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gojoscloset · 3 years

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“Hello, I just read your writing d**k appointment and I like it very much. And suddenly, I saw that you open the request NSFW dialogue prompts. Would you please write prompt 60 “Looks like someone wants to be a dad/mom” with Gojo or Megumi please 🥺”

Bahaha omg I’m so sorry I’m late as hell I’ve been busy with a lot mentally cause I have the attention span of a goldfish.

Please please enjoy, thank you so much for requesting lol. I’m back on my bullshit ✨

60. “Looks like someone wants to be a mom/dad”

WARNINGS: N S F W

Reposted from previous account

Smut obvs.

Breeding kink???? (if you squint)

Cream pie

Mentions of Pregnancy

No proofread??

————-

“Looks like someone wants to be a mom.”

You didn’t dare look away from what you thought had to be one of the cutest pairs of baby shoes you have ever laid your eyes on.

“Hmm? What do you mean? I just thought they were cute!” you lifted the pair of shoes up and gave your boyfriend a grin.

But Satoru was no idiot.

You see, these past few months have been filled with nothing but waves of emotions and ideas that you would have never thought you would have contemplated this early in life, but a pregnancy scare earlier in the year shook your world and turned it on its axis.

Of course you had imagined a life with Satoru, possibly married in the later years, and a potential family way wayyy down the line. However, you were content with where you two stood. A strong and healthy relationship, 2 consenting adults in love. But you also had to remember you were 2 powerful sorcerers in love. So even with your line of work, kids at the moment seemed really out of the question. Hell, even being in a relationship with someone like Satoru was a blessing with the lives you two lived. So even the idea of bearing his child seemed like you were asking for a lot from the universe.

When your period came late, all your little fantasies and thoughts of having a family took a step closer to becoming reality, you melted at the idea of becoming a mother and all your fears and doubts were thrown out the window.

But alas, the joy left just as fast as it came you were back on your regular schedule the day before your doctor's appointment. Relieved of course, but things weren’t the same.

Day after day you caught yourself indulging more and more in the idea of what your life would be like with a child. Would your first child be a girl or a boy? Whose features would they take on the most? Oh how you prayed to the gods that they would look more like Satoru than anything.

Would you be a good mother? Would Satoru be a good father? There was no doubt in your mind that he would be.

Don’t even get started on the names.

Your gaze would linger when you would pass up children and their parents at a park. Or when you would pass up baby clothes at the shopping strip, you would stop in your tracks and imagine your future child wearing that outfit.

Secretly you would shop for clothes online just to ‘see what they look like’ Or secretly read first time mom forums on breddit just to ‘See how it feels’ but it was so much more than just a passing curiosity.

And of course, You weren’t the only one who noticed the change.

You and Satoru have been in the love game for a respectable amount of time, and have spent the seconds, hours,days,weeks,months,years, in each other's presence. He would absolutely be able to acknowledge when you’d turn your head in the kids section or when your gaze would linger on the little girls in princess dresses at the market, corners of your lips curling just a little.

Or when a toddler at the grocery store handed him a fake phone,in which he pretended to answer with such enthusiasm you would almost believe he was actually on the phone with someone,he could visibly see how your heart melted at the sight. You looked at him like you wanted to marry him on the spot for the rest of the day. A personal favorite memory of his.

Satoru was a dumbass, but he was not stupid.

You didn’t know how much he loved seeing these little things, the little changes in you. Behind his tinted shades and through his long lashes, he would carefully watch your duality go from powerful sorcerer to something maternal.Something you never did in all the time he has known you until after the scare.

It made him want to jump your bones on the spot and put a baby in you every time, but you never brought up the topic despite seeming to be interested in motherhood, and respectfully he left it alone. But you had been caught red handed almost always.

Satoru held himself back when he had various opportunities to talk about it, do you know how hard that is to do as Satoru?

He wanted to press on. He wanted to pry and ask you all kinds of questions regarding the sudden change, but he knew that there was a time and place for everything, and now was definitely not the time nor location.

“Hey, not bad!” He allowed his glasses to slip off the bridge if his nose ever so slightly to get a better view.

“I would wear these if they came in my size”

He joked, you smacked his arm playfully and laughed.

“Cmon lets g-“

You were about to place the shoes back on the rack but he stopped you before you did. He pulled out his phone and snapped a few photos of the shoes and tag.

“I was being serious” he stated plainly, earning another laugh from the both of you.

——

The rest of the day went on as normal, for the most part. The little interaction at the store replayed not only in your mind but Satoru’s as well.

‘Did I make it too obvious?’

‘Did I overdo it with the shoes?’

‘Is it time to talk about it?’

—-

‘Toru..’ you whined but that didn’t stop him from continuing to bend you like a pretzel while plowing into you.

“Don’t be shy now, you look so good like this. ...And those faces you make....” he licked his lips reaching out to grab your jaw, thumb running across your lip.

Even though you were whining about the embarrassing positions he kept putting you in, your body was on fire and didn’t want this to end.

With every position he managed to go deeper and deeper, hitting places only he knew how to hit. He utilized the curve of his dick just how you liked it, grazing your favorite spots with every thrust.

The way your walls fluttered and clenched against his made them his favorite spots too.

It was crazy to you how Satoru knew your body like nobody else did. He knew every curve, every dip, every corner. He knew what made you weak in the knees and what you disliked with a passion. He knew what made you cream, what made you wet, what made your back arch and your toes curl.

“You like that Hmm?” He bucked his hips, folding your legs up, pushing your knees as close to your chest as possible.

He gazed into your eyes, watching the way your face wrenched in pleasure. He needed that, he loved that. Being able to see your expression contour and twist because of him, god it got him off.

He looked down at you, his usually spiky hair now flattened with sweat, strands sticking to the side of his face. He bit his lip, and gripped your hips with force, bruises were guaranteed.

He brought you closer, you slowed your breathing to control the ride. You two had been fucking long enough to know the Cues, the way your body twitched and the little sounds you would make when you were close triggered the muscle memory and he moved in the way he knew would push you over the edge.

“D..Don't slow down!” You commanded, throwing your head back into the sheets, the familiar tingling sensation starting at your core, his pace picking up, hands trailing down your abdomen, fingers circling around your clit, wet with its own slick.

He couldn’t help but suck on his own bottom lip watching your body rock in rhythm with his, the way your breast bounced, he couldn’t help but grab a handful.

“That’s right baby….” he spoke softly, voice just above the lewd sounds you two we’re making. The squelching, skin slapping skin, the gasping sounds when he would thrust back into you.

He was getting carried away, letting the words just spill from his lips. “Mmmm fuck yeah baby, you feel so fucking good.” He groaned “fuck around and put a baby in you-“

You had been with this man for many many moons, had been through thick and thin, but nothing had prepared you two for that awkward moment.

All movements ceased the second he stopped talking. Both of you pulled away and just looked at each other, embarrassment demonstrated on both of your faces.

Both of you seemed to think about the Barget incident, and then every other incident which made the dirty talk hit different.

“Sorry” Quickly he spoke, in hopes of somehow saving his ass in case things went south.

“W-what for?” You continued to try and mask your feelings about the situation(s), but nothing could get past his eyes.

He was no idiot, you knew that, but you still tried him, because sometimes he lets your shit slide. But not this time.

“Please y/n, I’ve seen the change in you.”

The air was thick, momentarily, but the smile on his face gave you clarity.

“The lingering looks, the shoes at the store… I’ve noticed” his large hands cupped your face, thumb brushing calming shapes against your cheek.

“Is there something we need to talk about?”

He released you from your position and sat up straight.

“Toru…do you really wanna talk about this now?????” Sheepish under the circumstances

“Don’t give me that. We’ve been together too long for you to try and play this game with me.”

His hands found their way to you once again. Pulling you by the wrists, he sat you up and made you look at him as he continued to speak.

“Communication remember?” He was soft, yet stern.

“You haven’t been the same since the missed period incident.” Your jaw dropped, he was on it even with the timing.

There was no sense in hiding anything anymore, this man knows all, this man sees all.

“I’d be lying if I said you were wrong….you see..” you began to pour your heart out, trying your hardest to keep eye contact with him.

“The pregnancy scare heightened the want for a family with you, Satoru. I envision a lot of things, and you being in my future for a long long time is one of them...”

He held your gaze while looking at you like you were the most beautiful thing in the world. He listened intently like you were whispering the secrets of the universe to him.

“But I never brought up the topic of family because we’re-“

“Sorcerers” He finished the sentence for you, the small smile he held earlier now turned into a flat line.

The speed in which he did was almost enough to make you flinch. Bittersweet in a way,at least this confirmed that he too thought about a family with you at one point but considered the circumstances.

A“Exactly..” you continued. “And the scare made me realize what I want in life..with you. But it’s out of reach and it’s not something I wanted to project onto- “

His large hands placed themselves in either side of your face and Satoru showered you with kisses.

“I. Love. You. So. Much.” He spoke in between kisses.

“I love you too, but- AH!!! What are you doing??!”

Satoru pulled you by your ankles, placing himself in between your legs once again.

“Putting a baby in you, that's what.” He gave you such a sweet and loving look, it didn’t match the words that spewed from his lips.

“T-that’s not funny…” Quickly, you covered your entrance before he even thought about it.

“Exactly, because it wasn’t a joke sweetheart.”

“Wait, but what about-”

“We’ll be fine, i’m the strongest, remember?” he gave you a playful wink and grabbed your wrists, playfully prying your hands away, he wasn’t going to do anything though, not without your consent, but seeing how flustered he could make you fed the already enlarged ego he owned.

“Now tell me, do you want a boy or girl? Ooh, what about their names?”

“ Satoru… wait… are you sure? Don’t you wanna think about it a little more?”

He let out a playful laugh and pointed a finger dramatically at you, “Are you sure?”

Without missing a beat you nodded, you wanted this so bad, and by the looks of it, so did he.

“That’s all you had to say, let me take care of you, my pillow princess”

-------------

The sultry night was young.How many times have you came already? It didn’t matter.

His arms were wrapped around your entire body, holding you in place as he bounced you up and down his shaft.

“My pretty girl… my sweet sweet princess.” He whispered against your skin, tongue grazing from your collar bone up to your jaw, tasting your sweat. He wanted to breathe you in, and make you his air. The words replayed in his mind as he fucked you senseless.

“and you being in my future for a long long time is one of them...”

“Toru…” Your breathing hitched,, his praise made your walls twitch around him. He got the hint and immediately went to work. In a swift movement you were beneath his form. His skin glistening with a layer of sweat.

“ How do you want it?” he groaned, draping your leg over his shoulder while grabbing the other one, spreading you wider. You were grateful for the change of position, you have been wanting to touch him for a while now but the grip he had you in earlier was not letting it happen.

Your hands hungrily made his way to his chest and arms.

“As long...as I get it…” you managed to mutter through moans. His thrusts became erratic, a sign that he was coming undone as well.

“Look at me..tell me how you want it....tell me how you need it” he licked his lips with desire. You managed to look at him through half lidded eyes, giving him exactly what he wanted, he always did the same for you.

You lifted your hips up some, grinding harder against him, letting more of him fill you up, you could swear you felt his head kiss your cervix. You did a kegel, walls giving his dick a hug.

The actions earned you a breathy moan, he almost lost his cool, it threw off his pace momentarily but when he picked back up, the speed was doubled.

“You like to play dirty, hmm? “

“The only way I like to play…”

“Very well then” he said through grit teeth, finger moving to where you were connected, rubbing your clit in circles without mercy. You were pushed over the edge quickly, mouth Ajar, and body convulsing against him, his movements did not falter.

“That’s my good girl”

He lowered his body down mouth to cage you between his arms, droplets of sweat falling onto the sheets as he tried to avoid sweat falling into your eyes.

“Are you sure?”

He asked once again, not moving an inch until you gave him the go.

You simply stared up at him, goofy grin he always carried on him plastered onto his handsome face.

You gave him the go once again and he bucked his hips.

This particular moment was sweet sweet bliss. Normally Satoru would be careless with his movements when it came to chasing his orgasm, but not this particular one. His touches would linger, fingertips burning themselves into your skin with passion, making their way from your hips to your hands, large fingers filling in the gaps between your own.

His kisses were oh so immaculate. Sweet and soft, but most importantly, abundant.

And the way he spoke your name. Only Satoru could make his words come out like they were coated in honey.

His hips snapped and he gave your hand a squeeze, face in the crook of your neck, the hot breath against your skin forced chills down your spine, with you

“I love you so much…” he groaned into your ear. With a few more bucks of his hips you felt his seed spill into you. You were running on fumes at this point, overkill with the overstim, but that’s how you liked it.

You felt your clit throb, your walls still fluttering against him from your previous climax like they were sucking every last drop of out of him.

He looked down at you silently, but the look on his face, the calm waters in his eyes said everything he needed to say. You couldn’t tear away your gaze, you were already high off the blue dream.

His eyes moved from yours to your lips, they looked needy to him. He bent his head down and planted a kiss, despite the scenario, it was chaste. Innocent. Refreshing.

“I love you.” He repeated, though he had no doubt you felt the same. “I know you do...there is not a single doubt in my mind...and I love you oh so very much, more than I could ever put in words.”

There was another comfortable silence, however, the small smile that was on your face quickly turned into a flustered look when he pulled out of you and spread your legs open, looking at the mess he made inside of you.

“W-what the fuck are you doing?!!”

You laughed nervously and tried closing your legs, but he held them open, too strong for you to try and fight against it.

“I just wanted to see the masterpiece I made. Plus-“ he positioned himself between your legs again

“I’m not done, I want to make sure I get the job done right.”

He gave you a wink, and immediately you knew you were in for a long night.

A very very long night.

#jjk headcanons #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jjk x y/n #gojo satoru #gojo x y/n #gojo x you #gojo x reader #satoru gojō x reader #satoru gojo #Nasty Nept✨

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royalcalum · 3 years

Text

Must Love Dogs

Featuring: Calum x reader

Warnings: language, mentions of being catfished I guess... it’s just straight up fluff tbh

Summary: As an up-and-coming Twitch streamer, you’re used to befriending people online. When you start getting cozy enough with one fan for them to ask for a ride from the airport, you find out who you’ve really been talking to for six months.

Author’s Note: I’m going to try to start rewriting some old fics (mainly Calum tbh) to make them more realistic (lol as if this is realistic) and better in general so this is a rewrite of “blurb request lol 4/4 where you're whole relationship has been on the internet like you met on twitter or something and you finally meet at the airport after like five months idk this would be really cute and it's like my dream :----(“ Not beta’d

It started as an innocent fan and creator friendship. You’d been streaming on twitch for a while and had gained a decent sized following, averaging about 500 viewers per stream. Needless to say, your comments section was a little difficult to keep up with. But even with the quick scrolling of new comments with each statement you made, you noticed one name in particular whose comments were always funny or sweet instead of crude and vulgar, like some of those your mods were frequently deleting.

When that same username followed you on Twitter not long after you took notice of them, you were quick to follow back. You’d followed a few of your “fans” before, so it wasn’t unusual. Hell, it wasn’t even odd for you to DM back and forth with some of your followers. What was out of character was becoming attached to one of those fans.

All you knew was his first name (Calum), his age (24), and his location (LA) before you started talking regularly. He had asked for your number at one point, but was understanding when you said you don’t give out that kind of information. For you, it was a relief to finally talk to a man who not only enjoyed your streams, but didn’t make you feel objectified and demeaned. For him, it was a relief to finally meet someone who liked him instead of his name or money.

Communicating with him grew difficult when he flew to Australia to visit family. The time difference still gave you time to DM every day, but staying up late wasn’t quite the same when it was just afternoon for him. You’d already spent five months talking to him and as much as you hated admitting it, you had started to care for this mystery man despite never seeing his face. That never stopped you before (Corpse, anyone?), but for all you knew, “Calum, 24, California” was actually “Craig, 42, Alabama.”

When it came time for him to fly back to LA, you were surprised when he asked if you wanted to meet up when he got back. Like, right when he got back. As in “my friend can’t pick me up and I don’t want to ask you of all people to suffer through LAX traffic so I can just get an Uber if I need to but it’d also be nice to finally meet if you could give me a ride from the airport,” back.

You’d be lying if you said you weren’t apprehensive. He was technically still a stranger you met on the internet and you couldn’t guarantee he wasn’t going to overpower you, take your car, kidnap you, and murder you somewhere in the desert. But you took precautions and told your roommate and a couple other friends where you would be and when to expect you back. If things went well and you spent more time with Calum, you’d call them and tell them, no texting.

Two days later, you stood next to your car parked outside the baggage claim for his airline. You didn’t even know who to look for, but he knew what you looked like — obviously, since you met through your twitch stream.

As people started to flood out of the airport doors, you started to wonder if you had been duped. Would this be a story worthy of Nev and Max? Being led to an airport just to be stood up? More and more people left the terminal while you took up space with your car. You’d get a ticket if you didn’t leave soon — your car may be running but you were technically parked in the loading zone — and your anxiety just continued to grow. He wouldn’t lead you on for nearly six months and stand you up at LAX, of all places… right?

Just as you looked down at your phone again to let your roommate know you might be back sooner than expected, you heard your name called from a few feet away.

And when you looked up, you were starstruck.

“You motherfucker,” you laughed as he got closer. “You knew I was a fan from my stream! That’s why you didn’t want to FaceTime!”

He laughed with you and didn’t hesitate to pull you into a hug.

“It was fun getting to just talk to you,” he defended. “I didn’t want you to unintentionally treat me differently just because you like my band.”

It felt nice to not only meet him, but feel him. He held you tight against his chest, his arms circling your shoulders with yours around his waist. And his thick sweater gave you a soft cushion to rest your head against as you just held each other. You pulled back from his hug but kept your hands on his ribcage, his resting on the sides of your neck as you asked, “How did you end up on my stream?”

“Someone tweeted a clip of you singing one of our songs from an older stream so I decided to check you out. I thought you were pretty and fun so I came back for more.”

For a second, you just stared up at him in multiple stages of shock. This was Calum Hood. From your favorite band. He just hugged you. And called you pretty. How could you handle this?!

But you could handle this. Because he was also the guy you had been talking to for the past six months. The guy you stayed up late talking to and who sent supportive messages when your chat got too aggressive and told you stories from his childhood. You knew him. You just had to let yourself realize the man you’d grown to care about personally was also the man you cared about as a fan.

Holy shit.

“Are you okay?” he asked, sliding his hands down your neck and over your shoulders to your upper arms as he looked down at you with concern etched on his face.

“What? Oh, yeah. Sorry, it’s just taking me a second to really let this all sink in,” you admitted.

“Yeah, now that we’re here, I’m realizing I probably should’ve broken the news in a less, uh, spontaneous way,” he laughed nervously, dropping his hands from you and shoving them in his pockets instead.

You should’ve just kept your mouth shut to keep those hands on you. Or if luck was on your side, he’d have his hands all over you later.

“I mean, I’m not mad about it,” you shrugged. “It’s just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” he asked with a smirk.

You let out a sigh. “Honestly? I was kind of expecting to either be stood-up or meet a 42-year-old balding man from Alabama with a beer belly named Craig.”

“Wait… his beer belly is named Craig?”

“No, he is named Craig, you doof!” you laughed, gently shoving Calum’s arm.

“Well I’m sorry to disappoint,” he said with that same smirk on his lips.

“Oh believe me, I’m anything but disappointed,” you replied with a quirk of your own lips. “So, am I taking you to your place then?”

Calum started loading his luggage into the backseat of your car as he spoke to you. With only two checked bags and a carry-on, he didn’t have much, but clearly wouldn’t let you help as he hoisted everything in.

“Yes, please,” he said as he shut the car door. “As excited as I am to finally meet you, I really miss my dog.”

You gasped and immediately perked up. “Duke?!”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Do you want to meet him?”

“Oh my god, yes!” You ran around to the driver’s side and impatiently waited for Calum to get in and buckle his seatbelt before weaving through the waiting cars to get out of LAX. Fortunately, Calum got in on a late night flight so the traffic wasn’t as bad as you’ve seen before.

“I feel like you’re more excited to meet my dog than you are to meet me,” Calum pouted from the passenger’s seat.

“As excited as I am to finally meet you,” you started with a direct quote, “I really love dogs.”

#Calum x reader #Calum hood x reader #Calum hood fluff #calum hood one shot

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captainmazzic · 4 years

Text

Happy Halloween.

So it’s about time I gave a real fucking update instead of just dicking around being cagey about shit. I’ve mentioned a new project repeatedly. So let’s sit down and actually talk about it, friends. Pull up a chair, grab yourself some hot cocoa and strap in. Welcome to Sarc’s emotional roller coaster.

Bear with me. This is hard to talk about for so many reasons, but mostly because I’ve been belittled and ridiculed so many times in my life for liking “cringy” things or wanting to do things that other people think are stupid or childish. I hear the voice of my father telling me to “make something of my life” and “don’t squander your talents”, I hear the voice of my mother telling me I have “so much potential” and “one day I hope you get some ambition”, I hear the voice of my ex telling me to “stop wasting time with stupid shit” and “nobody is interested in failures”. I hear old teachers telling me honor roll students should go to college and study high-demand majors and anything else would be lazy and detrimental and won’t contribute anything worthwhile to society.

It’s the same shit that prevented me for a long time from posting art online. From posting writing online. From making ocs and showing them to other people. And now it’s preventing me from starting this project, and I’m so, so tired of it.

My biggest fear right now is that once I start talking about this project I’ll lose this tiny little community of people vaguely interested in my stuff that have somehow stuck around. External validation and sharing the things I love are my primary motivations with everything I do online, and while screaming into the void is all well and good, I need feedback and interaction and community. I need it so, so badly. I wouldn’t post jack shit – ever – if I didn’t need that, to be honest.

So anyway.

When the pandemic kicked into high gear earlier this year I got laid off for a few months. It gave me a lot of time to think about who I am and where I wanted to be in life, what mattered to me, what dreams I still had and which ones had fallen by the wayside.

Some of them are huge – once upon a time I was very religious. I went through seminary, got my minister’s certification, and was slated to be an associate pastor in a mega-church and rake in a six-figure income within 3 years. But I lost my faith and couldn’t stand the idea of being disingenuous.

And there was also a time when I received a full-ride scholarship to a very prestigious university that would have spanned a 12-year program and resulted in me having several doctorates and masters degrees by the end of it, in the fields of geology, palaeontology, and cladistics. But the scholarship program that was supposed to sponsor me went bankrupt the very semester I was supposed to capitalize on it. I was still accepted into the school, but the $1.2 million price tag would have all been out of my own pocket. So obviously that didn’t happen.

Those were the “acceptable” dreams. Those were the ones that parents and teachers and the general outside world approved of and thought were worthy goals. But neither of them panned out, and all I have left are the cringy ones. Like homesteading and sustainable living (can’t start without land, can’t have land without money). Like making comic books and doing art commissions for a living (it has to be steady to support myself, and I’m far too slow an artist for things to be steady). And like… playing video games.

Ha.

What’s funny is I can already envision the eyerolls and hear the snorts of laughter. What kind of dream is that? Only a handful of famous youtubers and twitch celebrities play video games for a living, and breaking into a field like that is pretty much impossible unless you already have friends in famous places.

Yeah, but… it would be so much fun. Right?

It WOULD be fun. I don’t have to become a super popular celebrity for it to be fun, right?

I don’t have to make it my day job and rake in piles of cash for it to be fun, right?

… I don’t have to actually be successful for it to be fun… right?

… Right?

… I love video games.

I’ve loved them ever since I tried and failed so many times to win The Empire Strikes Back on Atari 2600. I’ve loved them ever since I played Mortal Kombat with my cousin in his basement with the sound down super low because it was ultra-violent and I would have been in so much trouble if mom caught me playing it. I’ve loved them ever since I tried and failed to finish Strife and Hexen and Heretic without the computer crashing and rebooting to DOS. I’ve loved them ever since I had to cheat-code my way through Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II just to get past the first boss fight but then no-clipped through the wall and died anyway. I still love that game.

But I stopped playing video games for a very long time. I was intimidated out of them by an ex and a somewhat toxic friend group who were Real Gamers™. I was brought to LAN parties but not allowed to play, because I slowed down the team and didn’t know the controls. I was banned from commenting on other people’s moves or cheering people on because it was distracting and I could cost them a win. I was even kicked out of their online D&D campaigns because I couldn’t be serious enough or roleplay well enough for their standards. Even if I was playing a game on my own, I couldn’t play with anyone else in the house because I’d be ridiculed for dying a lot, or for going the wrong way, or for picking the wrong game because only certain games are “good” and most of the ones I wanted to play were “stupid” or “trash” or a “waste of time”.

That kind of thing sits with me for a very, very long time. I didn’t really play games at all for over a decade. Even after I ended up on the opposite side of the country, with a new circle of friends, I couldn’t bring myself to play much of anything.

And then I had an extended visit with a friend of mine, and he introduced me to an early version of a ridiculous little game called Minecraft. My friend was an avid gamer but also a very kind one. In the ten years before this, I had told myself that I just preferred to watch other people play games instead of playing them myself (a lie. I mean, I absolutely adore watching other people play, but I also want to play too lol), my friend saw through that and very gently encouraged me to take a stab at playing Minecraft myself. He moved his laptop over to me, and I played a whole ten minutes with him watching before my nerves failed me and I promptly died. But miraculously it wasn’t a big deal to him. It was just a game. I might have cried in relief, I don’t remember.

After my visit I shelved playing video games for like another year, despite buying a whole mess of them because other friends online loved certain titles and wanted to talk about them with me. (I never played them, just bought them. I couldn’t even handle the thought of playing by myself in my own house). But for some reason I mentioned to my brother-in-law my old visit to my Minecraft-loving friend, and he just… up and bought the game for me. My brother-in-law is also an avid gamer with a lovely and patient disposition, and he suggested I just play in creative mode and build things to start. So I did that (behind a locked door in the RV that I lived in by myself, with the lights off and the sound down low) and Minecraft was my sole video game for another several years.

Then a couple years ago another friend of mine (hi Char) introduced me to Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I fell in love. It sparked a renewed interest in video games that I thought I would never really have the opportunity to satisfy, because games were still intimidating.

Let me clarify: I… SUCK. At video games. I’m terrible at them. Learning controls is a nightmare and a tunicate evolving its own brain would learn faster than me. If I’m aiming, I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. I have the direction sense of a whirligig beetle on the back of a drunk pigeon. I die fast and I die often. I can count the number of games I’ve actually finished on one hand. Even less if we don’t count the ones I had to use cheat codes to get through. But none of that diminishes my love of experiencing them, and over this whole pandemic and quarantine thing I’ve had a lot of time to unpack and mull over my thoughts and feelings and passions about them.

… I moved my RV to a new spot literally the day before the lockdown in my state first initiated. Before this I was in a spot that had no internet other than what reception I could get on my phone, with severely limited bandwidth and patchy, unreliable service. The new spot has a steady wi-fi connection, and while upload speed is utter shit, downloading and streaming video are just this side of manageable. So I spent the first three months of the quarantine lockdown doing pretty much nothing other than watching Jacksepticeye, CrankGameplays, and Markiplier play video games on YouTube. (I honestly had no idea before this that people even did let’s plays. My internet access/speed has been shit for so long I’m totally out of the loop).

It… for fear of sounding utterly stupid yet again, it inspired me.

Like. These people really love what they’re doing. They just. Play video games and have fun with it, and I mean yeah they make money hand-over-fist doing it but the main thing is they HAVE FUN doing it. They have fun! Playing video games! In front of people! It’s wild. And the thing that REALLY got me was… they have feedback on it too. They have a COMMUNITY. They have people they can talk to about it. They have people that they can play games WITH, even, who don’t yell at them or tell them they suck every five minutes or tell them they can’t play with them because they’re worthless as teammates. They can fuck up in a game and their friends are laughing along with them on Discord instead of screaming at them to get it right or get out. They can play games by themselves in their house and then upload videos on the internet and then they can talk to other people about it! They have fun! It’s awesome! They have fun!!

I just. It meant so much to me. It meant so much to me to see these videos of these three, and then another dozen or so that I’ve followed since, play all these games and have such a good time and also be such a positive and kind and encouraging source of energy.

I know all of this is not exactly about video games specifically. It’s about coming to terms with how I’ve been treated as a person and as a friend, about how other people respect someone’s interests and passions, about how it’s okay to share your interests with other people and it’s okay to like things that other people might not care about or think are important.

And I’m so, so tired of not doing the things I love because I’m afraid of what other people will think.

So I, uh. I invested all of the stimulus money I had into a new rig and equipment like a camera, lighting, acoustic panels, all that shit. I dug out all the games I bought but never played, I made accounts on all the big gaming services like Steam and Itch.io and GoG, and I made a YouTube channel. And I’m going to be making my own let’s plays. And it will suck, and it will be cringy and awkward and badly done, and it won’t make me money or be a valid career option or be anything but another very expensive hobby, but it will be mine, and it will be something I can share with people and (hopefully) have fun with, and it will (hopefully) be an avenue for some of this positive social interaction I’m craving.

I know YouTube can be toxic and super negative and full of trolls and cancel culture fanatics and people just waiting to find something to tear you down for, but like. Come on, y’all. I’m posting this on tumblr dot com. Toxic is everywhere anyway. I just want to try, you know?

I just want to love video games again.

Someone famous that I look up to so, so much told me – without knowing that I was even listening, without even knowing that I even exist – that if I enjoy doing something, to just go for it. To just jump in and do it, and if it works then it works, and if it doesn’t, what have I actually lost?

And I’m lucky enough to have four whole offline friends that I’ve mentioned this idea to, and each of them has said encouraging things like I’d have a good voice and face and style for making let’s plays. I honestly don’t know how true that part is, but on my good days I believe them. And they also said that I should go for it, to just try.

So that’s… that’s what I’m doing, I guess. I just want to try.

I know it’s not Star Wars fanart. I know it’s not Star Wars fanfiction. I know it’s not Star Wars meta or essays or ranting about the Sith and the Jedi and the Force. I know it’s not what y’all want from me. And that’s utterly terrifying. I’m bracing myself to be alone on the internet again, because I know that when I dive headfirst into this thing, it’ll eat away into the time that I normally might be spending doing writing or art, and it’s going to be something no one else wants to see and no one signed up for. And that’s partly why it’s taken me so very, very long to get started.

The other part is more physical. Of course as soon as I decide that I’m going to put my face on a camera is when my entire face goes to shit. I’m currently waiting on a potential diagnosis for mouth cancer, while already dealing with a severe jaw infection that’s causing my teeth and gums to rot inside my mouth. They already took part of my jaw, I’m missing teeth, others are turning black, if I open my mouth even just a little it is so obvious and I look like a very, very literal zombie. I have never been more grateful that masks are socially acceptable. I have a series of twelve appointments scheduled to treat this shit now that I have dental and health insurance (goodbye paycheque), and I might qualify for reconstruction surgery too. But that doesn’t really help how I look right now.

So I just can’t bring myself to start this project just yet. I’ve been sitting on it for months now with all the other pieces in place, but I just. Can’t. Start. It’s driving me crazy, because I want to start so badly. I feel like I’m wasting time. I feel like I’ve already wasted so much time, because I haven’t even done anything else in the meantime. I haven’t done hardly any art or fanfic, nothing. My anxiety is spiking so high right now because I have all these expectations of myself, but I can’t do anything about it. I’ve been told that I could just start without a camera or wear a mask on screen, and I’ve actually done some recording doing exactly that, but I just… can’t seem to make anything I want to finalize.

It’s also frustrating because I have no way of uploading anything at home. I’ll have to go over to my partner’s house which is nearly an hour’s drive away in order to get internet good enough to upload videos, which means that upload schedules are going to be shiiiiiit and that’s also frustrating.

But. But. BUT. I want to do this.

I want to do this so badly. I want to share let’s plays and experience a love of video games with other people. I want to actually play games with other people too. I also just acquired a piano keyboard, and I want to play again on the regular because I miss it so much. I used to play piano for hours every single day, it’s so relaxing and fun, maybe I can post that too. Maybe I can post let’s draws or something, where I ask y’all what to draw and then make a video of me drawing it while bullshitting to the camera I don’t know it sounds like fun. Maybe I can post videos of my cooking because the shit I make seems to be everyone’s favourite thing on instagram, and maybe I can take my camera with me when I go to the ocean or hike up into the middle of nowhere in the mountains and film how beautiful everything is up there. Or maybe I can do none of that and just focus on one thing, I honestly have no idea what I’m doing or how to do it, but I just… I want to try. I just want to try.

I don’t know where any of this is going anymore. I’m sorry I haven’t responded to messages, or opened up commissions. I’m sorry that this isn’t what y’all wanted. I’m still going to continue drawing and writing, I’m still going to be around, I’m not going anywhere, but I have no idea how prolific I’m going to be and I have no idea even when I’ll start uploading videos, to be honest. But I just. I’m just gonna try. It might still take me a while but I’m gonna try. Wish me luck. I love y’all.

#long post #psa #sarc speaks #sarc speaks a LOT #3k words worth of a LOT #I'm so sorry #OTL

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avenger-hawk · 4 years

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(1/3)HELLO! It's me, Anon who loves you again(lol). But you can call me Zera since I feel like we are going to interact more now (if u want to of course). But Damn, I just went back to finally read your response and I agree so much with what you say. I have an entire essay to write back and this shitty ask will not let me express myself lmao. Anyway, those past few days I felt so shitty just because of how degratory people can be on the internet because they think they are anonymous.

(2/3)Tumblr at this point is so…f*ucked. Constant slandering denigration, muckraking and aspersions. Some people try to negate the toxic and keep it alive but this platform is a breeding place for mob mentality. I’ve seen so many people bullied out of the place just for having a differing opinion. And so many people being all woke trying to “spill tea”, “expose” real people. They tarnish people’s feelings and reputations all behind their safe anonymous cocoon.

(3/3) And they justify this abuse/slander with “I am allowed to express my opinions so gtfo if you don’t agree bitch”. They play the victim when people tell them that opinions do not mean denigrating real people for bullshit reasons with no real proof. At this point sweetie, I am just ranting. Sorry if I am bothering you with those negative thoughts but I felt so shitty those past few days and you are pratically the only one I can get behind in this hellhole tumblr shit. Also, I am writing out-

(Last Part) As I was TRYING TO SAY before the limit bullshit cut me off, I am writing out a response to your previous response to my previous ask. It’s way too long already so I will either need to send you through dm or cut it out into pieces after I have fully written everything out. Thankkk you so much for talking to me despite me being so sudden with you. I appreciate you so much and I hope you are taking care out there (both physically AND mentally). Also, loving those art reblogs

Hello Zera and nice to meet you by your name (or nickname, it’s cute anyway~) and I’m glad you like my fanart reblogs.

I am sorry that you are feeling shitty…it’s frustrating, to say the least, to see people hide behind anonymous and slander blogs, names, real people who are behind them, for an opinion, a taste, whatever. I find irritating even the words/expressions they use, maybe because as a non native English speaker I saw them for the first time used in this bad context so they are only associated to tumblr fake woke idiots and their ‘that’s the tea’ shit. And it’s ironic that they can talk shit about people however they want but when people do the same to them they justify with not only the reasons I listen in my last reply but also with this thing you mentioned, that they are allowed to express their opinion…like, what about the person they slandered? oh but they are not ‘valid’ (I hate this word too) because their opinion is wrong. Says them, ofc. Then ofc they start playing the victim because poor kids, everyone is a bully to them.

It’s ok to rant, I understand your feeling well and I’d like to tell you that if you ‘stop paying attention’ to this it will be ok, but I do fall into the frustration & irritation pit too sometimes. But it happens less often, cause I channeled my fandom time and interested on positive stuff instead and so I want to stay. I don’t want to be preachy or belittle this problem because I know how hard it is (and you can see in my blog that I struggled with these problems directly too, both from dumbasses like those you describe, and from a different kind of creep lol, and even in my other fandom there is slandering and calling out and horrible things), but recently even more, all this coronavirus lockdown (my country is in quarantine since more than a month now) and something horrible that happened to the person I love, made me reconsider certain things. At least for me, at least for now, their importance is dulled down now…Even more than before where I was already detached from fandom dramas.

And since I can see things from a detached perspective I might try ‘suggesting’ something to not let this shit get to you…because life is a b*tch and you can’t allow yourself to suffer for f*ckers who don’t even show themselves, hiding behind an anonymous, or running a shitty blog where they just shit on people, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t engage in fandom discussion (or, like they call it, ‘discourse’, another word I hate) anyway, and I recommend everyone to not engage in anything with those f*ckers. Not because you (not just you Zera but you guys in general) are scared of them but because what they want is attention, and receiving replies, reblogs, attacks, everything, is what they want. blocking them, even making fun of them like they do to others, is ok, cause it’s repaying them with their same treatment. But cut communication. Block people, everyone. These idiots, their friends, those who put likes on their shit, those who put likes on their shit but also to your stuff because they can’t pick a side and maybe they’re good people who don’t think much about these things. Block every single person who irritates you even just a little, and everyone around them. Unfollow people, but mostly block them. The fanarts I post now has little notes compared to the ones I had in the past when I posted them, because I blocked everyone who annoys me, everyone whose opinions annoy me, everyone who starts shit even though I don’t want to speak to them, like every SN/SI/canon stans and puritans and more. I unfollowed friends who followed one of those fake woke b*tches, who reblogged their stuff I didn’t want to see, and made them unfollow me. Marie Kondo my a** lol

And make it clear, so that those who’ll see these people shitting on someone who clearly said they blocked them, will realize who’s bullying who. Maybe it won’t change anything in the short period but in the long run it will, because these assholes have their same behavioral pattern, being overt or even more, covert narcissistic b*tches in need of attention, so if their target ignores them they’ll move to another, in the same ‘area’.

The temptation to check their blogs and see if they attack you, your friends, or what they do in order to protect yourself is strong, but it won’t help getting over this. I know it’s hard and I fell into this a lot, but we all should use fandoms in a positive way to get distracted when we feel like shit because of fandoms…like looking at fanarts, fanfiction or using some private chat group that you know it’s a safe space, even though I read that a dischord chat became moralistic hell unexpectedly, for some the people who joined.

Anyway, sometimes we (and I include myself) fall into this ‘addiction’ where we consider fandom things so important, and we neglect real life people and things…and negative shit like bullying, slandering and all this makes us feel horribly and it’s not different from real life bullying. Sometimes it’s even worse because we join a fandom as a distraction, an escape route sometimes for real life problems, and instead we end up feeling like shit because of it. But, as someone who spent a whole year trying to expose a very bad person who did bad things to me online, and as a person who was slandered many times and always fought back, I can say that letting this affect our real life is bad. Because real life is even harder and we don’t need more weights on our shoulders. And if something like illness or death get close to your circle of people, you realize how all this is pointless, how these f*ckers have no purpose in their pathetic lives other than making others feel bad, and how we can and must fight back everything, but not let it get inside our heads and hearts, where we must keep things we like, our fave characters, ships, dynamics, kinks, people, whatever.

Because, and really everything I say I tried and try on myself first, there will come a time where you’ll look back at this and you’ll realize you might have missed something more important in your life, real or online it doesn’t matter, both are important…Life, I was saying, sometimes is cruel in big and small ways, taking something or someone away from you when you least expect it, making it hard to do the things you like because some a**holes decides it’s wrong, online and offline (like, try feeding crows in my area and see how much hate you can get, and being hated for something so harmless is really horrible, and it’s like the real life representation of online shit imo) is too short to worry about shitty blogs run by shitty people or shitty anons~

I really hope you’re feeling better Zera, and if you celebrate Easter I wish you a happy one!

#Anonymous #replies &co #fanon and fandom stuff

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aquarianlights · 5 years

Text

Happy Personal Update Time!!

I know I promised to do this forever ago, but things got busy. So here I am!

Most of you know this is my personal blog, but it has become a lot less personal since pursing medical education. I’m still here, though, and I still love coming here to read all the asks I get and interact with all my followers and all that good stuff. What I really miss is being able to post text posts. They have always been my way of venting and letting go of inward pain, anger, frustration, etc... Text posts/ranting have always been super cathartic for me. But my life is great now and I’m happy to just jump back in to give a long overdue update every once in a while because I miss doing it and I know I still have longtime followers somewhere in that list of people. Haha. Exciting stuff is happening, though!! And I’m very excited to share it, as well.

SO.............this is gonna be long because THERE’S GREAT STUFF HAPPENING!! :D AND I WANT TO SHARE IT ALL!! I hope someone will read this coz man oh man have I come a long fucking way from the whiny little drug addicted suicidal little boy I used to be. Haha. :)

This fall semester is going to be just lovely. I’m going to have the opportunity to work with one of the clubs I’m joining to teach high schoolers how to properly do dissections. I’ll be taught how to properly clean equipment like microscopes and auger plates and such. And I’ll be working alongside a couple of my professors and other club members to mentor high schoolers in some cool biology stuff. :)

The other night, I finally got official international membership with Phi Theta Kappa and also got international membership with the Omega Nu Chapter. I’ll be receiving all that good proof stuff soon like certificates and such, but the reason I’m primarily excited about that is because that opens me up to a TON of scholarship opportunities. Both of those societies give out a fuckton of money every year for academic achievement and with me transferring schools, I’m hoping to be lucky enough to snag some of that.

One of my professors recommended me for a student council officer position and I found out recently that he spoke with another professor in the same department that had me as a student and she got on board with that, but I’m not entirely sure I want to go that route because while I was writing up my essay to submit to the current SGA explaining why they should choose me for one of the officer positions, I really didn’t feel all that passionate at all about it, so I’d much rather someone with a passion for the position have it, but it made me feel good that my professors have that kind of faith in me. I’m still debating on it, though.

Another professor of mine submitted my name for an internship position with a student partnership that eventually leads you to an invite-only online community where you can be set up with more internship opportunities and helps to make connections in your field and all sorts of stuff. The internship has a $200 stipend for the first semester that you do it and a $250 stipend for every following semester that you do it.

I was going to try it out with her this summer semester, but I had *NO* idea there was so much involved. By the time I had completed my 10 hours of training, I was in shock by the amount of work I was going to need to do to prepare for the role so I’ll actually be taking it on for the first time during Fall semester instead of summer, which is annoying because part of this internship requires you to make a short presentation in every one of the classes that the professor has that term for the students their class (and any other professor in the department who uses the software who may need you), record said lecture and put it up on canvas with the professor for anyone who missed the 1st day of class and for any online classes, be open for any questions after the presentation from both the students and the professor, hold at least 2 hours worth of office hours during the first week, and a *TON* of other stuff that happens prior to the semester before this and after this throughout the semester that would take forever to list. This is annoying that I am having to start in the fall because summer semester has less than HALF the students that fall has. There’s barely anyone there in the summer at all and summer classes are usually very laid back. The teachers are so chill in the summer and usually don’t care much, whereas the Fall semester is serious business and there are TONS of incoming freshman all confused about where they are going and everyone is lost and in a hurry and nervous and it is just total chaos literally everywhere on any campus you go to. So we really wanted to test this out during summer, but there’s just no way. The amount of representatives I have to meet and sit down with and hash out certain details with prior to even making this presentation is going to take me at least a couple weeks and summer semester starts next week. Lol. I only had like 3 weeks from the time my professor submitted my name. Was not nearly enough time.

It’s a very overwhelming internship and the work is... daunting. I mean, it is going to be a *LOT* of work and it is something I have never done before and it will be a style of leadership that I have never had placed on my shoulders before, but everyone has to take that first step at some point in their life. I hope I can do it. I’m going to try... I won’t say I’m not nervous about standing in front of a lecture hall full of students... but I’m probably not as nervous as some would be. I used to hold rally’s in my town square when I was younger to inform the public on the dangers of puppy mills, so I’m quite comfortable with public speaking, but I will say that it has been a good minute since I have done it and I have never stood up in front of a lecture room full of college students who are the same as I am and tried to pretend to know exactly what I’m doing. That’s a little scary to me. Ngl. Lol.

I’m going to be taking American Sign Language as a fluff class to boost my GPA, so I’m really excited about that because I’ve been wanting to learn it really badly. Just wanted to throw that in there haha. :)

That’s about it for the really BIG things for Fall Semester right now, not including like... the normal hard classes, graduating and switching uni’s soon and stuff. Which I’m super excited about!!

BUT!!...This summer is gonna be lit as well!

I got a volunteer position that I’m going to be in orientation for sometime soon (I think next week is what she said) where I’m going to a local shelter and all I’m doing all day is walking dogs, socializing dogs (basically playing with them and getting them comfortable around humans and other dogs so they’re more adoptable), bathing dogs, and basic training (sit, stay, etc...). It is basically my DREAM volunteer position!!

I just remembered reading an article at one point that said “most people don’t know that shelters really need people to just walk the dogs because regular volunteers usually don’t have the time”. And I remembered volunteering at the Humane Society when I was more able bodied than I am now and that was not something I could do now. It was much too physically taxing. Cleaning kennels, washing over 100 dog bowls in a massive sink that I had to stand on a stool to reach, washing tons of worn out dog blankets and toys, carrying heavy loads of laundry, carrying heavy water dishes out to the play yard, filling up buckets and carrying them, scrubbing the floors with a scrubber thing, etc etc etc... like, I could barely do it as able bodied as I was then. There was no slowing down because you had to rotate the dogs out and you only had a certain amount of time to clean the few bowls and toys/beds/towels we had and only a certain amount of time to power wash/spray down the kennels they were in. It was very very fast paced work and one large break in the middle of the day and I had to leave early and I know I could not do that now. Not in a million years.

Dog walking is something I can do with any size dog. Dog washing is still something I can do and something I have done professionally many times in the grooming industry. Dog socializing is wonderfully cathartic for me AND them. And I’m quite good with basic training, despite what it may seem with Echo...lmao (he just hasn’t been around consistency, which is a huge problem).

So I’m very very excited to get through my orientation and get started on this volunteer position! They were so kind and said that my physical disabilities would be no problem and they could work with me on my pace. I’m really looking forward to this and I’m hoping I can maybe fit it into my schedule when school starts up, even if I have to cut it down to just a couple hours, one day a week.

AND THEN........

In my PERSONAL life...

I’ve made a really cool circle of friends who isn’t intertwined with one of the most toxic people in my life that I really love and will most likely keep in my life forever because I truly believe they can unlearn the toxic behaviour and they’re one of my platonic soul mates. So I now have this really awesome circle of friends that I’m experiencing and learning all these new things about myself and about New Orleans and I keep getting closer with them.

((I may or may not post a rant I wrote up about that, coz it’s painful to talk about. And this is a happy post so it doesn’t go here!!))

I’m learning how to cook through one of those friends. I don’t have enough money to throw at a Hello Fresh subscription, but one of my next door neighbours in my apartment complex has turned into my really good friend and she has a Hello Fresh bi-weekly subscription and it usually is a 2-serving dish and we both live alone and we are both learning to cook for the first time, so we are doing it together. :D She invites me over to her apartment whenever she’s cooking and we’ll just muddle through learning how to cook together. It’s going to be a lot of fun honestly because I have SOOOOO much to learn!! :) Recently got a NutriBullet so I can make protein shakes, but I need to look at recipe’s coz mixing protein powder with just milk or water is awful. Ugh.

I’ve made up my own 30 day challenge for exercising and basically just becoming more healthy and getting my heart and muscles in better shape. June has 30 days so I figured what better way to do a 30 day challenge than on a month that has 30 days lol. Easy to keep track of, right? I made myself a chart and put it on my fridge and everything. Going to keep a log. I’m very excited to see the difference between day 1 and day 30. Going to take pictures for comparison. Idk if 30 days will make that big of a difference, honestly but... we’ll see??? Lol.

I guess this should go up in the school section, but I’m also working on quite a few scholarship entries so we’ll see how that goes!! I had NO idea so many easy essay scholarships were out there!! Keeping it to 1k words is the hard part. :( Eeeeeeeeeeep!!

Been studying for the MCAT’s and tryna find a medical math tutor. It’s gonna be hard, but... we’ll see. Hopefully the MCAT prep classes will help.

I’m in love with deep cleaning and organizing and my neighbour is gonna pay me to clean her apartment and then I’m going over to her mother’s house that she’s renting out (her mother passed away recently and she couldn’t handle staying in the house anymore) to help her Marie Kondo the place. We’re just gonna kind of... go at her own pace, slowly thank everything for doing its job, and get rid of everything that we can and deep clean everything while we are doing it. Probably just take it a day or a week at a time. I’ll be there with her to support her through the process...like if she needs to cry on someone when she sees a certain item or something. I’m excited to help with her journey to recovery and I’m so honoured to be given the chance to be someone’s rock. I love the bond me and my neighbour are developing. I just feel so honoured.

I’m going up to my parents house, then up to Virginia, then hopefully MA towards the end of the summer. Looking forward to the trip quite a bit. :)

HONESTLY...

I’m just so freakin’ excited. My life is going so wonderfully. Everything is so great. My apartment is wonderful, my relationship with my mom is on the mend because of how well in school I’m doing (you all know that’s all she cares about lol), I have wonderful friends and a great support group, my therapist and I click really well, I’m making opportunities happen and having opportunities open up to me in return, I’m meeting new people and seeing new things, I’m feeling physically healthier than ever (even though my chronic pain is worse than ever), I almost always wake up in a good mood, I’ve been getting a good amount of sleep almost every single night, school is good, connections in the professional world are growing...

The ONLY thing holding me back right now is money. I’m pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and it is killing me. The amount of things I *WANT* to do but don’t have the money for is just killing me. I’ve been wanting to take dance lessons, but I don’t have the money. Been wanting to sign up to a yoga studio and FINALLY found one IN MY AREA(!!) that had instructors trained in dealing with people with ehlers danlos syndrome (which is crazy coz lots of yoga instructors turn me away when they hear I have ehlers danlos type 3), but I can’t afford it.

I can barely pay my rent. :| I’m lucky I have EBT, otherwise I literally would not have had any food over the past 2 months. I would have had to choose between having a roof over my head or having food, so thank FUCK I have EBT coz I have a full cabinet and fridge right now. Fucking bless. Lololol.

I’m just so content. There’s a lot of stuff going wrong here and there and a lot of stuff stressing me out, but OVERALL... I couldn’t be happier.

Things have really taken a turn in my life and I have been waiting for them to all come crashing down for 2 years now and they still haven’t and that’s amazing to me.

And there’s my update lol. Hope you enjoyed the Killian Chronicles. 😂 😂 😂 Love and missed you all! 😘

((PS: This has not been proofread and most likely never will be. Free-flow-thought writing is my specialty lol.))

#personal #me.txt

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passionandpurposeblog-blog · 5 years

Text

Sexuality: No More to say and so over it

A few months after my long term girlfriend and I split up, I ended up in bed with Phillip, A nice guy that I’d known for some time. During the post-sex talk, he turns and asks “So does that mean you’re straight now?”

“LMFAO”

‘You’ve got a nice cock and I had a great orgasm, …..but you haven’t awoken anything in me that wasn’t already there. You cannot ‘make’ me straight and no one forced me to fuck you’

Infact, No one else would sexually awaken anything in me. Not the next guy after Phil, or the guy after that guy, or the girl after the guy after Phil. The list goes on and the list started waaaay back into my early teens. I've always been open, I was experimenting with drugs and people at a young age, I had a threesome with a guy and a girl when I was just 18. When I look back, I must admit that was very young for such an experience, but I just went with the flow. I don’t regret it, but I wish I had done it at a later age to really make the most of it and have the emotional maturity that you need to go with it.

I’ve been listening to an interview with Kate Pierson (B52’s) and she has recently married her long term partner, a woman that she has dated for 15 years. She said that she had always dated men, and was even married before and that this lady came along and bang she was in love, just like that. Kate Pierson is now 71, So this is her 55-year-old self experiencing a major transition and shift in her life. Whilst trawling through the B52s back catalog online I read so many comments from random fans. ‘She's a lesbian’ ‘I never knew’ ‘But she was married to so and so’ and this is exactly the snooze fest that I am writing about today. Yawn...... If she spent 40 years with different men and now met a woman, perhaps shes just er just bisexual? And more importantly, shouldn’t we be interested in the music and her voice? As much as I love her, when all is said and done I don’t really want to think about the bedroom antics of a 71-year-old yknow.

What is it with the labels?

It’s like no one is comfortable until they know exactly which box you belong in, and if you stray from that box then their tiny minds scramble and system overload occurs. ‘ANNOUNCE YOURSELF AT ONCE’ ‘What are you?’ and ‘Don’t you dare have options or change, it doesn’t fit with the label I’ve prescribed you’.

Before we label Kate a lesbian, how about we mention that she’s a brilliant talented vocalist with over 40 years in the band? Or is that how we are defining her now ‘The lesbian’?. *Insert laughing emoji here*

“Bisexuals always get dumped on,” says Cynthia Nixon from Sex in the City...The Media has too labeled her a lesbian when much like Kate Pierson, she was in fact with men and entered into this new world later on in her life. It’s like now we must erase her whole previous life and deny that any man has ever come close to her! How dare she now turnaround and say she's’ attracted to men! How fucking dare she, she’s lesbian property now and she has no voice! She never said she was anything, You did!

I thought, ‘I get it! I get You, I just get it’. She’s attracted to people, they may be male or they may be female yet shes being kettled to a place she never asked to be. It really is that simple. Should her current relationship end, nothing stops her going back to men, dating another woman or even staying single. Your past partners do not mean that your future self is set in stone. It’s not difficult to understand really is it?

But! And there is a But!

Say Cinthia and her gf/wife did break up and she dated a man. She won’t find it that easy, because of what I call, the whole ‘lesbian fragility’ - Gay women who pride themselves on being with women and only women and god fucking forbid should you show any interest in a guy. Well, You are now damaged goods my girl. A sell-out, banished!....exiled from the pride....like the Lioness in last weeks BBC Planet Earth. How can you and the gay community ever really watch the L Word again together or listen to Ani Difranco in the same way? ‘It’s just not the same’ they’ll whine.

I’m being serious. There is a reverse discrimination within the gay community! I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve seen a few women in same sex relationships end, then go for a guy and their ‘friends’ no longer feel the same way about them, there’s no time to hang out anymore and she is “too busy with her straight friends”.

Awwwww did someone emasculate you?

I’ve never really enjoyed the company of gay women if I'm honest. I always found their friendships forged on sharing of sexual preference rather than common interest, views or hobbies. I usually think their haircuts are shit and they present me with this feeling where they are unsure if they want to fuck me or fight me. Very awkward, not to mention its a very childish and incestuous scene.

I have seen this so many times with women, either in a same sex or opposite and then switch later on down the line which is what I mean about experience and just understanding those around you. I think a lot of women are on the bi spectrum. Not all, no, but a lot are, and sexuality is fluid. About three months ago my cock hungry straight friend told me she’d met some woman online and is now having the best sex of her life! Great, wonderful, Whoppie. So how do I label her? …....‘Err Mary’......... I label her Mary. I can’t really call her cock hungry right now, so I’ll just label her ‘Hungry Mary’.

One of my oldest friends is gay – full blown lesbian, never been with a guy but totally cool with every bi girl that has. She and I sit on a different part of the spectrum, but she gets it and like myself she gives those around her that mutual respect and safe space to be who they are. If she turned around tomorrow and said she’s dating a guy, I wouldn’t be shocked, not because she has ever indicated that she likes guys, but simply because people change.

I know three guys that have also experimented with other guys, would identify as straight and two of the three have long term girlfriends and kids. I just think at the time they took the ‘any holes a goal’ attitude and like my younger self, just went with the flow.

As we age and grow the fuck up, this should be more accepted and we should just allow people to do who and what they want without the questions, especially the silly questions. It’s really mind numbingly boring, not to mention so nosey!? Jeez, get your own life in order. Despite my ramblings, I'm actually a pretty private person. I just don’t discuss my private life or anyone I’m dating, I have so many transient non-committal interactions with people that I just don’t feel I need to.

I’ve been chatting to some people for ages, and I still wouldn’t discuss parts of my life with them. I keep my circle so small, and If we don’t click like that, we don’t click like that. It’s cool, because there is far more to me and far more to you than who we have in our beds right? I cant imagine meeting someone and asking them, “so what are ya?” CRINGE. I’d die. I’ve got some friends that I’ve spoken to for years, we’ve had really great conversations and it’s never occurred to me to stop and ask ‘do you have a partner? Are you gay?’

The small circle of friends that I have know me, they get me and that’s my safe space.

I do find some of the questions and statements really annoying, and if I’m honest just plain weird. I have an irritating male friend in that likes to continually remind me that I’m attracted to women, and of course, there is no way that I can be attracted to men, because I’m not attracted to him..... *eye roll* Dick! It’s like me saying to someone, ‘but you said you like mixed raced girls, so why don’t you like me’ it’s really really weird and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Its uncomfortable because he cannot address or acknowledge his own fascination with bisexuality and cannot stop mentioning it every time he sees me? He makes out he is cool and open-minded, yet I seem to be the topic of convo or butt of his jokes. Address your homophobia or your weird unrequited sexualisation of me whatever the issue is. Seek help mate, Your issue not mine.

I cannot recall being asked what two women do in bed, but I have heard of it being asked to other people. It’s hilarious. I honestly believe that if you are over 25 and cannot work that out then you have a really dull imagination and I’d bet you are not very experienced. Not necessarily in bedding two women at once, but just in experiencing people; hearing their stories, watching porn, understanding their anatomy and physiology. OR You are being a menace and condescending..... I’ve never seen two men at it live, but I’m pretty sure I know how it goes down ;-)

Sometime ago I spent a fair amount of time at a bdsm sex dungeon helping out an old friend. Id mostly film her sessions, and now and then Id help out by giving some guys the odd little kick in the nuts etc. Boy, I could write a whole new blog on that experience LOL! I saw some things!

Meeting all the different types of people that came in the dungeon really opened my eyes to the world of sex and sexuality and just what turns people on. You really cannot judge what people are into, and you’d never know. It’s funny, the ‘geezers’ that make the gay jokes about bumming are often the same ones that ask the women to wear strap ons ;-). People have their quirks and their kinks, they just hide it well BELIEVE me.

I’ve seen a lot and I’m very open and not much phases me, but because I’m not phased, or excited by the gossip or the fascination of it all I'm over it. …....over the labels, the questions, the presumptions, opinions and the basic inability to let people do what they want in peace. So because of this I decided a long time ago that I’m actually over my sexuality and stopped speaking about it back in my twenties.

Yawn.

No one owns me and no one dictates.

I’m not anything, I’m just me in that particular point of time. No path is set and I answer to no one except who’s in my bed.

Keep your own truth

#sexulaity #bisexuality fragility homophobia lgbt straight labels b52s #sexuality #cockhungry

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flyrtreynolds · 2 years

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THE STORY BEHIND THE LEAK OF A MYTHOLOGIZED RAP ALBUM

When one of hip-hop’s most mythical albums was finally unearthed, the artist behind it, Jay Electronica, praised Allah for its unforeseen release.

The long-rumored album’s unlikely emergence occurred after it was leaked by a 19-year-old hacker. And according to that hacker, it took only about five minutes to dig up Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn), a project that was first announced in 2007 and, thanks to pressure brought on by the leak, released in an official capacity on TIDAL last month (before being taken down quietly not long after).

The album sat in cloud storage of one of Electronica’s collaborators for eight years, the hacker says, a fact he deduced from the digital time stamp imprinted on it. He claims it was located in a folder with a title that referenced Manhattan’s Jungle City Studios. (Electronica’s collaborators dispute this claim).

It likely would have remained in that folder indefinitely if the hacker, who insists on remaining nameless but divulges he’s a college-enrolled male in the U.S., had not come across the names of Electronica’s inner circle and, on a whim, decided to break into each of their laptops.

After only a few minutes, he discovered gold. Act II, a coveted album that had gained folkloric status after being promised and pushed back numerous times over the years, was nestled neatly in a .zip file, its file names nearly identical to a tracklist released by Electronica in 2012. Although the hacker broke in looking for the album, he didn’t actually expect to find it.

“I was excited and didn’t know what to do with it,” he says. “[I didn’t know] whether to keep it to myself or not.”

He decided on leaking it and created a “group buy,” which is what happens when an online community pools money together to purchase a product. He set a target funding goal of $9,000 and leaked the track “Real Magic” as proof that he actually had the goods. The goal was achieved in about two weeks.

Just like that, Act II, perhaps only surpassed by Dr. Dre’s Detox in lost-album infamy, was finally out in the world. But with it brought questions. How did the hacker find the album in the first place? What right did he have to release Electronica’s fabled opus? And did Electronica agree with his reasoning?

My journey to find the origins of the leak begins in early October, as I start poking around for clues and end up falling into a strange corner of the internet, full of encrypted messages, mysterious aliases, and shadowy industry figures.

I find the hacker’s online identity by tracing the digital footsteps of the album’s leak: first on Twitter, where whispers are circulating of a large purchase for the project, then on Reddit, where a user tells me of an infamous moderator on the forum LEAKTHIS, an online community with a collective interest in unearthing (mostly illegally) unreleased music.

“He won’t talk to you lol,” the user warns.

LEAKTHIS members share a mutual admiration for the hacker, often replying to his threads with a goat emoji. But despite his reputation as a reclusive figure, he quickly agrees to talk with me for this story.

“I like providing music for people that otherwise they wouldn’t hear,” he explains when I ask him why he leaks projects. “But I also like collecting songs myself that will never leak or anything.”

I’m speaking with him through an encrypted app that deletes our message history often. My questions are frequently shut down, as he tries to avoid divulging any details that could lead authorities or other hackers to discovering his real identity. He often goes silent for days, or if I push too hard on the wrong topic, he’ll leave the conversation altogether.

He usually comes back, though. Once, after telling me he’s finished speaking with me, he pops up with a name and address accompanied by a blurry selfie picture of a teenage boy. He mistakenly thought I’d written a recent VICE feature on leaking culture and wants to expose the real identity of the 17-year-old hacker at the center of it.

“Great job, you guys interviewed a rapist, pedophile, animal abuser :-),” he captions the picture.

Whether he did this because he feels left behind or just because he wants to let me know I’ve chosen the wrong subject, I don’t know. It seems to prove that he does hold at least some of the power that users on Reddit and LEAKTHIS claim, though.

Looking through LEAKTHIS, you can see he’s shared unheard gems by beloved artists like TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad, the Weeknd, and Kid Cudi.

And then there’s his crown jewel, Act II.

“We weren’t going to get the album regardless,” he says when I ask him whether he believes he stole it. “The album has been nothing but positives for him.”

He’s quick to point out how it’s earned rave reviews from both fans and critics alike, as well as approval by Electronica himself, who, in a retweet of hip-hop journalist Angela Lee about the project, added: “A.P.I.D.T.A. Allah is indeed the best of planners. Humbled by the love its [sic] receiving.”

Then there’s the fact that some of Electronica’s collaborators were in the Discord channel, an invite-only chat platform, that was promoting the group buy. They were annoyed by the leak at first, the hacker says, but then “happy” to support it.

Was that the truth? Not quite, according to some of Jay Electronica’s collaborators.

“The story [the hacker is] putting out there is definitely not accurate,” says Mike Chav, the audio engineer who worked on Act II and whose Dropbox was the one supposedly hacked. “You gotta think who stands to benefit from things, and we kind of came to our own conclusions.”

Chav, along with other members of Electronica’s team (including the rapper’s tour DJ TJ The King), went “Scooby Doo detective,” as he puts it, after hearing about the group buy. So they entered the Discord channel in search of clues. What they found didn’t add up in their eyes, and they quickly came to their own determination: Someone they knew in the music industry had given the hacker the files to leak.

Their reasoning is based on perceived errors in the hacker’s story: Chav almost never uses his Dropbox to exchange files, he says, and he never used it to transfer Act II, which sits on two hard drives at his home. And while the members of Electronica’s team acknowledge they’ve used Jungle City Studios before, they say they never recorded any of Act II there, so it wouldn’t make sense for the file to be named after it.

Their suspicions were heightened by a longtime “super fan” of Electronica who they’d met multiple times in person at shows. According to the fan, who approached them in a sidechat on Discord, the hacker had done “business” with big-name artists before and had contact with another Discord member who was widely considered a figure in the music industry.

This figure, who, based on the fan’s description, Chav recognized as someone once in their inner circle, could have handed the album off to the hacker.

“Whoever created the smokescreen kind of played [the hacker] like a little puppet,” says DJ TJ The King. “Our impression is that some 19-year-old kid from Middle America didn’t just stumble upon this, you know? [Electronica] didn’t believe it either.”

The hacker tells me that this shadowy figure is in fact “a friend of Jay Electronica” but denies receiving Act II from them. They only confirmed its authenticity, he says.

“I’m sure Jay’s team doesn’t remember exactly what was where nearly a decade ago lol,” he counters, before adding that he does in fact work with labels, but not in this case. “I help them, they help me, and I don’t go to jail.”

Regardless of who you believe, both sides do agree on one thing: Electronica was pleasantly surprised by the leak, even behind closed doors.

“Any other time, Jay would be pissed that this happened,” says TJ. “But it was like, everyone was on lockdown, and we were supposed to have been on the road… So we’re kind of sitting here twiddling our thumbs.”

Electronica, just like Chav and TJ, didn’t believe the hacker had anything at first. “They’re gonna be mad when they find out it’s just stuff that’s [already] out,” TJ remembers Electronica telling him when he called to share news about the group buy.

What’s more, Electronica was dealing with a death in his family, so his attention lay far off from music. But then the buy was completed for Act II—or at least the “shell” that would have been released officially had it gone through the proper mixing, mastering, and clearing channels, TJ confirms—and his Twitter timeline was set ablaze with reactions to the project. He couldn’t believe it.

“I really love [him],” the hacker says when I ask him why exactly he went looking for Act II in the first place. “He’s been a big influence on my life and helped me push forward when things have been rough.”

The positive response to the album, reiterated vigorously on social media, perhaps washed away an insecurity within Electronica that fans wouldn’t like his debut, the main reason it was never officially released, TJ tells me.

“Jay thought at the time that people wouldn’t like it because it sounds so different from what was popular,” he says, adding that the inability to clear all of the album’s samples also played a part in its shelving (and most likely its recent pulling from TIDAL).

By that account, perhaps the hacker was right: While it may have not benefited Electronica financially (he wished he could monetize it somehow or even receive the 9K that was raised, TJ tells me), the leak may well have been a positive for him. Not long after its release, Electronica joined the group buy’s Discord channel and even created his own as a way of directly reaching his fans, according to both the hacker and TJ.

“I will say it’s only fitting for it to be released like this,” Chav admits. “Like, more mystery, more weird shit that has continuously followed all of the Jay Electronica projects.”

I tend to agree. For years, Act II was a myth, and then it was here. And then, of course, it was gone again. The hacker, the shadowy figure, the colleagues posing as detectives—they’re all part of the magic trick that’s been Electronica’s career.

If we were to follow the rules of a trick outlined in the 2006 film The Prestige, which Electronica references in his project titles, we start with The Pledge, then we go to Act II: The Turn and then we finish with “the prestige,” where we’re supposed to bring back what’s disappeared.

In this case, the leak served as the third act. It’s up to the audience to decide which player was behind it. This brings us to our final suspect: Electronica himself.

As many have pointed out, it wouldn’t be out of character for the mysterious rapper to leak his own album. In fact, when I tell friends that I’m writing this piece, that’s typically their first question: “Did he do it himself?”

TJ brings up (and denies) the rumors without prompt.

“Jay really had songs on there that he didn’t want out,” TJ says, pointing to the fact that a handful of verses on the project are rough sounding and mumbled out, seemingly as reference tracks to be recorded properly later. “A lot of people kept thinking, ‘Aw man, Jay leaked it!’ Nah, Jay is not the type of person that would leak something.

“Jay would take songs off of that and just put them on the internet; he’s done that plenty of times,” TJ adds. “Half of those songs that were on there, he put out. Maybe two or three songs that no one’s heard. The songs he wanted people to hear, they were out.”

The hacker denies these rumors, too. The one player who doesn’t, of course, is Electronica himself. Like any good magician, he keeps the illusion going.

“Every trick consists of three parts,” he recently typed out in the group buy’s Discord before mysteriously leaving the channel.

https://www.complex.com/music/2020/12/jay-electronica-act-2-leak-story

#hip-hop #jay electronica #act ii #complex

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piamii · 6 years

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LA trip 1.0

On the way to sf with my mom. Since she's driving the first leg, I might as well take the chance to write about my trip so far. Can't do cuts on my phone so will be a big wall of text.

I'm really happy with everything I got to do, especially because I got to spend time with my friends. It was my goal to make this trip into a mini vacation despite interviews and the stress of travel and that goal was a success.

I kind of want to write a post later on about me and Ms process of getting back together because it was complex and very significant to me, but that's for a later time.

Monday: although I was with my mom, it was the first time I got to take care of a lot of travel details on my own. It was tedious, but I feel a lot more confident doing it on my own next trip. I was planning on preparing for interviews and relaxing when I got back to the hotel, but I decided to make an impromptu trip to meet up with H that night. That ended up being a great decision for a lot of reasons. I got to drive through the city alone at night while blasting music, which helped me feel more comfortable with the area and more confident being in a new place. I found a few new songs I really liked on xm radio, which was nice because I've never had xm radio and it's really exciting to me LOL. Second, I got to meet H and drive him around and buy him a London fog latte from Starbucks. It was really natural and casual which made me really happy. I never had any doubts about our friendship but it just confirmed that our friendship irl was pretty much exactly the way it is online, just a little more "real" now. And it's weird to think that if I do end up in LA we can hang out all the time, and if I don't then these few weeks will just remain a fond memory.

Tuesday: open house and interview #1. I would give the site a B in terms of fit. Pretty high level of anxiety, hard to fall asleep etc, as is typical for the first time doing anything. Great program but not exactly what I'm looking for. Glad their interview was my first one because it helped me prepare for the rest. After a certain point of preparation, you just can't prepare for these things anymore. I was trying to remember everything I wanted to say but didn't get to say everything I wanted to say. So after this interview I thought, fuck it. I'm good enough to do well at any of these sites so I'll end up wherever I'll end up.

Wed: hung out with H and L. I think I will always cherish this day. Hung out with H at the mall for a bit to prep for interviews, he bought me a caramel americano from coffee bean and tea leaf (delicious!), and then we hung out at the tesla superchargers for awhile. Tesla has a really nice community in SoCal- so many people came up and asked h about his car I lost count and they were all really friendly. Also I'm convinced tesla is the future, everything is just amazing about his car. Hahaha :) then we met up with L at kbbq. As expected, the interaction was easy and pleasant. I was really really happy to spend time with both of them since I've known them for almost 3 years at this point; it still feels a bit surreal that it finally happened after all the times we joked about meeting up and eating together. L got me some under eye masks to help with my dark circles <3 and we found out we couldnt eat very much for all you can eat since we only ate 3 rounds. But it was delicious and we went to get strawberry bingsu. We did h's hair at the bingsu place which was highly entertaining. And then L had to go and i had an inner conflict about whether to get Taiyaki too. I figured I wouldn't have another chance for a long time so h bought Taiyaki for me :D it was delicious and colorful and made me very haps and very cold. Overall, a very very happy day ^___^ @floflogotmojo

Thurs: interview 2 - a wtf kind of interview, but in a good way. Went to see the view by the beach and then got the best udon of my life with H spontaneously later that day. We also went to a Japanese store and H bought me melty chocolates and a cream bun. :D :D

Friday: open house 2 to correspond with interview 2. Liked the work environment way better than place 1, but still didn't have a lot of opportunities for integrated care. I would give the site an A - S for work environment and B for fit of training oppprtunties. One of my previous mentors/cotherapists is part of the current intern cohort which makes me like the place even more since I fit well with her. She invited me to drinks (that I had to decline bc of schedule conflict), which made me feel very warm and welcomed. Hung out with R in downtown LA after that. I accidentally routed to the wrong place with the exact same street name so I was 45 minutes late. We picked up some pastries and drinks and went to chat in the open mall area. It made me happy that r planned everything, I just got to walk around and enjoy the sights and environment without anxiety. Talking with R was more or less just like how we talk online. Very comfortable interaction and made me feel like our friendship has a lot of potential. I like the big sister/little brother dynamic. He treated me to sundubu and then took us to overlook the city at Griffith. Good eats and good views :) it's really nice being around a happy go lucky, open minded, and accommodating enfp; in a lot of way R is similar to my mom. I pay a lot more attention to these things now because I've become more critical and analytical about my relationships. Anyways, another happy memory made.

Saturday: I decided to spend the day with my mom. We talked a lot about family relationships and about our difficulties with communication. I think it brought us closer and was very needed. I also watched a lot of Chinese drama because I need to keep brushing up on Chinese for my interview in 2 weeks...

Overall I think 2018 will be the year of boldly growing into new experiences and culling/strengthening friendships. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to experience so many new and happy things in the very first week of the year. To many more good memories and opportunities for growth! :)

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birdhug · 7 years

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reflections on my first year of being fully vegan

july will mark one year of me deciding to go vegan so i thought I’d just write some blurbs of stuff ive learned and ways ive grown!

my tastebuds totally changed!! there are so many more foods that i love now that id never thought id enjoy. (particularly soy milk and tofu) this is something that i dont see a lot of people talk about irt veganism but its totally significant. i love veggies so much more than i thought i ever could.

that being said apparently i cant tell the difference between soy milk and dairy because a barista accidentally gave me dairy in my coffee once and i didnt notice until a bunch of sips in that they didnt put the little “S” on the cup over the milk check box thing so ummm thats weird. i havent had dairy in nearly a year but okay

ive realized that there can be people who are usually rational and value objective truth but then they open their mouth on vegan issues (being a nonvegan themselves) and they sound like complete simpletons. (didnt david attenborough, when asked why he wasnt vegan, say something like “you cant feed lions grass”?? lol ok)

yeah when i was a vegetarian i liked being able to just go to tim hortons whenever and get a donut, and i do miss that convenience. but the fact that i cant have donuts or chocolate bars all the time means when i finally do get to have a really delicious veganized dessert, its ten times better and more special

kinda related, im generally WAY better now at just having the presence of mind to resist food that i want to eat in the moment. i used to just gorge myself at parties and stuff and feel awful afterwards. now, whether the food is vegan or not, i can resist it if i know itll make me feel like shit later Even if it would make me happy in the present

ive decided i want to pursue a career in dietetics :)

ive realized why i care so much more about animals. its because i realized that humans hold so much power over every single animal in the world, and throughout history weve largely used that power to kill and mistreat them. i really think in this day and age its our responsibility to use that power to do the best we can to help them. they are at our complete mercy.

i realized that we as a society have been conditioned to see animals as objects first, and living, feeling beings last: their images are used as mascots, symbols, toys, we watch them for entertainment in zoos, marine parks, circuses, we watch cute videos of them online, and we have trained ourselves to see specific animals as food, despite the only relevant difference between a dog and a pig being our arbitrary societal categories in which weve placed them.

ive come to think of caring about animals as “widening my circle of compassion”. and i think its extremely healthy for others do to the same, because its made me just more empathetic to all creatures, human or otherwise, in general

i am...So lucky. my mom was vegan for 4 years before i made the full switch so i was already eating vegan meals most of the time. all the groceries in the house are vegan. all the restaurants we go to have substantial vegan options. and i have someone close to me that i can talk about this kind of stuff with. but there are so many kids my age that want to go vegan more than anything that have to deal with an unsupportive family and i really feel for them. & i honestly dont blame them at all if they just want to give up or succumb to the pressure of their family. please, dont risk your mental health. take care of yourself first and do what you can.

i used to feel like its pointless going vegan because nothing is ever going to change but like. now that im exposed to the community and veg related news is coming my way i feel SO much more hopeful for the future. so many more people r going reducetarian, corporations are investing in vegan food companies and theyre absolutely blowing up, the dairy & meat industries are starting to panic. were not going to see instant change but like...shit is happening folks. keep fighting the good fight.

ALSO i used to feel so hopeless about climate change. like when i was taught about in school there was no actionable advice given? it was always like “uh yeah were all gonna die. recycle and walk to school i guess” but knowing how much an impact cutting animal products out of ur diet makes only motivates me to do more! (yeah it may seem small but its better to think of it that way rather than “weh theres nothing i can do so i might as well not do anything”)

i know that theres a large percentage of vegans/vegetarians that “go back”. so how can i say that i wont??? i feel really confident that i wont because its just so....easy for me now. you see that most people start eating animal products again because its too inconvenient for them but Honestly after living in a vegan household for 5 years and having access to all the information and resources that ive had...i really cant possibly imagine a good excuse. it just comes so naturally to me. its so fucking easy. boff future-me upside the head if i ever voluntarily go back

in conclusion this is the best decision ive made & its changed my life in a major way and ive never been happier about my choices in life...and ummmmm thats it. please consider reducing your animal product consumption to whatever extent you feel comfortable. it would mean the world to me

& id really appreciate if you didnt reblog this!!

#jaypeg #do0nt rebl00g

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ddrkirbyisq · 7 years

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Your presence keeps me safe. Keeps me from feeling scared, though there is everything to be afraid of.

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"What is your goal?"

I'll be honest -- life hasn't been the greatest recently, as you may or may not have noticed already. It's not anything poignant -- just a general down cycle, punctuated by some times when things are better; not too bad; even happy and exciting. The thing that worries me most is that looking at it from an objective standpoint I do think that it has had a pretty high correlation with when I started having to commute so far. But then again, there were other things that also changed in my life at that time as well.

I finished the Madoka series again -- what a great show. Surprisingly, I actually had forgotten quite some powerful moments...I guess it has been quite a while, after all (or perhaps I didn't find them as powerful the first time around?). I debated watching all 3 movies next, but I think for the moment I'm going to skip ahead to Rebellion as there aren't =too= many significant changes in the first two films to warrant it for now. Perhaps after that, I'll go back to the movies, and then write some general reflections in terms of my thoughts and feelings. I realized again that I'm actually pretty bad at discussing these sorts of things with other people and I'm not sure if it's because I'm just bad at explaining myself or because I'm just afraid of putting forth my own opinions...

Hyper Light Drifter is done done! I didn't 100% it, but I actually got more than I thought I would -- I got all 8 modules in each of the four areas, and also found all the monuments. I didn't do all the challenges and I'm still missing some upgrade bits and one last key, but I didn't really want to bother with those as I had gotten most of the "main" stuff and explored all the areas at the very least. Good game!

Next could be OneShot, but I'm actually more looking forward to Rakuen, so I think I might go ahead and go through that next.

Of course, I can't forget mentioning Monument Valley 2, which -- surprise! -- just got released (wow!). I'm waiting to sit down with that one and enjoy it fully when I have the chance. Honestly, just seeing the trailer and knowing that that game exists restored some of my hopefulness in life in general. Perhaps I just need more art in my life?

More food experiments! A few weeks ago I experimented with some different cuts of meat, including a top blade/flat iron steak (was ok. I also tried out the jaccard on it, which I can't tell whether was a good or bad idea), and a lamb flank steak (!), which actually turned out quite decently -- basically a lamb version of a steak. I might have to try cooking flank steak a little more often -- I think it's good practice to experiment with these less pricey cuts, both for variety's sake and for my wallet's sake as well. I've heard skirt steak can be pretty great too.

Just yesterday I fired up the Anova sous vide machine and used it to sous-vide some bratwurst sausages with beer, which I then seared over the stovetop (no grill for me! That's foreign territory still). Served it on toasted hot dog buns, along with whole grain mustard and beer-braised sauerkraut (plus a bit of bacon). A very wholesome meal indeed, and the sausages were definitely very juicy. Not bad!

Something else I realized is that some of my happiest times are in the grocery store, lol! Somehow just being by myself and skipping along while thinking of what foods to get really makes me happy. Maybe I'm destined to be a housewife...

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I was talking with my best friend the other night and I realized that one of the reasons that the blogging "audience" and social media audience in general that I find myself writing among has changed so much is not just that facebook and everything has exploded and has everyone and their mothers on it, but also that I no longer have a smaller exclusive group or community of peers that I can point to as my social media "community". In high school it was actually a big thing to me, that me and my high school friends (and some not-yet-friends that I was able to connect with) had this online "space" where we could interact with each other. Of course, many (but not all) of our xanga sites were public in the first place, so it's not like it was artificially restricted to just those people (and indeed that was part of the charm of it, that I could connect with people whom I only vaguely knew about), but the notion was still there.

Yet, I, along with many other people, have more or less lost that aspect of life and online presence now -- the idea of a tangible "cluster" of people. It's not just a matter of social media changing and FB becoming...well, whatever you want to call it. But now I have dance friends, college friends, friends from my past, friends of friends, ...

And of course I try to hedge myself in the other direction -- try to consciously retain =some= semblance of an "inner circle", but the reality is that that doesn't really exist anymore for me, not just online but in real life too. Yes, I =do= have a collection of close friends that =I= feel comfortable sharing more details with, but those friends themselves often aren't connected to each other in the same way, let alone at all. There's no one thing tying us all together, so of course it feels like less of a community.

Perhaps that itself is what I missed most about those days, is the feeling that it was a community of sorts. The good news is that despite all this I'm sure those sorts of communities still exist, they're just harder to find and form. But the herd of progress seems to be moving further and further away from it -- in the direction of scrolling tickers, feeds, reddit, tumblr, and twitch.

Meanwhile, I'll just be over here in the corner writing my snail mail...

#Blogger

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goodthingimamom · 7 years

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New beginnings?

I am attempting to pick up where I left off 5 years ago, with a freshly-started and soon-forgotten blog (a wordpress by the same name, as a matter of fact. Its still there, lonely and inactive). I had just had my daughter, I was a stay at home mom while Baby Daddy was working full time as a car salesman (money was very tight), and I was trying to find my place in a world where I never actually got to interact with anyone. I found a mommy group on Facebook and I was suddenly surrounded by people with a common interest. Immediately I found myself interested in baby wearing, cloth diapers, and all things crunchy and granola. If you’re a mom, you know what that means. Basically, I wanted to get to the roots of all-natural parenting, happy to ignore the “progressive” movements such as pureed first foods and self-soothing.

To be clear, I still believe in these things. What I also learned, however, is that the mom community is outrageously judgmental and cliquey-- two things I avoided through all of my undergraduate life. I found myself confused at first; why did I feel left out? Yes, I’m a stay at home mom, but in this circle I have joined and have felt so at home with, how have I come to feel like such an outsider? Is it even possible to form cliques in an online community? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. With one post, you find your questions go unanswered. You feel a little lost, a little misguided, and a little abandoned. You have a question about the one squishy thing you love most in this world, your flesh and your spawn, yet no one is listening to your concerns. No big deal, some posts are missed. You try again on another day with another topic. Again, your post is ignored while other moms-- the funny ones, the generous ones, the bubbly and smart and wise ones, all have their posts answered in seconds by ten and twenty or more responses. What’s so different about mine?

This became a theme until I realized that maybe the parenting community wasn’t a community after all. We had a common interest but no common core. So once again, I felt like the same outsider I had been all throughout high school; nice enough and under the radar, but still a little awkward and ostracized.

About a year and a half after my daughter was born, Baby Daddy and I went through a separation. I knew it meant divorce for us because I knew the definition of common-law marriage. I knew avoiding it would only end in a tax audit and I wasn’t down for that. Anyway, I moved in with my mom and step-dad, got a retail job that I actually love, and put my nose deeper into my school books. I was aiming for a degree in nursing but was still largely undecided (I ended up focusing on biochemistry, but that has since come full circle and I’m back to nursing. That’s another long and fairly boring story).

I dated a guy, I spent a lot of money I shouldn’t, and once a week when my daughter was with her dad, I had a life. I HAD A LIFE. I’ve NEVER had a life before. I got out, I went on adventures, skipped town for the night, enjoyed myself and my independence from my parents’ house. I lived. And then that eventually ended too, with a lot less money than I had before.

More long stories and two years later, I finally bought a condo for my daughter and myself to live in together. For the first time, I would have my own place and make my own rules for my daughter. Everything was set. I was still in school, I just landed full-time status at work, and I was ready for the single-mom lifestyle. Honestly, it was more than I had ever realized I wanted. Just me and my girl and my independence.

A few weeks after having my offer accepted on the condo, I decided to try online dating; lets face it, I wasn’t meeting anyone anywhere. A few messages here, a dinner date there, and then I found him-- my search for love had ended and I knew it the first night of us talking. Sounds too good to be true, right? Right. In all honesty, we hit it off perfectly. Everything we talked about was in sync. He was sincerely interested in me, he wasn’t pushy and made no assumptions, he was even so shy that I had to ask him out first. The poor man could barely ask for my number on his own. We had our first date, and he was adorably shy and reserved but we had a great time. We stayed out until 2 am when I had work at 5 the next morning. He tried to take me out to lunch after I was off work and I politely declined in favor of a nap. The next day was the first day of the new semester and we got lunch after I was out of class. The rest was history.

As it turned out, exactly a month after our first date, I closed on my condo. I moved in three days later. Bless his heart, he basically did the whole move himself, especially after I sliced my finger open with scissors on moving day and had to get 8 stitches. He literally wouldn’t let me lift a finger for the rest of the day. He hasn’t spent a night away since.

Yes, he has lived in my condo since day 1 (though he didn’t move his stuff in until 3 months later, technicially). In many ways, I have to tell myself that it was a sacrifice to make for a supportive man who truly does love me. He has a hot temper, we fight, we disagree (he’s a control freak and I’m freakishly independent; we don’t see eye to eye a lot of the time). In the tough moments, I regret it all. Letting him stay that first night, setting that precedent. Not putting my foot down and letting myself be in control of my own life for the first time ever. Going with the flow to see what would happen instead of deciding for myself.

For those of you who are wondering, he is great with my daughter. His son is 4 months older than her, and he really is great with kids. He’s stern, so he commands her respect, and she learned quickly that he will not bend to her 3-year-old whim. She may not always like him, and neither do I, but we both love him. He reminds me of my own dad in a lot of ways; very imperfect but very well-loved. Despite all the commotion at times, I have never felt so secure. I have never felt so connected to someone and so unable, spiritually, to remove myself from them. I have never had a problem letting go of people who prove they don’t deserve a place in my life. But even on our bad days, I don’t let him go. It’s not that I can’t, its just that I don’t. I choose not to. Sometimes I consider it, sometimes he does, too. Neither one of us commits to leaving because we commit to stay instead. And I guess that’s what really locks it in for me, because isn’t that the first rule of marriage? “Til death do us part” is tested the second a man and his bride lose their lustful passion. The second they argue and regret their choice to wed, the second they want to back out and take the easy route (the one where they don’t have to responsible for any other adult’s happiness or well being). That’s when divorce happens. That’s when it happened for me. But this time, as quickly as it started, as fiercely as we love and fight, I don’t back down. And neither does he.

And, here I am now. I’m a mom with a very, very small circle of friends. Its more of a triangle, really. One best friend and a few acquaintances, some stronger than others. Some come and go. I have a step-son who challenges me the way all children who aren’t mine always have in that I don’t know what my role is supposed to be or where my boundaries lie. My daughter is my soul mate, my husband is my pillar, and my dogs are my biggest hobby. I have tried so, so many hobbies-- photography, video games, BLOGGING (lol!), baking, homemaking, sewing, crafts.... Nothing sticks. Nothing inspires me. I enjoy taking pictures, but not enough to get out of my house and go find pictures to take. I LOVE cooking, but it feels like a chore most days since I don’t have an affluence with which to buy ingredients for dishes I really want to make. As much as I like how scientific and precise baking is, it bores me. Video games stress me out because the entire time I just feel like I’m supposed to finish, so I never actually enjoy what I’m doing.

So why the blog? That’s a good question, and the best answer I have is that maybe I’m trying to redirect my addiction to social media into a forum that could actually be productive. Its the opportunity for self-reflection, a medium for honesty in my progress or lack thereof. Its a flowing brainstorm, a mind map of more than 160 characters, where I can bounce ideas off myself. Maybe that will help me find myself and my passions. Find my direction.

My current focuses for beginning this self-improvement revolution include: 1. Get back to being obsessed with school; my 4.0 GPA fell apart after I moved out of my parents, partly due to being busier with a bigger family, partly due to working full-time, and partly due to being overwhelmed with the feeling that I can’t hold it all together any more. 2. Do something for myself each day that does not include the television or Facebook. Actually pick up that guitar I bought myself when I had signed up for guitar classes (before I moved and I thought I would have time for such things), pull the keyboard I got my daughter for Christmas out of the closet and start remembering how to read music, play sudoku, or read a book. 3. Use the Happy Planner that I bought (and am in LOVE with!) but always forget to use. Seriously, I’m so unorganized that I can’t even remember to keep my planner with me. I always think I won’t need it, and then I realize too late that I do. 4. Try to keep up with my appearances a little more. I am seriously obsessed with house shoes and sweatpants. It’s becoming a problem. Now I’m shaving my legs a few times a week, I’m wearing actual clothes when I leave the house, and sometimes I even wear makeup. I’m trying this new thing, you may have heard of it, its called fake it til I make it. Basically I dress like I have my life together and maybe I’ll start to feel like I do. 5. Get back in shape! Get out and run the dogs, they need it anyway. Go to the gym after the kids are in bed instead of passing out immediately. I got myself some home weights to use while I watch Netflix.

I have 3 weeks until the end of this semester, and then it is summer break which means I won’t have to feel guilty about enjoying myself. The Hubs and I have a lot to do, like fixing both of our cars and doing some home maintenance, but we are also really hoping to go camping this summer. In 3 days we start crate training our puppy. I want to exercise my butt off, literally, because come October I will be the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding. After summer my kids are starting kindergarten. After next semester, I will (maybe?) be applying to nursing school. There are seriously so many things I need to get motivated for. And motivated is just something I’ve never been.

So that’s what this is. My accountabili-buddy. My declarations and confessions. My admission to success and relapse. This is my account of self-improvement and self-actualization. Stay tuned if you feel so inclined.

#momlife selfimprovement motivation findingmyself

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