anythingforstories

[anythingforstories]

please please please please reblog if you’re a writer and have at some point felt like your writing is getting worse. I need to know if I’m the only one who’s struggling with these thoughts

#sometimes yes but then i look back on my older stuff #and i realize that how good i do or don't feel about my writing comes in waves #(and also sometimes i realize i'm comparing a Draft 1 to a previous Draft 3) #(but mostly it just comes in waves)

[anythingforstories]

English added by me :)

[anythingforstories]

this is assuming its on art you normally wouldn't jump to reblog. i myself only rb stuff i really really like so .

The 'rude/demanding' tone would be stuff along the lines of "if you like but don't reblog I'll [threat]" which i see surprisingly often, both serious and more silly

#i don't (yet) have a blog for reblogging stuff exclusively #and i might enjoy something without reblogging it for many reasons #even though i DO reblog lots of stuff #reblogging is important! i get it! i just don't want to reblog hundreds of times a day or reblog certain types of content #but seeing a “don't just like; reblog instead” makes me feel guilty for hitting “like” and not “reblog” #because then the artist will know i saw it but didn't reblog #so i simply do neither #so instead of saying “i like your thing” i simply don't say anything #it's like if i'm shopping and someone gets upset that i looked at their merchandise without buying anything #if i can't look and express that i like it without pressure to display it in my home then i'm just going to not even look #personally i would WAY rather people only hit “like” on my art than if they kept scrolling because they felt too guilty for not reblogging #because it means it made them happy! and isn't that the point? #no one is obligated to reblog my stuff! #it's just icing on the cake when it happens

[anythingforstories]

“How’s your WIP going?”

"Have you made any progress?”

“How close are you to being done?”

#who took these photos of me?

[anythingforstories]

redemption arcs that double as tragedies!! you're a better person than you've ever been and you have nothing left to your name!!you have to rebuild yourself and your life from the ground up and you're smiling in the ashes!! you were devastated your life is ruined!!! nothing is ever going to be the same ever again you are never going to regain what you had you are never going to be free of the guilt you are never going to be able to go home there is nothing left for you!!! you are free you are more yourself than you've ever been!! fires help forests grow!!

[anythingforstories]

people telling you they reread your fic is the biggest compliment you could ever receive. there are thousands of stories out there begging to be found, to be explored, but your story meant so much to someone that they came back to it eagerly, they went over every word again. to love is to return and loving a fic is rereading it. thank you to all readers and rereaders <3333

[anythingforstories]

Made a dragon friend

#cool art #dragon!

[anythingforstories]

Agreed, especially books that look like Just A Normal Book that a smol child with an advanced reading level might pick up without knowing any better (it's me, I was smol child) because there isn't even a rating system or warning like a movie would have.

Because written porn is actually Not Good for a child's developing brain, fun fact!

they have simply got to stop putting porn in books

[anythingforstories]

there are some internet friends where eventually you start calling them by their real name and then there’s times where its like nah son your name is crispy forever

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new purpose

(don't tag as ship)

#atla

[anythingforstories]

First you procrastinate on the task because it is not a big enough deal to get done urgently. Then you procrastinate on the task because it has become such a big deal that doing it is overwhelming. You would think that this implies a middle point where it is just big enough of a deal to get done easily, however the inherent perversity of the universe's causal geometry prevents this

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“I am adopted and my biological mother was 17 and so was my biological father. She was 7 and a half months pregnant when she decided to go to Planned Parenthood, which is the largest abortion provider in the world. And they counseled her to have a late term saline abortion, which is a saline solution that is injected into the mother’s womb. The baby gulps that solution, it burns the baby inside and out and then she is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours. And to everyone’s great shock and surprise I didn’t arrive dead but alive on April the 6th, 1977 in a Los Angeles county abortion clinic. What’s fantastic about this, about the perfect timing of my arrival, is that the abortionist was not on duty yet. So he wasn’t even given the opportunity to continue on with his plan for my life, which was death. And I know that I am in a government building and a beautiful one it is and I love your country as well as my own. But I know in the age that we live in it is not at all politically correct to say the name of Jesus Christ in places like this; to bring him into these sorts of meetings because his name can make people so terribly uncomfortable. But I didn’t survive so I could make everyone comfortable. I survived so I could stir things up a bit and I have a great time doing it. And so I was delivered alive, as I’ve already said, after 18 hours. I should be blind, I should be burned, I should be dead. And yet I’m not. You know what is fantastic vindication is the fact that the abortionist had to sign my birth certificate. So I know who he is. And it also says, for any skeptic listening, on my medical records: born during saline abortion. Ha! They didn’t win. I’ve done some research on the man that performed the abortion on me. And his clinics are the largest chain of clinics in the United States of America and they gross $70 million a year. I read him say, I read a quote from him at some point several years ago and he said, “I have aborted over a million babies and I consider it my passion.” I tell you these things because, listen ladies and gentlemen, we are in an interesting battle whether we realize it or not in this world. It is a battle between life and death. What side are you on? So a nurse called an ambulance and had me transferred to a hospital, which is absolutely miraculous. Generally, the practice at the time and up until 2002, was, in my country, was to end the life of an abortion survivor by strangulation, suffocation, leaving the baby there to die, or throwing the baby away. But on August the 5th 2002, my extraordinary President Bush signed into law the Born Alive Infants Protection Act to prevent that from occurring anymore. You see, we’re playing for keeps. I mean I’m hoping to be hated by the time I die so I can feel God about me and understand what it was to be hated. I mean, He was hated, Christ was hated. And not that I look forward to being hated, but I know along my journey, I know I’m already hated because I declare life. I say you didn’t get me. The silent holocaust didn’t win over me. And my mission, ladies and gentlemen, among many things is this: to infuse humanity into a debate that we have just compartmentalized and set on a shelf and said it is an issue. We have removed our emotions, we are becoming harder. Do you really want that? How much are you willing to take and how much are you willing to risk to speak the truth in love and graciousness and stand up and at least be willing to be hated? Or at the end of the day is it all about you? Or me? And so, after that I was placed in an emergency foster care home where they decided they didn’t like me very well. And as I’m fond of saying, I don’t know how you could not adore me right from the start. What is wrong with these people? But they didn’t. You see, I’ve been hated since conception by so many and loved by so many more, but most especially by God. I’m His girl. You don’t mess with God’s girl. I’ve got a sign on my forehead that says, “You better be nice to me because my father runs the world.” So after I was placed in the mean home, I was taken out of the mean home and placed into another home. A beautiful home. Penny’s home. She said by this time I was 17 months old, 32 pounds of dead weight, and diagnosed with what I consider to be the gift of cerebral palsy, which was caused directly by the lack of oxygen to my brain while I was trying to survive. Now I am just compelled to say this. If abortion is merely about women’s rights, ladies and gentlemen, then what were mine? There was not a radical feminist standing up and yelling about how my rights were being violated that day. In fact, my life was being snuffed out in the name of women’s rights. And, ladies and gentlemen, I would not have cerebral palsy had I not survived all of this. So when I hear the appalling, disgusting argument that we should have abortions because the child just might be disabled. Auh! The horror that fills my heart. Ladies and gentlemen, there are things that you will only be able to learn by the weakest among us. And when you snuff them out, you are the one that loses. The Lord looks after them but you are the one that will suffer forever. And what arrogance, what absolute arrogance. And it has been an argument for so long in this human place that we live, that the stronger should dominate the weaker, should determine who lives or dies. The arrogance of that! Don’t you realize that you cannot make your own heartbeat? Don’t you realize that all the power you think you possess, you really possess none of it, it is the mercy of God that sustains you, even when you hate Him. So they looked at my dear Penny and they said, “Gianna will never be anything.” Which is always encouraging. And she decided to ignore them and she worked with me three times a day and I began to hold up my head and they said, “Well, Gianna will never this and never that.” Long story shorter, I was walking by the age of three and a half with a walker and leg braces and I stand up here today with a mild little limp and without a walker and leg braces. I fall gracefully sometimes and very ungracefully at other times, depending on the situation. But I consider it all for the glory of God. You see, ladies and gentlemen, I am weaker than most of you, but this is my sermon. And what a small price to pay to be able to blaze through the world as I do and offer hope. And I think in our misunderstanding of the way things work, we misunderstand how beautiful suffering can be. I don’t willingly sign up for it. But when it comes we forget, we forget that God is in control and God has a way of making the most miserable thing beautiful. I have met my biological mother. I have forgiven my biological mother. I am a Christian. She’s a very broken woman. She came to an event I was having two years ago, showed up unannounced, and said, “Hello, I’m your mother.” It was a very difficult day, and yet while I was enduring all of this (you’ll probably think I’m silly) but I was sitting there and thinking: I don’t belong to you. I belong to Christ. I’m his girl, and I’m a princess. So no matter what you say in all your anger, and brokenness, and rage, it’s not mine to keep. It’s not mine to carry. And I won’t.”

—

Gianna Jessen, abortion survivor

Address at Parliament House, Victoria, Australia, September 8, 2008

(via tschaikovsky)

Powerful!

(via milbullrdr) I think everyone on Tumblr has things they’ll Never Not Reblog. This is one. And FYI, when a similar Born Alive measure was proposed in IL? Then-state-Senator Obama was dead-set against it. He insisted that women like Ms. Jessen don’t really exist. When she testified before the IL state senate, there was a video, and the absolute disdain and contempt with which Senator Obama held Ms. Jessen was all over his face. (via muzical84)

[anythingforstories]

I AM THAT IS

#cool art #redwall

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There is nothing so beautiful as a spring rain when all the wood gets darker and all the greens get greener.

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It's a bit funky, but I've been taking photos of the process and made a quick gif of how it takes form.

#cool art #this is incredible

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The best piece of advice I ever got was not meant as advice, but as an edict. If I was going to threaten people as a joke, it had to be so far out of proportion with what happened that it would be obvious I was joking. This changed how I expressed frustration with others. It then changed how I expressed frustration with myself.

Not “I’m going to hit you” but “I am going to buy a tuna sub from the gas station and hide it under the seat of your car”

Not “I’m going to kill myself” but “I am going to walk into the desert and let the scarabs take me”

The other side then happened. When I mess something up, instead of saying it’s bad and perpetuating negative thoughts, swing hard the other way.

Not “this art is terrible” but “this shall be framed and mounted on the wall in my museum exhibition as testament to the suffering I had to overcome”

Have been doing this since high school. It was my drama teacher who asked me to please stop scaring the actors. The other half of the edict was that I had to say it in a polite tone, and end it with either please or thank you.

Life changing. 10/10 Mr Muëller. Highly reccomend.

[anythingforstories]

RECOVERY

I spent a lot of my life depressed without admitting it to myself and then i spent a year so depressed i could hardly make myself do the bare minimum to keep my body alive, and now it's about 3 years since i got up from that lowest point and while i am still struggling with myself things are objectively a lot better.

and i just want to put a couple things i've learned, both to remind myself of how far i've come, and in case any of what i've experienced helps anyone else.

You can't run from the darkness

When you're super depressed it's easy to focus on how much you don't want to be depressed. When everything is darkness you tend to wish you could escape that darkness.

but you can't. The darkness is all around you. You can't run away from it without running deeper into it.

instead, follow the light.

don't think of it as escaping depression, think of it as seeking joy. Don't run away from the darkness, walk toward any lights you can see.

At first it will be very small things. The taste of a food. The way your favorite color looks. A smell you like. For me one of the first things i could find to remind me of joy was the way a warm shower feels.

I would just stand in the shower and lean into the tiny, tiny joy of that feeling. I would describe it to myself, how it felt good, what about it felt good. It didn't cure me, it didn't make me less depressed, but it was a little point of joy to focus on, to breathe into like a tiny candle flame in my darkness.

I would memorize that feeling, so that later, when i felt like nothing ever brought me joy anymore, i could think, no, that's your depression lying to you, you felt joy, however small, right there in the shower just yesterday. And, maybe there is more somewhere else.

Even today, it's been a hard week, i'm feeling a lot of hopeless and helpless feelings clamoring away at me, but... i have spicy soup. And spicy soup is a NEW joy. I found spicy soup joy as i was following any little light i could out of the deepest part of my depression.

I never put hot sauce in soup before then. But today i am drinking the broth of a very spicy soup and as much as everything else is complicated and difficult and scary and dark, there is a bright mote of joy in this sip of spicy soup. And in the next one. And the next. I enjoy it, i love it, all the more that it is new, and if i had given up four years ago, i never would have known this small joy, this new favorite tiny thing.

Who knows what other little joys i may find?

If you have come to a place in life where you have lost the knowledge of how to feel joy, it is important to remember that feeling joy is like anything else in life. The more you practice, the better you get, the more of it you can do at higher levels.

And there are only so many minutes in the day. The more of them you spend acknowledging what feels good, the less of them will be left for feeling bad.

you can't escape the darkness by fleeing from it, but you can find the light by moving toward it.

Chop Wood Fetch Water

Another thing i learned was a truth about the exercise advice you always hear.

For where i am in my recovery now, common exercise has very little impact. I don't really get the endorphins people talk about, and i don't tend to feel better about myself after i work out unless i already feel pretty okay about myself to begin with. i don't mean to say there is no point in me exercising, but, i walk about ten miles a day holding onto 8 energetic dogs and i do a fair amount of lifting and bending and stuff for my job, and it's fine but it's not, like, doing a whole lot for me at this point in my recovery (tho i do think more recreational exercise will come back into play a stage or two on in my healing process)

HOWEVER

There was a year there where i was only getting out of bed to go to the bathroom. When i was only able to force myself to eat just enough each day to stay alive because i'd made a promise to myself, and that promise was almost all i had left.

and the right kind of exercise is what pulled me out of that.

the RIGHT kind.

See, someone close to me needed help with a physical job. That was an important part and why this method is known historically as some variation of Chop Wood Carry Water -- it's intensely physical, which is important, but also, it helps the people around you. These days our personal communities tend to not need wood copped and water carried the same way. But you can get the same effect helping someone move all their furniture, doing all the yard work for your friends and/or family, volunteering for a charity that builds housing for homeless people, SOMEthing physically taxing that helps people.

In my case, my aging father needed help re-shingling the roof. So i promised i'd help.

So i got up every morning because he was expecting me. And i climbed the ladder because he would see me if i didn't. And i lifted and carried and hammered and worked hard. It took a week of six to eight hour days.

Right away, the fact that it was helping someone else made it not matter so much that it didn't feel like it was helping me at first. I couldn't deny that i was doing something good, that my existence had positive meaning, however small.

But very soon, it changed something fundamental in my state of depression. You can't do physical labor in the sun 7 hours a day without drinking a bunch of water. Without working up an appetite. Without getting very tired at the end of the day.

See, i had been struggling to make myself drink enough water, i was fighting to make myself eat even one small meal's worth of food each day, and i couldn't get a good night's sleep to save my life. And these things all made my depression much much worse. You think you get sad or angry from skipping a meal, consider being chronically undernourished. You think your mental state is worse after pulling an all nighter, think about what never getting a good night's sleep does.

But a couple days into this job with my father, and suddenly i was hydrated, i was eating full meals, and i was sleeping soundly at night.

THAT is what pulled me out of that deepest part of my depression.

So in a way, it was exercise that saved me. But not how people often say "have you tried exercising?" More like pushing myself physically to the point that my body demanded the things that previously i couldn't get it to want for itself.

Instead of forcing myself to eat i was craving food. Instead of staying up to all hours and then tossing and turning, i was physically exhausted and slept early and hard. (and, weirdly, being physically exhausted was somehow a relief from being emotionally/mentally exhausted)

Lastly

Healing often isn't noticeable while you're doing it

"healing is a process" is something you hear a lot, but i think it's more helpful to say something like

"Healing is like growing your hair out from short to long. You can look in the mirror every day and not notice it happening. And even when you can tell for sure it's longer than it was, you still can't really do anything with it, and it may seem pointless. But then one day you can tie it back in a ponytail and you realize how much it's grown and how many options are open to you now and you're really glad you stuck with it"

Now excuse me while i go meditate on the joys of my remaining spicy soup.