVERTISEMENT

I Always Touch My Wife’s Butt

“I love my wife’s ass. To quote Ron Burgundy, ‘That thing is good.’ So, as douchy as it might sound, I try to squeeze it or slap it whenever I can. She likes it, because she’ll always ask, ‘Why haven’t you smacked my ass in a while?’ if I don’t do it sort of regularly. I never do it around the kids, because they’re too young to understand the nuances of such a gesture within a loving relationship, but I do it in public sometimes. I’m sure people sneer. But, whatever, I love my wife’s ass.” – Josh, 39, New York

We Have a Collaborative Sketchbook

“I taught my wife about a thing my friends and I used to do called ‘Exquisite Cadavers’. It’s nothing weird, just the name we came up with for when one person draws a line or a shape on a piece of paper, and then the next person adds on to it, and then the next person, and the next person, and so on. I have no idea why we named it that. Anyway, I got a small sketchbook for my wife and I  and I’ll usually start a new one every week or two. We take the book to work with us and just add silly little things here and there until we’ve ‘finished’. Then it’s on to the next one. I love seeing what she comes up with.” – Al, 44, Ohio

ADVERTISEMENT

We Give One Another Wet Willies. Seriously.

“I give my wife wet willies. True story. She’s a jokester at heart. She loves prank videos and fail videos on YouTube. So, whenever she’s not paying attention, I’ll sneak up and get her. It goes both ways, too. She’s gotten me in the shower – somehow she knew exactly when my eyes would be closed while I was rinsing off shampoo. She even had the balls to do it at church one weekend. I think my best one was when she was FaceTiming with her mother. I crept up behind her while her mother watched with just this sort of, ‘Huh?’ expression. It’s definitely a silly, stupid thing. But, it’s our thing, and it always will be.” – Neil, 37, California

We Volunteer at an Animal Shelter Once a Month

“My wife and I — and our oldest son — volunteer at an animal shelter once a month. We help walk dogs, clean the place, and stuff like that. As a family, we all just love animals. So, when we’re there, we’re all just really, really happy. I know my wife is a fantastic mother — I see her in action every day. But, there’s something special about seeing her with a little puppy or kitten that just melts me. It’s just so sweet, and reminds me why I fell in love with her in the first place.” – Bill, 39, Connecticut

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles:

8 New Folding Knives to Add to Your Everyday Carry

Go Pillow Shopping with Your Wife to Save Your Marriage

The Best New Craft Beers to Seek Out, According to Beer Experts

Children’s Healthcare: How to Vote to Keep Kids Healthy in the 2018 Midterms

The post Happy Marriage Advice: 11 Rituals That Keep Our Relationship Strong appeared first on Fatherly.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/happy-marriage-advice-11-rituals-that-keep-our-relationship-strong/

[lindafrancois]

How Christina Lost 50 pounds, 31 Total Inches, and Did Her First Pull-up

I love inspiring success stories.

I especially love sharing stories from real people with busy lives who have struggled in the same way most of us struggle:

Multiple failed attempts at weight loss.

Mental baggage and challenges to overcome.

Negative self talk.

Yo-yo dieting.

Christina, a years-long member of the Nerd Fitness community, is somebody who has gained and lost the same weight more times than she can count. She grew up with negative self-talk, chased lose-weight-quick strategies, and struggled to love herself through the ups and downs.

After her husband stumbled across Nerd Fitness (smart fella), he told her to consider joining our community, and I’m so thankful she did!

Two years ago, we launched a beta version of our super fun 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, and Christina was one of our guinea pigs that signed up!

In those two years, she has transformed inside and out, and I’m so excited to share her story today. In these two years, she has had this great level of success without access to a gym without crazy dietary restrictions or calorie starvation, and finally loves herself in the way she deserves to be loved!

Although I’m very proud of the fact that Christina has invested in herself through coaching program month after month, I know you’ll learn a lot from her story.

At the end, I’ll share with you EXACTLY how to make your changes today. No more negative self-talk, no more reliance on motivation or willpower, but a focus on systems and progress and accountability!

Let’s see how Christina transformed…

How Christina lost 50 pounds and finally started loving herself

Steve: Hey Christina! Can you take us through a typical day before you decided to level up your life?

Christina: This is embarrassing to admit, but here’s a typical day when my husband would travel for work, which was about 2 weeks of every month:

Wake up, drink coffee, eat some string cheese, check emails, eat more cheese, drink more coffee, check more emails, watch a show or two on streaming media, check more emails, eat more cheese, switch to Diet Coke, grab some Taco Bell, tutor kids for a few hours, grab a beer or two with friends, eat pizza or some kind of horrible take-out, watch more TV until midnight or so, then head to sleep.

Steve: Taco Bell, pizza, beers, cheese on cheese on cheese, tons of take-out…sounds like a typical diet for many people struggling to lose weight.

Was there a specific moment when you decided to make a change?

Christina: It was more of a bunch of small things:

My blood pressure was kind of high.

My cholesterol was creeping up.

I struggled with being out of breath with the simplest of tasks.

Walking anywhere in Boulder for long periods of time meant open-mouth breathing. So embarrassing 🙁

Oh, and learning to snowboard was nearly impossible. There were days we’d drive the two hours to the mountains, I’d go down the bunny hill once, and be done for the day – I didn’t have the physical or mental stamina to try again.

I’d then sit in the lodge and drown my sorrows in chocolate brownies while my husband would go down the blue and black runs by himself.

Super fun for both of us. /sarcasm

Steve: Blah, yeah that’s no fun. So, you eventually decided that “enough is enough,” and ended up on Nerd Fitness! Was this the first time you had ever tried getting in shape?

Christina: Definitely not. I’ve kind of lost count of how many times I flirted with weight loss and getting fit. These are just some of the strategies I remember:

#1 Massive body shaming from my mom – including gems like “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” and “If you don’t lose weight before your wedding, you will always look back at your photos and feel terrible for how bad you look.”

#2 The single teacher income diet – I lost 50 lbs in six months only to gain it back when I could afford food again.

#3 Weight Watchers – I was used to body shaming from my mom, I figured, “Why not let strangers do it too?” Turns out this was less than ideal for my self esteem. I know WW works for some, but my particular experience wasn’t great.

#4 Various exercise VHS tapes from the 80s and 90s – My faves included Tony Little and It Figures with Charlene Prickett, because nothing motivates you like a built dude with a ponytail, or 80s leotards coupled with bad music!

#5 Beachbody shakes – I found the shakes to be excellent when mixed with a half pot of coffee, two tbsp of peanut butter, and a cup of half and half. No idea why I didn’t lose weight, hahaha.

#6 Cutting calories without tracking or learning – For some reason, I believed that even though I had no idea how much I was eating regularly, I could guess my way through calorie restriction. This did not work.

#7 Complaining – “Why am I so fat? Why can’t I lose weight? There must be something wrong with my metabolism. Why is exercise so difficult?”

#8 Wishing the fat away – “Maybe if I skip dinner I’ll lose a pound or two. Maybe if I skip dessert I will lose weight. If only a magical weight loss fairy existed…”

Steve: Thanks for sharing your struggles honestly with me (and now the world!). I’m curious: what made you decide to take the plunge and jump on board with Nerd Fitness and our coaching program?

Christina: Prior to NF Coaching, I mentioned to my husband I needed help.

After all of my failed attempts above, I knew I couldn’t do this on my own and wanted guidance.

I live in Colorado, land of the uber-fit, but I felt like none of the options available really meshed what I needed. I didn’t enjoy exercise and just couldn’t relate to fitness junkies.

The NF Coaching announcement came at a perfect time, and I was really pleased to see that the program wasn’t just personalized workouts, but also that my coach Jim would help me with my nutrition and mindset.

And you saw how I used to eat – I definitely needed help in that area!

Steve: Amen. We all know we need to exercise more and eat less, it’s actually DOING it consistently that’s challenging. So take me through your training schedule with Jim:

Christina: I told Jim about the equipment I had available (or lack thereof) and my goals, and my schedule, so he built a program that fit into that exact situation.

We did a lot of body weight to start with, no gym for me!

These days, I do a combination of bodyweight training (planks and wall sits), adjustable weights (overhead press, side rows), and anything Jim gives me that has to do with my pull-up bar and gymnastic rings (chin-ups, pull-ups, ring holds, etc.)

Steve: Let’s talk nutrition: What’s been your nutritional strategy?

Christina: Definitely more of an “if it fits your macros” (IIFYM) type of deal – I try to shoot for 130g of protein and under 80g for carbs and fat. I married an Italian who loves to cook; we quickly realized totally cutting pasta out of our lives wasn’t going to work.

So Jim helped me to be smarter about everything.

We time our big Italian meals on days we do a lot of physical activity, instead of every day which was always my problem in the past.

I also had to cut back my cheese addiction, which was super sad. It’s amazing how consuming 500+ calories of cheese a day can impact your diet. Again, who knew?

Steve: Yes! I too follow a “mental model” macros-type diet. What’s a typical day like for you NOW, after the changes?

Christina: SO Different!

Up between 5AM and 6AM, drink one cup of coffee with turmeric, cinnamon, and pepper, eat a small breakfast (normally an egg and some protein with one slice of really skinny bread).

I then do some work and housework, bodyweight training around 10am, drink a protein shake, drag husband out for a walk, then eat lunch around 12:30pm (lots of protein). We run our own company – a raw pet food company – and it keeps us both plenty busy

I then do more work, tutor in the afternoon, sometimes volunteer at a feral cat colony, and then dinner (protein and veggies), relax, and bed.

Much more structure in my life, and amazingly, I get things done. Who knew? 😉

Steve: What is your internal self talk like compared to 2 years ago?

Christina: There’s a lot less internal arguing about exercise or eating.

I’ll admit the first six months were miserable and really challenging. I cried my way through every workout – they were hard mentally, physically, and emotionally. This is what made it worse –  I would tell myself “I deserve to suffer, because I let myself go.”

I then realized that this self-talk was unproductive, and through conversations with Jim, my husband, and myself, I changed my attitude about the whole thing.

I realized that exercise is something I’m lucky to be able to do.

It’s something that feels good and makes me feel good. My husband knows when I haven’t exercised yet for the day because my mood is lousy!

Thanks to these two years, I can now snowboard, I can hike, I can walk through downtown Boulder without open-mouth breathing.

I can do things I want to do, even if they’re hard, without beating myself up.

Just last month, we hiked up Mt. Sanitas in the rain, soaked to the bone! This would have never happened before. 3.1 miles, 1300 feet of elevation gain, and *wet* – but I did it!

And enjoyed myself! It was pretty awesome. 🙂

Steve: What was the toughest or most important change you made?

Christina: After asking my husband for his opinion, apparently the toughest change was cutting back on cheese! And I quote, “You complained the *most* about that.”

That was done fairly early on, maybe six months into working with Jim, so it’s difficult for me to remember how tough that was. Apparently it had an impact on my husband, though! 😉

Steve: Talk to me about your progress along the way. How have you measured your progress and what has helped?  

Christina: I log all of my food daily and love the structure and awareness it brings to my life.

I can plan my day out based on what’s for dinner without feeling like I’m losing out on food. With food logging, it’s pretty easy to figure out what doesn’t agree with me, and I’ve gotten a lot better with portion control when it comes to items I want to taste but don’t want to gorge on (cake, gelato, etc.)

A bite or two of something is not going to ruin my day, but if I eat the whole thing, I know I’ll feel sick to my stomach and be useless the rest of the day.

As for tracking progress, I actually weigh myself daily. Weighing in used to be a source of shame; now it’s just a data point, and I can see how what I ate the day before affects me (I’m looking at you, salt).

I also take progress photos, track my body fat percentage, and track other measurements too.

Steve: Okay, so be honest: was NF Coaching worth the investment for you? Why stay 2 years even after having success early on? 

Christina: Simple. I’ve lost weight in the past, and I knew that it would just come right back if I didn’t really change my ways. In working with Jim, I lost 40 pounds fairly quickly once the diet changed and exercise was done on a fairly regular basis.

However, it was really important to me that the changes stuck.

Jim knows exactly how to push things and how to tweak behaviors in order to get results. He’s had great ideas around food, and his experience with a wide variety of people has given him some great insight into how people work.

I get exactly the level of support I need, and Jim can totally read between the lines of what I say and what I really mean. There’s always a goal in mind, and I work well with that type of motivation. These are our current goals:

Climb a 14er (mountain) – climbing a mountain of at least 14K feet with 3K feet of elevation gain

Do a muscle-up

Do a handstand

Steve: LOVE IT. And you are working with the best coach ever when it comes to handstands – Jim wrote our Beginner’s Guide to Handstands, led our Handstand Course, AND has helped other clients get their first handstands too.

Steve: Do you have any nerdy passions or pursuits?

Christina: I cosplay, play the Dresden Files tabletop rpg with a group of friends across three time zones, read a lot of comic books, and play video games in a casual way.

Steve: Nerd credentials check out – you’re in the right place! 

I want to ask you one final question: There are TONS of Nerd Fitness readers right now who are at your “Day 1” (or heavier). Do you have any words of advice for those folks? 

Christina: Change is so personal. You need to look within yourself and ask if you’re happy with where you are physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Then you have to ask yourself if you’re okay with the way your life is currently “hard,” and if you’re willing to try a different kind of “hard” in order to get some different results.

My “hard” before was heavy breathing, the possibility of medication for various health issues, clothing not fitting correctly, feeling embarrassed going out in public, and not being able to participate in activities with my husband.

Now my “hard” is more saying no to free food because I KNOW it’s not really free, trying to get in one more rep with a little more weight, and coming to grips with what my body and can’t do, despite how much I exercise.

Steve: Thanks so much for sharing Christina! Jim shares your updates with our team and I feel like a proud parent (that’s not weird, right? cool) watching you continue to transform every month!

When we meet in person we can practice our handstands! I’ll make sure to bring Jim too.

The 6 Keys to Christina’s Fantastic Transformation

As I’ve been following Christina’s story over the past two years, I can think of six specific things she did differently than most people who struggle and never succeed:

#1 CHRISTINA KEPT TRYING AND FAILING DIFFERENTLY

Weight Watchers, Beachbody, calorie restriction, negative self talk, dieting…Christina tried it all. Most people struggle with weight loss and assume that they’re broken. Christina eventually realized that she just hadn’t found the path that worked for her yet.

So she kept searching.

When she started working with us at Nerd Fitness, she went the route that sounded the most exciting to her: hiking with her husband, snowboarding, bodyweight training, and no gym membership.

There’s no ONE way to get in shape, and Christina found the perfect plan for her – the one she would actually STICK with.

#2 CHRISTINA COMMITTED TO HERSELF & INVESTED IN HERSELF

She had tried to get in shape before. Many times.

And failed. Many times.

Most people blindly chase the next fad or making half-hearted attempts to get in shape. They also give up at the first sign of adversity and can’t get any changes to stick.

Even worse? Sticking with a “healthy” plan for months only to discover that it doesn’t actually generate results (I see you low fat food, starvation, running endlessly on a treadmill).

Christina recognized that years of these strategies hadn’t resulted in permanent progress, so a different approach was needed.

She knew she couldn’t do this alone, so she hired a coach who knows her better than she knows herself.

Through her ups and downs, highs and lows, successes and struggles, her coach is there to set the right pace for her at that point in her life. When life changes, so does her workout and nutrition programming.

Certain things are worth investing in, and Christina decided that she was worth it.

#3 CHRISTINA DIDN’T LET SPEEDBUMPS BECOME ROADBLOCKS

Along the way, Christina struggled: this getting in shape stuff isn’t easy! One missed workout becomes two, which becomes six months off in the blink of an eye.

But she relied on her husband, her coach, and her knowledge that her coach had set her up to succeed, and all she had to do was stick to the plan.

Even after Christina managed to successfully build powerful habits and momentum, she was diagnosed with some serious health challenges: severe osteoarthritis in her left hip and moderate to severe osteoarthritis in her right hip.

Most people understandably fall apart when hit with a setback like this. They say “oh what the hell.” If their bodies are failing them, might as well eat junk food and stop exercising because, “What’s the point?”

Christina went the other way.

She said, “I am not my x-ray.”

While her diagnosis has put a damper on running, lunges, and squats, she worked with a physical therapist, doctor, and her coach to come up with other options to keep her physically active.

Because of her attitude change, Christina was able to turn these mountains into molehills and step over them.

And now she’s focused on climbing ACTUAL mountains.

#4 CHRISTINA STOPPED WISHING AND STARTED DOING

Why do we beat ourselves up when we run out of willpower? Why do we get mad at ourselves for not being “motivated enough”? Why do we rely on hope and wishful thinking when it comes to getting healthy?

Because we think successful people have more of this stuff than we do, and that’s why they’ve lost weight.

We then lament the fact that we’re not like them and thus are doomed.

Reality paints a much different picture: people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off stopped chasing motivation. They recognized that willpower was limited and motivation would abandon them when life got tough. So instead, they stopped hoping and wishing and instead start building systems:

They have somebody they can be accountable to.

They study past failures and change their approach.

They get started and course correct along the way.

They structure their environment and day so that willpower isn’t needed.

This is exactly what Christina did. She stopped expecting things to be different and took the future into her own hands.

She knew she couldn’t do this alone, so she enlisted help, she got her husband’s support, and she GOT TO WORK.

#5 CHRISTINA TRACKED THE PROBLEM TO CRACK THE PROBLEM

Here’s my opinion as to why Christina succeeded: She started tracking her food daily. She could then share this food log with her coach who could make small changes and suggestions that didn’t overwhelm her.

Christina also weighed herself daily, not due to OCD neurosis, but instead as a scientist collecting data points and adjusting her progress!

She’s now educated with how many calories she can eat each day, the makeup of everything she eats, and she can make much more educated and informed decisions guilt free with each meal.

By tracking her food and her macros and analyzing her relationship with food, she can still eat home-cooked Italian food regularly without screwing up her nutrition goals. She MAKES through timing and tracking rather than hoping it works out.

In addition to these successes, through tracking she was able to discover two areas that were holding her back: she quit drinking and cut back significantly on high calorie cheese consumption.

These changes might not have happened had she not been tracking so diligently!

#6 CHRISTINA FINDS NEW DRAGONS TO SLAY

Her journey began with a weight loss goal: “I want to lose weight and feel better about myself.” And she lost 40 pounds very quickly on her journey.

This is where the big change happened:

Instead of saying “all done!” like se would have in the past, she instead worked with her coach to ask, “What am I capable of now that I’ve done all this hard work? Maybe I can work towards pull ups and get better at hiking!”

“Okay I got pull-ups, now what do I want to do?”

She and Jim consistently updated her goals and missions so she always had a new target. She wants to climb a mountain. She wants to do a handstand and a muscle-up. And every day her workouts and her nutrition are set up in a way for her to get closer to those goals!

And if she ever reaches these goals? Perfect. She’ll get new ones!

There’s always another dragon to slay…

How will Your Next Attempt Be Different? Be like Christina!

Here’s how Christina transformed like Optimus Prime, and how you can too:

Keep at it. Christina didn’t find lasting success with Weight Watchers, Beachbody, or calorie restriction. Although those programs work for some people, they didn’t work for her. Nerd Fitness spoke her language, so she followed the process.

Track the problem, crack the problem. The most successful people that have lost weight and kept it off all track their progress and adherence in some way. Start by writing down what you eat for the next few days, calculate the calories, and educate yourself! See how your photos change, and make adjustments based on your data. Hope + action = win.

Invest in yourself, get help where you can. A lot of people think hiring a coach is a sign of weakness. Christina realized this is the wrong attitude, and has used her coach to change her life. Invest your time or your money into taking this fitness stuff seriously and get help or get educated. It’s your life we’re talking about here!

Always have another dragon to slay. Christina completely changed from “I want to lose some weight” to “What am I capable of? I want to do a handstand and climb a freakin mountain!” This is the key to sustained weight loss.

Train in the way that works for you. Christina does bodyweight exercises, hikes, and goes snowboarding with her husband. There’s no gym in sight! There are a million ways to get in shape, so pick the ones that fit your goals and make you happy!

This should get you started, regardless of whether or not you join any of the programs at Nerd Fitness!

You can start bodyweight training TODAY.

You can adjust your nutrition TODAY.

You can start to build your guild TODAY.

Now, if you’re somebody like Christina and seek 1-on-1 guidance and instruction, I’d love for you to check out our 1-on-1 NF Online Coaching Program and chat with us about it.

We schedule phone calls with everybody who wants to join the program to make sure we’re a good fit for each other – you can schedule your free call by clicking on the box below:

I want success for you the way that Christina found it – through healthier eating, a healthier mindset, and a complete overhaul of her attitude!

Two years seems like so far away, but think back to where you were 2 years ago – how much has changed since then? Look back at photos of you from two years ago. I bet TWO things are true:

“This feels like it was yesterday…”

“But I don’t really look much different.”

As they say, “The days are long, but the years are short.”

So why not start today? If you enjoy the journey, it makes the struggle worth it.

If you have questions for me or Christina, let us know in the comments!

Team NF is here to help you!

-Steve

PS: If coaching isn’t your thing, we also have a powerful online course that is self-paced and has helped 50,000 rebels level up their lives. 

The NF Academy has a 1-time payment, 7 levels of workouts, 10 levels of nutrition, boss battles, quests, and the most supportive community on the internet.

How Christina Lost 50 pounds, 31 Total Inches, and Did Her First Pull-up published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/